Link Popularity Explained and How To Build Links

Author: Frank Kilkelly

Link popularity is the single most influential factor for determining how well a web site will perform in search engine rankings. A web site's link popularity is computed from the number and more importantly, the quality of links pointing to a web site.

Link Popularity history

To gain a better understanding of link popularity it is useful to know why it became so crucial for search engine rankings. In the past a web page's ranking was determined, amongst other factors, by the number of keyword occurences within 'on-page' elements i.e. in page text, META tags, title tag. When web developers learned that they could trick a search engine to return their web pages by cramming keywords into their pages the search engines had to get a bit smarter. They were using 'on-page' elements to determine relevance so it was only natural that they would look to elements out of direct control of the web page creator i.e. 'off-page' elements. Search engines made the assumption that the greater the number of links from other sites pointing to a web site, the more popular the web site is and therefore a more quality resource. This worked nicely in theory but in practice it was also to be abused.

Web site owners figured out many ways to get links pointing to their web sites one example of which was through the use of link farms, pages the contained nothing more than a collection of links, Quantity of links was being abused so the search engines made use of the old saying ""quality not quantity"" and began to assign a quality factor to each of the links pointing to a web site. Now web sites that had a higher number of high quality links were looked upon favourably by the search engines. Building link popularity became a science in itself and today is still the most time-consuming and frustrating activity for a search engine optimizer.

Main classes of links

Note: In the following examples SiteA is our web site and SiteB is an outside site (i.e. a web site under a different domain name than SiteA).

Inbound links:

Inbound links to a web site are links that originate from an outside web site. An example would be a link on SiteB pointing into a page on SiteA.

SiteA (----- SiteB

Outbound links:

Outbound links from a web site are links pointing to a page on an outside web site. An example would be a link on SiteA pointing out to a page on SiteB.

SiteA -----) SiteB

There are two further classifications of links:

Reciprocal links:

An example of a reciprocal link is when SiteA links to SiteB AND SiteB links to SiteA, the link is reciprocated by both parties.

SiteA -----) SiteB

AND

SiteA (----- SiteB

To achieve a high link popularity the type of links to build are inbound one-way links. This simulates how natural links are created i.e. links that people create to point to your site because they found it worth linking to.

For outbound links it is natural to assume that they might decrease link popularity of a web site but this is not true. You do not give away your link popularity when you link to another site. They do not add to your link popularity though.

Reciprocal links can add to your link popularity if the web site that you exchange links with has a higher link popularity than your site. However they are not as powerful as inbound, one-way links as they are quite artificial in nature i.e. most probably created by communication between the owners of both sites.

How to build link popularity

So it is quite obvious that to help build up a nice link popularity many inbound, one-way links need to be created. This can be achieved in a number of different (and most importantly, legal) ways:

Directories:

Directories are categorized listings of links from around the web. Many, many directories exist and vary in their methods of getting your link posted on them. They provide a great source of quality inbound, one-way links. Getting listed in quality directories such as DMOZ or Yahoo can be more beneficial for your link popularity than a lot of links from smaller, newer directories.

Great site content:

The most powerful way to get inbound, one-way links is to have great site content that other web sites will want to link to. This allows you to get links from sites other than directories, which can definitely be better. The best thing about this is that it requires no communication on your part, it just happens naturally. If your site has poor content then others sites may not link, including the directories. Most of the top ranking web sites today got to the top because of great content. Writing interesting and informative articles for your web site is a good way of getting these kind of links.

Emailing web site owners:

If you come across a listing of links on a web site other than a directory e.g. a links page on a somebody's personal web site, it can do no harm to write the web site owner a polite email requesting a link to your site from their page. They may request a reciprocal link in return but sometimes they do not and you can get a quality inbound, one-way link for your efforts. I have got many links in the past using this method. In my email I always ask them to visit my site first before making a decision to link and I personalise each email with a comment or two about their site.

Summary

The best and most effective way of increasing your search engine rankings is working to improve your web site's link popularity. This can be achieved by getting as many inbound, one-way links as you can from quality sites such as directories. Other ways to get these links are having great content on your site and requesting a link to your site from other web sites.

Increasing link popularity is a time-consuming and sometimes frustrating process but is definitely worth the time and effort when you see a dramatic increase in traffic.

About the author: Frank Kilkelly is a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Expert and Webmaster at http://www.seo-ireland.com/ , a complete search engine optimization resource. The highlight of the site is an SEO forum for discussion of the latest techniques and tips to improve the ranking of your web site.

Google PageRank: Not Worth The Worry

Author: John Metzler

I notice that a lot of webmasters are obsessed with Google PageRank (Entire sections of SEO forums are even devoted to PR). Web sites do not live and die by their PageRank. A PR 6 web site may rank lower than a site with a PR 5 due to other Search Engine Optimization factors. Search engine results are not proportional to a web site's PageRank value.

The PageRank value is a representation of a web site's internal and external link structure. Internally, your web site's pages should be easily accessible from each other and use anchor text relevant to the theme of the web site. Externally speaking, outbound links should be good quality and/or relevant to your web site's content. And finally, it is widely known that incoming links also contribute quite a bit to PageRank. There is obviously much more to achieving good search engine rankings that the above linking strategies.

With that being said, many webmasters become obsessed with the PageRank of their web sites and consider it to be the bottom line of any search engine marketing campaign. This type of thinking can cloud a much more important issue of whether or not the client has seen an improvement in search engine placement and web site traffic. Always base your achievements on specific rankings for keywords that have been well-researched. If you go parading around about achieving a PageRank of 6 for your client, he or she won't care if they aren't seeing a return on their investment, now will they?

If you're working to increase your link popularity through reciprocal links and refuse to link to web sites that are lower than PR 5, rethink your strategy. Well-designed, well-ranked sites with informative content are always a safe bet to link out to. That was my basic strategy with a client of mine, www.1bbweb.com.

They have a PageRank 4 (at the time of writing this article, January 2005) and rank at #6 on Google for 'bed and breakfast directory' (without quotes). The #7 result has a PR 6 and the next three spots in the first page of results are PR 5 web sites, all higher than my client. This example is repeated throughout the Web and proves that preoccupying yourself with PageRank can result in losing sight of more important ranking factors.

About the author: John Metzler is a Senior Vice-President at Abalone Designs (www.abalone.ca) which offers Search Engine Optimization at affordable prices.

Search Engine Optimization and Other Scary Things

Author: Francisco Aloy

by Francisco Aloy

Being a relative newcomer to the Web I decided to foray into Search Engine Optimization to gain first hand experience and any insights I could. My assumption was that it would have a basis built on rational thinking and logical facts.

I pre-supposed a certain degree of agreement and transparency from many of the established sources and opinion makers. My starting viewpoint supported by my association of Search Engine Optimization and the Web as natural extensions of common sense, logical thinking.

In hindsight, I must confess I'm not more knowledgeable about the subject than when I first started. I found very few opinions and practices based on fact. What I did find - and it came as an unexpected revelation - was general confusion and disagreement.

I found secret potion SEO, lurking-in-the-shadows SEO, ignorance as dogma SEO, Voodoo SEO, witch doctor SEO, magical chicken bones SEO, the 10 blind men and the elephant SEO, fancy and hearsay as SEO! In the minority, I found but a handful of opinions based on cold hard facts and logic. How in the world can Search Engine Optimization mean all those things?

OK, perhaps I did overdo the above paragraph, but the point I'm making is this: With the infinite number of opinions, incorrect assumptions and dead wrong practices; how do you know what to believe? Imagine you're a small business looking for SE optimization; how would you go about it?

The Search Engines, of course, won't reveal more than general guidelines for optimization; other than that, they don't say much. I realize they do things in that manner because they can't explain much about their inner workings. If folks had the skinny on the formulas and algorithms, nothing short of SE pandemonium would ensue.

I'm sure you've seen the ads that guarantee a dominant position for your choice of keywords. How can that be so? I think some keyword phrases are so competitive, very few have the resources it would take to acquire dominance. The cost of many of the keywords and phrases are completely out of reach for most small home based businesses.

Furthermore, I'm sure you've heard about websites getting banned after hiring a SEO expert. I had this experience:

I remember reading about a well known SEO business and I wrote them an email inquiring about why they didn't appear in the search results dealing with their subject matter: search engine optimization or search engine ranking. I received a short and cryptic reply that didn't say much.

As time went by, I came onto an article that stated the particular SEO outfit had been banned by the SE's during that time frame. That explains the nature of the return email; meaning: I don't want to talk about it!

The paragraph above implies that if they'll do it to their own website, they'll do it to yours! Look before you leap should more than suffice as the motto for your business decision.

I think SEO experts that are on the level won't guarantee you dominance for ANY keyword phrase. Think about your competition and see if it's feasible. For example, would you have the resources to dominate for the word ""business?"" I did a search on Google and came up with 695,000,000 results!

Before you make a decision and commit time and money, check out any offer. Phone past customers and ask them about their experiences; would they hire the same expert again? Ask for quantifiable results and look for a positive track record; I imagine SEO experts are not a dime a dozen. Investigate and get answers to all your questions before you put money on the table.

(C)2005 Francisco Aloy

About the author: Francisco Aloy is the Editor of The Newbie Business Guide. Constructive and clear information to start your Internet Business. For more articles by Mr. Aloy, visit: http://www.newbie-business-guide.com

Google - The Ultimate Web Writers Style Guide

Author: Nick Usborne

Indulge me for a moment.

Forget that Google is a search engine. Just for a moment, imagine it is a style guide. A very different kind of style guide.

Instead of this particular style guide being written as a static book by an expert or two, it is written by studying the searching and browsing habits of hundreds of millions of web users.

Get the idea? Not a search engine. A style guide. A constantly evolving style guide that works from its insights into how people use and read web sites.

A style guide that puts the visitor first, puts their needs ahead of the academic opinions of experts.

A style guide that automatically rewards sites that serve their readers the best.

If we study Google not as a search engine, but as a style guide, what does it tell us about how we should write our web pages?

>> 1. Make the subject of each page absolutely clear.

As visitors arrive at your site, regardless of the entry page, the first question in their minds is, "Am I in the right place? Will I find what I want here? Can I achieve what I want to achieve here?"

Fortunately, the web page format gives us a title, headlines, first paragraphs and subheads we can use. So it makes sense to use them to make it abundantly clear to our visitors what the page is about.

We'll do this for our visitors. But, because doing so helps our visitors, Google will reward us.

>> 2. Make your home page short text clear

First-time visitors to your home page are unlikely to be able to achieve their objective through that page alone. So you need to write short text that will quickly and clearly let them know if you have what they want deeper in your site, and how to get there.

This means using the right words in your headings, subheads and short descriptions. It means anticipating the words and phrases most visitors will have in their minds and will scan for. It means understanding which words and phrases best correspond to your visitors' needs.

Write these headings and short descriptions with your readers in mind and, once again, Google will reward you.

3. Make your text links relevant and descriptive

A text link that says, "More..." or "Click here" or "Learn More..." tells the reader nothing about the destination page.

Visitors scan your text links in the same way as they scan headings, subheads and short text. So provide them with clues. If you have an interior page about a weight-loss hypnosis service, write a link that says something like, "More on weight-loss hypnosis".

Do this and you'll be helping your readers a great deal. And yes, Google will reward you for your efforts.

>> Concluding thoughts...

By all means use a traditional style guide. They are great for getting your grammar right and choosing the right words. That said, many of them conflict in their recommendations as to the correct online terms. To some, a web site is a web site, to others it's a website.

But back to Google as a style guide for a moment. This whole exercise, this make-believe about Google being a digital, interactive style guide is all about the importance of writing for your readers.

Yes, what I have been talking about it using the correct keywords and phrases in the appropriate places.

However, too many people write their pages with Google as the primary audience. I think that's the wrong approach. You get a clunky text flow that, intuitively, feels wrong to the reader.

Instead, write with a clear understanding of what your readers need. Do this and you'll find that the best keywords fall into the right places with an appropriate frequency.

And Google will reward you.

About the author: Nick Usborne is a copywriter, author and speaker. You can access all his newsletter articles on writing for the web at his www.ExcessVoice.com site. You'll find articles and resources on how to make money as a freelance writer at www.FreelanceWritin gSuccess.com

A Search Engine Optimizer's New Year's Resolutions

Author: Shawn Campbell

With the ringing in of the New Year, I resolve to become a better search engine optimizer (SEO). Below is a list of resolutions that I have made in order to make my clients' web sites the absolute best on the web. I will not use flash as text. Even though many search engines can now read some of the text embedded in flash, flash sites do not perform as well in search engine results as non-flash sites. Flash should primarily be used to enhance sites; in the same way one would use pictures to make the site look better. I will not use images as text. Although I personally believe that text in images will be read by search engines by the end of 2006, we are not there just yet. As it now stands, image text is invisible to search engines and therefore should not be used in that capacity. I will use good usability techniques. Usability is simple to test. Get three friends to complete a task on your site as you silently watch and take notes (have them talk out loud too). You will be amazed as to what you find. Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox has a good introduction to usability . I will not use cloaking. Cloaking is frowned upon by search engines. Once they catch you, you will get penalized (or in some instances, banned). I will not use frames unless I have a REALLY good reason to. Frames complicate things for the search engine. There are very few good reasons to use frames and thus they should be avoided whenever possible. I will use a catchy title with the keyphrase in it. Marketing is what we are all about. A catchy title will bring in the customers. A title containing the target keyphrase will raise the result in the search engines. Put the two together and you have a professional marketing title that works hard to bring in traffic. I will track the return on investment (ROI). By tracking the ROI, I will clearly see if the site is making or losing money. To track ROI one needs to co-relate the marketing dollars spent with the revenue earned. This statistic is usually hindered by the site's owner, who cannot (or does not) provide the financial information, nor the conversional statistics I need to track ROI. I will write an alt tag that clearly depicts what the image is, for every image. This will help people without images on their screen know what the image is about. Using the keyphrase in the alt tag is a bonus because it will help the rankings slightly in the search engine results, but it is most important to describe the image as clearly as possible. I will use good informative content. Ah yes, ""Content is King"". All the above resolutions are meaningless if I don't have good content. This is what will bring in the search engines. This is what will bring in the clients. And this is what will bring in the dough. I will not stuff the pages with keyphrases. Stuffing the page with keyphrases goes against the golden rule of good content. If you stuff the pages with keyphrases, they will no longer read well, and readers won't like to read them. Consequently, people won't enjoy your site, and because the search engines are designed to figure out what people like and then display it to them, the search engines will eventually begin to disregard your site. Therefore, ALWAYS use keyphrases wisely. I will not use ""spammy"" techniques. ""Spammy"" techniques are anything the search engines say not to use. These techniques may do well in the short-term, but in the long run they will get you penalized (or even banned). -

Google has a list of guidelines here -

Yahoo has a list of guidelines here I will use pay-per-click (PPC), even if it is for a very small amount. I have found that using even a minuscule PPC campaign will bring in more traffic. It also propagates links to your site throughout the Internet, and thus makes your site more prominent. If you are worried about losing money, then use the free conversion tracking tool available at both Overture and Google AdWords. USE IT. Only then will you know how effective your PPC campaign really is. I will track unique hits to the site. By keeping track of whether the site's traffic goes up or down, I get a big picture of the health of the web site. If traffic goes up, then the rankings probably went up. If traffic goes down, then rankings probably went down. Of course there are also seasonal variations (and marketing pushes), but you should be familiar enough with the market to know when to expect such cyclical fluctuations. I will get a good copywriter to write the content. ""Content is King"", so get a professional to write it. You may think you are good, but are you really? Would you bet your Internet presence on it? Use someone who knows how to write specifically for the Internet. Use someone who knows how to balance writing for people, writing for sales, and writing for search engines. I will not send out ""spammy"" emails asking for reciprocal links. Reciprocal links don't bring in clients, and they tend to only slightly boost your PageRank. An SEO's time is better served getting the site listed in directories and on sites where people would be looking for it (such as associations, suppliers, clients, and more…). Personalized emails to these sites requesting a link to yours are fine. Templates or mass emails requesting reciprocal links are definitely not. I will work hard getting valuable links to my site. ""Linking is Queen"", thus getting links is essential. Find directories that relate to your market and take your time to submit to them (in the best category). Contact your suppliers and/or resellers and see if they will link to you. Figure out where your potential clients hang out on the Internet, and get those sites to link to you. Do your homework to choose where you want your links to appear, then roll up your sleeves, get out the elbow grease and get those links to show up! With a little dedication and a lot of work, I will get my clients into the top search engine results. If you want to do well with your web site, stickto these resolutions and before you know it the traffic (and the sales) will roll in smoothly, just like the New Year.

About the author: Shawn Campbell is an enthusiastic player in the ecommerce marketplace, and co-founded Red Carpet Web Promotion, Inc . He has been researching and developing marketing strategies to achieve more prominent listings in search engine results since 1998. Shawn is one of the earliest pioneers in the search engine optimization field.

5 Things to Keep an Eye on in the SEO World in 2005....

Author: Bobby Heard

After the latest PR update at Google and MSN's beta search going live, there is one thing for certain in 2005: the world of search is in for some major changes. There has been growing speculation around the SEO world that reciprocal linking is a thing of the past. Rumors are abound that PR means less and less, if anything. Bill Gates came out of his cave to say that "Today's search is nothing" and that it won't be that way for long. There are quiet rumblings in the SEO back alleys of a new, state-of-the-art search engine currently indexing the internet. Websites are dropping off the face of the planet. And we're all left to sit here and put together the pieces. So what is in store for 2005?

1) Reciprocal links, while not becoming totally dead, are decreasing in value, and there will most likely be an algorithm update to lessen their importance. The original thought process behind the importance of a link was that it was seen as a "vote" for the linked-to site. Now that reciprocal links are everywhere, it is hardly a great way to count "votes" for a website. Reciprocal linking will continue around the internet, although the amount of people who try to get away with one-way links (by never getting back to you once you've added their link) will increase significantly. This will, of course, be an attempt to acquire one-way links, which brings us to our next subject....

2) One-way links and triangle linking, though already quite popular, should explode over the course of 2005. Both are much harder to control and acquire, which makes Google happy. The triangle link "ploy" makes links look like one-way links even though "Site A" is returning the favor to "Site B" through "Site C". There will be attempts to sell triangle linking programs and systems by SEO companies, however, the complexity, difficulty and time involved in this scheme will produce ridiculous prices.

3) What this about a new search engine that is going to index every site on the internet, EVERY 10 seconds? Become.com has turned a few heads with it's claims. Site owners have reported Become Bots spidering "like crazy". It's all quite hush, hush, however and you need to have an invite in order to test it out. It should be interesting to see what they're capable of if and when they decide to go live. I'll go out on a limb and say that it's a household name by this time next year.

4) MSN will scrap the "beta" tag on February 1st from it's sparkling new search engine, which is currently live at search.msn.com and Bill Gates thinks it will rival Google. There is a lot of debate over this issue, but there is no denying that it is far better than the old chugger they were using before. Love him or hate him, Gates has most likely given a hard right to the chin of Yahoo!, which seems to be suffering from a magnitude of quality problems. MSN will be second to Google in total searches in 2005.

5) PR still has importance. However, it is also decreasing in value. PR is only based on the quantity and quality of links (both inbound and outbound) from the given web page. The most obvious reasoning for the declining importance theory is due to the fact that on any given search on Google, the PR of each page seems to have barely any correlation with it's place in the rankings. For all you PR lovers out there, hold on to your toolbar's tight, because this could be a bumpy ride.

About the author: Bobby Heard (bheard@abalone.ca) is the Vice-President of Abalone Designs (www.abalone.ca), which offers great SEO results at affordable prices.

How to Make a Title Tag that Search Engines will Love

Author: Frank Kilkelly

Making the following changes to your title tag can help improve ranking and increase targeted traffic to your website:

Include keyword phrases in your title tag:

Think of a title tag as the name above a shop. Imagine you are walking down a busy street with shops on either side of you. However every shop window is boarded up and all that is visible is its name. You mean to purchase a new Hi-Fi system and need to locate a suitable store. You look at all the names but are getting confused as to which one is for you. All of a sudden you see a store with 'Hi-Fi and Electrical' in its name. You enter and purchase your spanking new Hi-Fi system, but it is a bit expensive. And little did you know but the store next door also sold Hi-Fi systems but for a lot cheaper. However its name did not indicate this. In fact its name sounded more like a jewellery shop than an electrical store.

A search engine is rather like the shopper in the above example. It sees the title on each web page and determines whether this would be a good result to return based on its text. If you search for 'Hi-Fi' it is highly likely that some of the results returned will have 'Hi-Fi' in their title.

To be found using the search engines you should optimize your website for a set of keyword phrases. These keyword phrases should be included in your title tag. Suppose I was a website selling Hi-Fi systems, then I would like my website to appear in search engine results when searching with the phrase 'Hi-Fi systems'. If I include 'Hi-Fi systems' in my title tag I will increase the chances that the search engines will find the page and my ranking will be higher. Of course you are not limited to adding only one keyword phrase to your title, I would recommend two perhaps three but be careful not to make it too long. Also remember make it easy to understand and descriptive for a human.

Order these keyword phrases effectively:

Placing a keyword phrase at the start of the title tag allows it to be seen better by the search engines. Look at the following examples:

* ABCDEF Electrical - Hi-Fi Systems * Hi-Fi Systems - ABCDEF Electrical

Both of these two examples are acceptable to human eyes but in the eyes of the search engines the second is see as more relevant if 'Hi-Fi Systems' is searched for because it appears at the start of the title. Generally it is best to place company name or the name of website to the end of your title tag.

Make your title enticing to the eye:

Although this point does not make a lot of difference to the search engines it can help to get people to click on your link in search results.

Which is easier on the eye?

1. XYZ COMPUTER HARDWARE 2. XYZ CoMpUtEr HaRdWaRe 3. XYZ Computer Hardware

I imagine that most people would say that (3) is the most pleasing. (1) and (2) are harder to read because of improper captilization. In (1) you see that using all capitals detracts the importance of any words you actually want to draw attention to and also some search engines may penalise this practice. (2) is simply a nightmare to read.

Try to keep title tags as unique as possible:

As each page on your site should be unique so should your title tags. Not only do unique title tags make the site more descriptive and navigable to a person they help search engines answer queries more accurately and allow more penetration of your site's pages in their databases.

Common title tags mistakes:

* Do not leave your title tag blank, ever!

* Do not use 'Untitled' or default text in your title tag. If you are using a web page editing application it may place some default text in the title tag. Make sure you always check your title to make sure this doesn't happen.

* Do not write title tags that are not relevant to the content on the page. Search engines compare text in the title tag against actual textual content on your page to rate relevancy. If the two are not related this will decrease your ranking. Also it is annoying to a person who visits your page when the title tag they saw going into your page does not relate to the content on the page. This will ensure that this person leaves your site and maybe never comes back.

* Do not stuff your title tag with repeating keyword phrases. This may be looked upon by search engines as spamming and they may penalise your ranking.

Summary:

Ignoring title tags is definitely a mistake if you aim to achieve high rankings. Although it takes a lot more than the title tag to propel you to the top of the search engines it can be very effective in making a search engine more secure that your site's content is more relevant than a competitor's.

About the author: Frank Kilkelly is a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Expert and Webmaster at http://www.seo-ireland.com/ , a complete search engine optimization resource. The highlight of the site is an SEO forum for discussion of the latest techniques and tips to improve the ranking of your web site.

How to Improve Your Search Engine Ranking

Author: Suzanne Morrison

With search engines like Google currently indexing over 8 billion pages, it is becoming more and more difficult to get a top search engine ranking. Type in a popular search phrase such as ""Internet Marketing"" into Yahoo or Google and you will be returned over 8 million results!

Unless your website is in the first two or three pages, it is unlikely that you will receive many visitors from search engines.

So what should a webmaster do to give their website the best chance of ranking high in the search engines?

All search engines work slightly differently and have ever changing algorithms for ranking web pages, but these tips can be applied when planning, developing or marketing a website to help you reach that top page of search engine results.

(1) Choose your keywords carefully

It's extremely important to set aside time to research your keywords. It's best to do this in the planning stages, before developing your website, but many of us start a website without knowing a thing about how the search engines work, so you may find yourself doing this weeks or months later.

Try to choose phrases that are searched on frequently and if possible have a low number of competing websites.

To get an idea of the number of times a keyword is searched for per month, type a keyword into the box at

Overture Search Suggestion Tool

This will tell you how many times your keyword was searched on in the previous month (based on Overture's partner search engines) and give you a list of similar keywords.

Another useful tool to help you choose your keywords is Word Tracker. This tool will help you choose your keywords and give you a ""KEI"" for each set of keywords based on the popularity of the keyword (number of searches) and the amount of competition.

You can try this out for free on:

Wordtrac ker

If you manage to pick your keywords in the planning stages you may even be lucky enough to find a domain name that contains your keywords.

(2) Optimise your pages

Once you have decided on your keywords you will need to optimise your pages for those keywords. Here are a few tips.

- Ensure that the Title of your page contains your keywords.

- Mention your keywords inside the meta tags. Most search engines no longer use meta tags, but some make use of them so it is still worthwhile using these.

- Try to make sure that the first occurance of readable text on your page contains your keywords

- Ensure that your keywords are mentioned in the initial paragraph of your page

- Use your keywords throughout the text of your page - but be careful not to overdo this. Your page should still be readable by humans!

- Use your keywords between the headline tags on your page (""H1"" tags or H2/H3 if H1 is too big)

- Occasionally bold or italicise your keywords

- Make sure that links pointing back to each page on your site contain the keywords for each page

- Give all your images an ""ALT"" tag and put your keywords in here too - again, don't overdo this

- Try to put some of your keywords in your outbound links

(3) Start Linking

One of the most important criteria in getting a good search engine ranking is the number of backlinks you have to your website from related websites.

Type in your chosen keywords to Yahoo or Google and take note of the top 3 sites returned to you.

Now go to this Link Popularity Tool and put the URLs of the top three sites into the linking tool, along the URL of your own site.

Have a look at the difference between your site and the top 3 sites and this will give you an idea of how many links you need in order to get a top search engine ranking for these keywords.

The best ways to get links back to your site are:

- By writing articles related to the subject of your website and getting them published on the internet

- Reciprocal Linking with other related websites

- Posting on newsgroups and forums that allow you to have a signature attached to your posting (with your uRL in it)

- Submitting your site to directories.

Try to make sure that the anchor text (clickable text) that links back to your site contains your keywords.

(4) Add Content Regularly

Another thing you may have noticed is that top ranking websites have lots of content.

Regularly updating your website and adding fresh content will also help your site to rank more highly in the search engines.

If you don't have time to create your own unique content there are plenty free articles available Just type ""Free website content"" into Google and you'll have your pick of the 18 million results that it returns to you!

To improve your ranking, follow steps 1 and 2 above and repeat steps 3 and 4 regularly.

You can check your progress on Yahoo and Google by using the free search engine ranking tools at the following sites:

Yahoo Search Rankings Google Rankings

About the author: Suzanne Morrison is the webmaster and owner of How to Start an Internet Business . To learn more about how to promote your website visit her

Beginner's Guide to Internet Marketing

Optimizing Your Website's Design For Search Engines

Author: Andrey Milyan

It is a well known fact that big search engines like Google are paying the most attention to the links that point back to your website. However, that does not mean that your website design does not matter. You should take a break from looking for link partners and invest some time in optimizing your website's design; it will pay of in the long run. Below you will find some tips on how to optimize your layout in order for search engine spiders to crawl your website correctly.

Use of images in search engine optimization process.

The most important thing to understand about search engines' spiders is that they can only read text. That means that whatever text you have inside the image will not be read by any spider. Of course, website without images will be boring to look at but be careful not to put important text inside the image. It is relatively easy to surround your body text with images to make it look as if the text is part of an image without hurting your search engine ranking chances. Discuss these things with your web designer.

Create meta tags.

Creating meta tags is the next step toward successful search engine optimization. Meta tags are designed to give search engine spider in idea about your website before it actually crawls the body of the page itself. Meta data gives the spider title of your page, short description and the keywords that are relevant to that page. Notice that the word ""page"" is used here; spiders look at each page of your website separately. Here are some examples and explanations on meta tags:

SEMBooster.com

TITLE - that's the title of your page. Do not make it too long and don't try to put too many keywords in it. Never the less, you should have 1-2 of your major keywords in the title.

DESCRIPTION - that's the description of you page. It should be 1-2 sentences and should make sense because search engines like Google use it when displaying your listing, along with title tag.

KEYWORDS - that's the keywords that relate to your website. Make sure you put keywords that have been used in the body of you page. If you put keywords that are nowhere to be found on your page some search engines might penalize for it and filter out your website.

Use style sheets.

Today using style sheets or CSS is a common practice but you still better make sure your website is using one. Style sheets help you clean up your code and remove font tags that might cause problems with spiders. In the past webmasters filled pages with tons of keywords in the tiny font size and therefore search engines started to penalize for it. Using CSS ensures that all text is of the same size as well as spider is concerned; visually all fonts will look different. Now webmasters are even building the whole sites on CSS.

Image alt tags.

Image alt tags are an important part of your website optimization. Image alt tag contains text that you see when moving your mouse over the image. It is also the text that is used to describe an image if your website's visitor has images disabled. Because search engine spiders can't read text inside the image, it reads alt tag as a way to understand what the image is about. It seems that search engines are not penalizing for stuffing alt tags with keywords but be careful not to overdue it. Here is how it looks:

H tags.

H tags or headings have been known to increase website ranking for a while now. But is it really so? We have strong reasons to believe that h tags (mostly H1 tag) do not get you better ranking. They are, however, a great way to organize content of your page so it is not very surprising that some webmaster still think they can bring better ranking. Also, using keywords in H tags will increase your keyword density. So by increasing your keyword density and organizing your content, you can actually get better ranking but it is not thanks to h tags. There are a lot of website owners that complain that H tags are difficult to work with. Our advice to this is: ""Don't use them if you have no place to put them or if you don't have much content to organize."" There are plenty of high ranking websites that don't use H tags at all.

Your website's navigation.

Make sure it's crawlable. People often build a website but soon realize that search engine spider does not go any farther then index page. Even though you have links to most of your pages from the home page spiders might still have difficulty indexing your pages. There are several reasons why this happens:

Your website is using JavaScript navigation menu. If you have drop down menus in your navigation then it is surely designed in JavaScript. JavaScript is not crawlable by search engine spiders, therefore spider cannot index your other pages. There are several ways to fix this problem. Try adding simple text links to your major pages at the bottom of your home page so that spider can move through your website easier. Another way to solve the problem is to create a site map and connect it to your home page with text link. This will drastically improve spider's ability to spider your website. Your website is using Flash navigation menu. While images can at least be linked to other pages, Flash navigation is not crawlable at all. Use the same solutions that were mentioned in number one. Check your meta tags. It is possible that you are using robots tag which might be blocking the spider. Make sure that if you have one either remove it (you don't really need it, spiders will still index and then follow to other pages on your website) or put INDEX, FOLLOW inside the tag. It should look like this:

Site Map.

Site map is a very useful thing for an website. It can benefit your website in several ways. First, it will make your website much easier to index; as a general rule search engine spiders index pages much faster when you have a site map. Site map is absolutely necessary if your website is using JavaScript or Flash navigation and you don't want to get rid of it.

Site map will also help your visitors navigate your website. Some of the pages they might be looking for a berried deep in your navigation structure and site map makes them much more accessible for everyone.

In you site map you should simply place text links to all of your pages; you can organize them however you want, even group them if you like. In the link anchor text use keywords that are relative to that page, it will help spiders identify them correctly.

About the author: None

The Top 3 Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Website's Search Engine Rankings- and How to Fix Them!

Author: Richard Martin

Getting your website up and running is hard enough. After spending hours getting the HTML code just right and trying to make sure that you provide a great user experience, the last thing you want to do is change everything around in order to get your site ranked higher on the search engines. Follow these tips from the beginning and you'll see the benefits.

1)Not changing the title tag from page to page. A lot of people realize the importance of the title tag. But few sites change the title tag from page to page. If you have a large site with a lot of different pages targeting different keywords, then change the title tag to reflect the keywords of the particular page. Keeping the title tag the same throughout the site may optimize the site as a whole, but you are limiting the amount of search terms that you can use. The shorter the title the better, you don't want to get caught stuffing the title tag with too many terms. Just change it from page to page.

2) Not using a H1 tag. Use a H1 tag. Really. No, it's no 1996, but search engine bots love the H1 tag. They view it as "hey, this is so important, it's in the H1 tag." Everybody got carried away with putting neat graphics and flash on their site and have neglected this tag. In fact a lot of sites use a graphical banner where their H1 should be. While these certainly look good, search engine bots can't read graphics, they are just bots. Use the H1 tag and use your keywords in it. It will help the visiting Search Engine bot determine what your site or page is about.

3)Using "Home" as a link text. Everyone uses "home" as the text to link back to their index page. However, this might not be the best choice. After all, it is a link. We all know how important links are in search engine rankings. When you use the word "home", the search engine bot will chalk up another point to "home" for your site. Why not use a keyword as this text? If your site is about hubcaps...why not use "hubcaps" for the link text? This will help you in that it a)adds a link within your site using "hubcaps" and b) help the search engine bot figure out a little better what your site has to offer.

About the author: You may reproduce this article on your site. We would like a link back to our site Lawyer from you. This article may not be altered. Thanks.

Richard Martin is a contributer to http://www.business-lawyer-corporate.com. The site is a collection of business lawyer listings.

Ethical Search Engine Optimisation Services: All This Talk about Link Building

Author: David Touri

These days, trying to improve your website search engine ranking can be a long and frustrating nightmare. Being a search engine optimisation specialist and having established my own business, many clients seem to be confused about the long process of how to build website presence in the search engines. Having built my own site from scratch and having struggled to get the desired ranks, one thing is for sure, it does take time.

Many seem to believe that link building will get you the desired ranks in no time. That is quiet wrong. Whilst there is a lot of talk about link building, many seem to forget the basics of website optimisation (content, coding and tags). Search engines like Yahoo! place strong emphasis on these basics whilst Google may favor factors outside our control such as link popularity. So how do we satisfy all search engines?

Notes are as follows:

1. Focus on the things that can be done at your end. This includes:

- Writing efficient code with as much scripting placed into external files.

- Select targeted keywords that do not have a large number or competing pages so that you have more chance to win position for them.

- Write keyword rich content.

- Have Title and Meta tags that are keyword rich and reflect what is written for a page.

2. Directory submissions are a key factor. Some may charge a price for inclusion whilst others may not. It is highly recommended that directory submissions are made simply because a human editor will look at your site, which in turn gives you more points with the search engines.

3. One of the most difficult points to fulfill is link building. If you have a site that offers useful information and services, in time it will generate the required links. There are other ways to speed the process such as writing articles and posting them on certain websites. However, the key factor to link building is not to obtain irrelevant links. This will simply be regarded as spamming and could result in negative consequences.

4. Lastly, the most important point, PATIENCE.

To recap, provided you follow the basic steps and have the patience, your site will climb up the ranks steadily. Link building will help improve your ranks but be careful because it can also harm your visibility if used in the wrong way i.e. obtaining too many links from non-related websites.

About the author: David Touri is a search engine optimisation specialist working for SEO Sydney . He offers

ethical search engine optimisation services to companies in Australia. For further information, please visit http://www.seosydney.com.au

META Tags Explained and How To Use Them For Ranking

Author: Frank Kilkelly

The META tags are used to provide extra information about a web page. There was once a time where a good search engine ranking could be achieved by simply changing the value of the META tags. However these days are long gone. Nowadays the META Tags are decreasing in importance in the eyes of the search engines who are using more sophisticated methods of ranking pages (namely link popularity, optimized anchor text).

There are many different types of META tags but the one that can affect ranking are the Keywords META tag and the Description META tag.

Keywords META tag:

This tag contains keywords relevant to a page. In the past search engines referenced this to determine how to rank a particular page. However many people started to abuse this and stuffed the tag with keywords that were not relevant to the content of the page. This confused search engines and subsequently returned weaker search results. To combat this less and less emphasis has been placed on the Keywords META tag. However this does not mean that it is entirely useless. Here are some reasons to still include it:

* Some search engines still use it

Although most search engines do not use the tag there are undoubtedly still some that do. For this reason place around 15-20 keywords relevant to your site or page into the tag. Do not attempt to cheat the search engines by repeating keywords as this is considered spamming and they may look unfavourably on this.

* Account for misspellings of keyphrases

People can misspell certain keyphrases that you may be optimizing for so it is common to place these misspellings into the Keywords META tag. This allows you to rank in search engine results for misspellings without having to represent them on the actual content of your page.

Description META tag:

In the past this tag was used to specify the text that would appear in search engine results alongside the link to your site. Keywords could be placed into this text to influence ranking. However it was abused similar to the Keywords META tag and has befallen the same fate, meaning it is not as useful as it once was. Some search engines do not display it in their results (most notably Google, which retrieves the text from content on your page) and do not use it to rank a site. Having said that some search engines do still use it so again it is a mistake to ignore it completely.

Descriptions placed into this tag should, strangely enough, be very descriptive of the page or site they reside in. Include a few relevant keywords/keyphrases that you are optimizing for in the description and try to limit its length to 25-30 words. Also try to use no more than two sentences.

Summary:

Although not as important as they once where, the META tags can still influence a search engine when it comes to deciding whether your web page is relevant or not.

Keywords META tag:

15-20 keywords, include misspellings of keywords/keyphrases

Description META tag:

Include keywords/keyphrases, 25-30 words, no more than two sentences.

About the author: Frank Kilkelly is a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Expert and Webmaster at http://www.seo-ireland.com/ , a complete search engine optimization resource. The highlight of the site is an SEO forum for discussion of the latest techniques and tips to improve the ranking of your web site.

SEO Deadly Sins - Mistakes That Hurt Web Page Ranking

Author: Frank Kilkelly

The following are a list of mistakes can ensure that your site maintains a low ranking with the search engines. Avoid at all costs.

* Specifying no title for your page *

I cannot stress how important the title of a web page is. Failing to specify a descriptive, keyword optimized title will do untold damage to your ranking with the search engines. It is the equivalent to owning a shop and boarding up its windows. Ideally each page on your site should have a unique, content-specific title.

* Excessive use of images or Flash animation on a page *

If your web page has plenty of nice-looking graphics and eye-popping Flash animation and not a lot of textual content it may indeed look nice but have you ever considered what how the search engines might see it. Search engines thrive on textual content, scavenging as much text as they can but unfortunately they cannot understand images or Flash animations like we can and so will find nothing of real value on your page. Try to balance your page so that the textual content is given priority and that any images or animations are used only when needed. Also it is a good idea to attach some text to an image by using its ALT tag as search engines use this text when determining rank.

* Complicated menu systems *

Search engines spiders that crawl through our pages are a relatively primitive bunch. They find in hard to navigate complicated menu systems implemented for example in JavaScript or as a Java applet. Just because it is easy for a human to navigate through the site never assume it will be as easy for a search engine spider. A menu system using simple textual links will be easier for a spider to understand and it will be able to successfully navigate your site. A lot of the time complicated menu systems can be replicated using textual links and CSS.

If you must use a complicated menu system be sure to provide a site map that is clearly accessible from the homepage of your site and contains only textual links to your pages. This ensures that even if the spider cannot understand your menu system that it will be able to find the pages on your site.

About the author: Frank Kilkelly is a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Expert and Webmaster at http://www.seo-ireland.com/ , a complete search engine optimization resource. The highlight of the site is an SEO forum for discussion of the latest techniques and tips to improve the ranking of your web site.

10 Great Search Engine Optimization Tools for Your Online Success

Author: Milena Sotirova

The Internet promotion of every company is related to the search engine positioning of the site. The positioning is important for your books, products and services to be easily found online.

Search engine position is the place which a site takes in the search results for every search engine after performing search. The searches often are results of one or more words entered in the search bar. It seems simple to find where your site is by searching with the related keywords. For the search engine optimization being effective you need these keywords in your meta tags. If you want to check how it works, type for example ""promotion"" in Google and Yahoo to find that http://www.promotionworld.com/ is on 2. and 1. position respectively (this may change at the time you read this).

Meta Tags - How to create your meta tags Meta tags are specific HTML tags that exceed their ""what you see is what you get"" functions to display content and serve as a mediator between the site page and the search engines, performed by their crawling robots.

The Title Tag is, as it can be assumed by its name, the site or page title that best describes the site content and purpose and contains of short phrase that can include the site name. It can be separated or not by colons but must include the words that describe the main functions of your site. When you write it, you can consider that the search engines will select your site in the search results more successfully if the metas contain the keywords you are going after in the search engine optimization.

MySite: MySite functions

Meta tags are easy to create with the PromotionWorld's Meta tag generator http://www.promotionworld.com/seotools/index.php?rdt=meta that makes this task an easy one step effort to get the entire code the way it should be in the site's HTML code immediately after the tag.

To be sure that your meta tags contain the appropriate keywords that will lead you to the top of the search list you can try a little research using the Keyword suggestion tool http://www.promotionworld.com/seotools/index.php?rdt=keywords . Here you can find what are the most searchable keywords related to your content and to include them in your meta tags. You can go back again and again to check and update your keyword list according to the search trends.

Search Engines - How to submit your site After your site is dressed with the meta tags, you are ready to go and submit it to the search engines. The Free Search Engine Submission tool will automatically submit your site to more than 60 search engines, including the best known. Just follow the easy steps and you will get your site submitted and a detailed report about the submission process results displayed and send to you.

Search Position - Where You Are The positions of your site is easy to find using the Keyword Ranking Tracker http://www.promotionworld.com/seotools/index.php?rdt=kwrank. This handy tool will quickly tell you the site ranking on Google. You can check the competitors' sites as well to see where you are. To find out where your competitor's sites are located you can look at the WebSite Location Tool.

The effective optimization is based on statistics and you can check up how your results change thru the time using the secure help of PromotionWorld's Keyword Ranking Monitor. Your keywords and URLs are stored easily accessible with your user name and you can check the trends of any keyword search results displayed in well designed graphics. You can even select a keyword from the keyword suggestion list and import it into your keyword result table just by one click.

The most advanced search at all Google Datacenters can provide you with information about how your ranking is moving depending to which server the search inquiry is sent. This Google DataCenter Watch tool http://www.promotionworld.com/seotools/index.php?rdt=dance can allow you to predict your keyword optimization efforts.

Links - The secret of traffic The links that are going to your site by other sites are important for your Traffic and Google PageRank. You can permanently check up your link status with this Backlink Tracker Tool http://www.promotionworld.com/seotools/index.php?rdt=bklinks . Your link history will be stored and here you can find how effective your link exchanges with other sites are - a technique of vital importance for your site online success. To check your Google PR now just go to the Google PR Tool enter the URL and get the result.

Extras - Convert your site traffic into money There is a good advertising program that gains more and more popularity and becomes a materialized developer dream of earning just from the user traffic to the site. Google AdSense is designed to provide you the opportunity to provide to your users fresh related to your content links and to make you benefit from it without any effort. Using Google AdSense Tool you can see from here how the Google Adsense ads will appear on your site. Try this simple and attractive free tool to see the Google AdSense program diversity designed for your content.

If you already have a Google AdSense account you can easily monitor your AdSense data displayed in graphics and charts to get you an easy visual access to your campaign.

WebSite Gifts - Count your visitors and make them happy Your site content will be more accessible if you provide the users an option to search free thru your site pages. You can get this Free search for your site.

A good gift for your site is the Free Counter displaying the number of visits for your pages. Get this tool and set it on your site. If you have an idea of some different image you can send that or if you feel, you can prepare an image and send this to be included in the tool set. Be creative and make the other users appreciate your talent.

I hope that you enjoyed our touring thru the amazing tool land and you get even more ideas about how can you promote your site.

About the author: Milena Sotirova is Editor of DevStart, Inc. http://www.devstart.com/. She has publications on web promotion, search engine optimization and web hosting industry news coverage and analyses. PromotionWorld.com is one of the most popular sites for web promotion and contains tutorials, tools, articles and search engine news. Subscribe for DevStart Channel http://www.promotionworld.com/informer/ Send your feedback to editor@devstart.com

How to avoid losing PR(Page Rank) And Increase It.

Author: Abdillahi Abdillahi

You have built a great web site with quality content and submitted it to the search engines.Then after a few months or even years it gained a good PR(Page Rank) and all that because of your hard work and staying up nights.And you say to yourself wow it finally paid off so lets go out and celebrate. But there is a very important question which you should ask yourself and it is how can I keep it and even make it better? If you can answer to this question very well then you have nothing to worry about but if you can't then there are a lot of things you should worry about.

Therefore, today in this short article I have explained some tips on how to avoid losing that great PR(Page Rank) your site has and increasing it.You might already know and read about some of the tips but I always say there is someone out there who don't know about them or already know about them but looking for a simple article or tutorial which explains them in another way.

Let me tell you what made me write this article.It all started when I decided to redesign our web site. I wanted to make major changes in page structure etc and I knew what was going to happen when I do that.All of our site's pages had 4 PR(Page Rank)which was better than what they have now because now they all have 0 PR(Page Rank).So I redesigned the site and ignored the tips I have covered in this article because there is always an exception of everything and there was one .I have to say am not an SEO(Search Engine Optimization) expert but I keep learning and as you learn something you slowly become experienced and expert.

Any ways, That is enough I guess so lets see what I'm going to cover in this short article.Im going to start with some tips on for avoiding to lose it then I'm going to cover some other tips for increasing it.OK then here we go .

Do not rename files.

Whenever you rename any file that is a part of your web site you increase the change to lose its PR(Page Rank).There are many reasons which can make you rename your site files e.g. suppose you want to add some dynamic features a certain page which has a .html file extension and the script you are going to use is a server side such as PHP. After you decide to add the feature to that page you will have to rename it to .hp file extension and that will result the lost of the page's PR(Page Rank) because when any search engine spider comes to your site in order to index it then it will look for the old file and it won't find it because it is no longer available or accessible to anyone.

Sometimes this causes the search engine spider to leaver the site or get stack into no where.But there is a way which you can keep the .html file and add the feature you want it to have in the same time make the server read it as a php file.That will be the use of .htaccess/ mod _rewrite .I'm not going to cover about those two as the article is not about them but you can search the web and find many great tutorials about them.So try to avoid renaming any file that is a part of your web site.

Do not change the domain name of the site.

Lets suppose you have a domain name which has 6 PR(Page Rank) but later you wanted to change it so you can get a better one .By changing it you completely lose the PR(Page Rank) of it and all the sub pages.You can still have the old domain and redirect it to the new one and move the old pages to the new one but still that will not work.It will be like starting from zero again and trying to again a new PR(Page Rank) for it because as you know it has a 0 PR(Page Rank) at the moment.So don't change your domain name unless you want to :)

Do not redirect pages or the domain name.

page redirection or domain redirection will result the lost of your site's and its pages PR(Page Rank).Of course there are many reasons which can make us want to redirect a certain page or domain name e.g. You have a page in your site called services.htm and as I mentioned you redesigned the site and renamed all the files to new ones.So you renamed that page to our_services.htm instead of services.htm.Now you ask yourself how can I get or make this new page indexed by the search engines .And as you can see there is a way to do what you want and that is redirecting the old services.htm page to the new our_services.htm page.

Sooner or later search engine spiders will realize what you are doing and they might punish your site and remove it from the index .For that reason and so many other reasons which I cant gather all of them here you should avoid redirecting pages or domains.If you get a new file and design it is better to delete all the old files from your site and use the 404 file not found page which will contain a site map of the new design's links and an error message telling the visitors what happened to that page they followed ,whether they followed it from a site or a search engine.

In that way you don't lose visitors and search engine spiders don't get stack into that page which doesn't exist anymore instead they follow the links in the site map and index the new files .Therefore, avoid using any kind of page or domain redirection.

Now that I covered three tips on how to avoid losing your site's PR(Page Rank) then it is time to cover two tips on how to increase it.Here we go then.

Updated Content

This is very important if you want to increase the PR(Page Rank) of your website.You should provide fresh content and try to update it daily or every two days . No matter what kind of site you have you must have a great content because they say content is king.If you can't provide that content by yourself then get content from similar site or get articles of other authors which write about what your site is or even hire someone to write it for you.As you update it daily you will see your PR(Page Rank) getting better but be patient because it won't happen overnight :)

Quality back links

Quality back links is very important.You should have links with sites similar to your site .Search the web and see sites that are similar to yours and request a link exchange.This will help you and the other site increase your PRs(Page Ranks). Make sure you don't link back to sites that are not similar to your site as this would decrease your current page PR(Page Rank).There are many ways you can increase it but try to use the legitimate way and not anything that might hurt you later.The more you have manu quality back links the more your site's PR(Page Rank) gets better.

Conclusion

As you can see in this short article I have covered some important tips on how to avoid losing your sites page rank and making it better.Of course there are many other tips which can be used along with the ones covered here but I guess the ones covered here are the most important ones.We all want to make our site's rank high in search engines and that is the goal of every site owner.So it is better to know some ways to avoid losing it and some other ways to make it better. That is all for the time being ,Now try to use what is covered here and see the results. :)

About the author: Abdillahi Abdillahi is a web designer, founder and president of http://kooshin.com , a company providing affordable web hosting and web design solutions to small to medium sized businesses and individuals. For more information , please visit http://kooshin.com

Meta Tags help optimize your web site rankings

Author: Jennifer Schilling

Are you working on getting your web site up onto the internet?

There are a few different elements you need to think about when first putting up your new web site. Starting with the basics and building from there is the best way to go. Optimizing your web site and getting it ready for the Internet World to see is what you need to concentrate on first. Here are a few helpful hints to get you on your way to success.

When optimizing your web site and making sure it is ready for the search engines to crawl frequently, there are a few key areas that you need to pay attention to. The three main fundamentals for creating successful search engine optimization are Link popularity, Meta tag creation and optimizing your web site. We will specifically concentrate on creating meta tags to help optimize any web site.

What is a Meta Tag?

A meta tag can be found in the ""html code"" within a web page. Each meta tag is used by the search engines to determine what your web pages are about. The meta tag Information provides the ""essential guts"" of your website page. Your Web site ""Title and Description"" Tags are an essential part of this meta tag creation. The ""Title, Description and Headline"" Tags can be the first thing any web searcher will see when they do a search on the internet.

Since first impressions are everything, the importance on making ""the Title, Description and Headline"" meta tags readable, relevant, attractive and properly optimized are absolutely essential. The true key is not to over optimize because you are likely to be banned entirely from the search engines if you choose to do so.

What happens when the search engines crawl your web site?

Now that you have set up your meta information, the search engines will crawl your web site and use this essential information as the brochure to your web site. When a search engine crawls your site, it determines the relevance of this meta information compared to the content on your page. The keyword Frequency on your web site should appear as much as possible on a page without being considered as something that sticks out like a sore thumb. If this does occur, you may be penalized as spamming.

What is key word frequency?

Keyword Frequency describes how many times a keyword (or phrase) occurs on a page. The most simple example of keyword frequency is if your key word appeared on a web page 5 times in every 100 words viewed by an engine, then your keyword density would be 5/100 or 5%.

The real trick to ensure a good ranking on the search engines is to produce quality content-rich pages which make the keyword density climb higher. But repeating your main keyword phrases can be tricky because you must still ensure that any content on your site isn't compromised by your search engine optimization effort, so as to not confuse your reader. If you can keep a reader coming back to visit your web site, you definitely know you have accomplished this task.

In conclusion, keyword frequency should match your meta information with the content on your pages. The search engines have changed dramatically so trying to trick them by spamming with only hurt or jeapardize your web site.

Don't try to spam the engines by submitting content-low pages full of keywords. You want to attract visitors to your site because of the good content your are providing to your readers. Take the time to optimize your site correctly so that you can get the most out of your web site rankings. When you have good content on your site, you will find those search engine rankings climbing to the top.

Good luck optimizing those web pages,

Jennifer Schilling

Copyright © 2004 Jennifer Schilling

About the author: Jennifer Schilling is a home business mentor. Come by and grab a F-R-E-E subscription today at: http://www.intern et-business-success.biz

Link Popularity - A Thing of the Past?

Author: Courtney Heard

've found myself involved in a lot of discussions about the dropping importance of link popularity lately. Numerous people have said to me that they think incoming links no longer hold as much weight as they once did, and that the only links worth obtaining are relevant links. I have to vehemently disagree.

First of all, before Sergey Brin or Larry Page even learned the word 'algorithm', there were web sites that practiced the fine art of reciprocal linking. Pre-Google link exchanges served only one purpose and that was to develop direct traffic from those links. This still works! Somewhere in our PR worries and link popularity ambitions, we forgot one important fact : you never know when the next link you obtain for your site will be a direct traffic producer. For example moving.ca, provides daily traffic to www.abalone.ca through a small, text link on their links page. This does not come up on Google as an incoming link to Abalone Designs, but it is one our most valuable incoming links, nonetheless.

Now, as far as your ranking is concerned on Google, links still hold weight. Search for just about any term or phrase and check the #1 ranked site's incoming links versus the others. 9 times out of 10, The first ranked site will have a few more links than the others. The times when I see lower ranked sites having more incoming links than the #1 site, generally speaking, the #1 site has better content, and more of it or this site's incoming links have anchor text that contain the exact search term or phrase you searched for and the others don't. It's still the same old formula. Offer a content-rich, user-friendly site with incoming links that have relevant anchor text and your site'll do alright.

Relevant anchor text is important, but what about having your link on relevant sites? Links on relevant sites or pages have one tremendous bonus and that is targeted traffic. This is providing, of course, the link produces direct traffic. Other than that, I say links on relevant pages aren't that much more important than other links. Take, for example, the incoming links to seoinc.com - the very first page that shows up on Google when you search for seoinc.com's incoming links, is csmonitor.com. A Christian Science magazine! If I'm missing some link between religion and SEO, please inform me, but otherwise, these two sites couldn't be more different. Google has deemed this an important incoming link for seoinc.com, regardless. You think you know the algorithm, but you don't. You never know when links will count.

Let's not forget about the other search engines, though. Still a few steps behind Google, MSN places a lot of weight on incoming links. So does HotBot, Yahoo! and now, apparently, Become.com. This is just a handful of places that take a critical look at your link popularity. And I hate to say it kids, but I think there's a chance that MSN might slightly outdo Google this year. As of late, I've noticed different rankings on Google for clients based on where you're searching from - geographically-specific search results against our will. I haven't spoken to one individual who likes this idea. This could be the giant mistake MSN has been waiting for Google to make, and you don't want your perfectly Google-optimized site to miss the MSN bus when it's usage tops Google's.

This brings me to my last point which, quite frankly, is a no-brainer. The Internet is nothing but a massive network of links, hence 'net'. To turn your back on this is one of the hugest mistakes you can make on the web. The more links you have around the web, the more often your site will be seen. It's just like the real world, ""there's no such thing as bad publicity"". Think of incoming links as cyber-publicity - there's no such thing as a bad incoming link.

About the author: Courtney Heard is the founder of Abalone Designs, an Internet Marketing and SEO company in Vancouver, Canada. She has been involved in web development and marketing since 1995 and has helped start several businesses since then in the Vancouver area. More of Courtney's articles are available at http://www.abalone.ca/resources/.

The role of the robots.txt file to improve site ranking!

Author: Michael Kralj

Not many web master take the time to use a robots.txt file for their website. For search engine spiders that use the robots.txt to see what directories to search through, the robots.txt file can be very helpful in keeping the spiders indexing your actual pages and not other information, such as looking through your stats!

The robots.txt file is useful in keeping your spiders from accessing parts folders and files in your hosting directory that are totally unrelated to your actual web site content. You can choose to have the spiders kept out of areas that contain programming that search engines cannot parse properly, and to keep them out of the web stats portion of your site.

Many search engines cannot view dynamically generated content properly, mainly created by programming languages, such as PHP or ASP. If you have an online store programmed in your hosting account, and it is in a seperate directory, you would be wise to block out the spiders from this directory so it only finds relevant information.

The robots.txt file should be placed in the directory where your main files for your hosting are located. So you would be advised to create a blank text file, and save it as robots.txt, and then upload it to your web hosting to the same directory your index.htm file is located.

Here is examples of the use of the robots.txt file:

To block out a directory in a robots.txt file, such as a subdirectory for your online store called /store/ you would do the following: Disallow: /store/

Another example to block out your stats directory: Disallow: /stats/

You may also want to disallow individual files that you do not want searched by the search engines. For example you dont want search.php to be parsed by the Search Engines. To do this you type in the following on its own line:

Disallow: /search.php

Following the rules outlined and creating the robots.txt file, you will keep search engine spiders out of unwanted files and directories, and letting them go through the important files to see what your web site is all about!

About the author: Michael Kralj is owner of Emenki Web Solutions and Domains at Retail. Emenki Web Solutions are web site designers and programmers based in Hamilton, Ontario, providing businesses with an informative and strategic approach to establishing an online presence on the web.

Please visit Emenki Web Solutions on the web http://www.emenki.com Please visit Domains at Retail on the web: http://www.domainsatretail.com

Link Building in Light of Vision-based Page Segmentation

Author: Andy Hagans

The days of basing a successful link building strategy on link quantity and anchor text alone may be numbered. The link popularity theories behind PageRank and Hilltop remain important, but major search engines are continually adding new elements to their link algorithms to improve search relevance. One of these new elements is the concept of visual page segmentation which was recently proposed in a paper entitled ?Block-level Link Analysis,? by Deng Cai, Xaiofei He, Ji-Rong Wen and Wei-Ying, available online at http://research.microsoft.com/research/pubs/view.aspx?tr_id=690.

How VIPS Works

The paper introduces VIsion-based Page Segmentation (VIPS), which begins with the premise that current link popularity algorithms are faulty in that they consider each page on the World Wide Web as a single node. Different ?blocks? on a page however often have different semantics; for instance, a block on the left side of the page might contain a general navigational menu or text link advertisements, whereas the block on the right side of the page might contain an informational article or links to other Web sites about a certain topic. When VIPS is applied, these blocks can be separated by a computer with a vision-based program. Each block can then be considered as the fundamental unit of analysis, rather than the entire page. When a link is scored in terms of its block, the link?s contextual relevance can be interpreted more intelligently by search engines. What VIPS Means for Search Engine Optimization

In the near future major search engines such as Google, Yahoo! Web Search and MSN Search will likely integrate some form of visual page segmentation into their search algorithms. A successful search engine optimization strategy should incorporate knowledge of block-level analysis to ensure that the effects of a link building campaign will be maximized. But how exactly does a concept like VIPS affect search engine optimization? Two consequences in particular should make every SEO take pause.

Devaluation of Links from Certain Blocks

VIPS will allow search engines to differentiate between links from the content block and links from other blocks such as text advertisement blocks or footer blocks. As such, algorithms could easily weight links from each block differently.

A link from the content block could be considered as more likely to be a true recommendation than a link from a text link advertisement block. Search engines may therefore give extra weight to in-content links while devaluing links that appear to be advertisements. Sites that rent links through link networks usually do place them in a block above, below or to the side of the content block. When VIPS is implemented, there is a risk that many rented advertisement links could be devalued.

Improved Contextual Analysis

The theme in which your link is placed also will be more important than ever before. Many search engine optimizers have voiced their opinion that ?anchor text is everything?; that is, the theme of a page linking to a Web site does not parse link relevance, but only the anchor text of the link does.

With block-level analysis, search engines will be able to recognize the theme of any given block more easily. This should have the effect of boosting the link relevance for links from tightly-themed content blocks, while devaluing links that are in a block with no apparent theme.

Links That Will Always Soar

A search engine optimizer need not fear the effects of VIsion-based Page Segmentation. Although VIPS will probably devalue certain types of links that are favored by many SEOs, it will concurrently increase the value of themed, in-context links.

I have always stressed the value of legitimate links from directories, articles and press releases. These types of links are placed in a content block and are also tightly themed (that is, your target keywords will be near your link).Webmasters who actively build these types of links will benefit from long term rankings even when new twists such as VIPS are added into the algorithmic mix. In fact, these algorithmic improvements should improve search relevance and neutralize some of the spammier link building methods. And that?s something we should all be happy about.

About the author: Andy Hagans is a search engine optimization consultant who specializes in link building and risk management. Visit http://www.andyhagans.com for more information. Mr. Hagans also maintains The Link Building Knowledge Base at http://www.linkbuilding.info to help other webmasters.

Search Engine Optimization: Traffic Increase Basics

Author: Milena Sotirova

The key factor in search engine optimization is traffic increase and it is the starting point of the successful and effective web promotion plan. Showing good popularity by user retention brings your site to the best positions in the search engines and provides your new users with one more opportunity to learn about your online presence.

Definition Site traffic is the most powerful tool in developing of your online business and promotion. The traffic measures the real user activity and the degree of web relevancy of your site content and services. Although the relation between traffic and search engine popularity can be regarded as a dual connectivity, there is clear evidence that user traffic generates search engine optimization results.

Traffic Measurement Devices For the effective measurement of the site traffic and analysis of the user and web site marketing profiles can be used two software products with proven popularity: WebTrends and Webalizer. WebTrends gives more profiled reports and can be used to map your SEO and marketing campaigns.

With the site traffic referrer information data can be defined the most effective link exchange program. It also can be used for defining of the most powerful traffic generators and help with analyzing the path to your traffic goals. Studying your traffic paths can show you how effective are your site content additions and changes and how effective is your site navigation.

Measuring of the internet success often can be regarded as relative matter, though the in deep learning of the processes clarifies the mechanism of the good web promotion results. The criteria can be an adequate and reputable Internet institution providing reliable and converged data, such as Alexa.com. The search engine provides traffic rankings, user reviews and other information about sites.

The ranking is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data and changes on a daily basis depending on the change of the different criteria participating in its formation. This powerful tool provides you with the information of your positioning in the Internet space and gives the option to compare your site's results with the ones of your competitors.

Core Traffic Increase Techniques

Content Traffic increase is based on growing popularity of your site. It can be achieved through following of some basic techniques. The first is generating interest in your services and content by increasing the user accessibility level to the information on your site pages. This can be achieved by integrating of the most appropriate design for your site industry and reliable content. The content is still the king in attracting new visitors and keeping the existing users. When deciding on your content major topics and staff, you can foresee the industry trend and learn the novelties in the present.

Fresh content is always the key in creating of a reputable site. If your business is in the service sphere, you can provide reliable information of your services, free tools and instant accessibility to articles and FAQs, structured in a Knowledge base or provided in a searchable list of categorized content.

Navigation Navigation is crucial for your site content accessibility and provides your users with the option to search freely through your site. PromotionWorld provides a free search for your site and you can download it easily from here http://www.promotionworld.com/tools/searchbox/. The design can be decided with the easy navigation principle in mind and keeping the rule saying ""Simple is best"". It is important the intersite structures to be accessible from navigation bar and a navigation path on the top of your page content.

RSS The content distribution works via RSS. Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a lightweight XML format designed for sharing headlines and other Web content. You can find more comprehensive information here. The next step is including RSS in My Yahoo. It will provide you with a powerful traffic generating tool. You can create My yahoo button for your RSS from here. It takes really several minutes to achieve fast results.

Newsletters Visitor retention is achievable through keeping the interest in your site content. Develop newsletters for your target user group and enlarge the perimeter for better result. If you are a newbie in the field, find comprehensive information here.

Alerts Use this powerful mean to notify your users when the new content of their interest appears on your site. It creates trust, keep the interest and provide you with a stable mail list group.

Surveys The surveys measure your site activity; surveys can be used for marketing purposes and keep the interest to your site pages. You can store the survey questions for users' convenience.

Forums Open a forum on your site with reliable categories and create a community of users interested in the content and services topics of your site. The forum will generate a live and active user group attracting more and more users.

Traffic increase is based on user retention and is a factor for the success in your site's search engine optimization. Optimize with user retention in mind to achieve the website popularity growth. Service quality will keep your credibility and ensure the growth of your online success.

About the author: Milena Sotirova is Editor of DevStart, Inc. (www.devstart.com). She has publications on web promotion, search engine optimization and web hosting industry news coverage and analyses. PromotionWorld.com is one of the most popular sites for web promotion and contains tutorials, tools, articles and search engine news. Subscribe for DevStart Channel http://www.promotionworld.com/informer/ Send your feedback to editor@devstart.com

How I reached #1 in Yahoo! Part 2

Author: Michael Rock

How I reached #1 in Yahoo!® Part Two

KEI - Keyword Effectiveness Index. The value of a keyword or keyword phrase that helps a web site reach the #1 position in search engines by comparing how often the keyword or keyword phrase is used and comparing it to how many web sites are using that keyword or keyword phrase to market their site. In part one of this article I discussed how you can thoroughly research and pick the right keywords for your web site. You can read part one of this web design SEO advice here. (http://www.theinternetpresence.com/business-article-26.htm) Part two of this article will show you how to take your list of keywords created from part one and narrow it down to the most effective keywords to use. Let's start with the KEI rating of the keywords. You can find many free KEI tools on the internet. I personally use one that was part of a $500 software package, but you can find many tools on the internet for free. My advice for this is to try a few of them out and stick with the tools that show generally the same results and toss the ones that don't. Even with the software package I bought I still use wordtracker and overture to compare my results. List your keywords in the first column of a table. (I use Microsoft Excel, but you can use anything that works.) In the second, third or more columns list the number of times that keyword was used per day or month. (I use one column for wordtracker, one column for overture, and one column for my software package.) Be suspicious of the keywords that don't show the same results on all three and consider tossing them out. For example if one column says it searched 300 times per day, but the other two do not even show it being searched at all I would toss that keyword out. In the next column type in the KEI rating of that keyword. And in the next column, if you have a tool that allows it, enter how often the competition uses that keyword in a 'competition' column. Enter in the numbers for this data for all of the keywords listed in your table. Now we can start to narrow down the list. Look at your keyword KEI ratings and compare them to each other. Toss out the keywords that have a low KEI rating. Next look over the list of keywords again and think to yourself, ""Will someone that types that in want to visit my site?"". If not, toss out the keywords. Ask yourself, ""Will someone who types in that keyword be likely to be profitable for me?"". If not, toss out those keywords as well. Look at how often your competition uses a keyword in your 'competition' column. If it has a good KEI rating and over 17,000,000 web sites are using it then it will be hard to get to #1. Consider tossing these keywords out also. For example I concentrated on the search term, (web development contractor) which had a great KEI rating and was hardly used by competition. I tweaked my site for this keyword and now if you type in web development contractor into MSN you'll find out that I hold the number one position. And have held it for over a month now. In addition if you type in (business presence on the web), or (Internet Presence) you'll see me floating around the top 5 along with some other search terms. (Perhaps I should rename this article How I reached #1 in MSN) The search term (web design) had a good KEI rating, but the competition was over 17,000,000 web sites using that search term. Perhaps I'll feel lucky and try for that one next. I keep narrowing down my list until I have five of the best keywords to use for my web site. I take those 5 keywords and type them into the top 3 search engines and list the top 10 sites that show up with each keyword. So you will have a list of 50 sites per each search engine you used. To get a good general ranking in all of the search engines, I combine the 3 lists of 50 sites into one big list of 150 web sites for comparison. Alphabetize the list. Did you notice something? Some sites are listed three or more times! Toss out the sites that only show up once and this will narrow down your list of 150 considerably. Take the top five web sites that show up with the keyword you want and list them in another page. It is now time to pick apart there sites and discover why they are there! Research the five sites using your keyword and compare them to each other. You have to research the site's page that landed on the search engine for these factors: Is the keyword in the tag? If so, where is it placed, and how often. Is the keyword in the description tag? If so, where is it placed, and how often. Is the keyword in the keywords tag? If so, where is it placed, and how often. Is the keyword in the content of the site? If so, where is it placed, and how often. Is the keyword in the headings (H1-H6) of the page? If so, where is it placed, and how often. Is the keyword in the links of the page? If so, where is it placed, and how often. Is the keyword in the alt image attributes? If so, where is it placed, and how often. (alt image attributes are the words that pop up when you move a cursor over a picture) If you want I can do this analysis for you. Just send me up to 3 keyword phrases and 2 web sites for comparison and for $25 you'll get a much more detailed report on both sites. This will save you a lot of time! Keyword research usually runs about $240 to $360 if you have me do it.

Examine the five sites next to each other and concentrate on building your site on things that they have in common and do one number better than them. Ignore building your site in the areas that are not consistent between the five. You then should be getting good results when your site is indexed next. There are other ways to help increase the ranking of your web site like linking. Linking plays a very important role with Google, but there are a number of rules for linking to make it effective. That is a whole new article in itself. This may seem to be a lot of work, but is well worth it. Some companies charge $1000 to $1500 per month for doing this service and what I typed into these two articles is 75% of what they do. I have my system tweaked now so that it takes me roughly 8 hours to do the keyword research and 2 or 3 days to optimize my site for it. You can do this too! Be looking for more articles soon! Copyright © Michael Rock Web development contractor (Web Design and Hosting) Internet Presence www.TheInternetPresence.com

About the author: The owner of this registered company has over twenty years experience with DOS, windows business applications, numerous programming languages, artistic development, and web design. Other areas of interest include web marketing, web promoting, and business marketing and development. After the persuasion of those praising his work, he decided to go into business himself and highly suggests everyone else to do the same.

Ethical Search Engine Optimisation Services: Are You Unintentionally Search Engine Spamming?

Author: David Touri

Many people who have websites are not totally up to date with what is considered to be search engine spamming. Having worked on search engine optimisation for a few clients, I have come across websites that are using spam techniques to help elevate search engine rankings. When I confronted clients about this, they honestly did not know they were using a form of spam nor did they realise the consequences if detected by the search engines.

So what is search engine spamming? A simple definition would be; deliberately designing website pages that offer poor and irrelevant content, and are used to trick search engines into ranking the content highly for inappropriate search results.

People tend to use spam as a way of attracting as many visitors to their website. When caught by the search engines, this will result in a major setback to business. Websites will be blacklisted from the search engines and chances are they will not appear in the index for a very long time.

Not sure if you are spamming? Below are a few common forms of spam techniques that you should avoid.

Doorway Pages - Optimising a single webpage to perform exceptionally well in search engine ranks for a group of keyword phrases (keyword stuffing on the webpage). Once a user clicks on the link, they will be automatically redirected to a completely different website.

Invisible Text - Using text that is not visible to the human eye (having the same colour text as the background colour). The invisible text will usually contain a large number of keywords (keyword stuffing).

Link Farms - Joining community websites that provide large volumes of irrelevant links to your website.

Along with other forms of spam, these techniques should be avoided at all costs. If you are not sure whether your site uses some form of spam, then it would be best to contact a search engine optimisation specialist before it could result in your website being blacklisted.

Past clients who were using some form of spam and were not aware of it, had taken a big loss by having their website blacklisted in some search engines. The road to recovery can take very long and it is one that no one would like to follow. Be cautious!

About the author: David Touri is a search engine optimisation specialist working for SEO Sydney . He offers

ethical search engine optimisation services to companies in Australia. For further information, please visit http://www.seosydney.com.au