Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Increase Online Traffic - What NOT To Do

Author: Anita DeFrank

Since everyone is so obsessed with ways to increase our website traffic (and of course we should be) people often are quick to jump at anything that might help. We are always talking about ways to increase search engine traffic. But, what about what we shouldn't do? The following I'll share a few tricks that you shouldn't be doing.

the internet. I'm not talking about PPC programs; that's a whole other article. The ones I'm talking about are the ones that 'guarantee you' 10,000 visitors for $10.00 (just an example). Do you really think that's possible? Not only do they try to sell you visits; they also try to say you'll get such and such amount of sales. In plain words…BULL! Besides, there is NO company that can guarantee you any amount of sales. Sales depend on the demand of your product/service, price and of course your ad copy. Plain and simple…Buying traffic is a scam. Don't do it.

of your valuable time. (Remember, your time is valuable and time IS money.) Everyone else listed there with your site is doing the exact same thing you're doing. Let me guess, every day you are clicking on your link and voting for yourself and/or you are sending out tons of emails (possibly spam) begging all your friends to vote for you. Am I right? Don't waste your precious time doing this. Instead spend your time working on your ad copy. It'll take you much further.

site to search engines. Submitting your site to search engines does not increase your search engine rankings. The important search engines will index a properly built website.

sending your traffic AWAY from your site. You are giving your visitors the opportunity to click away to another site. You need to be concentrating keeping your visitors and selling your product or service. Besides that, a lot of people break the web rings. These rings are set up to be all about the same topics. You are giving your visitors direct links to your competitors.

decided to spam their own websites. How do they do this you ask? One way they do this is to place a lot of unrelated keywords into their meta tags and keywords. Another way is to make 'invisible text' on their website by making the text so small that it actually looks like a dot or period. Don't do this. This can easily get you banned from the search engines.

Farm? A link farm is list of links created and maintained solely for the purpose of constructing links between member sites. For example: One page of links is generated and to be listed on this page it is a requirement to place this page on your website. Search engines see this as an illegal move and can have you punished and banned from them. Please don't hesitate to investigate if you have a question about a particular program that you are involved with. It could save you tons later.

One thing that I frequently hear when referring to the above 'programs' is the following: ""But, it's free, it's not going to hurt me."" First of all, these aren't free. These are a waste of valuable time. As I mentioned Time IS Money and your time is precious. For every moment you are spending on these basically worthless ideas, you COULD be improving your traffic instead. Secondly, a few of the above mentioned are against search engine rules and could get you banned. That is a lot of hurting.

Starting to get depressed? Want to know what TO DO to increase your online traffic? No worries. (I wouldn't let you hanging like that.) There are lots of great ways to increase your website traffic. Take a look at http://www.mommyshelperonline.com/increase-online-traffic.html to find out what you should be doing.

About the author: Anita DeFrank is a Work-At-Home mom, publisher and webmaster. With the Mission to provide the best resources for all that are working at home and to make the dream of working at home a reality to those who wish to. Bringing together the perfect balance between working and working at home. Stop by her entire network of sites: http://www.MommysHelperOnline.com http://www.WahmStateDirectory.com http://www.Wahm-Blog.com

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Search Engine Optimization for Newbies

Author: Mario Sanchez

80 percent of web surfers start their journey on a search engine. There are close to four billion pages indexed in the major search engines. While search engines are not (and should not be) the only way to promote your business online, it is one of the most important.

If you have a small business website, and you want to rank well, there are a few things you need to do. First, don't think that users will search for your site for your company name. If, for example, you have a website design firm in Dallas, you should try to rank high when somebody searches for ""web design dallas"", or ""web design company dallas"". These phrases are known as ""keywords"", and they are the first thing you must define (even before you start designing your website).

There are several ways to choose the right keywords. When choosing them, remember to make sure that they are terms that search engine users actually use, or you may end up ranking high for search terms that nobody uses. For some tips on chosing the right keywords you can check out my article at http://www.theinternetdigest.net/archive/keywordoptimization.html

The next question is, how do search engines know that your page is relevant to your chosen keywords? The answer is twofold:

1) They rely on your page copy: If your keywords, and other related terms, are mentioned frequently on your web page, your relevance for those words will increase (don't overdo it, though, or the search engines will treat is as spam). For more information on how to optimize your page's copy for the search engines, you can check out my article: http://www.theinternetdigest.net/archive/web-page-optimization.ht ml .

2) They rely on links to your page from other web pages: This is understandable, since if search engines relied only on web page copy, it would be too easy to manipulate results. Outside inbound links from quality sites are difficult to get, and therefore carry significant weight. Regarding inbound links, two things are important:

a) the quality and topic of the page where the link originates should be relevant to your topic, and

b) the words on the text used to link to you must contain your preferred keywords: if those links say ""Dallas Web Design Company"", the search engines will conclude that you are a web design company based in Dallas (by the same token, the words ""click here"" won't tell search engines anything about your site).

In a nutshell, find the right keywords, make your page copy relevant to those keywords, and get a lot of quality inbound links with your keywords in the link text, and you will be on your way to high search engine rankings.

For more tips on internet marketing and search engine optimization, you can visit my site at http://www.theinternetdigest.net, read my article ""Do-It-Yourself Search Engine Optimization"" at http://www.accordmarketing.com/tid/archive/diy-search-engine-opti mization.html or check out the SEOBook at http://www.accordmarketing.com/seobook/

About the author: Mario Sanchez is a Miami based freelance writer who focuses on Internet marketing and web design topics. He publishes The Internet Digest ( http://www.theinternetdigest.net ), a growing collection of web design and Internet marketing articles, tips and resources.

Monday, April 28, 2008

Increase Online Traffic

Author: Anita DeFrank

Everybody wants it … everybody needs it. Traffic. In essence your business can't survive online without it. This let's everyone searching for the best ways to increase website traffic as quickly and painlessly as possible. In the following I'll share some little tricks to help increase traffic.

Link Exchange Exchange links with other sites that relate to yours. Look for other sites that could be of interest to your visitors. Avoid one of the most common mistakes of naming the filename of your link exchange page 'links'. This is one mistake that is often made and can save future problems from occurring. It is also a good idea to organize your link exchange page. Break the links down into categories such as Internet Marketing, Shopping, Business Opportunities and so on. You can also move in on the keywords that you're trying to rank with by using them in your link exchanges. An example of this would be if you were trying to rank high with the keywords scrapbooking at home you would use those words in your exchange.

Directory Listings Some of the best advertising available online would be getting listed in directories. This doesn't mean submitting to search engines. If you write quality ad copies and build a quality site; the important search engines will find you. What I am talking about is directories that you pay to be listed in. A good example of this is http://www.WahmStateDirectory.com These types of directories you pay to be listed for a certain amount of time. Some are weekly, monthly or in this case are yearly. This is also an excellent way to get those 'back links' to help you rank better in search engines.

Website Design There are a few details that you can add to each web page to help increase search engine traffic and in turn increase targeted traffic to your website.

Title tags Use your targeted keywords for the title. The HTML code for your title tags should look like the following:

Your page title (keywords) here

Meta tags Again, you can use your keywords in the meta tags and describe each page within them. The HTML code for your meta tags should look like the following:

Your page title (keywords) here

Alt Tags Use these to describe your pictures on your website. Two things happen when you use these. First search engines can't 'read' pictures so this gives the search engines text to read. Secondly, some visitors may have graphics turned off and instead of getting the dreaded red x they'll see the text. Alt tags for images should look like this:

Website Content If you don't utilize any of the tips I've mentioned so far please make absolute sure you follow this. This is one of THE most important factors needed to increase online traffic. You must have quality content. I can't express exactly how important this is to the targeted traffic you receive. Make sure the content on each page is relevant to your site, to your title and meta tags and most importantly to your visitors. Don't have your title tag horses and make the site about dogs. If your site is about horses, make sure you write about horses. Search engines love text. The more quality text you have the better. Don't forget to have those keywords in your content!

Articles This tip always makes everyone run and hide when they see it. It's not really as hard as you think. Hopefully, your website is something you know about. So, if you know about it; write about it. Article writing is your own little arsenal for back links. There are tons of places online that you can submit your articles to for free. There are also tons of people out there searching for free content. It's a win-win situation. They get the content and you get the exposure. There is a list of places to submit your articles to located at http://www.mommyshelperonline.com/submit-articles-for-free.html

Be sure to include a bio at the end of the article. Include your Web site URL in the bio. Make it a condition for free publication that the article appears with bio and business link. A bio is a short paragraph about you, your business and of course a link to your website. You can view an example bio at the end of this article. The good thing about article writing is that it establishes you as the expert and therefore increases the chances of people visiting your website.

Still looking for more traffic secrets? Aren't we all?!? For even more secrets to Non-Stop, FREE Targeted Traffic, I highly recommend taking a look at author Jim Edwards's book Turn Words Into Traffic (http://hop.clickbank.net/?mommyshelp/ezarticles). The targeted traffic it brings you is as good or better than anything you could pay for ... except you don't have to pay for it! Check it out; you'll be glad you did ;).

Don't be too quick to jump at every program available that might help increase your online traffic. Stop by and find out what NOT TO DO too http://www.mommyshelperonline.com/increase-online-traffic-donts.h tml

About the author: Anita DeFrank is a Work-At-Home mom, publisher and webmaster. With the Mission to provide the best resources for all that are working at home and to make the dream of working at home a reality to those who wish to. Bringing together the perfect balance between working and working at home. MommysHelperOnline.com WahmStateDirectory.com MommyBanners.com HomeBusinessSpecialists.com

Sunday, April 27, 2008

When to NOT hire a SEO and why

Author: Zoran Makrevski

When you get an e-mail from SEO Company with content similar to this:

""We submit your site on X00.000 search engines and directories…""

Stay far away from companies which offer you to submit your site on thousands of directories and search engines. Why?

What they do is: they use submission software and advanced scripts and they submit your site to different guest books, local search engines, search engines in other languages, post your URL in comments in different Blogs, FFA etc…You will not have any benefit from this. FFA stands for Free For All, pages which are designed to carry a designated amount of links on each page. Have in mind that when comes to link popularity relevancy counts and links form this pages will not going to help you much. Add to this that FFA pages have very limited life span, you will get the picture.

When some SEO company claims that they can guarantee #1 on Google

Why?

No one can guarantee #1 on any Search Engine! (Except the owner of course) I can guarantee you first place in the search results in my Greek Business Directory , since I am the owner, but there is no chance that ethical and honest SEO company will give you such a guarantee in real life.

Even the biggest companies in SEO industry do not give such a guarantee. There are companies who claim that if they don't achieve specific number of top 10 positions, you get your money back. Take even this with great caution, and be sure to read their guarantee 2 times, including the small letters on the bottom (if there are any). Many of them will attempt to propose you non competitive phrases, which will give you no traffic and therefore you will have no benefit from this.

When SEO Company offers you to get paid on base on delivered traffic (Though THEIR domain)

Why?

Many SEO Companies offer to the prospective client's deals on base on delivered traffic. This traffic to be measured easily, they propose new domain, or sub domain to be created, optimized and to deliver traffic though this domain. Be sure to ask which property will be that domain or sub domain. If SEO Company told you that domain will be their property, your site will not be optimized. Here is what will follow: SEO Company will register domain name on THEIR name, and will optimize that domain for your keywords. They will redirect all traffic from that domain to your site.

You will be forced to pay monthly maintenance to that company and if you decide to stop their services, they will redirect their traffic to some other company in same industry. Keywords which worked well for you, will work well for your competitors too.

Fair and honest company might offer similar deal because of many reasons, but the domain from which the visitors will come will be YOURS, so if you want to change SEO Company, you will have the traffic directed to your site until the new company takes over, and your investment (optimized domain and the traffic) will remain your property.

In case that SEO Company doesn't want to disclose the techniques which will use to rank high your website.

Why?

Legal and ethical SEO Company will give you very clear idea what they intent to do with your site, and will give you detailed plan of activities. You have to know that some SEO Companies use techniques forbidden by search engines and your site may get banned from the search engines because of this.

For example if your SEO company use thousands automatically created so called doorway pages, which are full of your keywords only and are useless to the visitors, your site might get banned because of this.

So be sure to ask your SEO Company what they intent to do, and which techniques they plan to use. Good SEO Company is always ready to educate their client to some level.

When SEO Company claim that you will see the results within 1 months

Why?

In this case, don't walk away. Run!

If your site is brand new, it might take up to 3 months to get listed on major search engines. To get some results even in less competitive results, you should count that 4-6 months is the timeframe where you can expect to see first results. Note that if your website has 5-10 pages only, you will need much more content that this. SEO Company will have to add much new pages to your site, and that is time consuming task.

So, if the SEO Company claims that you will be on the top within a month, they have PPC (Pay per Click) in their mind, and that have nothing with Search Engine Optimization.

About the author: Zoran Makrevski Sea rch Engine Positioning Firm SEO.Goto.gr

Saturday, April 26, 2008

SEO job is a continuos service process.

Author: Xponse

SEO job is a continuos service process.

Normal SEO Job: Suggest Competitive Key-phrase (To include in Page content of Site) Suggest Domain name Proper naming structure of files for search engines Proper phrasing of the page title / Meta tags Inclusion of a robots.txt file Creation of a sitemap

Pre-devlopment guide line: 1) Domain name suggestion : (.com / .net ) gemsstones / preciousstones / raregemstones / gems-stones / precious-stones 2) Directory and sub-directory should be named by key word. all file shoud be named only index.html, index.php etc. Put ( - ) to separate two word in directory or sub directory name ( example : www.gemsstones.com/gem-sones/ ) 3) Try fill in the blanks all above key phrase within the content of pages ( ration 7% to 10 % )

note: For normal SEO job, Fee Can be include in the cost of web design.

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

[Only those who want to generate REVENUE From NET]

Advance SEO Work [include SEM work]: Create Reciprocal Link Page Engaging in a link campaign one-way Link Reciprocal Link Three-way Link Directory Submission Server Log analysis Press Releases Article Writing Blogs Purchasing Text Links (optional) Banner Advertising

Target work: Page Rank >4 Good SERP Competitive Key-phrase [SE- googl.com / msn.com / yahoo.com]

Time Require: New Site: 60 to 90 days Old Site: 30 to 60 days

SEM work [Depend on Client Advertisement budget] PPC Campaigns Bid-management Check ROI [Return on Investment] Benift: Site Listing can be visible on Top SE from next day after Registration. [Depend on BID amount] Site Visitors can be convert into BUYERS without wasting time. Even if site could not SELL product, small Revenue can be generate from Banner impression (Page Load). Bid amount will deduct, only when visitor click on visible link listed in SE.

http://www.xponsewebs.com

About the author: I have 6 years experience on web designing and web promotion. I worked for 123greetings.com as web developer and SEO.. having very Good SERP on keyword ""greeting cards"" in google.com

a) my company website http://www.xponsewebs.com was #70 SERP in google.com for key-phrase ""custom website design"" on Oct' 05. I did SEO job on same key-phrase and within 30 days of period http://www.xponsewebs.com has #10 SERP. b)

Friday, April 25, 2008

SEO Boging for Pagerank

Author: James Anderson

Weblogs have been around for a long time now but in recent times more and more webmasters have been using them to influence their PR in an attempt to acheive better rankings.

Blogs are given a large amount of weight by search engines so it was only a matter of time before webmasters would add blogs to their ever growing arsnal of tools.

There are two methods I have seen being used in order to acheive this, one ethicle and one not so ethicle.

The black-hat way is similar to the old link farms we saw spring up some years ago. Someone creates a large network blogs that are all linked together and contain huge amounts links pointing to their main site. This does not add any benifit to the web and just clogs it up with muliple spam blogs. Any webmaster found using this technique by search engines are running the risk of being penalised.

The ethicle method is creating a blog that contains useful information to it's readers. If the blog is good enough other webmasters will link to it purely for it's content, creating strong one way links. One way links give a higher amounts of weight than the over popularised recipracle linking stratergy. Combine this with a link from your blog to main site on each page and you can see why it is called ""bloging for PR"". It doesn't end there, creating a good blog will also keep surfers coming back day after day to read any new content you have posted.

Blogs are fast becoming my favourite way of genarating traffic and if used in the correct manner should be able to boost any sites traffic levels.

About the author: James Anderson is an SEO Consultant for Podium Solutions Limited Internet Consultancy

Thursday, April 24, 2008

How to Choose Keywords for Maximum SEO Effectiveness

Author: Corey A. Wenger

Choosing the right keywords and phrases for your search engine optimization (SEO) program is critical to its success. The right keywords drive targeted traffic to your website – prospects that are ready to buy. The wrong keywords attract web visitors that are not likely to purchase your products and services – wasting your time and money.

By following the simple methods listed below, you will be able to determine the right mix of keywords and phrases that will generate targeted prospects to your website. Remember that good search terms are ones that are related to your business and have sufficient monthly search traffic.

How to choose the best keywords and phrases?

1)Select keywords that represent your company's "bread and butter." What products and service lines are the most profitable, have the strongest sales, and continue to show good market demand. And yes, typically the 80/20 rule applies here. 80% of your sales and sales leads are produced by 20% of your keywords and phrases.

2)Look at complementary products and services that people tend to buy that you don't offer. Often, these keywords generate good prospects and typically have less competition than your primary keywords and phrases.

3)Use online tools to help determine keyword variations and search frequency. The best free programs to use include Overture's search term suggestion tool - http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion and Google's AdWords suggestion tool - https://adwords.google.com/select/main. 4)Use WordTracker - www.wordtracker.com. For a small fee, you can use this tool to find niche keywords, use the thesaurus to find related search terms and determine general monthly search frequency. This is a great tool and worth the investment.

5)Use pay-per-click programs like Overture or Google's AdWords to choose keywords and phrases for your SEO program. Both programs help you generate search terms based on specific keyword relationships and show how often they are searched for. Set a small monthly budget and track the number of keyword impressions you receive for each search term. After one to two months of data, choose the search terms with adequate search frequency and incorporate them into your search engine optimization program.

6)Don't forget Geographics. If your products and services are local or regional, be sure to include your state or city within your search phrases. For example, an investigations company that conducts most of its business in the Midwest would want to choose "Indiana and private investigator."

7)Take a look at your competition. Based on your top three competitors, look at their website for specific search terms being used. Also, look at their META keywords to get a good idea of what search terms they think are important. Remember you want to look at competitors for your different markets served and products and service lines.

8)Analyze your website traffic. Make sure your web hosting company provides you with the ability to analyze your website log files. Some hosting companies have you log into your account to view monthly web traffic reports, while others email monthly reports. Information obtained can tell you the top search terms and search engines used to find your website and other valuable information. To get the most out of your log file data, it is recommended to use a log file analyzer such as Web Trends or Urchin.

By applying these methods, you will be well on your way to generating highly-targeted keywords and phrases that attract the right types of prospective clients - ones that have direct interest in your products, services, and solutions you offer.

About the author: Corey Wenger is owner of Key Position Web Marketing and is a professional Search Engine Optimizer and Consultant who has over three years of experience in helping companies increase sales and profitability through strategic web marketing programs. On average, clients have seen 200% + increases in web marketing sales and prospects. For more information, please visit www.key-position.com or email him at corey@key-position.com.

Monday, April 21, 2008

Google Tops Fifty Billion Market Cap With Innovation

Author: Mike Banks Valentine

Google Tops Fifty Billion Market Cap With Innovation Yahoo See, Yahoo Buy Strategy Makes Them Number Two

by Mike Banks Valentine ? October 26, 2004

Google market value has topped $50B, so now they're worth more in dollar value than Yahoo. That goes right in line with being worth more in search value and relevance. (CBS MarketWatch)

I've written before that Yahoo has their fingers in so many pies that they don't have the necessary attention on search that Google does. Google only buys companies that offer services, software and add-ons which increase the value of the Google search experience. http://www.website101.com/arch/archive140.html

Yahoo buys companies when they think they might be able to squeeze some extra bit of profit from them and add to the already confusing array of services which take an alphabet soup of 109 Yahoo ""properties"", broken down alphabetically. http://docs.yahoo.com/docs/family/more/

Yahoo bought up all the available search ""properties"" within the last couple of years and, as I said in mid-July of 2003, ""Well if it is a horse race, Yahoo may gain on leader Google if they are able to integrate their Inktomi and Overture (and by extension, Altavista and Fast/AllTheWeb) purchases into relevant search results that searchers trust. But all of the Jockeys on those horses will be whipping their charges toward the finish line with an eye to the winning purse."" http://searchengineoptimism.com/Yahoo_acquire_Overture.html

The fact is - Yahoo search is no better than Google now that they have bought up all real competitors. Referred traffic from Yahoo search results to web sites is still only one fifth that of Google at 70% versus Yahoo's anemic 15 to 20%. http://searchengineoptimism.com/Google_refers_70_percent.html

The new MSN search may pose a threat to Google if they continue on their current path toward relevant search results. As of October 2004, Google market capitalization of $52 billion with shares hovering around $160 per share price, reflects the true value of Google.

Yahoo is kind of like a WalMart, a ""Portal"" with everything under one roof and over a hundred wildly diverse ""properties"" that don't contribute to search relevance or search value. Google confirmed today that they have no intention of becoming a portal, but instead intend to keep the laser focus on search that made them number one. This focus was underlined by CEO Eric Schmidt's comment in the Financial Times of London, ""We are not building a browser,"" to stop that circulating rumor. (Financial Times)

Yahoo! Search has introduced a Google clone search page but who will see it? If you visit the Yahoo home page, you'll see a couple of hundred links to all their services such as Yahoo Jobs, Yahoo Dating, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Movies Yahoo Stores, Yahoo News, Yahoo Web Hosting, ""More Yahoo"" and ""Even MORE Yahoo"" links near the bottom of the home page, blah blah blah, etc. But they've put up an elegant Google clone for their search page at search.yahoo.com. That nobody will ever see unless it is bookmarked or typed directly into the browser address bar!

Yes, you can search from the Yahoo home page and that is the most prominent of all the Yahoo's glut of stuff, but I'll bet they posted this spare little copy of Google's home page to appease those who don't want to wade through the rest of the mess to get to search. This placement means that only those of us that purposely AVOID their home page and jump right to search by typing http://search.yahoo.com/ into the address bar will find that page.

That's the equivalent of MSN of course where you must type in http://search.msn.com to see THEIR spare search page. But MSN has at least kept some elements of branding in the design of that page, while Yahoo has made their page LOOK like the Google home page with a Yahoo logo. I can't wait to see how they'll integrate Yahoo Desktop Search into the browser ... the same way Google did.

Yahoo enters the Desktop Search race how? Buying a company! According to Mike Grehan in a Pandia Search News article ""Yahoo! may also be joining in the race for Total Search. They recently acquired the e-mail software company Stata Labs which sells an e-mail application called Bloomba that lets people search message text and attachments.""

Today the market has confirmed what searchers already know, that Google now tops Yahoo in financial relevance as well as in search relevance. Google leads and Yahoo follows. Google develops new technology while Yahoo buys it.

Google envisions & innovates but with Yahoo it's more like ""Yahoo see, Yahoo do"" done by buying another company.

About the author: ------------------------------------------------------------ Mike Banks Valentine does Search Engine Optimization contact him at http://SEOptimism.com/SEO_Contact.htm Visit http://RealitySEO.com for Mike's daily commentary on the Search Engine business. Subscribe to the RSS feed or join and comment yourself on the latest search news. ------------------------------------------------------------

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Nuthin' New Except Search Terms

Author: Stephan Miller

Is there such a thing as brand new search term? Something that has never been typed into a search engine box before. Yes, I know. I didn't think it was possible. The whole ""nuthin new under the sun"" thing. But it is. If fact I have seen stats on it, but can't remember where right now. It's not important. Somewhere in the range of 40% of the keyword phrases typed into a search engine's box have never been used before. Now that's a search engine statistic that will get you thinking.

It will get you thinking that going to Overture an typing in a generic keyword like ""reciprocal links"" and then optimizing your page for the results will get you nowhere. Well at least it will get you a shot at 60% of the search engine traffic. The 60% percent that everyone else is competing for. But what about that 40%? The 40% that you have no competition for because no one is optimizing their site for them. The 40% that are the real search engine users. The 40% that are ready to spend, if only they could find what they are looking for.

I realized the importance of this 40% this weekend when I was searching for a simple script that could count the words and phrases on a page and return the amount of one, two, and three word combinations on that page. A simple script that I did not have the time to write.

But in order to find this script, I had to push my way past a bunch of black hat seo pages to get to anything close to what I was looking for. By the time I had found what I was looking for, I had about seven search terms in the Google search box and a few quotation marks just to narrow my search down to what I was actually searching for. Now that was a new search term. But only one of the types you may run into.

Another type of terms are the shooting star types. A key phrase, a name, or a term that becomes a buzz very quickly. I created a site just to test how many hits I could get related to the top 200 search terms from Wordtracker. I expanded these terms using Overture's keyword tool and then gathered related RSS feeds and place them on my site.

I then just sat back and watched mainly because I had no idea what would happen. What happened was I received no less than 2000 hits from the search engines containing the term ""Kari Ann Peniche"" this moth. You know, the pageant winner that lost her crown by appearing in Playboy. Now this is something that I didn't expect from a website that was just an experiment.

I couldn't have expected it. I just picked up news feeds that contained her name. She created a buzz. A buzz that my RSS feed based site caught a week before anyone else did. The site is now gone, because it put a strain of the service I was using to find RSS feeds for me. But it showed me something. You can't optimize your site for everything under the sun. In fact, if all you are doing is looking at website stats, you are going to miss the boat.

So what am I getting to? Hope, maybe. Hope that if you write the way you speak, if you fill your website with the type of content that you would like to find instead of useless, spammy, ""optimized"" text, you can find the visitors and hits you are looking for. Or rather, they will find you.

Or you can optimize your site for last month's keywords and compete with everyone and his brother for customers that are already angry at sites using black hat seo.

About the author: Stephan Miller Profit-ware Download Directory Thousands of digital downloads available instantly.

Saturday, April 19, 2008

The Back Pain of Search

Author: Gallianno Cosme

If you've ever suffered from back pain you'll relate to the grief that I discuss in this article. You'll relate even more if your back pain started on the onset of your SEM career. Not surprisingly, mine did.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love this industry. It's entertaining, thought provoking, and challenging. It's an ever-changing industry that keeps me on my toes in constant search of information, knowledge, and new ideas.

But there are some aspects that make me just want to squeal. Most of my rants rest on the shoulders of the SEO kinship. The, often self-proclaimed, gurus and goddesses of the search engine community. The often disbelieving falsities, self propaganda nonsense that many in this industry procreate.

Don't get me wrong. I respect many SEM professionals. The likes of Danny Sullivan, Shari Thurow, Morgan Carey, and Peter da Vanzo - to name but a few. But then there are those, who I'll refrain from naming, who seem to think they are know-it-alls, alluring people to follow their often devious or bandwagon practises, and occasionally belittling those who don't.

What really gets my pain throbbing is the constant battle to find original content from these self-proclaimed ""gurus"". As you will know, many swear that increasing link popularity is the most important factor in obtaining high search engine placement. Those same experts proclaim that bulking up content is the way to gain link popularity.

I'll take this one step further and say that original, interesting content is what really works. These are the sites that people want to share with friends, families, and colleagues alike. The problem I have with this is quite simple: where has the original content disappeared to?

I cannot remember when last I read an original piece or commentary on the SEO industry? Most of the ""content-bulking"" copy that I come across is repetition of something said before. ""Thesaurusised content"" is what I like to call it.

The majority of the population, myself included, don't have the time to sit and read old information. As far as link popularity is concerned, why would someone want to devalue their own site by linking to sites that have similar content? Makes no point at all. Ever noticed that the most populated sites on the Net are those that genuinely have interesting and original information that people find enticing. Isn't that what the gurus mean by ""content is king""?

I believe that this ""cloned information tendency"" that is spreading the Net, like a virus on steroids, is due to a lack of creativity and imagination. The effort of tapping into ones own resources and deciphering ones own opinion of the industry seems daunting to many people. I don't blame people for rather clinging on to the already said like fleas on a dog's coat during the summer months. Fear of the unknown is a risk that very few people wish to take.

I receive a lot of newsletters and RSS feeds from many sources. Of the over 17 hours of reading I do per week, half has been wasted on reading repetitive jumble. Ok, so maybe the wording and style of the jumble is different, but the nuts and crux of what's being said still remains the same. Being the busy person that I am, I don't have time or the inclination to read ""old news"".

So why am I going on like an anal granny in search of some estrogens? I suppose that I'm just a diehard fan of original content. I like to have a smile in my mind when I finish reading something, either because I've just read something really interesting, or because I can relate to what the author is suggesting.

Just because I want to learn and stay informed on the industry does not mean that I want to be bored either. Nothing gets my natural endorphins running more than entertaining content. The mixture is undeniably a recipe for readership. Readerships means link popularity, and that my dear friends is the only antidote for serious back pain.

About the author: Gallianno Cosme a.k.a. Gino is the SEM Captain at Quirk, a One-2-One eMarketing company offering tailor-made, innovative and cost-effective eMarketing solutions. Go to http://www.quirk.co.za for more information.

Friday, April 18, 2008

Jump-start Your Link Building (without Getting Sandboxed)

Author: Andy Hagans

Link popularity has been written about ad nauseum, but most articles address the subject from a perspective circa 2001. The available information usually focuses on topics such as reciprocal linking or the current price of a PR6 link. But following outdated link building advice is more likely to get your Web site penalized than it is to help you gain top rankings.

Google's increasingly sophisticated algorithm has largely caught on to PageRank brokers and has successfully filtered out the benefits of many bought links, as well as those of reciprocal links. The risk of obtaining these types of links is even greater for a new site, as detection of an "unnatural" link structure has recently gotten many sites "sandboxed" to the bottom of the SERPs. For this reason, a link popularity campaign must be conducted carefully and yield relevant, "natural" links.

The methods described in this article will give your Web site backlinks that fit the following criteria, which are important for keeping a site out of the "sandbox":

1) The link is on a Web page that is hosted on a unique IP address. 2) The link is on a Web page that itself has a unique, wholly independent set of backlinks. 3) The link is on a Web page that is at least loosely relevant to your Web site's topic. 4) The link is created within a week.

Numbers 1-3 are important so that your Web site's new backlinks are independent and natural, and do not trip a filter in the search engine algorithm; number 4 ensures that you can move on to more advanced link building tactics before your competition gets further ahead.

Directories Directories have always been cited as a basic starting point for a link popularity campaign. Listings in the Open Directory Project and the Yahoo! Directory ensure that a site will be spidered and indexed quickly and also provide a reputable backlink. In the past few years however many general and niche directories have sprung up, most charging a yearly or one-time fee to be listed. Webmasters have questioned the ROI from being listed in these second-tier directories, as most provide little traffic and charge 10-50 USD per listing.

But listings in these directories provide important link popularity benefits for a Web site. A link from a directory fits the four criteria we laid out above—each of these directories has a unique set of backlinks and is hosted on a unique IP, the site's URL will be placed on a topical page, and all of the directories review and add new submissions within a week. With directory listings alone, a new Web site can gain a few dozen quality backlinks for under 1000 USD (not counting Yahoo!). Aaron Wall of SEO Book has provided a good list of directories at http://www.seobook.com/archives/000166.shtml.

Press Releases Press Releases provide an opportunity to announce your Web site, and just as importantly, provide a backlink to your Web site from a relevant page (it had better be relevant—after all, it's an article about your Web site!). A press release should be well-written and submitted to multiple newswires. In less than a week, it will be published on its own Web page by each newswire and possibly by the newswires' syndication partners as well. The writer should be sure to include a link in the body of the press release in http://www.mysite.com format. Again, these backlinks meet the four criteria we laid out above. Newswires usually charge a fee to publish a press release, although a few offer this service for free. You can view the Open Directory Project's category of press release services at http://dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Web_Design_and_Development/Pro motion/Press_Release_Services/.

Articles Another great method for gaining quality backlinks, as well as publicity, is to write and publish a helpful article. The author can write a relevant, informative piece on your Web site's subject, which of course includes a link to your Web site in http://www.mysite.com format. General "how-to" sites (and often, news sites in your particular niche) accept article submissions and will often reprint a relevant, well-written piece. It's free content for them, and a backlink for you—a win-win situation. The author of THIS article swears by this method, and once again notes that it fits all four of our criteria for a timely and quality backlink. Aaron Wall of SEO Book has provided a list of Web sites that accept article submissions at http://www.seobook.com/archives/000099.shtml.

Just Say 'No' Although it may be tempting, you should stay away from reciprocal linking, except in the rare case where the link is relevant and helpful to your visitors. Likewise, you should avoid renting links from link brokers or networks; the links they sell are usually filtered by Google. These two types of links will have a minimal impact on your search engine rankings anyway and may even get your Web site "sandboxed."

Instead, seek quality one-way inbound links by the methods described in this article; if you have exhausted these tactics, or if you have run out of money, you can always beg for links from relevant Web sites. If your site contains quality, original content, you may not even need to beg!

Conclusion The success of a search engine optimization campaign depends greatly upon link popularity. Getting a Web site listed in directories, distributing press releases and submitting articles for syndication are three ways to gain a slew of legitimate backlinks from unique IPs relatively quickly. This will keep the site out of the "sandbox" and give any SEO campaign a sound link structure to build upon.

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.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Choosing Keywords: What They Don't Tell You

Author: Mike Arnold

Let me start off by saying that I am no web design expert but I have designed a few websites and the biggest challenge I found was choosing keywords. It seems like it would be easy but it is not.

Choosing keywords and keyword placement is the foundation of getting indexed properly in search engines, choosing the correct ones and placing them on your web page is not an easy task. First off your keywords or key phrases have to make sense so that a person visiting your website can understand what you are saying. All well and good, we can all do that. The problem comes when a machine is sent to look at your page all of the sudden it no longer looks the same. Take this page for example www.globalwebmonitor.com , after reading this page you would know the following things about this company: *Global Web Monitor sells business services. *The business services are designed for IT departments, website owners, web hosts and website developers. *The primary service Global Web Monitor sells is called Global Up Time. *Global Up Time is a monitoring service. *Global Up Time monitors websites, servers, networks and ports. *Global Up Time can do port security checks on servers and firewalls. *Global Up Time emails, phones or pages customers if one of their monitored items goes down. *Global Up Time can save its clients time, money, customers and business reputation. *Website monitoring is priced as low as $4.95 per month. *And finally you have the option of a 30 day free website monitoring trial.

Unfortunately the search engine robots and spiders are just machines and see this page completely different. If you run the keyword density program from Google for the web page www.globalwebmonitor.com you get keywords and key phrases that are completely useless to this particular website. A second problem that affects this web page is the stop word list that is used by many search engine spiders. The third problem with this page is words under 3 characters are filtered out. So what happened to the Global Web Monitor main page is that they ended up with key phrases like: *Global time monitoring *Servers network appliances *Global monitor overview *Status pages overview *Time monitoring *Services global *Monitor overview *Sign trial *Account enter *Check systems *And my personal favorite - Eliminates human

This is by no means all of the keyword phrases that were generated from the Global Web Monitor home page but you can see that even these few would drastically alter the way this web page would be indexed. If I were to look at these key words and had nothing else to go on I would think this website was about some ""Human eliminating global time monitoring network appliance"", not website monitoring services. As a result, most of this web page needs to be reworded in such a way that the key phrases that are important to this website are placed with different words before and after each key phrase. Also the name of the monitoring service needs to be removed a few times.

When you run into a problem like the one on this page the best thing to do is get out the thesaurus and alter the wording on the page until the keywords that you want to represent your page equal around 12%. Use the keyword density tool found on Google to determine the percentages. Oh and make sure that completely unsuitable key phrases like 'eliminates human' are not too prominent in the keyword list.

About the author: Product research and development at Global Web Monitor Business Services and Website Monitoring

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Why you should NOT submit your site on Search Engines

Author: Zoran Makrevski

Before to answer to this question we have to know what is the difference between a search engine and directory. Here is a brief explanation.

Main difference between search engine and directory lay in the way how websites get entered into their index. People submit their sites to the directories, which are reviewed by human editors. Think of the directories as collections of Internet sites organized by subject. Search engines works by sending out a spider to fetch as many documents as possible. Another program, called an indexer, then reads these documents and creates an index based on the words contained in each document.

Having this said, let's see why you should not submit your site to the Search Engines.

More than 90% of the search engines traffic comes from three major search engines Google, Yahoo! and MSN.

You can see many ads on Internet which looks like this: "submit your site on X00.000 search engines…"

Submitting your site on hundreds of thousands search engines wouldn't help and is simply not worth. Save your money as you would do when you see ad's like: "loose weight while you sleep".

These three search engines provide results for many other search engines, and if you are listed on these three search engines, your site will be listed on many other search engines too.

Altavista for example show results from the Yahoo! index. Rankings are not the same, because the algorithm is different but index is the same. If your site is new and is listed on Yahoo but not on Altavista, be patient and do nothing. Altavista will show your site when they update their index from yahoo. AOL (America On Line) and Netscape use Google index. They additionally receives and listings from DMOZ. Examples are many.

So called "Meta" search engines like DogPile or Metacrawler are showing results from Google and Yahoo among of others. These search engines actually search the top search engines and show combined results.

If your site is not new, there is a chance that search engines spiders already find your site and index him. So before to do anything check is your site already listed, even if you did not submit your site on any search engine. But what you should do if your site is just uploaded?

As we already explain search engines are equipped with spiders which will find your site. All you need is to submit your site in Directories, and search engines spiders will find your link and your site will be indexed. But be sure to provide enough "food" for the spiders. That is, submit your site in enough directories, and you will make that process shorter.

While submission to the search engines is wasting of your time, submission to the directories is not. You will benefit from submitting your site in Directories, not only because search engines will find your link there and index your site, but you will also increase your link popularity. Search engines consider each link who is pointing to your site as a one kind of vote and give him a "credit" for each "vote".

That's why you should submit your site to as many directories you can. However, don't expect bulk traffic from the directories. Even the biggest directories like Yahoo! or DMOZ are not able to deliver load of traffics. From the other side, traffic delivered though the directories is usually quality traffic, because these people are browsing to find products or services that you offer.

Submitting your site more than once on search engines might slow down indexing time. If you still want to submit your site on search engines best is do that just once, and do that manually. Companies who advertise that they will submit your site on X00.000 will not do that manually, that is for sure. They use automated submission software, even all major search engines say's in their submission guidelines that you should submit your site manually. And major search engines are what you should care for only. You remember the fact where the over 90% of traffic comes from?

Remember that only submitting your site to the search engines does nothing to increase your ranking in most cases. If web site optimization on your web site is not properly implemented or is not implemented at all chances are small that your site will be on first few pages with results. And having in mind that only about 7% of the people look further then third page, top is the only place you want to be.

How to calculate if the search engine optimization is worth to invest in? Consider this: What is the annual worth of one customer to you?"" Is it 25 €, 250 €, or perhaps 2500 €? How many customers you need to get the invested money back?

Optimization of your website might be one of your best investment ever, if is planed and implemented right.

About the author: Zoran Makrevski Search Engine Optimization Services SEO.Goto.gr

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Getting Back Links to your site Free

Author: Kris McGee

Get Free Links To Your Site Instantly

As many of you know, getting links that point to your site is a must for search engine optimization. Search engines such as Google use backlinks to measure the value of your page. The higher value your page is, the higher your search engine standings. Search engines use this as a tool to eliminate the spam pages out of their index. Because they think no one will link to a spammy page and thus the link to the page must be authentic. If your site has been online for some time, it will usually have some natural links pointing to it. What I mean by this is someone saw your site fit and placed a linik to it from their webpage. However, most webmasters will frown on the idea of linking to a page without some sort of link back. Getting Links

You could find sites online, then email the webmaster and ask them to link back to your site. Providing you will place a link to their site also. However this is a long and tedious process, and your response rate will usually linger around 5% or so. There are even places that will email webmasters for you and such. I've never tried it that way. I always considered it a sort of spam. However I'm sure there are legitimate providers that will handle the service professionally. Automating The Process

Getting your link to show up on pages can be automated. Thats right, all you need to do is sign up for this service and place their code on your webpage. Then you link will show up on their thousands of partner sites. The links are non-intrusive and can be CSS styled to match your page. The service I'm speaking of is

Digi tal Point Ad Network . You are assigned a weight for the links you display and your link will show up on partner sites. And the best part is that its free! All you need to do is sign up and place the linking code on your pages. The more ads you display on your page, the more weight you will recieve. Find out more by visiting Digi tal Point .

About the author: This article was written by Kris McGee. I started writing and doing web design 5 years ago and currently run PrimeGraphix.com along with many other websites.

Monday, April 14, 2008

How to Choose an Internet Marketing Company

Author: Lester Boey

-- Internet Marketing Determines Web Success --

Internet marketing is essential to the success of e-commerce sites. You can have a professional looking website but what good can it do if internet users are not able to find it when they need your products and services? That is where an internet marketing campaign comes into play.

Internet marketing is similar to designing websites- it does not require much experience to do a good job, just good knowledge and a keen eye for details. It is fundamentally important for a good internet marketer to constantly update himself weekly, if not monthly, of online markets.

--What an Internet Marketer can offer-

In short, an Internet Marketer oversees that your website is built properly for visibility and promoted with the best dollar spent on your internet marketing campaign. It is no good having a website and not appearing in internet searches. Your website has to magically appear before buyers when they need products and services. Internet Marketers deploy search engine optimisation techniques to make your website visible and targetted to internet users.

Internet marketing requires research and analysis effort for individual website, followed by optimisation of website. Hundreds of hours may be spent on each website, depending on the size of your targetted market. You are essentially paying for the amount of effort involved, effectiveness of your internet marketer and daily sales tracking of your website.

-- How to choose an Internet Marketer -

Internet marketing requires constant updating of skills and knowledge. One crude way to test if your internet marketer is a genuine or fake- Ask your internet marketer about recent events that happened in his field. If he cannot answer that, he must have a genuinely good reason to back himself as a good internet marketer! At times, it is easy to fall prey into the hands of bad internet marketing companies as happened in US and other parts of the world.

About the author: Lester Boey works in an Australian search engine marketing and design company (http://www.definiteweb.com/)

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Its 2AM, do you know where your website is?

Author: Cindy Kelly

You've selected the perfect website template. You're finally ready to show the world your professional website...but will anyone be able to find it?

When I began my career as a webmaster 5 years ago, I assumed that if I had a great looking website it would naturally bring visitors. I found a great looking professional website template for the small business I worked for, customized it...and waited. To my surprise, no visitors appeared. I kept wondering what I had done wrong? I used PPC ads and trusted feeds to bring the traffic to my website but it seemed very expensive and didn't yield the results I expected. I didn't quite understand why how those other non-paid listings (for the same products I sold) were listed ahead of me. My desire for an improved search engine ranking(or any search engine ranking) drove me to find a solution.

I visited webmaster forums, read many newsletters and websites and discovered a great little tool called Wordtracker. I learned that if I had only used keywords that people ""really"" searched for, I could build my whole website around them and the visitors would come! I used Wordtracker, Overture, and Alta Vista to come up with some suggestions. To my surprise some of the words I thought people were searching for, they weren't searching for at all. I quickly learned that it wasn't realistic to target one word phrases like ""baby"" or ""toys"" because they were way too broad and competitive. I also found that people were searching for specific products I sold. I quickly realized that the more words I used that were specific to my business, the better chance I had of conversions (sales).

Once I was able to step outside the box and look at the real data that was in front of me, I decided to revamp my professional website template, include realistic, targeted keywords, develop original content based on these keywords and re-release my website to the world. About 2 months after I did, I finally saw results. It worked! Search engine directory submissions and solid link campaign were next. I was so happy with the results that I decided to form my own website to teach people just like me how they too can improve search engine rankings with the right keyword search strategy. I never realized how much a keyword search strategy could benefit a website until I saw it for myself. Now, my professional website template brings targeted traffic with conversions!

About the author: Cindy Kelly is the developer of TheWebDecorators.com, a website design company that offers affordable website design services to small businesses.

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Rebuild Website or Perform SEO?

Author: Chris Genge

Rebuild Website or Perform SEO... which should you do first? A lot of website owners are interested in rebuilding their website and in performing search engine optimization (SEO), but can't. Budget constraints won't allow for both and so they struggle with which one to do first. Rebuilding a website is a great idea. Performing SEO is better.

The Internet is vast...truly vast. It is comprised of, at last count, over 8-billion web pages and that number increases daily. People need a map to chart this unimaginably large landscapes and search engines are the maps. SEO provides pointers to your business on the maps; rebuilding your website does not.

If you understand the following statement, then the decision is very easy to make - in order to become visible to their second audience (the visitors), websites must first receive adequate top rankings (the first two pages of listing results) by their first audience (the search engines).

Search engine optimization Search engine optimization is probably the single most important marketing technique that a website owner can do to increase visibility and visitors. Greater visibility and highly targeted visitors improve sales, which in turn, improves the bottom-line.

Numerous studies have proven just how important SEO is for online businesses: -50% of those who bought from online retail sites arrived via the search engines (Aggrandise.com, 2002). -Between 85 and 90% of people use search engines to find websites they've never visited before. -The Financial Times reported August 2002, that every day over 340-million web users rely on search engines to locate new businesses (DISC). -57% of Internet users search the web each day, making search the second most popular Internet activity next to checking email (81%) (DISC).

Studies have also proven that SEO has the best return on investment (ROI) of any form of advertising in terms of cost-per-acquisition (CPA). Savvy website owners who realize just how fierce competition on the Internet is use SEO to position their business ahead of their competitors. If you are not incorporating SEO as part of a website marketing/promotion strategy you are losing out, because your competition mostly likely is!

If done properly, the results from SEO are very impressive. One of our long time clients in the printing industry has been operating the same site for almost five years. Instead of rebuilding their website which has a very simple design, they decided to perform SEO. That same site now delivers so much business that SEO is the only form of sales and marketing they use (both online and offline). Another client now does as much business in one day as it used to in seven. And this client originally wanted to rebuild their site first. And to this day, the site is still the same except for some minor regular updates. In the past, the client did a lot of print advertising, but because of great SEO results, they have cut their advertising costs in half and achieved sales growth of 700%! For more great examples, read the case studies on the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) website.

Rebuilding a website Rebuilding a site makes it look nice, provides fresh content, and sometimes improves navigation. Will any of these lead to increased visitors? Most likely not. Making aesthetic changes does very little to increase a website's visibility on the Internet. It is estimated that 56% of ALL websites are ""lost in cyberspace""! What is the point of spending money on rebuilding a site if no one ever sees it? It would be a complete waste of time, money, and effort - all of which translate into a very poor ROI.

Your website is competing with over 8-billion (at last count) other pages on the Internet. It will be ""lost"" by not having it visible to the search engines - akin to putting up a flashing billboard on a deserted island! It can be the greatest billboard ever designed, but because of its isolated location very few people will see or read it, and thus, it will be a poor source of revenue generation.

The fact is, there are lots of great websites on the Internet. So what? What's the use of having a great website if no one knows about it or can find it? And even if people do know about it, you are still not reaching the largest Internet demographic: the 85 to 90% of ALL Internet users who find what they are looking for by conducting searches on search engines!

The top-4 search engines are Google, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL (CyberAtlas, May 2003). How do they compare in terms of traffic? The info below shows the top 5 results of the Top-50 Internet Property Rankings for October 2003 (ComScore Media Metrix, Nov. 2003). Keep in mind that the table shows total number of unique visitors, not total number of searches. So while MSN is tops in terms of traffic, Google is still the king of search. Rank Property Unique Visitors (in thousands) 1 MSN-Microsoft sites 109,334 2 Yahoo! sites 108,673 3 AOL Time Warner Network 108,394 4 eBay 62,454 5 Google sites 58,209

The point of the table is that four out of the top five most-visited sites are search related sites. SEO is your mechanism for becoming visible to this group. SEO is critical to the success of your online venture. Rebuilding is also important, but it can wait.

Other considerations -Ask yourself, what will deliver more results to my business: rebuilding or SEO? -What is the purpose of your site? If you use it to bring in customers or sell products, then SEO is definitely the one to do first. If visitors and sales aren't important, but having a beautiful, stylish site is, then by all means rebuild it. -To deliver maximum benefits your website has to be both people and search engine friendly. Will rebuilding accomplish this? -Some owners think they'll rebuild the site first and then perform SEO, only to discover afterwards that their budgets won't allow for it. Ask yourself, do I want to be stuck with a nice looking site that delivers NO more traffic than its predecessor? -Your website should be an asset, not an expense. It should be generating you income or leads, or providing useful information about your company. If it isn't then why have it? -In the US, 13% of traffic to a website comes from search engines, up from 8% for the previous year. International figures were even more striking with some countries having search engine referral rates as high as 21%! (WebSideStory, Mar. 2003). SEO makes your site search engine friendly. Rebuilding it may or may not, depending on how skilled in SEO your webmaster is. There's far, far more to SEO than just inserting META tags (title, description, keyword tag).

SEO first, rebuild second It really is a much wiser choice to perform SEO first. Later if the results indicate the need to make improvements, then proceed with rebuilding your website. Involve your SEO in the rebuilding process - their input/ advice will be invaluable!

About the author: Chris Genge is the President of 1st on the List Promotion Inc, a website promotion firm that specializes in search engine optimization and pay per click management. Chris writes on current and emerging search engine marketing theories and has been involved in the SEO industry since 1997. He and his team focus on researching and implementing the most effective search engine optimization techniques. To learn at http://www.1stonthelist.ca/

Friday, April 11, 2008

Get listed at DMOZ

Author: Jakob Jelling

When you are deciding on the major search engine directories that you want your website to be listed in, you should not overlook one of the most important ones: the DMOZ (short form for Directory Mozilla). DMOZ is just another name for the Open Directory Project, one of the human-powered submission directories. The Open Directory Project (http://www.dmoz.org) was designed and is currently operated by a volunteer group of web editors and reviewers.

It will not cost you a dime to get listed on DMOZ but before you submit your website to the Open Directory Project for review, you will need to be certain it is developed with DMOZ standards in mind. You will need to go through all of your web pages to make sure that your website is elegant and professional.

Your website design should be already completed at the time you make the submission. That means that the design of every single web page should be finished. Unfinished websites will be rejected. Also make sure that your website contains valuable and relevant information or your website will get rejected.

One of the benefits of being listed with the Open Directory Project is that your website will sooner or later appear in other search engines like Google and Yahoo. This happens because the DMOZ listings are used by numerous search engines and directories, including Google.

The submission process is relatively uncomplicated. Your first step is to visit the website of Open Directory Project: http://www.dmoz.org. You will be able to select a category and subcategories for your website and add your website's URL. Make sure that you selected the correct category and subcategory. Incorrect selection may result in longer waiting period or rejection. Also read and follow the provided instructions and requirements very carefully

The title and description that you submit should be carefully prepared and reviewed to make sure they accurately describe the content and the main theme of your website. If DMOZ editors will disagree with your description or title, they can either change it or completely reject your website.

It may take some time (sometimes 6 months or more ...) before your website will show up in the Open Directory Project. However, do not resubmit your website during the waiting period as this can only result in a longer delay or get your website rejected. Be patient and regularly check the status of your submission by doing the search on DMOZ. If your website does not get listed for a long period of time or gets rejected, you can also check on the status of the submission or the reasons for the rejection by contacting the editors for the subcategory that you selected.

About the author: Jakob Jelling is the founder of http://www.centernet.dk. Visit his website for the latest info on search engine optimization.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

The Myth of Search Engine Submission

Author: Mario Sanchez

Contrary to what most people think, it is not necessary to submit your site to the search engines. In the early days of the web, when search engine technology was still primitive and search engines' ability to crawl the web was somehow limited, it made sense to submit your site.

Today, search engines like Google, MSN or Yahoo! Search have no problem crawling billions of pages and adding them to their index every month (and sometimes even more often). Most likely, they will find your site once they find a link to your page in another website.

That website can be a directory (a site that uses human editors to select, categorize and list websites), a site you exchange links with, or an article-posting site where you submit articles you write, complete with your resource box (a small bio about yourself with a link to your site).

The two best general directories are Yahoo! ($299/year fee) and DMOZ (free, but they may take a while to list your site). Listing your site with them will give you two of the best links you can get.

When exchanging links, make sure you do it with reputable, non-competitive sites with a topic related to yours (for example, if you're a real estate agent, you may want to trade links with a mortgage broker's site).

Writing articles and posting them in sites like Article City or Ideamarketers is not only a good way to get links, but also a great way to establish yourself as an expert. The idea is to allow other webmasters to re-print your articles for free, provided that they include your resource box (with a link to your site) at the end of the article.

In summary, don't waste time, energy and money submitting your site, or using one of those services that claim to submit your site to ""thousands of search engines"" (they are worthless). Instead, focus on getting high-quality inbound links. They will get your site listed faster while building your site's online reputation and popularity.

About the author: -----

Article by Mario Sanchez: The Internet Digest . For more search engine tips go to: SEOBook

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Google, and the History of Link Building.

Author: Jer Strausser

I can't begin to tell you how sick I am of reading articles and posts that mention the two words ""Google"" and ""penalty"" in the same sentence!

So many webmasters are walking on eggshells these days when it comes to Google, and it just doesn't need be.

The most common question I see is ""If I do this, will Google penalize me?""

Let me help you ease this nonsense.

Just like anything in life, there is a portion of common sense that needs to be implemented when optimising a website for the internet. When you come across a technique that you may be questioning in the back of your mind, just think it thru.

You may want to sit down for this one. It may blow you away ;0).

The fact of the matter is, Google rarely penalizes webmasters for anything. Yep, that's right..you heard me...RARELY!

Why is this, you may ask?

Well, it's quite simple. Google didn't become #1 in search because they were the best at penalizing the most sites. They became #1 because they have an excellent way of solving problems. You see, when you hear webmasters complaining that they were penalized, well in most cases, it's just not so.

Google knows the tricks of the trade, and to maintain their title as 'The king of search', they need to be constantly studying different techniques webmasters are using to try to get better search engine rankings.

Google has mastered the term 'devalue', because that is what they actually do.

Remember back in the day, when all links were created equal? That's because back then, most people linked to your site because it had good content that they thought their users would be interested in, so the links were themed, and they didn't require a link back to them. That is why a lot of the older sites on the net have high rankings. They have many one-way links pointing in.

People caught on.

Then you had webmasters scurrying to get any link they could get their hands on, to point to their site. Didn't matter to them if the links made sense. There were links from gambling, adult, and free games sites, all pointing to an education site. It didn't make sense, so...

Google caught on.

Google found ways to figure out if these links were relative. Those that were not, were 'DEVALUED', not 'PENALIZED'.

People caught on.

Webmasters were also getting smarter. Next came the 'reciprocal links'.

The trading or bartering of links between two related sites. ""If you put my link on your homepage, I will put your link on mine"". To this day, still very effective, but....

Google caught on.

Google decided this was good. Lot's of good sites linking to each other BUT, this link schema isn't quite as good as if site A, linked to site B, without site B linking back, so Google 'DEVALUED' the links, not 'PENALIZED' them.

People caught on.

Now people are buying links to their sites from any other sites that have high pr. Thus giving them a one way link and a PR transfer. Not a bad idea, but...

Google caught on.

Google is thinking, ""Now why in the world would this quality PR8 web hosting site have a text link to this PR2 Viagra site? Pretty easy answer huh? So Google 'DEVALUED' this type of link.

People caught on.

Now people are buying RELATED links on RELATED sites. This is good!

Personally I see nothing wrong with this, and I don't think Google does either. This is called 'Advertising', and it is a common, normal, honest form of advertising and marketing for your site. If you look back to the very beginning of the internet, and the first example I gave you, this is almost identical. The only difference is that back then, most people linked to you for free, today, you have to pay.

Does that make all of the other link building techniques worthless? NOT AT ALL! It just means those types of links aren't as valuable, so it will just take more of them to create the same effect.

Well, I am hoping you see my point here? I could go on forever on this subject. The main point is that webmasters need to understand the difference between something being 'DEVALUED', and something being 'PENALIZED'.

Being penalized for something is when you are doing something bad, wrong, illegal, or immoral.

Being devalued, just means that the topic in question is being saturated, and is no longer rare or unique. In order to keep competition and honesty, there needs to be a new and better means developed to maintain an edge.

So next time your site drops in rankings at Google, before you scream 'Penalty', make sure that Google just didn't tweak their algo to devalue your technique.

About the author: Jer Strausser is the owner of the highly popular work at home community at WorkatHomeCommunity.com . Visit them for tips, news, and articles for your home business success.

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

When CMS Met SEO - Using the Power of Content Management Systems

Author: Gobala Krishnan

Search Engine Optimization revolves around providing useful, unique content on your website and making sure that search engines can find and understand it easily. 'Organic SEO' as it is called, puts emphasis on optimizing hundreds of keyword rich content pages as 'spider-bait' for search engines, with Google being the most popular target.

While organic SEO in itself boils down to a few simple techniques and a lot of hard work, the most tedious of those is always adding and managing content. If you're a webmaster lost in a world of dead links, missing pages, distorted images and a site structure that beats any maze, you're not alone. Such is the nightmare that many Dreamveawer-and-Notepad type of webmasters hide.

What is CMS?

CMS, or Content Management Systems, is a great alternative to using manual WYSIWYG HTML editors, website builders, and all the others kinds of expensive website tools in the market. CMS applied solely to the purpose of creating and managing websites are also knows as Web Management Systems. A short excerpt from StepTwo.com on the definitions of CMS:

"" A content management system (CMS) supports the creation, management, distribution, publishing, and discovery of corporate information. It covers the complete lifecycle of the pages on your site, from providing simple tools to create the content, through to publishing, and finally to archiving. It also provides the ability to manage the structure of the site, the appearance of the published pages, and the navigation provided to the users.""

Advantages Of Using CMS for Your Website

Here are a few often overlooked advantages of using CMS for your web project, from a search engine marketing point of view:

1) Easily Create, Publish and Manage Content

With page editors that resemble a word processor program, adding content with a CMS interface is simple and fun. Most CMS software also allows you to change the location of your content pages and links easily, while the back end processes takes care of updating the links throughout your site.

Done manually, reorganizing a website's content, particularly a large one, can cause a webmaster some pretty restless nights.

CMS also allows the website owner to outsource content remotely from willing contributors. With built in access level hierarchies, users can register as Authors and start submitting articles and news. This is then automatically sent to the next in line, the Manager, and on to the Editor and finally the Publisher or Administrator, and then it can be automatically published on the front page as new content.

And SEO specialists know that search engines love new content, above everything else.

2) Create a Solid Website Structure

While search engine spiders can maneuver your website like a human being can't, they too are fond of websites with good structures and easy-to-find content. Most CMS software can automatically create menus and navigation from categories that you set. Once you create a new category or subcategory, you can instantly publish it on all your pages, with the click of a button.

According to popular SEO wisdom, search engines spiders do not index pages more than 3-4 levels deep on your website structure. In response to this, some CMS software also allows you to put all your content on the first level, for example ""http://www.yoursite.com/article236.html'. However, using the CMS' control panel, you will still be able to see all content within their respective folders and subcategories.

3) Search Engine Friendly Capabilities

This is perhaps the most significant development in Content Management Systems. As more businesspeople and SEO begin to dig deep into CMS, the need for spider-friendly pages has taken center stage. Recent advancements have enabled CMS users to install modules (sometimes already built in) to make it appealing to search engines. The latest CMS software can create keyword rich pages, titles, meta tags and even anchor text.

That, coupled with advanced search engine spiders being able to go deep into databases to index pages, is set to turn Content Management Systems into the next big organic SEO tool. In fact, search engine friendly CMS even makes organic SEO specialists, sad to say, sort of 'obsolete'.

Make CMS Work for Your Web Business

Most content management systems are available for free, or at a minimum costs, under the GNU General Public License (http://www.gnu.org/). While there are literally hundreds of available CMS out in the market, these websites are a good guide for choosing a right one for your website or internet business:

Compare various CMS : http://www.cmsmatrix.org

Try a CMS: http://www.opensourcecms.com /

Search-engine Friendly CMS: http://pss.sfidreamteam.com

About the author: Gobala Krishnan is a writer, internet business entrepreneur and marketer. Visit http://www.home-business-association.com today for important and unique tips on building an Internet Business.

Monday, April 07, 2008

Sex, Drugs and 'Rock':

Author: Robert Bruce Baird

Driving That Train

"The area that is now known as Turkey played a major role in the Mystery Religions. The use of drugs to create "religious" experiences was developed to a fine art by various occult fraternal mystery religion groups in the Turkey area. The Assassins from where we get the word hashish controlled parts of Turkey and Lebanon in Medieval times. They used drugs to gain the allegiance of their recruits. Some of the most powerful figures for the Illuminati have been Turks. The Grand Orient has had some powerful figures in Turkey. For instance, at the Masonic Congress of all the Grand Orients' (that's European Freemasonry- although several American presidents have been members of European Freemasonry) Grand Lodges, Bou Achmed came from Turkey. The Grand Lodge of Asia was represented by Sebeyck-Kadir from Asia. Bou Achmed took a big role in the Grand Orient's decisions. As an aside, let me explain one example of the power of the Grand Orient in America. The Grand Orient was originally strong in Louisiana but spread itself to many other US. locations. Garfield, a very powerful man in the Grand Orient, managed to become US. President because the political process got deadlocked at the convention and the Masons suggested him as a compromise candidate. Although Garfield was an extremely powerful Mason, had been perhaps the youngest general in the US. Army during the Civil War, the Illuminati ordered him shot after he had served about a year in office as President. Garfield was reported by an eye-witness to Satanic rituals to have participated in the cannibalistic rites of Satanism done to gain the spiritual power of the eaten person. The Grand Orient Freemasonry has been linked to other orders of Freemasonry that are also called Rosicrucians. Pope John XXIII joined a Rosicrucian group that had links to European Freemasonry when he was in Turkey. While the secret Grand Orient Freemasonry was very strong in Turkey in spite of its small numbers, the regular American Freemasonry granted a dispensation for a Masonic Lodge to operate in Smyrna, Turkey in May, 1863 but the charters were withdrawn on Aug. 27, 1880. However, it is interesting that of all the Turkish cities, Smyrna was definitely the best place for Freemasonry to gain recruits. Men like Achmed Pasha and many of the other Pasha family have been leaders within Freemasonry and the Illuminati. Achmed Pasha was a Satanist and had a large harem. Mehmet Talaat Pasha (1872-1921) was a Freemason and part of the Turkish revolution of 1908. He was the leader of the Young Turks, which was a joint project of the Sufis and the Frankist Satanists. (The type of Satanism led by the Frank family has had connections to Turkey for hundreds of years.) Mehmet Talaat Pasha was the Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Turkey. He was held the political position in Turkey of grand vizier of Turkey (1917-18). Another Turkish Pasha was part of the Turkish royalty running Egypt when Egypt was part of the Ottoman Empire. His name was Khedive Ismail Pasha and he was Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Egypt. It was this Turk, Khedive Ismail Pasha, who gave the famous Obelisk to the United States. This Obelisk was called Cleopatra's Needle and was originally erected in the city of the sun, Heliopolis, about 1500 B.C. The Obelisk is a representation of a human penis, because sun worship, worship of regeneration (sex) and worship of the sun god Satan were all tied together. Masons helped with the moving of the obelisk, and its dedication when it arrived in New York City. Large obelisks have been erected by Masons in New York, Washington D.C., Paris, the Vatican, and London. (If my memory serves me correct Berlin received one too at one time.)

Every morning when the United States President wakes up he can look out the window and see the Masonic obelisk and be reminded of who controls America. If the President has any training in the Mystery religion of ancient Egypt, he will also know what body part is symbolically erected in the Washington Memorial." (1)

Notice the importance of Smyrna as a source of Freemasonry here. That is where the Onassis family has operated potion-pushing or altered consciousness drugs for millennia. My friend who uses the name Eternum1 on a web community has this to say about the issue.

"Sometimes, when my tiny head is spinning with disinfotainment and other artifacts of the mediasphere, I try to think what archaeologists and social historians 2,000 years from now might make of our particular little epoch. How, for instance, would they parse the word ""drug""?

Is a ""drug dealer"" a pharmacist or a petty criminal? When we talk about ""reasonably priced drugs for seniors,"" are we discussing marijuana or Lipitor {or Levitra}? What would they make of the fact that the last four American administrations have declared a ""war on drugs"" while taking money from drug companies?

Why is it bad when residents of Colombia build mansions from profits on the sale of drugs, but it's good when residents of Newport, R.I., do the same thing? When one person cannot live without ""lifesaving drugs,"" we express great sympathy, unless that person is a ""drug addict,"" in which case we may even throw him in jail. When a mood-altering drug is sold in pill form in stores, it's called an antidepressant and hailed as a medical breakthrough. When a mood-altering drug is sold on the streets, it's called felony drug trafficking and subject to stiff criminal penalties.

Because we are native speakers of Americanadianese, we can wend our way through the contradictions. We know that the bad drugs are the ones the cause euphoria and impair judgment, unless the drug is alcohol, but that's not ever called a drug, so there's no confusion there. We know that the good drugs are the ones that cure diseases or relieve symptoms, except sometimes the good drugs are ineffective or even counterproductive in achieving those goals.

Street dealers do not finance experimental trials on the effectiveness of the drugs they sell. Drug companies do, but they fudge the results. Street dealers have a small feedback loop because customers can tell pretty quickly whether they're loaded or not. Drug companies have a long feedback loop because human beings can't instantly tell whether their cholesterol is being lowered or their blood thinned or their insulin production stimulated. A drug with a long feedback loop is clearly more profitable than one with a short feedback loop because the dealer can keep an ineffective drug on the shelves much longer.

Interestingly, the people who sell ineffective drugs are generally said to have made ""honest mistakes."" If a street dealer sold you an ineffective drug, you could take five of your friends and go back and have a brisk conversation with him. If a behind-the-counter dealer sold you an ineffective drug, you'd have to hire a lawyer and file a lawsuit and maybe, maybe, 10 years later you'd get some money, although probably you'd be dead by then.

Street dealers don't have patents on their drugs, which means that they'll always have plenty of competition. Drug companies do have patents, so they can set their prices without worrying about market economics. And when their patents run out, they can put out a drug with a slightly different formulation, promote it like mad and sell the new drug in a monopolistic setting {With government mandated market support in order to manage the 'money-trees' while building bureaucracy.}. You have to wonder when street dealers are going to come up with Cocaine XR or LSD Reditabs.

Since the street dealer works in a competitive atmosphere, he has to keep his prices relatively low. In order to increase his profitability, he can ""step on"" his product, that is, dilute it. It would be unwise for a drug company to adulterate its product, but since it owns a monopoly, it can set prices artificially high and achieve the same profitability levels. A street dealer who knowingly poisons his clientele is called ""the scum of the earth."" A drug corporation that knowingly poisons its clientele is called ""a tobacco company."" People who sell illegal drugs often rot in jail for 20 or 30 years. People who sell legal drugs are often forced to attend tedious daylong board meetings. People who take illegal drugs are called ""losers."" People who take legal drugs are called ""everyone in America.""

Glad I'm not an archaeologist in 4040; my brain would ache a whole lot.

One pill makes you larger, and one pill puts you in jail, and please do not operate heavy machinery with the ones that mother gives you. {My ex-roommate was being told to apply for his old job as a forklift truck operator while being given drugs for Schizophrenia which he did not have. He was no liar and could not expose a potential employer to the insurance risks or his fellow employees to the life threat this would entail. Many drugs people use are impairing their driving prowess and there are laws to take away their license that go unenforced.} Driving that train, high on ethyl 4-1-piperidinecarboxylate, just like Et and the ungreatful dead."

Homeopathy:

It is a wonderful thing to have the Joy of Learning and to make a career that you find is related to your studies. There are so many ways to get a Doctor label and thus claim expertise in the many fields and disciplines which we have broken knowledge into. Some of this is counter to real expertise and much of it just sets people apart from knowledge and each other. But people are also being segmented into classes within the hierarchy of government backed by and for elites in all so many ways. Medicine has been one of their more dastardly tools alongside religion and the so-called education system. This next little factoid reminds me of how Edward Gibbon almost died because the British Medical system would not approve vaccinations through use of scabs as had been done by the likes of Paracelsus or others in antiquity and which was approved in the France of his era. Did Gibbon's Jacobin Masons use this among their members since the time of Moses Maimonides or earlier alchemists?

"When the Cholera epidemic reached England, it provided another opportunity to compare homeopathic treatment with the conventional methods of the day. Regular allopathic medicine yielded a mortality rate of 59 percent compared to only 16 percent for the Homeopaths. (2) When these statistics were collected, the information was so startling that a medical commission was sent to the London Homeopathic Hospital to check the records. Though the data were duly verified, it was decided not to make them public, and the facts were not released until a hundred years later." (3)

The formation of a political machine such as the American Medical Association who helped bring the FDA into control is a major issue against alternative healing or real care for people. In the late 19th Century as these issues were becoming apparent there were many who knew that the allopaths or medical doctors selling laudanum and the like were actually the 'Killing-trade'. There are signs that stress management (don't fret – sweat or exercise) and the connectiveness to the 'all' around us are again making a play to be considered in health maintenance. Vitamins and supplements are able to prove to even the most duped person receiving medical care that they work and yet some doctor's groups and the governments that back them still disqualify doctors who advise their usage.

The whole area of academics is subject to a 'Knowledge Filter' (Berkeley Law Professor – Johnson) or Literary Theory (UBC English Professor Graham Good) and the outright suppression of creative or thoughtful and meaningful potentials. (4) I think the concept of Bucky Fuller that he called 'the observer of the observed' and his more detailed 'creative realization' is part of what we operates as we 'project' upon reality. For example the things (!) we see are actually a mixture of fields of energy from the dross and less excited to the highly excited or vibrational energy inside the atomic structures. In one way of visualizing this we could SEE something including an aura which is the field of energy not usually visible but associated with the solar body and integrative centers called chakras. Perhaps we could contemplate a time when all people had the ability to see or sense auras and yet by our socially normed 'projections' that include telling our children certain things do not exist, we have lost the conscious integration or incorporation of these fields of reality.

About the author: World-Mysteries.com guest expert Author of Diverse Druids Regular column in The ES Press Magazine, soon I'll be featured on gardinerosborn.com

Sunday, April 06, 2008

8 Easy Ways to Optimize Your Website

Author: Scott J. Patterson

Traffic from search engines is widely considered the best (and cheapest) way to generate traffic to your site. The increasing popularity of search engines has led to the development of a whole industry that revolves around ways to "optimize" websites.

The end result is that many people now think that only "professionals" can help their website rank high within search engines. But, the truth is that anyone can structure their site so they rank high for many keywords.

Below, I have listed 8 simple steps that you can take to optimize your web pages. By following these, you will improve your chances of increasing your rankings:

1) Target one word for each page: A huge mistake that many beginners make is cramming numerous keywords onto every page. Instead of doing this, you should focus on one specific keyword for each page. That way, you can make sure that the page is focusing on that one word without any distractions. If you want to target multiple keywords then it is necessary to create a separate page for each.

2) List your major keywords in the links back to your site: Many search engines, Google being the most famous, have started to take into account the words that are mentioned in the title tag of the links that point to your site. So, a great way to improve your rankings for your keywords is to place it in the title tag.

3) Make your first 100 words on the page keyword rich: Another mistake that most webmasters make is to have a menu on the left-hand side of a website. Since search engines primarily focus on the first 100 words of a website, a left side menu is a misuse of valuable space.

Instead of doing this, you should have your title, description and web copy within the first 100 words of your site. An easy way to do this is to have your menu on the right instead of the standard left-hand side.

But, since the left-handed menu is now commonplace, you can also choose to put your first 100 words above the left-handed menu, so this text will be the first thing read on your website.

4)Insert the keyword into your title tag: In the source code of most pages are "header tags" (also known as Meta tags), which help search engines understand the content of the page.

To fully optimize your website, you can tweak the source code of the page. The first step is to insert the keyword in the title tag. (This is what is shown in the results of a search engine when your site is listed)

5) Insert your keywords in the description tag: The description Meta tag is almost as valuable as the title tag. The information in this tag is listed directly below the title tag in search engine results. As a result, a good description can make your website stand out from other listings. To get the prospect to click on your site, it is important to write a snappy description while using your keyword.

6) Insert them into your keywords tag: Like the title and description tags, keyword tags are used to help search engines understand the content of your web page. Although this Meta tag has become less popular, it doesn't hurt to put your keywords here.

7) Place your keyword in the header: When writing the actual text of your site, the first part should be the headline. Whenever a search engine scans your site, it rates all words in the headline as being more important then the rest of the web copy. To take advantage of this, you should have your keyword in the page headline. But, since the header tag (h1) is quite large, you should format it so that it is smaller.

8) Write your keyword enriched web copy: Now that you have set up the structure of your page, you can write your web copy. While creating the text, you want to include the majority of the keywords at the top and the bottom of the page. In addition, the keyword should be included a few times in the middle. Basically, the common saying is that the keyword density should resemble an hour glass shape.

The total web copy of your page should be about 300-500 words. Also, the keyword should be included about 5-12% of the total words of the page. The percentage varies according to each search engine, so you might want to play around till you find the best results.

If you follow all these steps, you will definitely see an improvement in the search engine rankings for your keywords. The best part is that you do not have to spend any money on the expensive search engine optimizers!

Good luck!

About the author: Scott J. Patterson brought his website to the top of many search engines for important keywords. To find out how he did this AND also how he created his online store with NO computer experience, be sure to check out a Fr** copy of his ebook:

http://www.buildingastore.com/8O.html