Exploring Beyond Keywords Into Behavioral Research

Author: John Alexander

If you have ever studied search engine optimization, then you'll know that most educators place tremendous importance on performing good keyword research. After all, it's true that we need to optimize our pages for the best phrases, or we will never realize our true traffic potential. It's all about trying to attract the ideal audience of searchers to our Web site, right? Is that not what most of people do? They build a Web site offering their business services, then they say to themselves ""How do I get traffic to my site?"" For many Web site owners, their source of traffic is an after-thought.

It's much wiser, to first try and discover what keyword phrases people are searching for on the major search engines and then optimize Web content for those specific phrases. However, there are still further regions to explore that go beyond keyword research. Let's call it researching the ""behavior"" of your target audience.

The difference between keyword research and behavioral research is that keyword research keeps us in a rather technical mode and focused on finding out what words people are entering while searching. Behavioral research has the added advantage of enlightenment and understanding that not only reveals what keyword phrases are being used, but why those keywords are being used.

Give this some careful thought. What could possibly be more important than getting inside the head of your target audience and discovering what they really want? Actually nothing! Once we understand exactly what someone is looking for, we can give them exactly what they want. Think ""behavior."" Every day, people around the world use the Internet as a tool for a vast array of purposes. A study of behaviors can carry you much deeper into understanding the desires of your target audience and ultimately, an understanding of what kind of useful content to provide for them.

While most people are thinking about what keywords to use, try to expand your scope to focus and discover the fullest possible picture of what your customer REALLY wants, what they really are doing, by simply studying their searching behavior on the major search engines.

Why make all this fuss about behavior trends anyway? What creates behavioral trends? Think about it this way. If you can discover how a certain target audience is using the Internet, then chances are the rest of your target audience may be doing exactly the same thing. This is not only helpful with respect to the ideal keyword phrase selection but also may be helpful to your writing style. How you communicate to a grandmother will have a completely different spin than how you communicate with a sports enthusiast looking for sports scores or a photographer searching for a place to review several different lenses.

If you happened to learn that a grandmother is shopping online to buy a gift for her daughter's newborn baby, then what are the chances of there being many other grandmothers doing the same thing. If enough grandmothers are doing this in real life every day, it creates a trend.

So lets get down to talking about behaviors then.

Some people have already realized that online consumers are searching for price comparisons online. Wouldn't it be useful to know exactly what prices or what products people are comparing? How easily you could you take advantage of this information by creating ideal content within a retail site, that compares exactly these things that people are searching for and want to know! Not only that, but suppose you could research those exact products and determine fairly quickly where the biggest ""window of opportunity"" would be for you?

One of the most powerful and useful tools for researching human behavior is Wordtracker.com. As an official member of Wordtracker's question and answer support team, I help answer peoples questions about keyword research every day. The questions I answer are mostly things that customers are curious about, but often the answer to their question does not allow me the time to explain about some of the special advantages of Wordtracker. This is why I wrote an e-book called Wordtracker Magic, to help people understand some simple, easy alternatives to performing keyword research and behavioral research. Many people miss the behavioral trends simply because they are thinking too narrowly about ""keywords"" which may already be pre-programmed into their minds. Remember, if there is enough common interest in any topic, so that a similar search behavior is occurring then it will often leave an identifiable trend behind in Wordtrackers database. Every time you can discover those trends, it's like pure gold!

About the author: John Alexander is the Co-Director of Training of Search Engine Workshops with Robin Nobles. Together, they teach 2-day beginner, 3-day advanced, and 5-day all-inclusive ""hands on"" search engine marketing workshops in locations across the globe. John also teaches online search engine marketing courses through http://www.onlinewebtraining.com, and he's a member of Wordtracker's official question support team.

Popup Killers - Not just killing that Popup but also

Author: Jason Hulott

With the increased use of popups on sites - when you enter, when you leave, while you are there - Popup killers (or stoppers) are all the rage.

Companies use Popup killers as a marketing tool for frustrated webusers - they kill the Popup, the webuser uses their service be it as an ISP or Toolbar.

New ISP Disks, Toolbars, and Browsers all now come with some form of Popup killer. While we all want to stop the frustration of having several popups being delivered while surfing around the web, to the webmaster a Popup killer can totally kill a site's normal functionality.

** What do I mean?

If I said rename a Popup killer to a Javascript killer, (which is how some Popup killers work), then you wil get the gist!

With some SEOs advocating hiding links that they don't want a search engine to spider or to hide affiliate links within Javascript functions, having a user visit your site with a Popup killer enabled could kill more than that annoying Popup.

It could mean that when a user clicks on your apply button or affiliate link, it won't work! The user can click on it as often as they like. It won't work!

This could be costing you sales and applications.

** We tested it out!

We tested this on our Loans site (www.polarloans.co.uk). We delivered 1,000 visits to the site where the application process was a javascript function. We had 1 application.

We then switched the apply buttons and links to a normal HREF link and sent another 1000 visits to it. We have a 10 fold increase in applications.

The only on-page changes were the Apply button links and we drove the visits via PPC spend.

** What can you do?

It maybe time you looked at the major links on your site to your product sale pages on affiliate links. If they are running as Javascript functions it may be wise to try switching them to normal HREF links and test the results.

You can always change them back if you need to but consider the potential revenue option.

It certainly has worked for us!

About the author: Jason Hulott is Director of J2 Squared, leading specialists in Internet consultancy whose specific aim is to drive more revenue to websites. Their main area of focus are the insurance, finance, and automotive industries

Meta Tag Optimization

Author: Michael Hargrove

Meta tags are not nearly as important as they used to be in ""Old School"" SEO, but they do still deserve and need proper attention.

Meta tags are contained within the area of your pages.

The most important Meta tags will include your title, description and keywords. These should be the first tags on the pages.

Irrelevant tags such as meta author and meta generator, can confuse engines and make other areas of your meta tags appear to be less relevant.  Eliminate any irrelevant meta tags.

Title Tag

Your Sites Title Here

Your title tag should be the first META Tag shown within the of your page.

Your title tag is going to be one of the most important areas of your page that your keywords should be placed in.

Your title tag should contain your most important keyword phrases for the specific page that the title is on.

In most cases, its best not to repeat words in your title.

Titles should contain approximately 15-65 characters. The search engine and the competing market will play an important role as to exactly how many characters are going to help boost your rankings.

Stop words such as ""A"", ""The"", ""And"", ""With"", etc. Should be avoided in titles.

Punctuation should be used sparingly -- only when they are needed to make a title appear to make more sense or appear more professional.

Good marketing sense says that the first letter of each word of the title should be capitalized.

Description Tag

Your description should only describe the content of the page that the tag is on.

Not all search engines will use your description for ranking purposes. Some will use it as the description of your site -- others wont consider it for any purpose at all.

People should be enticed to click on your site by reading your description, but marketing hype and biased words should be avoided.

Depending on the engine you are targeting, consider adding your keyword phrase toward the middle of your description instead of the beginning.  This seems to be especially helpful when trying to get a page ranked for a competitive keyword.

Descriptions should be approximately twenty-five words depending on the search engine that will use this description and the reason they are using it.

Proper grammar should always be used in your description tag.  Only begin each sentence or proper nouns with capital letters and use proper punctuation.

Keyword Tag

Most engines no longer put much relevancy on this tag. However, it does help to use it for those that do.

Only list keywords here that are relevant to the page this meta tag is on.

Do not repeat a word more than three times within a keyword tag.

In most cases a keyword meta tag should contain no more than four or five phrases.

Do not use words such as ""A"", ""The"", ""And"", ""By"", ""With"", etc.

Commas can be used to separate words from one another such as...

search engine optimization, web site marketing, website ranking

Not using commas can sometimes increase the chances of being picked up under variations of phrases.  This is normally only useful if your string of keywords can produce multiple important phrases to use such as...

internet marketing website online promotion services

Do you see how a much wider variation of words can be used here? The keywords that this page might get listed under would be:

Internet Marketing Marketing Website Marketing Website Online Website Online Promotion Online Promotion Online Promotion Services

So, instead of listing all of these words separated by commas, space can be conserved and additional options are available by listing them as a string of words.

Robots Meta Tag

The robots meta tag is used as a command to the spiders so that they know what to do when encountering a specific page on your web site.

If the command instructs the robot to ""index"", then your page will be spidered.

If the command instructs the robot to ""follow"", then the spider will follow the links from this page.

If the command instructs the robot to not index a page, ""noindex"", the spider will NOT spider this page.

If the command instructs the robot to not follow, ""nofollow"", then links on this page will not be followed. Only one set of commands should be given to the robot.  Decide which commands to give and place that tag on the corresponding page of your web site. Each page of your site should contain a robots tag.  If it does not, there is no need to worry as long as you want the pages to be indexed.  The robots tag is simply a prompt so that the spiders know what YOU want them to do.  If you don't have the tag at all, your pages and links will still get indexed and followed. Ending...

While meta tags certainly are not the most important aspect of search engine optimization, they do still offer useful information to the spiders and should be crafted properly.

If you are using a ""meta tag generator"" to create your tags, be sure to proof them thoroughly before placing them on your page.  Some automated generators have a tendency to leave room for error.

For information and tips on optimization tips please visit Web Submission Services Inc. We offer information on successful ranking tips.

About the author: Search Engine Positioning Specialist Michael Hargrove is the owner of Web Submission Services Inc at www.internetmarketingwebsites.com

8 Essential SEO techniques

Author: Matt Colyer

1) Title Tag - The title tag is the most powerful on-site SEO technique you can use, so use it creatively! What you place in the title tag should be short and use the exact keyword you use for the web page that you are trying to optimize. Each and every single web page should have it's own title tag.

2) ALT Tags - ALT tags were meant to be for text browsers because the images didn't show in text browsers and the ATL tags would tell the user what the image is about. You should put your main keyword(s) in the ALT tags, but don't over do it because you could get dropped in the results or even worse banned for life!

3) Link Popularity - Link popularity is the most powerful SEO tool out of all them. Most search engines don't even consider web sites if there is not at least one or two links pointing to the web site. Having another site(s) link to your web site is important when it comes to getting your site a good ranking. Your keywords should be in the links you get and keep the keywords short, so more weight is given to the words in it. When you receive requests for a link exchange, check the site out before linking with them, check for spam (Repeating keywords in the meta tags or in the content, hidden text or links, etc.).

4) Keyword Density - This is also vital and should be used with research. You should use the keyword(s) once in the heading tag, once in bold text, once in underline text and get the density between 5% to 15% (Don't go over 15%!). Also use your keyword(s) both low, in the middle and high on the web page, keyword(s) should be in the first sentence and in the last one.

5) Page Size - Your web page's speed is important to your visitors and the search engines. Why? Because the spiders will be able to spider your web page faster and easier. Try your best to keep your web page over 5k and under 15k in size. Many search engine won't spider a web page under 5k.

6) Rich Theme - Search engines are looking at themes more and more these days. Build content (Articles, tips, etc.) much as possible and keep the web pages around 200 to 800 words. Create content that's related to your market and link them out to other related content on your site. Try to get 200 web pages or more. The content should be keyword rich.

7) Web Site Design - This is also important, if you want to get indexed! Text content should out weigh the HTML content. The pages should validate and be usable in all of today's leading edge browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, etx). Stay away from flash and Java Script, search engines dislike them both, but search engines are starting to come around Java Script.

8) Insite Cross Linking - This will help you get all of your web pages indexed by the search engines. Your web pages should be no more than three clicks away from the home page. Link to topic related quality content across your site. This will also help build you a better theme through out your web site. On every page you should link back to your home page and your main service(s). Try to get your keywords in the link if you can.

After that you should start to see your web site's ranking improve over the next few weeks, depending on how many of the SEO techniques you are already using. If your web site is new, give it a year or so and you should begin to get a top ranking for your important keywords, but that really depends on how popular your keyword is.

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

Popup Killers - Not just killing that Popup but also that your revenue

Author: Jason Hulott

With the increased use of popups on sites - when you enter,when you leave, while you are there - Popup killers (or stoppers) are all the rage.

Companies use Popup killers as a marketing tool for frustrated webusers - they kill the Popup, the webuser uses their service be it as an ISP or Toolbar.

New ISP Disks, Toolbars, and Browsers all now come with some form of Popup killer. While we all want to stop the frustration of having several popups being delivered while surfing around the web, to the webmaster a Popup killer can totally kill a site's normal functionality.

** What do I mean?

If I said rename a Popup killer to a Javascript killer,(which is how some Popup killers work), then you wil get the gist!

With some SEOs advocating hiding links that they don't want a search engine to spider or to hide affiliate links within Javascript functions, having a user visit your site with a Popup killer enabled could kill more than that annoying Popup.

It could mean that when a user clicks on your apply button or affiliate link, it won't work! The user can click on it as often as they like. It won't work!

This could be costing you sales and applications.

** We tested it out!

We tested this on our Loans site (www.polarloans.co.uk). We delivered 1,000 visits to the site where the application process was a javascript function. We had 1 application.

We then switched the apply buttons and links to a normal HREF link and sent another 1000 visits to it. We have a 10 fold increase in applications.

The only on-page changes were the Apply button links and we drove the visits via PPC spend.

** What can you do?

It maybe time you looked at the major links on your site to your product sale pages on affiliate links. If they are running as Javascript functions it may be wise to try switching them to normal HREF links and test the results.

You can always change them back if you need to but consider the potential revenue option.

It certainly has worked for us!

About the author: Jason Hulott is Director of J2 Squared, leading specialists in Internet Consultancy whose specific aim is to drive more revenue to websites. Their main area of focus are the insurance,finance, and automotive industries

Search Engine Optimization in an eCommerce World

Author: Mike Barton

Before one can fully understand the importance and necessity of implementing a search engine optimization program into their marketing mix, it is important to look first at the phenomenal statistics regarding Internet use. For example: •There are 7 new people on the Internet every second. •Every 4th person online is buying something right now. •One billion dollars in e-commerce transactions will be conducted this month. •Over one trillion dollars in e-commerce business will be generated this year. •1 out of 8 dollars spent by consumers is spent on online transactions. (Source: ACCUTIPS.com, December 2003) Furthermore, according to glreach.com, there were 649 million Internet users online worldwide in March 2003---a 14 percent increase in just one year! That comes out to be about 88 million new users in that year alone.

There can be no question that the Internet is continuing to grow at an amazing pace. While the fact that so many consumers are online is important, it is even more crucial to understand what these consumers are doing while online. The two most outstanding reasons people use the Internet is to communicate (e-mail) and to research (using search engines).

Again, here are a few statistics regarding how people spend their time online (for more statistics and a list of sources, visit http://www.10xmarketing.com/information.asp):

•88% of all Internet users use search engines

•37% of online shoppers used Google to search for online retailers. Search was used by 25 percent of consumers searching the Web for holiday purchases

•For car buying decisions, search engine advertising proved itself a stronger influencer (26 percent) than TV ads (17 percent)

•Virtually all affluent adult shoppers (HHI $100K+) use the Web to make or research their purchases. For automobile, computer and travel purchases, Internet use is extraordinarily high (over 90 percent of those surveyed)

When consumers go to the Internet, they use search engines because they are able to find the products they want, reviews, descriptions, consumer ratings, and the best price possible. Consumers are less concerned with where they buy their products as much as they are concerned with how much product they can get for their dollar.

Thus, each day millions of people use search engines to look for items they want to buy on the Internet. Those businesses that appear on the first page of these searches are getting 50% to 70% of the business from these customers. There is little doubt that potential customers are currently using search engines to search for the products and services your company sells. The only real question is, "What are you doing to help them find you, instead of your competitors?"

There are two ways to have your web site to appear on the first page of any search. The first is to engage in a pay-per-click campaign. The second is to appear on the first page due to "free" or natural search results. Getting high, natural rankings in major search engines is one of the most efficient and cost effective ways to market and sell your products on the Internet.

Search engines use complex, mathematical algorithms to determine which web sites are ranked high and which are not. If your web site matches the criteria, you're ranked high. If it doesn't, then you're not. It's that simple.

Search engine optimization, then, is designing your website and all of your eCommerce actions so that when consumers search for keywords that are central to your company, your website will appear at the top of the search results.

For example, if your company sells running shoes (a keyword that receives 127,575 searches per month), it would be very beneficial to be one of the top websites on the search engine. If you received only a small percentage of new visitors each month from that top ranking, it would still result in a significant source of revenue.

It might help to think of it this way: At least 10 million Internet searches are performed every month within each major business category. If only 1% of those searches found your website, you would have over 100,000 new visitors to your site each month. If only 1% of those visitors purchased your products or services, you would be making more than 1,000 new sales per month. (The worldwide average is 2.5%, making these conservative estimates.)

The scope of this article is not to look at the methods behind search engine optimization. Instead, it is to look at the importance the Internet is playing in business development today and in the future. The traditional marketing schemes of the past still have their place, but advertising dollars must be allocated to Internet marketing.

As Bruce Carlisle, CEO of SFInteractive said, "If you aren't putting money into search engines you are letting business walk out the door."

About the author: This article was written by Mike Barton, of 10x Marketing. 10x Marketing provides companies with Internet marketing solutions that will increase consumer visits on a regular basis, thus increasing potential sales and revenue. Contact 10x Marketing today for more information about your company's Internet potential.

Targeted Traffic is More Important than Ever!

Author: John Alexander

In the early days of web development, business owners had learned the very expensive lesson that a Web site with no visitors is of little value. Once the business owner learned that methods could be utilized to increase their visibility through search engine optimization, it then became apparent that the traffic that really benefited them, was ""targeted traffic."" It only made sense that if you were selling a solution, the person who will buy the solution are the ones experiencing a problem or challenge. It also became obvious that the best products and services to sell online were niche or specialized markets. Large volumes of ""general visitors"" (general volume traffic) may have looked nice on a statistics report but only the truly ""targeted visitors"" (target traffic) were usually the visitors making purchases or doing business at the Web site.

While some search engine marketers were simply offering placement for keywords chosen by their client, other SEO's realized the value of researching keyword phrases and built strategies that were focused on attracting a specific target market. This is why you would sometimes hear conflicting stories about the effectiveness of search engine marketing. People often had their sites optimized for the wrong phrases. These might be keyword phrases that attracted no traffic all or perhaps even keywords that attracted high traffic but the wrong audience. If targeted traffic was important for success back then, it is absolutely essential that we optimize for targeted traffic now. The reason is that as the web continues to age, peoples behaviour appears to be shifting again.

Plan for the current shift in online visitor behavior

The early online consumer compared to today's average user was thriving on search engine use most of the time. They'd search out one site then search out another site and literally travel all over the place half of the time, unsure what they were even looking for. Back then people ""surfed the net"" but todays online consumer is not surfing as much. Today's online consumer is becoming educated much more quickly and a whole new trend of online branding is becoming more increasingly important according to a recent survey.

Volume traffic of any importance is decreasing.

A California-based research company (Websidestory) that measures Internet audiences, recently stated on Feb. 6 that ""nearly 52 percent of Web surfers arrived at sites by direct navigation and bookmarks, compared with about 46 percent during the same period last year."" Even compared to just last year, clearly more people KNOW where they want to go and are directly entering the web address into the browser.

What does this mean ? To me, it is a great indicator that people who have been online for a while, are developing business relationships. People just don'r need to ""surf"" as much because once customers start doing business online and they like the service, why should they change? If they are happy buying a product from www.barnesandnoble.com, are they not likely to go back and just type in the web address or use a bookmark? As the web continues to mature, watch and see if a whole new wave of branding does not become of major importance on the Web of the future. Businesses who have chosen domain names that are easy to remember and have some branding built in, may see some significant increase.

Advantages for Search Engine Optimizers

The latest trends in Web behavior spell opportunity for some search engine marketers. These will be those SEO's who realize that targeted traffic are now (and really have always been) the only way to go. Someone recently asked me if I thought a decline in the use of search engines was bad news for the search engine optimization industry. I believe there will always be a need for good search engines. More and more, people will remember their favorite URL but this means that top placement and accurate relevancy will also be needed more than ever before. People searching the net don't care so much for paid ads, they want relevant search results. This is not to say that bid for placement search engines don't have some advantages, because they do.

SEOs who are going only after old fashioned, non-targeted general ""volume traffic"" (just big numbers with no target audience), things are about to become much quieter, as more online consumers KNOW where they want to go.

However, for those SEO professionals who really know their craft, the ""targeted traffic strategy"" can still render pure gold to the Web site owner and these are the times when top relevancy mixed with a targeted strategy should place those search engine marketers in the know, in even higher demand. High and accurate search engine relevancy for any online business Web site, counts more than it ever has before.

About the author: John Alexander is the Co-Director of Training of Search Engine Workshops with Robin Nobles. Together, they teach 2-day beginner, 3-day advanced, and 5-day all-inclusive ""hands on"" search engine marketing workshops in locations across the globe. John also teaches online search engine marketing courses through http://www.onlinewebtraining.com, and he's a member of Wordtracker's official question support team.

How to Create a Links Page and Build Page Rank

Author: James R. Morrison

One of the hardest achievements for a webmaster to obtain is a solid links page and great web site page rank. You know as well as I do that it is very difficult to obtain well page ranked reciprocal links. Especially when your actual links page is PR 1 or 2! There are ways to construct a links page with good page rank and reach a great page ranked web site.

The first step to take would be to add your links page link to all your pages and site map page, if your web site has one. This ensures the search engine spiders view your links page as important to your site. Many webmasters just place a link on their homepage. -No Good-

It is always good to have some outbound links from your web pages so you will want to do this on your links page. Choose 4 or 5 relating ""authoritative sites"" to link to. Write a good optimized description for them using keywords geared to your web site. You could simply write what the site is about and how it relates to your web site. Include any special offers or services from your web site into your links page. You want to have content besides just links on the page. Make sure there are specific instructions on how to link to your site on the page for prospected partners. Oh and one more thing ...don't name it ""links page"". You should use something like ""more resources"", ""respected web sites"" etc. Companies will take your link request more seriously if they see the word ""resources"" instead of ""links"" page.

Now for a little trick I use to find good page rank link traders. Go to http://www.webmasterbrain.com/prog/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=U TF-8&q= . Type in your main keyword or phrase and search. Find a competitive web site with a through the roof page rank. Click ""inbound links"" right under the title and there ya go. Find the sites with high page ranks and visit them. Gather the email addresses to contact them.

You'll want to tell linking prospects you're a brand new site when you email them. Mention that you are aggressively campaigning for reliable link partners and high search engine rankings. Throw in a service, gift or other offer as a way to thank them for the new linking partnership as follows: ""If you would like to trade links, we'll give you an (service) as a symbol of thanks."" If you have some good(PR5+) new links, let them know it. This will ensure them that you mean business and that your web site's overall page rank is on the increase. Lastly, add your site to as many directories (large & small) as possible using keyword text as your title. If you do this and keep at it, you won't be sorry!

James R. Morrison

websiteking@hotmail.com

http://www.yapsnap.com/gifts

This article may be used if the author,email address and links are not removed.

About the author: None

The Wonders of Wordtracker:. . . It's More than a Hunt for Keywords

Author: John Alexander

For me personally, Wordtracker.com is not just a tool for looking up keywords. Sure, that's one good use for it, but what I want to distinguish is another influential and exciting use for Wordtracker as an SEO resource.

""Keywords"" for use in your Meta tags are probably the least influential element in search engine optimization these days. However, hunting for keywords still seems the most popular use for Wordtracker. After all, it contains over 336 million queries within its database, which is no older than 60 days. An SEO can spend long periods of time doing research and hunting for keywords. But let's really try and get our minds around the keyword hunting issue for a minute, and I'll explain a few other tips for using Wordtracker.

Identify your target audience's ""surfing behavior"" Is there any greater discovery than having an understanding of a target audience's ""surfing behavior?"" It's like a light coming on in your mind. It's like flipping on a switch to an idea generator! Wordtracker will give you absolutely AMAZING detail if you take time to think about it laterally and outside of the context of just a ""keyword hunt.""

Later in this article, I'll explain how you can use WordTracker to identify your audience's surfing behavior.

Move beyond the ""keyword universe"" function.

In speaking with many search engine optimizers, I have learned that so many seem to get stuck in the ""Keyword Universe"" feature. The ability to generate lists of keyword phrases using the built in thesaurus is nice, but you must not get stuck there and let it do all the thinking for you. As you move on to discover other features within Wordtracker, you will also have the opportunity to perform a ""comprehensive search"" or an ""exact search"" or utilize the ""top 1000"" report.

Tips to identify human behavior?

Where you'll find most of your ""revelations"" or ""insights"" are in the ""comprehensive search"" feature of Wordtracker. Try entering one part of a search phrase and letting ""comprehensive search"" figure out the best ""full use"" of the phrase. Another technique I like to use is to examine the top reports for a ""high performance"" keyword or topic related to my client and then cut and paste it into comprehensive search to get streams of currently ""hot topics."" I define a hot topic as a popular topic in high demand, which may also have lists of related keyword phrases also in high demand.

Let's study a real life example . . .

Now let me give you a recent example of understanding behaviors. I wanted to pull additional traffic into a site selling baby furniture. The site sells strollers, baby furniture, cribs and other baby products. The client explained that they wanted me to find ways to pull in their true audience. Sometimes you'll discover the true audience is not what it first may seem. By true audience....I mean ""targeted audience"" or the folks most likely to ""BUY"" or ""respond"" to the Web site.

If you just think only in ""keywords"" mode, you may miss this.

Performing a comprehensive search within Wordtracker by typing in the word ""baby,"" Wordtracker returns interesting results. Do you know what I learned? The target audience for baby strollers is NOT people who have babies! You heard correct. The ""true audience"" for those buying strollers and baby cribs ARE NOT ""folks who have NEWBORN BABIES!"" Here is the catch....if you are targeting folks with newborns, to sell them a stroller....you're too late! The true audience are people who are ""soon to become parents.""

Once Mom and Dad know a new family member is on the way, they start buying BEFORE the baby arrives. Better yet...often it's not even the parents who are buying...it's the grandparents. Perhaps you have pages scoring tremendously well for things like babies, strollers, cribs and baby furniture...... but now your client wants even more.

Here's an example strategy:

One behavior of the true target audience which I discovered by using Wordtracker was as follows. As I entered the term ""baby"" into ""comprehensive search,"" the first thing I noticed was the top phrase ""baby names"" which had been requested on major search engines over 34,350 times in the last 60 days. It became very obvious when I noticed the incredibly high demands on major search engines for the phrase ""baby names,"" or how about ""meanings of baby names.""

This was indeed like a light coming on! I thought, imagine this, ""soon to be parents"" are researching their unborn child's name by using the Internet. What better time to connect with folks than before the baby is born.

Finally, build a strategy based on the identified behavior

Suppose we were to build a little library of themed pages right into your client's site to attract the TARGET audience. They are searching for baby names so it is essential that this is what you MUST give them. Give them lists of baby names to choose from, right? Don't ever trick your audience or they will simply never buy. Give them exactly what they are looking right up front. In this example, you could create pages that offer baby names and meanings of baby names AND subtly offer a few product listings or links to your client's store front. It is essential that you always provide content related to their search first, and then you might offer some links to other appropriate products within your client's site.

Test these unique ways for using Wordtracker yourself, and learn how effective they can be.

Good luck!

About the author: John Alexander is the Co-Director of Training of Search Engine Workshops with Robin Nobles. Together, they teach 2-day beginner, 3-day advanced, and 5-day all-inclusive ""hands on"" search engine marketing workshops in locations across the globe. John also teaches online search engine marketing courses through http://www.onlinewebtraining.com, and he's a member of Wordtracker's official question support team.

10 Ways to Exceed Your Client's Expectations Every Time!

Author: John Alexander

The following tips are just a few of the things I do as examples of setting my service apart from the crowd. In general, the weakest areas in the Internet Marketing and Web Development business, are ""Customer Communications"" and ""Customer Service." Set your effort towards learning to deliver ""excellence"" in both customer service and communication, and you'll have distinct advantages over many other competitors. These tips are based on the tried and true method of ""under promising and over delivering.""

1. Manage expectations on initial Search Engine placement:

Do NOT tell your prospect that you will get their web site placing in the top 10 search results right away. Don't guarantee that you you'll get them thousands of visitors right away. I tell my prospects that I will do my best to position them within the top 30 search results initially. As you know, in this business there are no absolute guarantees, but even if you can often position a client within the top 10 search results on at least a few of the Majors right away, think about what you say before you say it.

People are tired of hearing a lot hype. Many firms make the mistake of pedaling a lot of trumped up claims, even before they learn and understand a prospects business. With so many people out there, who will promise the world to get a sale, a little realism goes a long way to establishing your credibility. Setting a client's expectations low initially, only enhances the effect of achieving a high-ranking result. Why not initially tell your client something that is EASY to believe.

I like to teach the client to expect top placement over a period of 3 to 6 months. It's much easier for them to believe and for each time you immediately place within the top 10 quickly, the client has another exciting surprise! Learn to under promise and really over deliver every time! Focus on educating your clients and teaching them truths that others only gloss over (or are not aware of themselves).

2. Blow away old misconceptions

While some web firms talk about the huge volume of ""Hits"" to their customers sites, I teach my prospects very early, that ""hits"" are irrelevant. Hits are not the best means of determining site activity. A hit is NOT a visitor. A hit can be any action from the server. For example a page that displays 1 image, 10 buttons, 1 logo and plays music in the background, might generate up to 14 hits for every visitor to the site. This is best explained by showing the client an activity report and pointing out the difference between hits (any action from the server) and User Sessions (actual visitors). Eliminating any of the common misconceptions about traffic right from the start, will serve you well in a marketplace where others are selling nothing more than hype. Set yourself apart from the rest. Instead of letting customers believe old ideas, educate them and help your customer to grasp how things work.

3. Teach your client about the time required for initial indexing:

I tell my client not to expect much site activity right away. I like to prepare them for the time it takes robots to visit their site for the first time. Once again, this a great opportunity to set your client's expectation a little lower. If we give them an expectation of waiting approximately 6 weeks after registration, before traffic commences, we know that some search engines will probably begin to visit in 3 to 5 weeks. Indeed a few may occasionally even visit within just 48 hours from the time you register. However, creating an expectation of 6 to 8 weeks allows you to out-perform yourself every time. If you really must exaggerate...then under promise and over deliver.

Success Principle: Teach your client's the truth and learn to manage your client's expectations. If you deliver above average results and communicate well, you will have a client for a lifetime.

4. Tip on Mass Search Engine Registration:

Have you been telling your client about how you are going to register them with 250 search engines for free? This is an old out dated approach but you may be surprised at how many competitors will be saying the very same thing (because literally anyone can buy auto submission software).

I take a different approach.

I ask the prospect this question:

"Have you ever wondered why some web developers may offer to register you with 250 search engines for free?" The answer is simple...that's exactly what it's worth. ZERO ......I then go on to teach them how targeted traffic is only realized through achieving a high ranking on the Major search engines. Show them an activity report to validate it. Then educate them about how you remain focused on optimizing their Web site for the Major Search engines.

By setting realistic expectations on search engine registration, and telling them the truth about where most of their traffic will come from, you once again are providing an education that others in the business forget to give their clients.

5. Teach your clients about the value of Manual SE Registration:

If you're like me, you only do manual registration. If you do use an auto-submission program or service, make sure it is one that works in a non-spam manner (there are not many that do).

6. Teach your clients about the risk and annoyance of FFA Links:

FFA Links (which stands for Free For All links) are NOT search engines. Actually what you have probably learned by now is that many FFA sites are often times but not always, nothing more than spam sites seeking your e-mail address. Over the years I have tried subscribing to these services at times just to determine if there may be any benefit. I can determine no benefit in FFA links and I like to educate my clients so they do not get sucked in by the many ""special offers."" Educate your clients and save them headaches.

7. Build long term relationships with your clients.

Taking the consultancy approach with SEO offers many opportunities to not only build customer rapport but also to maintain it on a long term basis. I see my role as teaching my clients as much as I can about the Internet side of their business. The time you spend educating your client pays fairly big dividends in terms of customer loyalty. What happens after a while is, your customers will seek your advice on issues rather than just get taken advantage of by one of those e-mail deals that sounds to good to be true. Care for your client's business as if it were your own!

8. Does your client need help to write a Media Release?

This may be a stretch for some SEO's but look for opportunities to help your client promote their web site in different ways. I like to assist my clients by doing little things that are easy for me to do, don't really take too much time and add extra value to my service. Examples of these services might be to help your client write a good media release or the creation of little counter top signs that advertise the clients URL. Do they need a little checklist to help them promote their URL? Think value added!

9. Practice customer service excellence.

One of the biggest loopholes in the Internet marketing and SEO business, is lack of quality customer service. Do you return their calls? Do you look after their questions promptly? Do you keep them informed about the newest trends?

10. See your customer, as a customer for life.

Care for your customers business as much as you can with full attention to detail. Most business owners are far to busy running their business to look after all of their ""web presence"" issues. This is why they hire you in the first place. If you remember to deliver ""excellence"" in both customer service and communication, you'll have distinct advantages over many other competitors. Look after your customers well, and they will definitely look after you well too.

About the author: John Alexander is the Co-Director of Training of Search Engine Workshops with Robin Nobles. Together, they teach 2-day beginner, 3-day advanced, and 5-day all-inclusive ""hands on"" search engine marketing workshops in locations across the globe. John also teaches online search engine marketing courses through http://www.onlinewebtraining.com, and he's a member of Wordtracker's official question support team.

Top 10 Traffic Building Mistakes To Avoid

Author: James Leckie

When people look to submit their sites to the major search engines, there are some key mistakes that should be avoided for successful promotion.

Spam

The surefire way of getting your site blacklisted from the major search engines. Many people see creating thousands of cloaked or doorway pages with hidden text as the quick route to ranking success. It isn't.

Untargeted Traffic

It's one thing to generate lots of new traffic to your site, but is it the right traffic? If you're selling DVD's for example, you want potential buyers to visit, not people who are searching for pictures of a certain movie star. Best to make it clear in your meta information exactly what your site does, then you'll get the type of clientele you're after!

Single Keywords

Unless you're in some incredible niche marketplace where a single word can only be identified with your product with few competitors, single keywords aren't going to hit the bullseye in a traffic sense. Multiple word keyword phrases are the key to traffic success. Instead of going for ""books"", go for ""thai recipe books"" or whatever your target market is. You'll have far less competition for that keyword phrase than just a single word. Believe us, we've worked on a bookseller's site.

Poor Design

There's no way around this one. You can have the best rankings in the world, but if your site looks bad, you'll lose that traffic as soon as it arrives. Good, simple, clean design always wins - sloppy design and gimmicks don't!

I Don't Need Links

Oh yes you do. Links are crucial to the traffic building game. Without links to your site from others (if they're competitors, even better), good meta information won't be enough. Most search engines will rank your webpage according to its popularity with its peers. if a lot of sites link to yours, it must be good, so Google & Co. will boost your rating (link popularity algorithms). Read our dedicated article here.

Messy Meta Tags

It's worth spending a bit of time getting your meta tags in order - they tell search engines what your site's about, and act as a basic marketing tool to attract visitors to your site. Check the spelling and make them relevant and you'll be off to a flyer. Read our dedicated article here.

Stickiness

Page design and marketing are inseperable. Once you've attracted your visitors, your traffic building exercise has gone well and your site looks good, what are you offering which will encourage return visits? Regular site updates are very useful since your site will appear active and worth revisiting. The most successful sites we've worked on have been regularly updated. After all the effort you've gone to in gaining traffic, it's worth considering how to hang on to it.

Messy Code

After the search engine robots have visited your site, they'll see the meta information first, then they'll scan your page for the first chunk of relevant text. A large number of sites have cluttered code (Javascript usually) after the meta tags. This will not help your search engine ranking since the relevant text will be too far down the page. Try hiving the Javascript code (or similar) into another file and refer to it from the HTML.

Beware of Rogue ""Experts""

Before handing your hard earned money over to ""Site Submission Experts"", be sure to find out exactly what you're getting. They may claim to be able to submit your site to ""30,000 engines"", but let's be honest, there's only a handful which create almost all the search traffic on the web, so you can submit yourself. Some firms claim to guarantee you a Top 20 ranked page - yes, if your search phrase is 8 words long. It's not that easy in reality. Reputable firms can help you optimize your pages, and advise you on how best to market your site to your target audience, so best to do some homework first.

Patience

Building traffic is an ongoing activity. After your initial hard work, you should check your pages on the engines and ""tweak"" them if the results aren't as you expected. Traffic is the oxygen of the Internet and your site is dead without it, so regularly give your code a tune-up and resubmit if necessary. Don't oversubmit though. If you look at your server logs, you'll see the major engine robots visiting on a regular basis, they'll pick up your changes soon enough if you can afford to wait a week or so.

All the best with your traffic building efforts!

About the author: James Leckie is editor of http://www.bytestart.co.uk - the small business portal and http://www.trafficgeneration.com - the web promotion portal.

Pay-Per-Clicks . . . One Way to Boost Traffic to Your Web Site

Author: Robin Nobles

One of the ways to boost traffic to your Web site is by purchasing keywords from one of the pay-per-click search engines or directories.

But with literally hundreds of choices, how do you pick the pay- per-click engine with the best visibility that has the potential of giving you a higher return on your investment?

And, just as important, what are some strategies for working with the pay-per-click engines, and how do they operate?

How do Pay-Per-Click Engines Operate?

With pay-per-click engines, you bid on keywords that describe your business, your products, or your target audience. Then, you're charged your bid price every time someone clicks on your ad, which is displayed when a searcher types in the keyword you've chosen into the search box at an engine. Whoever is willing to pay the most for the keyword or keyword phrase will be at the top of the rankings.

There are many benefits to working with pay engines, which we'll cover in this article.

Important Pay-Per-Click Engines and Directories

Overture: http://www.overture.com

Overture is certainly the pay-per-click engine that most people recognize. It's also one of the most expensive and competitive.

However, the visibility of Overture is impressive, to say the least. It provides the top two or three results to "big boy" search engines and directories like Yahoo!, Lycos, HotBot, and MSN Search. In fact, Overture claims to reach 80% of all Internet users.

Overture listings are generally found at the top of the regular search results in an area called "Sponsored" results or sites.

Overture's pay-per-clicks operate under one premise: whoever has the deepest pockets and is willing to pay the most gets on top.

The minimum bid is $.10, and there's a minimum charge of $20 per month. A $50 initial deposit is non-refundable and will be applied to click throughs or to the minimum monthly spend. When your account is depleted, they'll contact you to see if you want to add additional funds to your budget.

Google AdWords http://www.google.com/ads/

Google AdWords have fast become extremely important in the pay- per-click arena, with results being shown at search engines like Google, AOL Search, Ask Jeeves, and Teoma.

Google AdWords operates differently than Overture in a number of ways. Your click-through rate and cost per click together determine where your ads are shown, so better ads rise to the top. That means no one can lock you out of the top position.

Google AdWords are shown on the right-hand side of regular search results in a pink shaded area called "Sponsored Links."

Because your click through rate has an influence on the placement of your AdWords ad, your ad's title and description must be captivating and designed to pull in traffic.

With Google AdWords, there's a $5 activation fee, and the minimum bid amount is $.05. You decide on the maximum cost per click that you're willing to pay and set your daily budget. You don't have to spend a certain amount per month, and you only pay for clicks you actually receive.

FindWhat http://www.findwhat.com

Another popular pay-per-click engine that is generally much less expensive than Overture is FindWhat.

With FindWhat, whoever bids the most gets on top. The minimum bid is $.05, and they require a $25 minimum amount to open an account.

FindWhat provides results to 200 different partners, including many of the big meta engines like Dogpile.

Lycos InSite AdBuyer http://insite.lycos.com/searchservices/adbuyer/overview.asp

A fairly new pay-per-click program that's displayed on both Lycos and HotBot is Lycos InSite AdBuyer.

Again, it operates similarly to the way that Overture and FindWhat operate, with the top results being those who bid the most for their target keywords.

The minimum bid is $.05 with a $50 minimum to open an account.

LookSmart http://www.looksmart.com

LookSmart is a pay-per-click directory where you pay a flat $.l5 per click through. It claims to reach 77% of the Internet users through the partners that display LookSmart results.

Some of those partners include MSN Search, About.com, Netscape, and AltaVista.

With LookSmart, you don't bid for listings. Everyone pays a flat $.15 per click through, and your ranking is determined by how relevant your site is to the search term, according to LookSmart's ranking criteria. To get started with a LookSmart listing, the initial investment is $29.

Other Pay-Per-Click Engines http://www.payperclicksearchengines.com/

This comprehensive site lists over 500 different pay-per-click search engines and offers individual reviews on many of them.

Advantages to Working with the Pay Engines

The pay engines offer many advantages to Web site owners, including:

1. If you have a brand new site with little or no visibility and no link popularity, the pay engines are certainly a way to get started fast while you wait for your standard search engine marketing efforts to kick in and take effect.

2. Pay-per-click engines are ideal for holiday promotions, special sales, or to jump start slow engine traffic.

3. With the pay engines, you have instant visibility in whichever search engines display those results.

4. You choose your rankings, depending on how deep your pocket book is.

5. If some of your keywords aren't performing, you can choose other ones.

6. You only pay for clicks to your site, so you can target your traffic by the keywords you choose.

7. With regular optimization efforts, it's sometimes difficult to achieve top rankings if you're in a highly competitive field. With the pay engines, you pay for your rankings, and VOILA! You're there!

8. Purchasing keywords is certainly easier and less time consuming than optimizing your pages.

9. With regular engines, when algorithms (or ranking criteria) change, you can find yourself booted out of your top spot. With the pay engines, as long as you're willing to hand out the cash, you'll be on top.

10.You can target your audience based on the keywords you choose. Most Web sites have multiple target audiences, so pay-per-click keywords are a way to reach each of those target audiences.

11.Pay-per-click is generally less expensive than traditional advertising media.

12.With pay-per-click engines, you don't have to worry about design strategies that could mean death to a Web site otherwise. Is your entire site one huge Flash movie? No problem, if you go through the pay engines.

Tips for Boosting Your Chances for Success with the Pay Engines

When working with the pay engines, it takes practice to achieve a level of success. So, start out slowly, and keep a tight rein on your budget. As you become better at crafting titles and descriptions and choosing highly targeted keywords, you'll gradually be able to increase your budget, if you choose.

Here are some additional tips:

1. It's not always best to be #1. Many compulsive ""clickers"" automatically click on the #1 result when they have no real interest in buying your products or services.

2. Be sure to include your keyword phrase in the title and description you create at the pay engines. Take special care in creating a description for your site, since within the top three slots, the best description gets the most traffic, as a general rule.

3.Your keywords must be relevant to the content of your pages. Overture is particularly careful about this.

4. Choose very targeted keywords so that you don't pay for needless click throughs. Don't ever choose a general keyword, because your costs will skyrocket but the traffic won't convert to sales.

5. Spend time researching your keyword choices at Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

or my favorite, WordTracker: http://www.wordtracker.com/moreinfo.html

6. Generally, you'll have more success if you purchase 10- 20 keywords as opposed to just a few.

7. Choose a broad range of keywords and bid prices and test the waters. Watch your keywords carefully. Non-productive keywords should be eliminated and new, more productive keywords should be purchased instead.

8. For Overture, consider purchasing a ""Premium Listing,"" which means that you hold the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd ranking for your keyword phrase. Why? Because engines like AltaVista and Lycos show the first listings only.

9. Set up a separate ""tracking"" page to send your pay engine traffic. In order to show whether or not the cost is worth it, you need to be able to track your click throughs and sales. Don't send pay engine traffic to your home page.

10.Write your title and description using "objective" language rather than "subjective." In other words, don't say that your product or service is the best or #1 (subjective). Rather, list some of the benefits of your service that make it unique (objective).

In Conclusion

You'll find many benefits to purchasing keywords through pay-per- click engines, but you need to learn some basic guidelines before you get started. By doing so, you'll hopefully find more successful when working with the pay engines.

About the author: Robin Nobles teaches 2-, 3-, and 5-day hands-on search engine marketing workshops thru http://www.searchengineworkshops.com in locations across the globe as well as online courses at http://www.onlinewebtraining.com/. Robin's partner, John Alexander, recently published an e-book titled, "Wordtracker Magic,"" at http://www.wordtracker-magic.com (which offers great tips for helping you learn how to focus on your target audience.)

The Latest Innovation in Search Engine Algorithms . . . User Popularity

Author: Robin Nobles

For years, the search engines have continued to introduce new factors into their algorithms to make their search results more relevant and to keep savvy search engine marketers from ""cracking the system.""

We've seen many ranking factors come and go in importance. For example, years ago, META tags were the key to success, or so we thought. Stick in META tags that were loaded with your keyword phrases, and you were sure to achieve top rankings.

Then, we had keyword weight as a ranking factor. We struggled to determine the keyword weight of our competitors' pages, then duplicate that weight in all of the various areas of our pages.

Along came link popularity, and with it, the massive link farms and link exchange programs. Web site owners joined as many as they could in an effort to boost the sheer number of incoming links pointing to their sites.

In the midst of these evolving ranking factors came changes to page components like the title tag. Put your keyword at the beginning of the tag for maximum ranking potential. Oops. Things have changed. Put your keyword as the 3rd and 4th words in the title tag. Wait - let's try the 2nd and 3rd words.

These are just a few of the ranking factors that have come into play over the last several years.

Can you see the potential for problems here?

After all, including keywords in your META tags doesn't mean that the page is more relevant for those keywords. Just because you have 12,792 worthless links pointing to your site doesn't mean your site is relevant for your keyword phrase.

Now, we're in the middle of another ""link popularity"" or ""link reputation"" surge. But the rules have changed. Now, we want sites that are related in content to our site, or authoritative, popular sites in our focus area.

Okay! Now we're beginning to get on the right track! After all, if an important, authoritative site in a particular topic area links to your site, it must mean that your site is important and popular for that subject too. Or, if other sites in your subject area link to you, it must mean that your site is truly about that subject as well.

Equally important, or even more so, comes the ""link reputation"" factor. If enough popular sites in your topic area use your important keyword phrase when linking to you, it's telling the search engines that your site is relevant for that keyword phrase. After all, the Web community has deemed to describe your site using that keyword phrase, which is a vote of confidence to the search engines.

Makes sense, except for one small problem. I can have a site that's devoted to wireless Internet connections, and you can have a site that's devoted to kitchen utilities. I can link to your site from mine and use the keyword phrase ""kitchen utilities"" in the link text. Some of the engines appear to use the link text as the determining factor when deciding link reputation, not the contents of the page pointing to the site. So, two sites that aren't related in content whatsoever could potentially help boost the link reputation of each other's sites. We may see the engines consider other factors in the near future, such as the contents of the title tag on the page containing the link, which will help solve this potential problem to some degree.

However, when looking at all of the factors listed here so far, do any of them truly prove that the page is relevant to a particular keyword phrase?

With relevancy comes a much more stable, trustworthy search engine. When you search for a particular topic, you're assured of getting search results that contain pages with good, solid content related to that keyword phrase.

After all, most people venture onto the Internet looking for information. If we can provide that information in content-rich, valuable pages, we've done the search engines, the users, and ourselves a big favor.

With all of these various ranking factors, what is the one area that is sorely missing?

How about a site ranking algorithm based on a combination of content relevancy and user popularity data?

""Content"" relevancy and ""user popularity"" aren't as easy to manipulate as link popularity, link reputation, or even keyword placement, so the search engine results should certainly be more relevant. After all, anyone who is concerned about relevancy in search engine rankings should want the most relevant pages and sites to rise to the top of the rankings. If our pages aren't the most relevant, we have some work to do!

Introducing an Innovative Search Engine Ranking Algorithm

I just learned of a new search engine that actually uses a combination of content relevancy and user popularity to determine rankings. It's called ExactSeek.com.

How does ExactSeek measure user popularity? The engine has teamed up with Alexa, which offers a toolbar that measures activity on the Web. By measuring the surfing activity of millions of Alexa users, ExactSeek is able to determine the user popularity and relevancy of Web sites in its index. User popularity is a far more reliable indicator of where Web sites should rank and gives users some input on the search results they see.

Mel Strocen, CEO of Jayde Online, which is the parent company of ExactSeek, says,

""Alexa traffic data will be a strong factor in the ExactSeek ranking algorithm but not the dominant factor, that being page content. Essentially, we've opted to emphasize user popularity over link popularity.""

In fact, in an effort to make the results even more relevant, ExactSeek.com will be in flux for the next week or two as they work to determine how much weight to give Alexa traffic data in ranking search results.

The beauty of ExactSeek.com is that the harder you work toward increasing traffic to your Web site by adding new, relevant content, paying for SEO, advertising in various publications, investing in a PPC campaign, etc., the better your rankings will be in ExactSeek.com.

Can User Popularity be Manipulated?

I think a better question would be, what search engine results can't be manipulated? The key is to consider relevancy and valuable content, which is something that ExactSeek.com has wisely chosen to focus on.

It's true that not everyone uses the Alexa toolbar. However, it does provide results based on an excellent sampling of users on the Web. Plus, user popularity will be more difficult to manipulate than other factors, because it is certainly more difficult to manipulate the surfing public than it is to manipulate the search engines.

Give ExactSeek.com a Try!

ExactSeek.com is innovative in more ways than the way it determines rankings. For example, you can check your site's rankings in the ExactSeek database from a link on the main page of the engine. How convenient!

In Conclusion . . .

As the search engine industry evolves, we'll begin to see more and more innovations geared toward arriving at relevant search results that aren't as easily manipulated as some of the ranking methods in the past. One of those innovations is being put into place now at ExactSeek.com: user popularity combined with content relevancy.

About the author: Robin Nobles teaches 2-, 3-, and 5-day hands-on search engine marketing workshops thru http://www.searchengineworkshops.com in locations across the globe as well as online courses at http://www.onlinewebtraining.com/. Robin's partner, John Alexander, recently published an e-book titled, "Wordtracker Magic,"" at http://www.wordtracker-magic.com (which offers great tips for helping you learn how to focus on your target audience.)

Free SEO - The Do It Yourself Approach

Author: Derek Moore

Did you ever wonder about making your site more appealing to the Search Engines? Did you get scared off by the high fees that SEO specialists charge for their services? If you answered yes to each of these questions, then I have some good news for you. There are only a few very effective ways to get good search engine rankings. The techniques are not very hard to learn and only really require time and patience on your part. Let's get started....

Domain Name The trick here is to register a domain name your customers can remember and the search engines think is relevant. Use words in your domain name that describe your product or service. For example, don't call your site www.derekspage.com if you sell pink widgets. You would be better off calling your site www.bestpinkwidgets.com.

Title Tag Search Engines value the contents of the Title Tag when ranking your site for keywords. Put your most important keywords in your title tags, using singular and plural versions of each word. Make your tags different and specific for each page on your site. For example, ""Pink Widgets and Pink Widget Support"". The Title Tag should be a short logical description of your web page.

Header Tags The description Meta tag is still used by many (not Google) search engines and is often used for displaying a short description of your website. Use about 20 to 30 words to describe your site and be as comprehensive as possible in the small space allowed. Try using your important keywords within the description tag. The keyword Meta tag is rarely used and should not be considered very important. Just put your important keywords in this space and move on to more important optimization issues.

Image ALT Tags The ALT tag is used for a very short description of an image or graphic file, and is displayed when your mouse pointer hovers above a graphic. Using your important keywords in the image description has been shown to have a small effect with some search engines.

Keyword density. Different search engines have their own preferences as to how many times a keyword phrase can appear on a given web page in order to demonstrate the importance of that keyword phrase. You should try and make sure that your important keywords have a 5 to 8 percent density in your site. If you keywords have higher than 10 percent density, it may be considered as keyword spamming or stuffing. (This will hurt your search engine rankings dramatically) Use the H1 and H2 heading tags to elevate your important keywords within your site. The keywords contained in these tags are considered slightly more important by search engines.

Inbound Links Getting inbound links should be considered your most important SEO strategy. Search Engines will rank your site based on the number and quality of inbound links to your site. Links from other highly ranked sites are more valuable and will increase your sites ranking. Contacting other website owners and asking them to exchange links with you is a good strategy. The sites linking to you should not be your competitors, but should be related to your site. For example, a bike repair shop would benefit by exchanging links with a bike trail site. Page Rank is a good indication of how valuable a site would be as a link exchange partner. Yahoo and Google each have a page ranking system. When arranging a link exchange, make sure that your important keywords are included in the anchor text. Search engines use anchor text when they try to figure out the relevance and importance of your web pages.

Example html code using good anchor text: Place your important keywords here

About the author: Derek Moore is the administrator and webmaster of www.seo-newsfeed.com . Visit

http://www.seo-newsfeed.com for more articles and tips to help you with learning Search Engine Optimization. We also provide SEO RSS newsfeeds with daily updates.

How to Get the Best Deal on Your SEO Project

Author: Scott Jason

If you own or manage a business Website, chances are you are at least somewhat familiar with the concept of search engine optimization (SEO). You may have read any number of books and articles on the subject and possibly given it a try yourself. Or perhaps, after exhaustive research, you decided that your time is better spent in your area of expertise. If that's the case, I have some good news for you. There is such a thing as affordable search engine optimization. In fact, when you know what to look for, it can be a real bargain.

Step One – 3 Simple Questions:

The first step is estimating some target market information. Just ask a few simple questions and write down the answers that you come up with. You'll need this information later:

1. How many people do you think are looking for what you offer? 2. What keywords are they using in search engine searches? 3. Which keywords are the most popular to meet your needs?

Step Two - Verify:

Now that you have your initial estimates, let's validate the information. Visit Overture.com's Advertiser Center and try their Search Term Suggestion Tool located at: http://www.content.overture.com/d/USm/ac/index.jhtml

Type in any term that you think is close to what your potential visitors are looking for. You will see how many searches were performed, on the Overture search system, for the previous month. TIP – Use a general search term to start with.

Now you have the single most important advantage when dealing with any trained business professional – you are informed!

Step Three – Make it Happen:

Now that you have this great information, you want to see it implemented. This is the best part. I recommend a visit to SEO Partner. SEO Partner (www.SEOPartner.com) really lives up to its slogan "search engine optimization on your terms".

They have assembled an enormous talent pool of SEO developers, who actually compete to work on your project. It does not cost you anything to post your optimization projects. To operate the service, they accept a small commission from the SEO developers (which is only a fraction of what developers would normally spend on marketing efforts alone).

Finally, there's one of my favorite features. SEO Partner protects you from those less scrupulous SEO 'experts' you read about more and more with their protective escrow payment system.

Step Four – Track Your Progress:

Finally, once you have your campaign underway, you really need to track your progress. There are some great tools available for that purpose. Here are links to some of the better products that I have worked with:

www.webposition.com www.axandra.com www.searchenginecommando.com

There are a lot of products out there - all at varying costs. I recommend you visit your favorite search engine and look for 'seo tools' and see what you get for a response. Then I would definitely test each one's demo version thoroughly before investing in any one of them. A good tool is worth the investment but there are so many great options out there that it's best to shop around and try before you buy.

I wish you the best of luck in your campaign!

About the author: Scott Jason is a search engine optimization project manager with SEOpm.com. With five years in the industry he specializes in assisting small to medium sized companies attain their SEO goals. Feel free to contact Scott, or his associates, at www.SEOpm.com

4 Simple Steps To Search Engine Optimization

Author: Lee Weaver

What is search engine optimization? Well, just what it sounds like, it's the process of optimizing your website for search engines. There are thousands of companies out there that ""specialize"" in SEO. For a fee (usually a LOT) they will optimize your website for you. If you're paying one of these companies, you're throwing away money! Don't believe me? Go to your favorite search engine and search for ""firefighter"". Why firefighter? Because that is the one keyword that we feel is most important to this website, American-Firefighter.com Go ahead, search. Here, we'll make it easy for you:

Click here to search Google for ""firefighter"". Click here to search Yahoo for ""firefighter"". Click here to search MSN for ""firefighter"". Click here to search Lycos for ""firefighter"". Click here to search HotBot for ""firefighter"".

(we'd link to Overture, but you'd have to scroll through 30 something ""sponsored listings"" before you get anywhere!)

What do you think of our search rankings? We think they're pretty good. How much did we pay to get these listings? NOTHING! Wondering how we do it? The SEO companies don't want you to know, but it's SO SIMPLE we just have to tell you!

STEP 1: CHOOSE your keyword(s)

Seems obvious, but a lot of people seem to overlook this. Choose keywords that are most relevant to your website. If your website is a content site, target keywords that relate to your targeted audience. This website targets firefighters, so firefighter was a logical keyword to target. If your target visitors are bus drivers, then bus driver would be a good keyword? Get it? If your site is commercial in nature, then your keywords should match what you are selling. If you sell toothpaste, toothpaste would be a good keyword. You don't need an SEO company to tell you this.

STEP 2: USE your keyword(s)

Our keyword is firefighter, and the word firefighter is used many times on virtually every page of this website (even this one!). If your keywords are bus drivers, and bus drivers is nowhere to be seen on your website, something is wrong. If you sell toothpaste and the word toothpaste doesn't appear on your website, someting is wrong. Again, you don't need an SEO company to tell you this.

STEP 3: Get Linked

This part is different depending on if you have a content site or a commercial site. For content sites you want to find similar websites. Websites that target the same people that you do. Don't think of them as competition, think of them as partners...link partners. Arrange link exchanges with these websites. Place a link to them, and in return ask them to place a link to your site. Most search engines use spiders to crawl the web, so the more similar sites they find that link to yours, the better.

For commercial websites link exchanges aren't always the best idea. Any other websites targeting the same visitors, ARE your competition. You don't really want to send your visitors to your competition. One idea is to arrange link exchanges with content sites. We have links to many commercial websites on American-Firefighter.com that we have posted in exchange for those sites placing links to our site. The second option is to advertise. Find large scale content websites to advertise with. This part can be a little tricky. Many content websites are so saturated with advertisements, and their prices are so high it hardly seems worth it. If you can't find a good content site to advertise on, we recommend Google AdWords: http://adwords.google.com Not only will your ad be shown on the biggest and best search engine on the web, but you can also have your ad shown on thousands of AdSense publisher websites, content websites that show contextual text ads served up by Google.

STEP 4: Don't Cheat!

Using doorway pages, hidden links, dynamically generated pages full of garbage, or any other sneaky tactic won't help, in fact it will usually hurt your websites success. Many search engines will ban your website if they find such tactics, and when a visitor sees such tactics, they will lose all faith in your website. A website with no visitors isn't much of a website.

Believe it or not, that's it! We have followed these four steps and have great search engine rankings on nearly every major search engine...and we didn't pay thousands of dollars to get there!

http://www.american-firefighter.com

About the author: Lee Weaver is a volunteer firefighter/emt and builds firefighter interest websites in his spare time.

Avoid Search Engine Blacklisting

Author: Kevin Kantola

The best way to avoid being blacklisted by the search engines is to avoid using some questionable techniques that were once popular to gain high rankings. Even if your website is not blacklisted by using some of the techniques below, it may be penalized (buried in the rankings) so your traffic will suffer all the same. When a search engine blacklists a website it will throw your listing off their site and block your site from coming aboard again. This can be done by blocking the domain name, the IP address or both.

Here are a few techniques to avoid, so that your site will not be blacklisted:

Mirror Websites

Mirror websites are sites with identical content but different URL's. This was once a method used to gain high rankings in the search engines, but since search engines are smarter now, this will only get you penalized or blacklisted.

Doorway (gateway) Pages

Doorway pages are pages with little real content for your visitors that are optimized to rank highly within the search engines. These pages are designed so that visitors will move deeper into the website where the real content lies. Navigation to the doorway pages are usually hidden from the visitors (but not the SE robots) on the homepage.

Invisible Text and Graphics

Using invisible text (text the same or a very similar color to the background) was once used to spam a homepage and some inside pages with non-stop keywords and keyphrases. Also links to doorway pages and hidden site maps can be done with invisible text (or invisible graphics). Some designers will create a graphic link with a 1 pixel by 1 pixel raster image and link this to a hidden inner page such as a hidden site map.

Submitting Pages Too Often

Submitting the same pages to the search engines within a 24 hour period can get you penalized and may delay your website from being listed in the rankings. Some search engines believe that pages submitted sooner than every 30 days is too much. The 30 day rule is a good rule to follow when submitting to multiple search engines.

Using Irrelevant Keywords

Using irrelevant keywords in a website's metatags and / or body copy in order to achieve high rankings will most certainly backfire. Search engines now want to see parity between these two areas and if your site is thought to be spamming with irrelevant keywords, you site will be penalized or blacklisted.

Automated Submissions to the Major Search Engines

Using an automated service or software to submit your website to the search engines can be extremely counterproductive. Most of the major search engines and directories accept manual submissions but do not like to be spammed with the automated ones.

Cloaking

Cloaking is the practice of deceiving both the search engine and the visitor by serving up different pages for each. The visitor sees a nicely designed and formatted page and the search engine robot scans a page of highly optimized text. Any practice that is deceptive should be avoided and the downfall of cloaking is that, if caught, the website can be banned permanently.

Using a Cheap or Free Web Host

Using a cheap or free web host can hurt in the search engine rankings. Frequent downtime, pages taken down for exceeding the bandwidth deter robots from indexing your site. If a robot cannot access your site often enough, your site will be dropped from the search engines. Hosting is cheap, so if you are serious about your website get your own domain name and host not one like geocities.com/yoursite.

Sharing an IP Address

Sharing an IP Address even from a legitimate web host can get your site in trouble. If you have cleaned up your website from all of the techniques mentioned above and your website still does not get relisted by the search engines in a couple of months, check with your host to see if you are sharing an IP address with other sites. If so, you may consider moving your website to a new host who will give you your own IP address or at least one that is not shared with another company who has had their IP address (an yours) banned by the search engines.

FAST's Director of Business Development and Marketing, Stephen Baker, has stated that globally there are approximately 30 million crawl-able servers and approximately two-thirds have been banned by the FAST network for spamming. If these numbers are correct, your site may be blacklisted or penalize for ""guilt by association.""

About the author: Copyright © 2004 SEO Resource

Kevin Kantola is the CEO of SEO Resource, a search engine optimization company, devoted to achieving high rankings and increased traffic. Visit the SEO Resource website at http://www.seoresource.net to see how your site may benefit.

Why Articles Are Not The Route To High Search Engine Rankings

Author: Priya Shah

Copyright 2004 Priya Shah http://www.PriyaShah.com

If you have any interest in getting high search engine rankings for your website (and who doesn't) you've probably been sold the idea that writing and publishing your own articles will do it for you.

Here's why that's not entirely true.

Imagine the following scenario...

You write an article around a keyword or keyphrase you want to rank well for.

You submit that article to all the article submission sites and directories and ezines you can find.

Your article gets published in hundreds of places.

You now have hundreds of links pointing back to your main site...

But your own site never shows up in the top ten results for that particular keyword or keyphrase.

Instead you find that there are lots of other sites carrying your article that rank better than yours.

You've completely missed out on an excellent opportunity to get high rankings for your keyword or keyphrase.

Even worse... you just handed your precious keyword-rich content on a platter to possible competitors who happened to publish your article on their website, and may have lost some of your most targeted visitors and sales to them.

So where did you go wrong?

Your mistake lay in using your precious article - the keyword-rich content you toiled for hours to write - for entirely the wrong purpose.

You failed to use the power of the medium of article publishing to give your site an unbeatable advantage over others.

Here's how to use your articles the right way to boost your search engine rankings.

1. Publish Unique Content On Your Website

When you make an article available for reprint, the article, by virtue of it being published on hundreds of other sites, now no longer qualifies as unique content.

In the eyes of search engines, those pages with higher Pagerank (and hence greater importance) than yours will now rank better than you for the keywords your article is optimized for.

Instead of making your article the main course, use it as an appetizer to direct search engines and readers to a UNIQUE, keyword-rich, well-optimized report or white paper on your website, and you'll see dramatically different results.

2. Use Your Article As Spider Bait

Think of your articles as simply the conduit that leads search engines to your website.

Publishing your articles all over the web is like leaving scraps for a puppy (a.k.a. the search engines) that follows them all the way back to the kennel (a.k.a. your website) where it can feast on the main course - your UNIQUE content.

3. Use Keyword-Rich Anchor Text In Your Resource Box

Use your main keyword or keyphrase in the anchor text of the article resource box that contains a link pointing back to your unique content.

This will create hundreds of keyword-rich links pointing back to the well-optimized report on your website, and give your pages a powerful edge over other websites.

Often this factor alone is sufficient to take your website to the top of the search results, especially with search engines like Google and MSN.

The guidelines here include only a few of the steps you need to take to get high rankings for the keywords of your choice.

To learn how to use your articles and unique content to get an edge over your competitors and secure long-term, top rankings for your website, check out the search engine optimization ebook, Number One In Your Niche.

http://www.numberoneinyourniche.com

About the author: Priya Shah is the author of Number One In Your Niche http://www.NumberOneInYourNiche.com and edits the newsletter Be a Whiz at eBiz! http://ebizwhiz-publishing.com

Creative Ways to Gain Links

Author: Jason Rickard

Creative Methods for ""One Way"" Links

Everyone knows the importance of getting other sites to link to you and the most common way is for a reciprical link. That is the kind of link that Click Sentrys reciprical tools address. These are great links and should always be sought after. However, there has been much discussion about Google giving less weight to a link that is recip. One of the ways to combat this is ""triangle"" linking but this can be very time consuming and hard to explain to new website owners. That brings us to another method:

One Way Linking

When most people think about one way linking their mind immediately turns to directories. These are a great source (and are seemingly endless) of one way links but there are even more creative ways to get them. I am going to break it into two very easy categories - Press Releases and Article Submissions

Press Releases - New websites seem to believe that people who need their service or product will just find them because of that need. Anyone who has started a site just to sit back and let the orders or visitors roll in has been quickly reminded that despite being the ""web"", people still need to know you are there. There are plenty of great sites that allow you to ""announce"" your arrival. Even if you are an established site you are still able to write a press release to announce any new products or tools you may have. Somehow in the move from newspapers to internet many have lost the fine art of writing an engaging (and self serving of course) press release. I will write another article sometime about that lost art with step by step instructions. In the meantime, just read some of the other Press Releases and adapt your own. These press releases are spidered by google so it is a great way to not only get a link but to also drive traffic to your site.

Here are some sites to start with:

http://www.prleap.com : Your free press release goes to google news(news.google.com) and searchengines like yahoo, msn altavaista and you can view the history and statistics. For this release, your article must be professional.

http://www.prweb.com: One of the best press release websites i come across. You can issue free press release which goes to related websites and article posting websites. For a fee of 60+ only, your article goest to various news sites like yahoo news, business.com(iam not sure of this) and related big news websites.

Article Submissions - The second great way to gain links is to submit articles. Do you have a web design site? Write an article about Google starting to index flash sites. All of the good submission sites allow you to put an about the Author section with links to your site in it. This gives you an instant link from the site you submitted it to but MORE IMPORTANTLY, these sites allow other website owners to boost their content by including YOUR article in their websites. The only thing they ask is for the article and your link to not be modified. Write a good article and you may see 100's of one way links within weeks. Write 10 great articles and.... well you get the idea.

Here are some sites to start with:

http://www.goarticles.com http://www.articlecity.com

Good Luck!!

About the author: Jason Rickard is the webmaster of http://www.yourfavourites hop.com and owner of http://www.graftonwebdesign.com .*Article may be reprinted provided it is not altered and links are live.*