Optimizing Pages with JavaScript and Style Sheets for Search Engines

Author: Dale Goetsch

Background

Search Engines use a number of criteria to decide what a given web page is all about. These criteria, which can be different from Search Engine to Search Engine, and which may even change over time, all aim at deciding how ""relevant"" a page is to a given user's search. The Search Engine wants to return the results most relevant to a user's search.

While the particulars may change over time, there are some criteria which remain constant. One of these is where the keywords are located on the page. Typically words that are located closer to the beginning of a page are considered more important than words that occur further down the page. This stands to reason: think of a newspaper article, where the headline and the first paragraph usually have more ""meat"" than the rest of the story.

Another measure of relevance is ""keyword density"". This is roughly the ratio of keywords on a page to the total number of words on a page. Having a higher ratio of keywords to total words will make a page more relevant for a search on those keywords.

When a Search Engine sends its robot out to look at your page, you want to make sure that it finds important information near the top of the web page, and that the page has a high keyword density. Sometimes there are complications, even when you have a lot of keyword-rich text early in the visible portion of your page. Two of these complications, extensive JavaScript code and extensive Cascading Style Sheet code, can be easily remedied.

JavaScript problem

Large amounts of JavaScript code can get in the way. Typically the largest amount of JavaScript code in a web page is found in the HEAD section. This is usually where variables and functions are defined, and so forth.

Unfortunately, having a large amount of JavaScript code in a page can be detrimental to a page's ranking in the Search Engines.

Since Search Engines tend to pay more attention to text at the beginning of a web page than they do to text further from the beginning, it stands to reason that if you have several dozen lines of JavaScript code at the top of the page, your real content is going to be further from the beginning of the page. Further down the page means less important to the Search Engine.

Keyword density is also important. Here again, if you have several hundred words of JavaScript code in a page, the keyword density—the ratio of your keywords to all the words in the whole page, both text and code—is going to be much lower. That means that some Search Engines will decide that your page is less relevant.

JavaScript solution

So how do you maintain JavaScript functionality, but make your page as Search Engine-friendly as possible? You put the JavaScript code into a separate file, and link it back to the web page.

The original page, ""mypage.html"", may look something like this.

My Title

...body of page...

Example 1—mypage.html with JavaScript code

We replace the JavaScript code with an instruction for the browser to go and grab the code from a separate file. The new page will look like this.

My Title

...body of page...

Example 2—mypage.html with JavaScript code offloaded

Note the addition of the ""src"" attribute to the SCRIPT tag. The value assigned to that attribute is the name of the external file that contains the JavaScript code. Typically, these external files will be given the filename extension "".js"" to indicate that they contain JavaScript code. Note also that there are both tags here, even though there is nothing between those tags.

A new page is then created that holds the code that was formerly held in the SCRIPT tags. We will call it ""codepage.js"", and it looks like this.

function helloWorld(){ alert(""Hello, World!""); return; }

Example 3—codepage.js includes only JavaScript code

This new file doesn't need any kind of HTML markup. It contains only the code that was originally held between the SCRIPT tags.

Style Sheet problem

In addition to JavaScript code, Style Sheet code can cause complications for Search Engines when it is put into a web page. For the same reasons as JavaScript—moving the important content further down the page, and diluting the keyword density—it is important to move Style Sheet code off of the page as well.

Style Sheet solution

The thought behind removing Style Sheet information from a page is very similar to that of offloading JavaScript; the syntax to do so is different.

The original page, ""mypage.html"", may look something like this.

My Title

...body of page...

Example 4—mypage.html with style sheet code

We want to move this code into a separate file, so we remove it from the original page, and add a link to point to the separate file that now holds the Style Sheet code.

My Title

...body of page...

Example 5—mypage.html with Style Sheet code offloaded

Note the addition of the LINK tag. This contains three types of information that the browser will need to reconstruct the page when a visitor looks at it. The ""rel='stylesheet'"" attribute/value pair indicates that we are looking at a Style Sheet file here. The ""href='style.css'"" attribute/value pair points to the external file that contains the Style Sheet information. Typically these external files will be given the filename extension "".css"" to indicate that they contain Cascading Style Sheet code. You will replace the filename ""style.css"" with the name of the actual file into which you place your stylesheet code. Finally, we have to specify the MIME type of the file, in the ""type='text/css'"" attribute/value pair.

A new page is then created that holds the code that was formerly held in the STYLE tags. We will call it ""style.css"", and it looks like this.

body{ background:white; color:red; }

Example 6—style.css includes only Style Sheet code

This new file doesn't need any kind of HTML markup. It contains only the code that was originally held between the STYLE tags.

Conclusion

By following these two procedures, you have now made your web page more friendly to the Search Engines. This means that the next time your page is spidered by the Search Engine robots, the important content on your page will be closer to the top of the page, and you will have a better keyword density. This will result in your page appearing higher in the Search Engine listings, and will probably bring more traffic to your website.

When you are ready to put your website to work for you, it's time to contact us.

Search Innovation Your Search is Over™ http://www.searchinnovation.com info@searchinnovation.com

Copyright © 2002 Search Innovation. All Rights Reserved.

About the author: Dale Goetsch is a Search Engine Marketing Consultant for Search Innovation, a Search Engine Marketing company serving small businesses. His background includes over twelve years as a software tester, as well as Perl, JavaScript and ASP programming.

Five Common Misconceptions to Achieving Success with your Online Business

Author: Robin Nobles

How successful is your online business? Are you achieving the monetary rewards that you'd hoped to achieve when you set up your Web site?

If not, you may have fallen prey to one of five common misconceptions to achieving success with an online business.

Misconception #1: If you put up a Web site, people will come. Regretfully, this is far from the truth. Competition is fierce on the Internet, and you must learn how to compete in order to have a successful online business. Putting up a Web site is the first step, but doing nothing more will ensure your site's failure.

Misconception #2: Amateur promotion will render professional results. Many people believe that they can purchase a handy dandy software program that will submit their sites to 999 search engines and directories, and their promotion efforts are over. The truth of the matter is, the majority of the traffic to most Web sites comes from the major search engines and directories, so submitting to 990 other ones is simply a waste of time and won't bring you any success.

Misconception #3: Submitting your site to the major search engines and directories is all you need to do. Wrong. Think of it this way: there are 10 search results per page for most of the engines. Most people won't go through any more than three pages of search results before giving up and trying another search. So, only the top 30 rankings really matter. If your site is #3,429 out of two million results, how much traffic do you think you'll get?

Misconception #4: META tags are the key to success with the search engines. Truthfully, very few of the major engines even look at META tags any more. So, sticking META tags on your pages won't bring you traffic and sales.

Misconception #5: The key to success on the Web is achieving top 10 rankings for keywords that are important to your business. This way of thinking is outdated. Instead, the key to success on the Web is bringing in extremely targeted traffic that converts to sales. You can have all the #1 rankings in the world, but if the rankings don't convert to traffic that ultimately converts to sales, your Web site will never be a success.

If you're ready to activate your Web site for success, why not take advantage of simple but powerful insiders' strategies that mean genuine business. The good news is that you can learn these strategies through step-by-step, personal instruction at the Ultimate SEO Mastery Workshop being held in New Orleans on September 9-11 at the Royal Orleans Hotel. For more information, or to learn of future workshops, visit http://www.searchengineworkshops.com, or contact Robin Nobles at robin@searchengineworkshops.com.

About the author: Robin Nobles, Director of Training, Academy of Web Specialists, has trained several thousand people in her online search engine marketing (http://www.academywebspecialists.com) training programs. Visit the Academy's training site to learn more (http://www.onlinewebtraining.com). She also teaches 3-day hands-on search engine marketing workshops in locations across the globe with Search Engine Workshops (http://www.searchengineworkshops.com).

131 (Legitimate) Link Building Strategies . . .

Author: Robin Nobles

131 (Legitimate) Link Building Strategies . . . ""The Definitive Source of Link Building Strategies on the Internet""

Co-authored by Robin Nobles, Eric Ward, and John Alexander

In search engine optimization, ""off page"" factors have become more and more important as they relate to rankings. In particular, solid link popularity can literally make or break a site with the search engines.

Before we go any further, what is ""link popularity""? In very simplistic terms, link popularity refers to the number and quality of the incoming links that are pointing to your site. These other sites consider your site important enough to link to. So, in the engine's view, your site is considered important as well. What is meant by ""link popularity"" can get much more complex, which is discussed further in this article.

However, one of the most difficult areas of SEO is building link popularity. Why? Because the engines don't want ""artificially created"" (or useless) links, so there are no easy ways to build link popularity. The days of link farms and huge link exchange programs are over. Try those strategies now and you can easily find yourself booted out of an engine.

Rather, the engines want links from authoritative sites, or links from sites that share the same focus as your site.

But besides the link popularity you gain by getting an authoritative site to link to you, you also gain additional visibility for your Web site. So, when working on building link popularity, don't forget those two basic reasons for requesting links.

The Purpose of this Article

Because building link popularity is one of the most difficult and time consuming aspects of search engine marketing, we decided to join forces with each other and with other search engine optimizers to create a list of legitimate ways you can build link popularity for your site.

When looking through this list, you may find strategies that are subject to abuse. If you use them as recommended in this article, you will have no problems. Abuse them, and you're treading in potentially dangerous waters.

Stephen Baker with Fast said one of the most memorable statements I've heard as it relates to what the engines like or don't like to see. He said:

""Our position is pretty straight forward...it's not the technique that we are concerned about, it's the intention.""

So, always keep that statement in mind when you consider linking or any other strategies for your Web site. Analyze your intentions, and if you wouldn't mind an engine knowing what you're doing, your intentions are okay.

Now that we've gotten the preliminaries out of the way, let's get down to business: learning ways to increase the link popularity of our sites. To write this article, we went to professional search engine optimizers for their ideas. After each strategy, we briefly attributed it to the SEO who sent it to us, and then we provided a list of all contributors along with their companies and URL's at the end of the article.

Keep in mind that these strategies aren't in any particular order. Also, keep in mind that though it isn't always stated explicitly, we're always referring to ""related"" and ""important"" or ""authoritative"" sites as our targets.

Start with the Basics:

Before you begin link seeking, you might want to read the article, ""A Linking-Campaign Primer"": http://www.ericward.com/articles/primer.html. (Eric Ward, President, NetPOST and URLwire) (http://www.ericward.com)

This is by far the oldest and best-known method of improving link popularity. Basically you e-mail or contact the Webmaster of a site that is complementary but generally not competitive to your own. You ask them to link to your site while outlining the benefits of doing so. You would generally offer to link back to them in exchange for this courtesy. Be sure you have developed genuine content on your Web site of interest to the trading partner. Explain the advantages to them and to their visitors by providing a link to your content. Tell them where the link on your site will be or set the link up in advance with the stipulation that you'll be glad to leave it there if they'll add a link to you in kind. Take the time to look over their site and then suggest where a link to you might be appropriate. Most importantly, personalize your e-mails! You must distinguish yourself from all the spam they receive daily. If the link is particularly important to you, call them personally or write them a letter or send a fax to show them you're serious. (Brent Winters with First Place Software)(http://www.webposition.com)

(To view the rest of the article, which is over 12,000 words long, visit: http://www.searchengineworkshops.com/articles/leglinkpop.html If you'd like to download the article in an ebook format, visit: http://www.searchengineworkshops.com/131LinkPop.html The article is also available in text format as an attachment to email by writing to RobinN@acws.com.

This article was compiled by Robin Nobles, Eric Ward, and John Alexander. The following people contributed tips to the article, and we greatly thank them for their contributions and help. Their companies and URL's are listed in the HTML, text, and ebook versions of the article.

Mike Adams, John Alexander, Michael Campbell, Chris Churchill, Terry Dean, Elbert Flores, Chris Genge, Bill Gentry, Ron Gotcher, Don Hammond, Detlev Johnson, Dixon Jones, Jon Keel, Barbara Coll, Stephen Mahaney, Nancy Nelson, Robin Nobles, David Notestine, Susan O'Neil, Debra Paynter, Terry Plank, Rocky Rawstern, Gil Sery, Chris Sherman, Judith Silver, Marshall Simmonds, Scott Smith, Danny Sullivan, Becky Thompson, Eric Ward, Carl Watney, Steve Wilson, Brent Winters, and Gary Woods.

A special thanks to Butch Pujol and Heather Colman of Digital Page Author Software and Service (http://www.digital-page-author- software.com) for creating the wonderful e-book for us.

Copyright 2002 Robin Nobles. All rights reserved.

About the author: Robin Nobles, Director of Training, Academy of Web Specialists, has trained several thousand people in her online search engine marketing (http://www.academywebspecialists.com) training programs. She also teaches 3-day hands- on search engine marketing workshops in locations across the globe with Search Engine Workshops (http://www.searchengineworkshops.com).

Rising Above the SEO Reputation

Author: Kalena Jordan

How many times have you seen an article referring to SEO (search engine optimization) as a ""Black Art"" or ""underhanded"", ""manipulative"", ""sleazy"", ""deceptive"", ""sneaky"" etc?. I could go on and on but you get my drift. The thing is - our industry has a pitiful reputation which is being reinforced on a daily basis by the media and word of mouth.

This realization hit me between the eyes recently when I read a comment in a search engine forum from an SEO who claimed he used his ethical SEO methods as a Unique Selling Point. Look what we've been reduced to - differentiating ourselves from the masses because we DON'T break the rules. What other industry could boast such a thing? Apart from the used car industry, I can't really think of any.

So where did this nasty reputation come from and why has it been allowed to propogate? Well, it's mainly care of the hundreds of cowboys out there who decide one day they are online marketing experts, announce themselves as SEO's and set up a backyard biz, deciding (naively) that the fastest way to achieve high rankings is to break the rules, ""crack"" the search engine algorithms and undermine the search indexes by generating pages and pages of search engine spam. They do this by creating doorway pages designed for search engine spiders rather than humans, complete with hidden text, hidden links, cloaking and lots of other ""tricks"" they come across as they surf the Internet.

Problem is these self-proclaimed experts don't bother to do their research and learn that such spamming techniques have long been ineffective. Nearly all the search engines these days have sophisticated methods of detecting and removing spam within days of receiving submissions. Penalties for spamming the search engines differ from engine to engine, but can range from being ""red flagged"" and put on a watch list, to being hit with a ranking penalty, to having your site permanently banned from their index (in severe cases). The type of scumbag SEO's that would play Russian Roulette with their client's web sites in this fashion are well-deserving of scorn. It can take months for search engines to lift such penalties, if they decide to at all.

While ineffective, such search engine spamming techniques have defined the reputation of the search engine optimization industry to date. In turn, this reputation is eroding business for so-called ""ethical"" SEO's - a term I use loosely to describe SEO's that don't try to undermine the search engine indexes when optimizing web sites. Actually, I'm not really comfortable with the term ""ethics"" to describe SEO. Until the industry establishes and accepts a standardized Code of Practice, we are just measuring others by our own personal standards and a set of arbitrary rules. But the SEO's I'm talking about strive to keep search results as relevant as possible by revising the visible site content and following the guidelines set down by the search engines in the optimization process. Some SEO's call this ""White Magic SEO"" - a tongue in cheek response to the ""Black Magic"" jibes I guess.

Not surprisingly, search engines have been reduced to lumping all SEO's into the ""untrustworthy"" basket. On their Webmaster Do's and Don'ts page (http://www.google.com/webmasters/dos.html), Google state: ""Be very careful about allowing an individual consultant or company to 'optimize' your web site. Chances are they will engage in some of our ""Don'ts"" and end up hurting your site"". Chances are? Sounds a bit presumptuous if you ask me. Likewise, at a recent search engine conference, a representative from AltaVista declared that ""all SEO's could be described using four letter words"". The typical Internet user can only come to the conclusion that, according to some very reliable sources, SEO's are not to be trusted - now how fair is that?

So the main problem is - how do we address this reputation issue? Do we establish and agree on a standard Code of Practise as in development on sites such as the World Association of Internet Marketers (http://www.waim.org/ethics.html), SEO Consultants (http://www.seoconsultants.com/seo-code-of-ethics.htm) and SEO Pros (http://www.seopros.org/members/practices.htm)? Do we race around locating and reporting search engine spam in the hope of improving our reputation in the eyes of the search engines? Or do we simply follow our own set of standards and hope potential clients can come to their own untainted conclusions? Personally I'm looking forward to the day when I no longer detect immediate suspicion when I tell people I optimize web sites for a living.

About the author: Article by Kalena Jordan, CEO of Web Rank. Kalena was one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia & New Zealand and is well known and respected in her field. For more of her articles on search engine ranking and online marketing, please visit http://www.high-search-engine-ranking.com

A Theme-Based Website, Part 2- Choose A Theme And Sub-Topics

Author: Julie Georg

In part 1, I said that a theme-based website is a site based on a single theme or concept. Every page of the site concentrates on a single topic that is related to the theme. Each page delivers great content on it's topic. We know this type of site scores with the search engines because it adds value to their search results. It also scores with visitors who are finding the valuable information they were looking for. And it scores for the merchants you represent because it will deliver ready to buy visitors to their sites. And, of course, you score with big commission checks.

I'm ready to build a theme-based site. What do I do first? Choose a theme, of course! For some, this may be very easy. But, some of us might not have the slightest idea what we could offer that would be of value to others. Let's brainstorm a bit. Are you an expert in your field with lots of information to share? Do you have a hobby that you're passionate about? A favorite subject you love to read about? Work experience from a current or previous job? Think about your strengths. What do others come to you for? Do you, or could you, offer a service? Ask your friends and relatives. Others may see something that is not so obvious to you. Don't make the mistake of thinking your theme must be something ""big"" and ""important"". Believe me, many more people are looking for information on ""fly fishing"" than ""rocket science""!

Once you have an idea (or two!) for a theme it's time to think about related topics. Remember, your site is going to consist of pages that offer content, each on a specific topic that is related to your theme. Back to the example of my ""Italian cooking"" theme. Possible topics included ""Italian chefs"", ""Italian specialty foods"", ""Italian cooking methods"", Italian cookware"", etc. I want as many related topics as I can find. I want to build a substantial site, offering my visitors what they are looking for, lots of valuable content. And lets not forget the search engines. I want to be sure their spiders are finding lots of related keywords so that I'm ranked high in their search results.

Now, I can come up with some topics off the top of my head. But I've only thought of a few, and how do I know if these are topics that people will actually search for on the Net? Luckily there are ways to discover both new ideas for topics AND if people are going to find you by searching for them. What I'm going to do is use a ""keyword research"" tool. These can be found at some of the engines like Overture or 7Search. Some pay-per-click advertising providers also have a keyword search tool, like Brainfox and Google's Adwords. If I use SiteBuildIt! to build my site, I have the Manager which does all the keyword searching and brainstorming for me, as well as showing profitability for each keyword. (You can see screenshots of the Manager in action by downloading the free SBI! Make Your SitePresell.. http://freetrial.sitesell.com/assist3.html ).

A keyword search should give me lots of ideas for related topics for my theme. OK, it threw up some weird, totally unrelated stuff, too, but I'll just ignore that. What I want are keywords that suggest a topic that I can write (or find) valuable content about. For example, my search on ""Italian cooking"" brought up ""lowfat cooking"". Hmm, hadn't thought of that, but a lot of Italian recipes are low in fat, so perhaps I'll write a page on this topic. This is called a keyword-focused page, and once I have 10 or 20 of these, I know that anyone searching for these and related keywords is going to find my site.

Great, I've got a site based on a theme that I know about and/or interests me. (If we're talking Italian cooking, we're talking PASSION!) I've packed it with valuable content on topics closely related to my theme. My visitors are going to love it, as are the search engines. But, well..... what about me?

Oh, did I forget? I do love Italian cooking, but I'm building this theme-based website to earn income. So, at least some of my pages will offer valuable content that is also designed to presell. Presell what? Any product, program or service that I represent as an affiliate. Of course, the product, program or service needs to ""fit"" with the content and the theme of my site. My ""Italian cooking"" site will include a page on ""lowfat Italian cooking"". Within my valuable content, I will recommend a favorite cookbook on lowfat Italian cooking and provide an in-text link to a bookseller who will then sell that book to my visitor. Content on Italian wine will link to a merchant where my visitor can mail-order Italian wines. Etc, etc.

How do I find the products, programs and services I want to represent? That is the topic of Part 3 of this series. Trouble coming up with a theme? Maybe I can help. mailto:yourhelpline@mail.com

About the author: Julie Georg is a consultant to individuals and small businesses interested in establishing a web presence. Step-by-step directions for building a theme-based site can be found in the excellent, free Affiliate Masters course. Blank email mailto:tamsassist3@sitesell.net

Introduction to Search Engine Optimization

Author: Lee Schmidt

Introduction

Imagine that you would like to find information on red widgets. Since you don't know any online resources for red widgets, you will have to use a search engine. How will you do this?

Most likely you will use either Google, Yahoo, or MSN. After searching, you will see a number of different things on your screen. The top section of your results will most likely display pay-per-click ads. This simply means that any link you find here was put here by somebody paying for it. You will also find these ads usually running down the right side of the screen. However, the largest section of the results page is in the center, where you will find the natural search engine results. You notice that there are thousands, if not millions of results returned. Each individual search engine must have a way of ordering these websites in order to display the most relative results to you.

This is where the term search engine optimization (or SEO) comes in. This leads us to the first frequently asked question.

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization is the art of employing certain methods which, in the end, have the intent to move your own website as high as possible in the search results for specific keywords or keyword phrases. This is also what is meant when you hear ads about ""boosting your ranking"" or something similar.

These methods cover a wide range of factors, including both on-site optimization and off-site optimization. What is also interesting about search engine optimization is that there really are very few objective factors which affect your rankings. Webmasters and SEOs have a pretty good idea of what factors have at least minimal impact on your rankings - but the significance of each factor is largely disputed. So why do you hear about SEO firms and companies that claim to be able to help your ranking?

Many theories on search engine optimization are actually theories. Meaning, they have actual data to back up any conclusions. Other than the largely accepted theories, different people develop their own hypothesis on what they feel to be important. These are often supported by many different SEOs but often do not have any evidence or data to back it up.

How do you know what to do?

Google, the single largest and most used search engine, has provided webmasters with quality guidelines for getting your site included in their results. This should be the most basic set of guidelines any webmaster should follow. There are, however, many factors which the majority of search engine optimizers agree on. These factors are based on research, observation, and accounts of experiences from webmasters and search engine optimizers.

What are the factors?

Although this list could be overwhelmingly long, the factors below are a brief list of basic factors which are known to have some type of effect on website ranking. Keep in mind, that each search engine most likely weights each factor differently, which is partly why you see different results at Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The following 10 factors are a list of what are conisidered the most significant things you can do:

Title Tag

The title tag is one of the most important aspects of on-site optimization. It should both describe the page and contain keywords.

Keyword Usage

The frequency and method you use keywords on a page affects the value each search engine gives your site.

The full version of this article (3 pages) is here: SEO FAQ

About the author: Lee Schmidt is a website analyst for a small business, and also writes for SEO Inside Out .

A Theme-Based Website, Part 1- What Is It?

Author: Julie Georg

What is a theme-based website? The wave of the future. The best way to please increasingly savvy visitors AND search engines. A theme-based website is a site that is based on one specific theme or concept. Every page of the site focuses on a single topic that is related to that theme. For example, if my theme is Italian cooking, topical pages could include Italian chefs, Italian ingredients, Italian cooking methods, Italian cookware, etc. Such a site could easily grow to a hundred pages, each of which focuses on a different topic, all of which are related to my theme.

Why would I want a theme-based site? A theme-based content site is a great vehicle for earning income as an affiliate. How?

Traffic: Each topical page is a ""keyword focused"" content page. In other words, I build the content of each page based on one of hundreds of keywords that someone might use to search for information related to my theme. Taken all together, my tightly focused, themed site scores well at the engines for hundreds of related terms. And we all know what that means - lots and lots of highly targeted traffic!

Presell: Each topical page is full of valuable content. This content is used to PRESELL(we all know the importance of preselling, right?!). My visitors are not searching for sales copy. They are searching for information. I need to deliver. Using my Italian cooking example, my page based on the keyword ""Italian chefs"" could offer brief biographies of the top Italian chefs. I could then recommend books by or about these chefs, providing an in-text link to a book seller. What else? I could write(or find) articles about olive oil, Italian ceramic cooking pots, the Chianti region, etc. And as a good affiliate, I provide in-text links to merchants selling Italian cookware, imported foods and wines, cooking lessons in Tuscany(!), etc, etc. Think of the potential.

Consider the advantages the theme-based website has over mini-sites, which some affiliates use to try to promote an affiliate program. They may seem easy and cheap, but mini-sites are not built to do well at the search engines and rarely get a directory listing - the two places my visitors are most likely to look for me! Where they WILL find my theme-based site. Also, mini-sites are typically made up of just sales copy. I know my visitors do not want to be sold. My theme-based site GIVES my visitors valuable content while preselling. Lastly, a mini-site is pitching one product. If a visitor doesn't want that particular product they're gone. My site, however, offers multiple products or services, any one of which my visitor may be interested in.

Affiliates will also often use gateway or doorway pages. These are essentially ""trick sites"" which may score with the engines but don't deliver good content and so rarely result in getting the click through, the sale, or the repeat visit. Also, tricking the engines is becoming less effective as the engines become more and more sophisticated. My theme-based site plays fair with the engines and the engines love it.

Using a theme-based website I create a WIN-WIN-WIN-WIN situation. My visitors win because they've found the high- value information they were looking for. Search engines win because I've given them a site that will add quality to their search results. The merchants that I represent as an affiliate win because I've presold my visitors and they arrive at the merchants' sites ready to buy. And, last but not least, I win with growing commissions. Can you say ""super-affiliate""?

Think a theme-based website is for you? Brainstorm ideas to find your site concept. Everyone has experience, knowledge, interests or hobbies that could be turned into a theme-based website. You can start building YOUR web BUSINESS. Don't have a theme? Check out Part 2 of this series. Or send me an email. mailto:yourhelpline@mail.com

About the author: Julie Georg is a consultant to individuals and small businesses interested in establishing a web presence. Step-by-step directions for building a theme-based site can be found in the excellent, free Affiliate Masters course. Blank email mailto:tamsassist3@sitesell.net

A Theme-Based Website, Part 3- Choosing Affiliate Programs

Author: Julie Georg

In parts 1 & 2 , I determined that developing a theme-based site is a great way to generate income. It's going to be a WINing situation for the search engines, my visitors, my merchants and ME. I've chosen a theme that I know (or can find out about) and love. I've found lots of keywords that are related to my theme and have lots of ideas for good content to offer my visitors. Now I need to find merchants who sell products, programs or services that are appropriate for my site and will fit with my content.

Once again, I'm going to look at my list of keywords. Since people are going to use these words to search and I've used them to write my ""keyword focused"" content for each page of my site... it only makes sense that the products and services I want to represent should also be related to these keywords. That will help me to seamlessly recommend the product within my content and really use my content to presell.

There are several ways to find merchants.

Technique 1: I'll do a search on my keywords at several of the engines - Google, AltaVista, Overture, or any of the others. Then I'll have a quick look at the first ten or twenty listings. If I use SiteBuildIt!, the Manager will automatically show me ten related sites for each keyword. (You can take the quick tour of SBI! at... http://quicktour.sitesell.com/assist3.html ) Wherever you get the listings, some will be merchants, while other are content sites. (Of course some are always irrelevant. Lots of room for my theme-based site!) I'm going to take a look at the merchants' sites and see if they have something I'd like to offer my visitors and if they have an affiliate program. If so, great. They go on my ""keep in mind"" merchant list for that keyword. Next I can explore the content sites. Maybe I'll find ideas for content, but I'm mainly here to see if THEY link to any merchants. If so, I can click through and see what I find. Can you see the beauty of this? I'm going to have content ideas and possible merchants all organized by keyword. That's going to make things pretty easy when I go to build my ""keyword focused"" pages, no?

Technique 2: I'll do a search for each of my keywords, plus the word ""affiliate"", like this... +Italian wine +affiliate. Or I can try this... affiliate wine. What will come up are either merchants with affiliate programs or content sites that are affiliates. Again, for the merchants, I'll see if I like their product and affiliate program. For the content sights, I'll check their links.

Technique 3: Now I'm going to check the directories. There are a lot of affiliate program directories out there. I'll check with a few of the best, like AssociatePrograms.com, Refer-It.com, CashPile.com and Associate-It.com. The directories list programs by category, so I'll go right to the catagories that fit my site theme and see if there is any program I like. They often have reviews as well, which I'll check.

Technique 4: One more thing I could do is to join affiliate networks. These networks provide merchants with affiliates and vice-versa. It's a good place to get exposure to a wide variety of merchants. I'm sure to find some I haven't run across already, so I'll check to see if any programs are featured that will work for me. I can join Commission Junction, BeFree, LinkShare, and/or ClickTrade.

That took a bit of work, but now I'm ready to narrow down my choices and weed out merchants with less than great products, or poor affiliate programs. I'm going to be pretty particular. The products I choose to represent will reflect on me. And the quality of the affiliate program will be reflected in my commission checks. I want my visitors to be happy and come back to my site. And I want fair compensation for delivering such valuable, presold customers to my merchants' sites.

In part 4 of this series, I'll explain how best to build a theme-based site. Questions? mailto:yourhelpline@mail.com

About the author: Julie Georg is a consultant to individuals and small businesses interested in establishing a web presence. Step-by-step directions for building a theme-based site can be found in the excellent, free Affiliate Masters course. Blank email mailto:tamsassist3@sitesell.net

A Theme-Based Website, Part 4- How To Build The Site

Author: Julie Georg

In the first three parts of this series, I've shown why I want a theme-based site and how I've prepared (and you can, too!) to make one. I chose a theme and found lots of related keywords. I have ideas for content and found merchants that I want to represent as an affiliate, whose products fit with my content. Now, I'm ready to build my site. It's going to be pretty easy since I have my content and merchants organized by keyword. And I'm keeping these two thing in mind: 1) I want each page to be focused on only one keyword. Remember, I'm doing this to please the search engines, but it also keeps things clear for my visitors. 2) From experience and research, I know it's best to keep things clean and simple. I want a straight forward site that's easy to navigate and with minimal distractions.

I'm going to start with my homepage, which should only tell my visitors what my site is about and how it will benefit THEM. Links to my merchants should NOT appear on the homepage - too soon. My homepage should link to 5-10 ""keyword focused"" content pages. These pages should offer valuable content and links to my best merchants for my most profitable keywords. Each of these pages can then link to 2-10 other pages. Every page should have a link back to the homepage, but not necessarily to every other page on the site. I need to think about where I want my visitors to go and what I want them to do, which is click through to my merchants, of course!

Ready for construction. Each page will have 1) a TITLE tag, 2) a META keyword tag, 3) a META description tag, 4) header tags(headlines), 5) and the body copy.

My TITLE appears as the link in search engine listings, so it needs to be honest and attractive. I'm going to use the specific keyword for each page in it's title, as well as a general keyword and perhaps synonyms if possible. For my Italian cooking site, for the keyword ""lowfat Italian cooking"", the page title could be ""Lowfat Italian Cooking- Healthful Italian Traditional Cooking, Naturally Lowfat"".

My META KEYWORD tag is going to start with my keyword for that page, in this example ""lowfat Italian cooking"". I'll also add a general keyword or two, like ""cooking"" and ""lowfat"". And perhaps a synonym like ""healthful"". I don't want to dilute the META tag with too many words.

The META DESCRIPTION tag will be the rest of what the search engines will diplay along with my title. This will also be honest and attractive. I'll state the benefit my page offers, using the specific keyword once or even twice, if possible, and also general keywords and synonyms.

The headlines are more important than my regular body copy, both for the engines and my visitors. And some engines don't use the META description tag to form the second part of their listings. Instead they will usually use my H1 tag (first headline), and the first words in the body copy after that. So, I'll be sure that my headline contains my specific keyword for that page at least once. What I can do here is take my META description tag and chop it into two pieces... part for the headline and part for the opening paragraph of my body copy.

Next, of course, comes my valuable, OVER-delivering, ""keyword-focused"" body copy. I provide great content that meets the needs of my visitors who have searched for this page's specific keyword. I also work keywords into the copy to please the engines. And I seamlessly work in my recommendations, complete with in-text links to my merchants.

Repeating this process for each page, I build a great site, filled with valuable content to please my visitors and deliver them to my merchants in a ready-to-buy frame of mind. Each page is focused on a specific keyword which is closely related to my overall theme, creating a site that the search engines will love. And that will bring me lots of targeted traffic. Well, just as soon as I submit to the engines. I'll cover this, and other ways to promote my site in the 5th and final part of ""A Theme-Based Website"".

About the author: Julie Georg is a consultant to individuals and small businesses interested in establishing a web presence. She offers assistance at.. mailto:yourhelpline@mail.com Step-by-step directions for building a theme-based site can be found in the excellent, free Affiliate Masters course. Blank email mailto:tamsassist3@sitesell.net

A Theme-Based Website, Part 5- Promoting The Site

Author: Julie Georg

All right, we're going to wrap this up. I now have a terrific theme-based site, jam-paked with high value content and built to feed those search engine spiders. However, my site is going to just sit in web space if I don't do some work to promote it. Fortunately, I'm well prepared. My site is optimized for listing with the search engines. I have hundreds of keywords to use for Pay-per- Click engines and my content is theme-focused and OVER- delivers so directories should have no problem listing my site. Let's take these one at a time.

Search Engines: The most important thing I need to do is submit my pages to the major search engines. They will deliver, by far, the most traffic to my site. I'll submit to AltaVista, Excite, Google, HotBot, Lycos and NorthernLight. Each has it's own policies, which I need to be sure to follow. Then I'll check my site's log files, to see which of their spiders have visited, and which pages they took back to the engine. If I don't see an engine's spider within a certain amount of time after submitting, I'll resubmit, according to each engine's acceptable limits. Next, I'll watch for when each of my pages has been indexed (listed by the engine). All this takes a lot of effort and time, so I might consider a service like Position Agent ... http://www.positionagent.com , although it's not cheap and not all the engines are covered. Or I could try AgentWebRankingSuite... http://www.aadsoft.com/agentwebranking/ranks.htm , which is free and runs on my computer. Or, if I've built my site with SiteBuildIt!... http://buildit.sitesell.com/assist3.html , it will do all the submitting, spider-spotting, index-checking and rank- tracking for me.

I'll use this information to tweak my pages. I may adjust lower ranking pages to be more like higher ranking ones. I'll probably experiment a bit with changing keywords in META tags or playing with keyword density, maybe increasing or decreasing content. It's tedious, but I know that the engines will deliver the most traffic to my site. I'll tweak until at least half my pages are in the top ten on half the engines. Any more tweaking after that is probably pointless because the engines will occationally change their ranking formulas and things will move around, usually evening out in the long run. I'm better off adding more high-value content pages to my site than continually tweaking.

Pay-Per-Click Search Engines: I want to research and submit bids for keyword placement at Overture, Bay9.com and Findwhat among others. The most popular keywords can be expensive, but my theme-based site is working a niche and I have hundreds of less popular keywords I can bid on. Because I'm paying for clicks, I want to be sure my title and description really relate to the keyword I'm bidding on and are completely relevant to my site so that they only attract highly targeted traffic.

Major Directories: Links to directories will bring some traffic and help my link popularity. Directories don't use spiders. Real people review the pages and decide what gets listed. Luckily I've loaded my site with lots of great, single-theme-focused content. To be listed at Yahoo I need to decide if it's worh the $299 for my business listing. It's unlikely that I'll be able to submit for free, as my site will be generating income. I can submit to Open Directory for free and to Ask Jeeves by telling them what question my web page answers. I'll automatically be listed at AOL and Netscape when I submit to Open Directory.

Less effective but useful methods of promotion: First there's ""word of mouth"", which I'm certainly going to get because I'm delivering great content. Second, I'll eventually add a newsletter subscription to my site. And I'll probably use some of my great content as articles to submit to other people's ezines. Perhaps I'll do some offline advertising as well.

Once I've done most of the above, I'll analize my traffic, checking click-ins and click-throughs. I can create special tracking links to measure the success of my efforts. I'll build on what works and improve or get rid of what doesn't. I now see the beneficial results of building a theme-based site. I'm working a niche and getting highly targeted traffic. I offer my visitors valuable content and deliver them to my merchants in a ready-to-buy state of mind. My site scores with the engines, my visitors and my merchants. And all that spells WEB BUSINESS for me. Now, I think I'll kick back and start thinking about my next theme-based site.......

Trouble coming up with a theme? Maybe I can help. Send me an email. mailto:yourhelpline@mail.com

About the author: Julie Georg is a consultant to individuals and small businesses interested in establishing a web presence. Step-by-step directions for building a theme-based site can be found in the excellent, free Affiliate Masters course. Blank email mailto:tamsassist3@sitesell.net

10 Basic Search Engine Preparation Tips

Author: Detlev Reimer

While many people think it is enough to have web site to earn hundreds or thousands of dollars within a few weeks, it is much harder in reality to get people to your web site and then it is another thing to get them to buy something from you.

But that's a different story. Let's concentrate on the first aspect: Getting traffic and especially getting targeted traffic. You don't want to have cat lovers on your site when you are selling dog food, do you ?

How do you get targeted prospects ? First of all, you must know your potential customers. Who are they ? What are they looking for ? So the first thing , even before you have built your web site, is to know which keywords your prospects would search for.

It is not as hard as you might think. But if you have a general topic like I have myself with Internet Marketing, it might be a much better idea to concentrate just on one aspect of Internet Marketing.

Friend, you ask why ? Did you ever perform a search on AltaVista for the term ""Internet Marketing""? Yes ? Then you will certainly know that there about 6 million web sites competing for the top position on ""Internet Marketing"".

It is very hard, if not impossible to reach a rank in the top 10 or even the top 30 for such a general term. But if you concentrate on, let me say autoresponders, then there are a lot less pages that deal with that topic.

1.) Choosing your domain name

This means, when you order your domain name, be sure to include your keywords in your domain name. To take the example just mentioned above: If you're selling dog food, don't take a domain like www.petshop.com .

Because then people could think that you are selling cat food, bird food etc. , too. You want to target your potential customers, so your domainname would be rather something like : www.dogfood.com or similar .

So now you've designed your pages. What comes next ?

2.) Frames/no-frames

Web pages which use frames have one big disadvantage: Some search engines are not able to index them correctly. They cannot follow the links that are included on these pages and that means that they won't be able to show the results of your pages.

If you want to be on the safe side, create your web pages without using frames. There are some tricks to enable a correct indexing but this would lead too far for this time.

3.) The title of your homepage

It almost goes without saying that your title should have your keywords included as well. You should choose a title that includes your four most important keywords. If you have a site where people can learn how to write ads, you could give your page a title that has the word ads in it plus some of your other keywords.

Example : ""Writing ads: How to write ads that sell your products like crazy."" You have repeated your most important keyword ""ads"" and you have used other keywords like ""writing"", ""write"" and ""sell"".

4.) Meta tag : description

Meta tags are additional pieces of information which are placed within the HTML - code. Your description reflects the most important part of your homepage since this is the description that is shown when someone searches for your site on a search engine.

You should clearly state the benefits of visiting your site. It should be a like a little ad for your site. You should include your keywords once again but not more than twice. I'll give you an example of my own site and then it looks like this :

5.) Meta tag : keywords

The Meta tag keywords should be used to put in all your keywords that are relevant for your site . It is crucial to put your 4 most important keywords at the beginning. You can include 15 further keywords and even more .

Example :

6.) Meta tag : robots

You create a little robots.txt to let the search engine know which links it should follow. If you want to exclude certain directories, you can use special commands which forbid the search engine spiders to follow a complete path.

This can be necessary e.g. to avoid that the search engines link to your download page where you have the articles you want to sell. An example can be found below :

# robots.txt for http://www.internetmarketing-success.com/ # file created: 16.08.01 User-agent: * # Disallow: /cgi/# exclude robots from specified tree # Disallow: /scripts/

# file modified: 16.08.01

7.) Keyword density

Your main keyword should be mentioned within the first 8 words of your body text and can be mentioned 3 times more. The other keywords should not be forgotten, too. Try to use them at least 3 times in your text.

8.) Alt-tags for your images

Alt-tags are alternative descriptions for your pictures. If you move your mouse-cursor over your pictures, you can see this alternative text. This text is also shown if a picture is not loaded correctly. Use your keywords to describe your pictures.

9.) No tricks like white text on white background !

Some people consider themselves to be very smart and they want to outwit the search engines by putting a lot of their keywords with a font in the background colour on their pages to make it more relevant to the engines.

But times have changed : The search engines recognize these tricks and as a result your pages are banned from their index. Try just to do what is necessary but don't use tricks, it won't do you no good.

10.) Link-Popularity

Many search engines like AltaVista have a new ranking concept which includes link-popularity. This means, the more pages have a link to your site, the better your site gets ranked.

Some of them have also made special deals with pay- per-click search engines. Those sites which rank on the top 3 will also get a high rank at ""normal"" search engines.

About the author: Article by Detlev Reimer. Feel free to use the article with these bylines included. Detlev has just finished creating his first product, a database program for Internet marketers which will help you to save and organize e.g. your advertising, customer and contact data. For further details, please visit : http://www.promobuddy.com/ . Sign up for his newsletter at http://www.internetmarketing-success.com/ .

Optimizing Frames for Search Engines

Author: Dale Goetsch

Background

Because of the way framed web pages are created, search engine robots have a difficult time spidering sites built in frames. As a general rule, search engine robots are not very good at executing client-side code, and framed pages are ""built"" on the client side. The best way to make a website accessible to the robots is to take it out of frames, but what can be done if the site absolutely must remain in frames?

How frames are built

Typically the ""framing"" page--the page that includes the tags--does not contain any links to the rest of the website; rather, it contains only information necessary for the browser to construct the framed pages.

SuperWidget XYZ from XYZ

Figure 1--index.html: the ""framing"" page

The framing page loads the files named in the tags into the frames defined in the framing page. In our example, they look like this:

Navbar Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Figure 2--navbar.html

Page 1 Welcome to XYZ, home of the new and improved SuperWidget XYZ. We have the best widgets available anywhere today, and at half the price of most leading widgets! Figure 3--page1.html

What if you can't do frames? Unfortunately, most robots cannot navigate through this page. They do not understand the tags, and are unable to move through this page to the pages ""navbar.html"" or ""page1.html"". Without being able to move through here, there is literally nothing of interest for the robot to index, so there will really be no information in a search engine listing, if the site is listed at all.

The section

One of the tricks that was incorporated into HTML with the advent of frames was the recognition that a page may be accessed by older browsers that are incapable of rendering framed pages: they literally cannot understand the tag. This is why there also exists the tag. This then allows users on browsers that are not frames-enabled to at least see something on a website. Typically, the section is wasted on a message telling the user to get a newer browser, thus:

SuperWidget XYZ from XYZ

This web site must be viewed using a frames-capable web browser. Your web browser, however, is not capable of displaying frames. Figure 4--index.html with added section

This page now has information that the robot can spider and include in the search engine database. Unfortunately, you will now be known as the website with the content:

This web site must be viewed using a frames-capable web browser. Your web browser, however, is not capable of displaying frames. Figure 5--search engine listing with poor text

Text in section This is probably not what you want your potential visitors to see when they look in the search engine listings. Since the robot can spider at least this page, it only makes sense to put your best foot forward and put some real content into the section. That way, your search engine listing will actually tell something about your site, rather than just annoy people because they choose to use a browser that doesn't do frames.

SuperWidget XYZ from XYZ

Welcome to XYZ, home of the new and improved SuperWidget XYZ. We have the best widgets available anywhere today, and at half the price of most leading widgets! Figure 6--index.html with better text

This is a dramatic improvement, because we now have real content on the page that the robot can read and include in the search engine database. You have now upgraded your search engine listing to this:

Welcome to XYZ, home of the new and improved SuperWidget XYZ. We have the best widgets available anywhere today, and at half the price of most leading widgets! Figure 7--search engine listing with better text

Unfortunately, this is still not enough.

Navigation in section Most websites comprise multiple pages. Even though you may have a lot of navigation links in your navbar.html file, the robot will never see it. That means that if you want the robot to crawl the rest of your site, you will need to give it some links in the section of the page. To duplicate the navbar functionality, you will need to add those links to the text, like this:

SuperWidget XYZ from XYZ

Welcome to XYZ, home of the new and improved SuperWidget XYZ. We have the best widgets available anywhere today, and at half the price of most leading widgets!

Page 1 Page 2 Page 3

Figure 8--index.html with added hyperlinks

Now you have the best of both worlds: you have text that the robot can grab, and you also have links that the robot can follow to access the rest of your site. As long as you have links to all of the pages on your website that you want the robot to access, you are home free now, search engine-wise. The robot follows the link to the file ""page2.html"", for example, and indexes the text on that page. How useful this newly-indexed content is to your visitor is now up to you.

Why is site framed?

People use framed sites for a number of reasons: ease in navigation, uniform appearance throughout a site, keeping your company name front-and-center, and so on. In other words, there is probably a reason why you wanted to display the pages on your site (file1.html, file2.html, file3.html) within the frames designated in the ""framing"" page. Your search engine entries, however, will not keep the pages in this configuration--remember that the robot didn't do frames, so the search engine database knows nothing of frames now either. That means the hyperlink created in the search engine listing will load only the individual page (file2.html), and not put it in its overall context. That's not what you wanted, or you would have designed the site that way!

Loading page into frames

In order to force the user's browser to load a given page into the framed environment that you wanted, you must employ some JavaScript sleight-of-hand. Specifically, you need to make each page aware that it wants to load only within the frames that you have designed. This is a two-step process that involves placing some JavaScript code in each page on the site.

Individual pages

For each of the individual pages, you need to add an awareness whether they are loaded into a frame, or sitting by themselves as an individual document in the browser window. This is accomplished by adding the following JavaScript to the page, typically within the HEAD section:

Figure 9--JavaScript for individual pages

You will replace some of the parameters here with names more appropriate to your situation:

replace ""frameset.html"" with the name of the page on your site that has the tags in it replace ""right"" with the name of the frame on the frameset page into which you want to load the current page Let's implement this for the page ""page1.html"", which we want loaded into the frame named ""right"" that is defined in the framing page ""index.html"". Remember to add your meta tags and give the page a meaningful title. Note the substitutions referenced above.

SuperWidget from XYZ

Page 1 This is Page 1 of the XYZ site, home of the new and improved SuperWidget XYZ. We have the best widgets available anywhere today, and at half the price of most leading widgets! Figure 10--individual page with JavaScript added

The ""framing"" page

For the ""framing"" page, there are two additional pieces of JavaScript that must be added. The first is a JavaScript function that is placed in the section of the page:

There are no substitutions in this code. Place it exactly as shown.

The other piece of code that must be placed is an ""onLoad"" event handler, that is placed in the tag, like this:

Figure 12--onLoad code for ""framing"" page

Remember that your frameset may have ""cols"" or ""rows"" attributes, and the numbers may vary. When we have it all together, the completed ""framing"" page will now look like this:

SuperWidget XYZ from XYZ

cols=""20%,80%"" onLoad=""loadDoc()"">

Welcome to XYZ, home of the new and improved SuperWidget XYZ. We have the best widgets available anywhere today, and at half the price of most leading widgets!

Page 1

Page 2

Page 3 Figure 13--all components placed in ""framing"" page

Completion

Once you have made these changes for the ""framing"" page and all of the individual pages, you are now ready for the search engine robots to visit your site. They will be able to access all of the pages in your site, and when your visitors click on your listing in the search engines, your individual pages will load in the way you designed them to work.

About the author: Dale Goetsch is the Technical Consultant for Search Innovation (www.searchinnovation.com), a Search Engine Promotion company serving small businesses and non-profits. He has over twelve years experience in software development. Along with programming in Perl, JavaScript, ASP and VB, he is adept at technical writing and editing.

A Visit with FindWhat.com CEO, Craig Pisaris-Henderson

Author: Robin Nobles

The Chairman and CEO of FindWhat.com (http://www.findwhat.com), Craig Pisaris-Henderson, recently attended a chat session and visited with Academy students regarding the FindWhat.com performance-based advertising network.

This enlightening chat shed light on one of the leading pay-for-performance advertising providers (providing keyword-targeted text ads to search engines and other large portals) and offered tips for achieving better results when purchasing keywords.

Craig began by giving some background information on FindWhat.com.

"FindWhat.com.com is a leading performance-based marketing company that introduces buyers and sellers online. We allow advertisers to bid on keywords, and then we distribute those keywords to over 200 distribution partners. We serve approximately 1 billion searches per month and handle well over 700,000 transactions per day. We have 20,000 plus advertisers from all over the world."

Craig is one of the founders of FindWhat.com, and as a result of his strong dedication to developing FindWhat.com, he was recently chosen as one of the nominees for the 2002 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

Craig answered the following questions from Academy students.

Question:

One billion is a very large number. How much of that comes from the US?

Craig:

We concentrate on the US marketplace at this point, so to put a percentage on it, I would say 95+% comes from the US.

Question:

What is your vision for FindWhat.com? What are we going to experience in 2003?

Craig:

I've been hinting around on several earnings calls that we were looking at both international initiatives and diversifying our primary traffic (distribution partners). I would say both are strong possibilities for 2003.

Question:

Are there any major partners (in North America) that you could hint about?

Craig:

We recently announced a new relationship with Terra Lycos. We are providing a turnkey keyword advertising service to both Lycos and HotBot Web properties. They brand and sell the service, and we provide our complete private label product comprised of the keyword-targeted pay-for-performance ad service, account manager interface, and customer service.

Question:

My company just opened an account with you. Is there any way to automate our system for bidding purposes?

Craig:

We do offer several automated functions but have not focused on automating the bidding process for several reasons. For example, if you have multiple bidders with a high ""cap"" and the system automatically increases bids, then you would have artificial increases that give an unfair advantage to larger companies since they have larger budgets. This has recently been seen in other systems that have introduced such functions.

There are many other reasons, but the important thing to understand about FindWhat.com is that we are focused on keeping a ""fair playing field" for all advertisers. We feel there are many different ways to market a product online. But to date, there has not been a ""fair"" way for thousands and thousands of advertisers to participate. Again, we are focused on helping advertisers of all sizes rather than the ones with the largest budgets.

We feel that in the long run, this will build a larger and stronger company.

Question:

What are your recommendations for a beginner pay-per-click client at FindWhat.com? For example, strategy, budget, etc.?

Craig:

Concentrate on your keywords and descriptions. Give our reps a call. As I mentioned earlier, we serve over 1 billion searches per month, so if you want to get traffic, you need to be identified by the user as a site that has the product they are looking for.

Question:

When bidding on your keywords, does FindWhat.com have an auto bid function to help reduce bid gaps between the #1 and #2 position?

Craig:

We implemented several functions that help eliminate the gaps you are mentioning. But if you really want to keep tabs on it, we suggest you log in frequently or contract a bid management company.

We do have a BidOptimizer feature, which will allow you to choose the position you wish your keywords to obtain (positions 1 through 5) within the FindWhat.com results. This feature also allows you to put in a maximum bid price. If, for example, the keyword you wished to have the number one position had a current bid price of $1.00, the BidOptimizer would put your bid to $1.01, unless you had a max bid price of less than a dollar. In that case, it would put your bid at one penny over the next possible bid position, within your cap limit.

Question:

In your opinion, what are the top three mistakes made by new users?

Craig:

The top three are: 1) They do not focus on the keywords that are actually delivering the ROI. 2) They do not focus on an accurate description. 3) They let their account run out of money over the weekend when we experience heavy usage.

Comment:

I just wanted to add that my company has been a FindWhat.com customer for a couple of years now and I really do love FindWhat.com and have placed many sites with FindWhat.com instead of other pay engines.

Craig:

But do not sell the others short. This is a dynamic sector and other companies do have benefits.

Question:

Does FindWhat.com have some kind of keyword tool to determine which are the popular keywords?

Craig:

Yes, in our keyword center. You can also call one of our reps and they will assist you in picking out the best keywords for your site. The keyword center is in our account manager section -- you need an account to access it.

Question:

I filled out an application for your affiliate program the other day and was told it would be reviewed. How long does that typically take?

Craig:

Anywhere between 1 to 5 days. We get a lot of apps but are very selective on who we partner with. If you have any questions, call 888-882-3178 and ask for the Business Development Division.

Question:

Craig, is your BusinessBuilder a new offering? What has the response been? Is the $25 a cap (limit 2500 keywords or 500 URLs, whichever comes first), and one can increase the ""pot"" or if not, it stops the bids at $25/month?

Craig:

We've had the BusinessBuilder product for quite some time. The response has been fairly good, but it is not something we push. We would rather assist as much as possible rather than push someone into a paid service if they do not need it. BusinessBuilder itself is a one-on-one consultation service for those who either don't have time to put together their own keyword ad campaign or are unfamiliar with keyword-targeted text ads.

$25/month is the minimum amount we allow a person to open an account with. The entire $25 is applied to click-throughs, so really there is no fee per se. As you can imagine, we do not have a max!

Question:

Let's say you're in top 10 for a particular keyword. Is it better to place a FindWhat.com bid on that term anyway, or to maximize for lesser keywords?

Craig:

You need to make the call. If the listing is getting the ROI you desire, than I would concentrate on other keywords. But if the listing is not getting the desired number of clicks and your ROI is high on that keyword, then I would focus my resources there. There is no blanket answer. It really depends on your results.

Question:

Are there resources for learning more about strategy?

Craig:

I think you are participating in the best one on the Web right now – the Academy of Web Specialists' online training programs (http://www.onlinewebtraining.com/courses.html).

Question:

Could you tell us more about FindWhat.com's relationship with Lycos?

Craig:

Our relationship with Lycos is the first of its kind. We have developed a new private label initiative that we are offering to the largest portals. Lycos is the first to launch. Basically it puts the largest portals in business for themselves, allowing advertisers to pick and choose who they want traffic from rather than all of the traffic getting lumped together.

As we all know, all traffic is not equal. We feel over the next few years, the largest portals will have their own service, and we intend on helping them do it.

Question:

Could you tell us a few of your 200+ partners?

Craig:

Sure... Lycos - HotBot - Webcrawler - Excite - Metacrawler - CNet -Dogpile. More information can be found at our site at -http://www.findwhat.com/content/pressreleases.asp. And, since we are a NASDAQ company, you can find more info by looking under our symbol: FWHT.

Question:

Is it still important to focus on the top three results?

Craig:

It really depends on the results one is getting. Some people get the ROI they are looking for at lower levels. But since some distribution partners only show three listings, it helps to concentrate on the top three.

Question:

What is the best way to measure ROI?

Craig:

It depends on what you are looking for when a user clicks. If you want sales, then the best way to look at it is what are your "sales to click" conversion.

In Conclusion

FindWhat.com (http://www.findwhat.com) is one of the more popular keyword-targeted performance-based text advertising services, and you'll generally be able to pay less for keywords purchased there versus at some of the other pay engines and still see good results. With over 200 partners displaying FindWhat.com results, it's an excellent choice when considering where to purchase keywords.

FindWhat.com has partnered with the Academy to offer Academy students up to 3,500 qualified visitors to their sites for only $25! For more information, visit: http://www.onlinewebtraining.com/findwhat_offer.html

About the author: Robin Nobles, Director of Training, Academy of Web Specialists, (http://www.academywebspecialists.com) has trained several thousand people in her online search engine marketing courses (http://www.onlinewebtraining.com). She also teaches 2-, 3-, and 5-day hands-on, search engine marketing workshops in locations across the globe with Search Engine Workshops (http://www.searchengineworkshops.com).

Using Meta Tags wisely to attract search engines & visitors.

Author: Rajesh V. Tavakari

Using Meta Tags wisely to attract search engines & visitors. by Rajesh V. Tavakari http://www.website-promotion-ranking-services.com There are certain tricks and techniques in SEO industry, which can fetch you real quick and top ranking in short run and get banned for ever, which I am discussing in this article. Before optimizing any site, always follow code of ethics and never spam.

In this article, I will be discussing about meta tags. How to use the them effectively without spamming. Its not just another article about meta tags. Read on to find out more.. Meta Tags are very important for your website's visibility. Many search engines read them from your site when you submit it to them. META tags were developed and made a HTML standard for the purpose of addressing specific information about your web page that does not affect the way your page actually looks.

1. Overstuffing Metatags : Believe me or not , there are still many people and web masters around who think that meta tags are magic bullet. Its not anymore. Mistake No. 1 : Stuffing keywords in Title Mistake No. 1 : Stuffing keywords in Description Mistake No. 1 : The keyword tag.

Mistake No. 1 : Stuffing keywords in Title I agree that its very important to include your main keywords in title tag. But there are certain things, which you should remember, as title tag is the most important tag. · Title tag length should be within 70 characters or 8 words · Title tag should be meaning full and attract visitors · Use one to two keywords in title tag · Use plurals & concentrate on keyword phrases rather than just keyword. · Make sure that title tag is grammatically correct

Syntax of Title Tag :

Your site title goes here

Now, lets me show you live demo on Title tag. Please search for ""Office furniture uk"" in Google, without double quotes. See the results. This is the first site listed under Google.

Office Furniture Home UK, Home Office Furniture London, Home ... Office Furniture UK Online Home Office and Small Office Shopping England, London, UK. Furniture, Office, Seat, Seating, Desk, Desks ... Description: Uses full screen flash with exit button. Offering bespoke office furniture solutions for businesses....

Welcome to furniture123 - Bedroom furniture, Office furniture, ... ... desk uk, child bed, home office furniture, child furniture, dining furniture, coffee table, office chair, furniture retailer, upholstery uk, bathroom furniture ...

Welcome to - Blueline Furniture - Ergonomic furniture, Custom ... ... has pioneered the manufacture of office furniture using timber ... FIRA GOLD Quality Award as its furniture hire, minimum ... dealer network across the UK and Channel ...

MFI.co.uk UK's leading furniture retailer offering an extensive range of quality furniture, including home office furniture, bedroom furniture, dining furniture, beds ...

These are the above first 4 results arrived for the term ""Office furniture UK"" in google. Now have a look over title and description. The first title does not make any sense and its stuffed with keywords, though its ranking no.1 it would have less click thorough as compared to no 2 and no 3. A fair and attractive title would be something like : Offers quality office furniture at discount price in UK ( Short title ) UK's leading furniture retailer offering office furniture at discount ( Perfect one ) Look at the above two titles. It conveys some message with a perfect sense. The best possible keywords have been used and its catchy too. Just by crafting a good title you can increase your click through, even though you are not listed in top 1 or 2 positions. I hope now you must have got some idea about crafting good title. Now lets jump to next step. Yeah. Description Tag.

Description Tag : Description tag is still important as most of the search engines still give importance to it. Sometimes even google picks up description tag. An ideal description should be somewhere within 150 to 200 characters, which correctly describes the content of the page. Make sure to place 2 to 3 important keyword phrases within first 100 characters. Tip 1 : Make sure that description tag comes immediately after title tag. Tip 2. Make sure that the first paragraph or the heading of the page contains 2 to 3 important keyword phrase. Tip 3. If possible you the targeted keyword phrase in text links to get boost. Things to avoid : 1. Do not stuff the description tag with keywords. 2. Do not use generic keywords, use keyword phrases 3. Do not repeat the title in description

Keyword Tag : The keyword tag is almost dead. Most of the web masters try to flood the key word tag with all sorts of keywords. Hardly couple of search engines gives a bit of importance to it. Please note that, directories like Yahoo, Dmoz & About does not consider keyword tag or meta tags. I do not recommend using keyword tag. If you use the keyword tag, do not include more than 8 keyword phrases. Do's 1. Include only important long keyword phrases. 2. Don't use generic / general terms. Be specific 3. Use Word tracker to find good keyword phrases Don'ts 1. Do not spam by stuffing all the possible keywords. 2. Do not include the keywords, which are not related to your website 3. Do not repeat any tag ( title, description, keyword tag ) you might get boost by repeating, but never know when you will be banned.

Other important things to remember : 1. Meta tags ( Title & Description ) should reflect the content the page. Do not put your company name in title. 2. Do not try to target more than 2 to 3 keyword phrases per page 3. Try to include your important keyword phrases in h1 to h6 tag. 4. Include your important keyword phrases in tag, bold tag. 5. You will get boost if you include your important keyword phrases in anchor tag. 6. Do not forget to Include your important keyword phrases in first paragraph of your web page. 7. Try to put your important keyword phrases in alt text. ( for images ) 8. Make sure that title and description is crafted neatly and attracts both visitors and search engines.

Robots (Recommended) See the workshop report at W3 for the full text.

default = empty = ""ALL"" ""NONE"" = ""NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW"" The filler is a comma separated list of terms: ALL, NONE, INDEX, NOINDEX, FOLLOW, NOFOLLOW. Discussion: This tag is meant to provide users who cannot control the robots.txt file at their sites. It provides a last chance to keep their content out of search services. It was decided not to add syntax to allow robot specific permissions within the meta-tag. INDEX means that robots are welcome to include this page in search services. FOLLOW means that robots are welcome to follow links from this page to find other pages. So a value of ""NOINDEX"" allows the subsidiary links to be explored, even though the page is not indexed. A value of ""NOFOLLOW"" allows the page to be indexed, but no links from the page are explored (this may be useful if the page is a free entry point into pay-per-view content, for example. A value of ""NONE"" tells the robot to ignore the page.

Conclusion

There are other meta tags like, Author, language, Copyright, Re-visit, classification etc. which are ignored by most of the search engines. Experience says, use the three tags wisely ( title, description & keywords ). You will be attracting both visitors and search engines.

For more information or any comments / suggestion on this article please EMail me . I will be glad to clarify the doubts / queries with live examples.

Author : Rajesh V. Tavakari is SEO Specialist of Website Promotion & Ranking Services, an Internet Marketing firm specializing in Website promotion & Website optimization. URL : http://www.website-promotion-ranking-services.com

You may freely reprint this article on your website or in your newsletter provided this courtesy notice and the author name and URL remain intact.

About the author: Author : Rajesh V. Tavakari is SEO Specialist of Website Promotion & Ranking Services, an Internet Marketing firm specializing in Website promotion & Website optimization. URL : http://www.website-promotion-ranking-services.com

Portal Marketing

Author: Shannan Hearne-Fortner

The goal of every good marketing campaign is to reach its ""target market"". Whether that be new or existing customers, entire or niche markets, to promote the company as a whole or a specific product; the measurement of a marketing campaign's success is how well the target market is reached. And how well the target market responds.

Advertisers spend tremendous amounts of time, money, and effort determining demographics of target markets to best aim their ad campaigns. Sometimes more market research is performed than the entire time the product being prepared for market spent in research and development.

Large market survey companies have evolved to assist advertisers in this process. Many pay participants for their opinions to gain wide and valid data regarding responses to products and their advertising messages.

At the same time, publishers, broadcasters, cable companies and a whole other host of folks who sell advertising time or space perform similar demographic research to better assist advertisers in reaching their ""target markets"". They note which shows are most watched, which columns are most read, which drive times are most listened to. They record which population segments are receiving these audio, video, and printed messages.

All this information is combined to provide a better opportunity for advertisers to get their targeted marketing message to their target market.

On the internet, there is an additional way to target your marketing message. The internet has changed numerous facets of the marketing world. Thanks to the speed with which information can be gathered and then re-distributed, the internet has even changed the way we view marketing information. Whole new terms for marketing and advertising have evolved: spam, mass email, pop up and pop under windows, exit windows, banner exchanges, and more. Do you notice that all these terms have a negative connotation to the internet user? Not so with the topic of today's article.

Portal Marketing is the development of advertising messages which are displayed to very targeted groups of internet users.

First, you have to understand what a portal website is. Portals are webpages that serve as mini-directories on very targeted subjects. Portals may be made up of specific groups of web sites who are paying for their advertising or listing on the portal site, or they may be made up of web sites added by the portal owner because he or she felt they were of value to other internet users interested in the portal's topic. Or they might be made up of a combination of both.

Portals do not attempt to catalogue the entire internet. Portals are much like the hub or center of a wagon wheel. They are a jumping off point for links or spokes to numerous web resources on a like subject.

So what does that mean for the advertiser?

Portal sites are very targeted sites to disseminate your marketing message. They are recognized as valuable resources to the demographic groups you are trying to reach. They are ranked high in numerous search engines because they do a fantastic job of playing the link popularity game. They also are only too happy to have you marketing within their walls.

How do you market on a portal site?

Very much the same way that you market on any internet web site. You can purchase banner advertising or text links. You can provide valuable content to the portal site and therefore often times get your marketing message out by way of a byline or a link free of charge. You can participate in the community. You can sponsor contests or moderate forums or chat boards. Virtually anything you do on a relevant portal site will fall under the category of marketing. Because any way in which you make your presence heard, seen, or felt you are reaching your target market.

There are portal web sites for just about anything you could want. http://www.primmart.com is a portal site for primitive and rustic shopping. http://www.mommyportal.com is a portal site for mom business marketing. http://www.moneymakingmommy.com is a portal site for work at home opportunities. http://www.wahm.com is a portal site for work at home mom resources on everything under the sun. http://www.thenetworkforwomen.com is a portal site of all things of interest to women on the internet. http://www.i-Cop.org is a portal site for businesses on the internet who have made an effort to police themselves and each other, providing internet shoppers and consumers with superior service every time. Even the category pages within The Open Directory Project http://www.dmoz.com are in effect portal sites. A brand new portal site for moms doing business on the internet is http://www.internetbasedmoms.com.

If you want to find a portal site on which you can begin doing targeted advertising, run a search. Because of their high link popularity status, a great search engine to use is Google.com

What if, unthinkable though it might be, a portal web site doesn't exist that reaches your target market?

The answer is so easy I can hardly believe you would ask. Start one!

Internet real estate is still the best buy going. Find a relevant domain name that is available. Register it. Host it. And build it. Shazaam. You are now in a position to portal market.

But how do I build a portal?

Compile relevant resources for people and build a site around it. As traffic levels grow you will be able to sell advertising space. But remember that whether the portal site itself ever actually turns a profit or not, it is still the cheapest and most targeted advertising space available.

What are the added bonuses for setting up your own portal site to use as a marketing tool?

Much like publishing an ezine or writing articles, you are continuing to build yourself as a leader and knowledge base in your field. And that is probably the most powerful marketing of all!

About the author: Shannan Hearne-Fortner is the President and Wizard of http://www.SuccessPromotions.com Marketing Your e-Business Better through creative marketing and knowledge. Guerrilla Marketing. One-to-One Marketing. Relationship Marketing. Your Marketing.

How to detect Search Engine Friendly Directories

Author: Osan Mundae

Directories serve two purposes in your web development efforts.

One, a link from a directory is counted as a back link and hence increases your link popularity. Two, some directories

will send you targeted traffic.

Webmasters who use directories for increasing link popularity

should check out the directory first to see if the directory

is SE friendly or not as, only a SE friendly directory will

give value for their links.

So, how do you detect a SE friendly directory? Here are some

tips, which will help you do so.

1) Check the url format of the directory. Some directories

have urls in the format http://sitename//index.php?id=1&c=10...

for their category pages. This is called a dynamic link and

search engines find it difficult to crawl such pages.

Urls for the category pages should be in a static format.

Example : http://www.indexbizz.com/cat1.html . Search engines

can easily crawl such pages and your link will also get crawled.

2) Your link should not be a JavaScript link. Some directories

use JavaScript to jump to your site from their category pages.

Search engines find it difficult to crawl such links.

3) The directory must not ban search engine robots from crawling

the category pages. You can check whether such a condition exists

or not by looking at the robots.txt file of the directory. This

file is located at the root level of the directory. To see this

file just type robots.txt after the domain name of the directory.

Find out what this file is saying, for example -

User-agent: *

Disallow:

This will allow all SE bots to all the folders and files in the

directory.

User-agent: *

Disallow: /

This will keep all SE bots away from all files/ folders in the

directory.

User-agent: *

Disallow: /mydirectory/

This will keep away all SE bots from crawling the 'mydirectory'

directory and all files under it.

So be wise in your selection of SE friendly directories, and put

your efforts towards getting links from such directories that

fulfill the above conditions.

About the author: Osan Mundae writes for http://www.indexbizz.com/

Engines and Spiders and Surfers, Oh My!

Author: Aimee Cremasco

(Why search engine optimization is alive, well, and kicking – and as crucial as ever to the success and profitability of your business)

By Aimee Cremasco, President, Word Associates

"If you build it, they will come…"

"If you build it, they will come…"

While this is a great line from one of my all time favorite movies, "Field of Dreams," it is frighteningly also a principle that far too many web site owners inexplicably live by.

Let's face it. In the world of online marketing, "building it" means nothing. The new mantra must be "If you PROMOTE it, they will come."

So what's the best way to promote it?

Virtually all credible third party statistics would suggest search engine optimization.

Consider the following statistics, courtesy of www.GuaranteedTopRankings.com:

·In a study released by ActivMedia Research, Search Engine Positioning was ranked the #1 web site promotional method used by eCommerce sites.

·Search engines create more awareness about Web sites than all advertising combined including banners, newspapers, TV and radio (IMT Strategies, a division of the Meta Group). The cold, hard truth is that if you're not successfully optimizing your site (and if it's not search engine friendly), you're losing hundreds and thousands of hits from the very people you most want to visit your site – people who demonstrate a serious desire for what you have to offer, by proactively typing keywords related to YOUR business into the engines. So what SEO (search engine optimization) techniques are working and producing results in 2003? While an entire book is probably needed to fully answer this question, here are a few useful components of search engine friendly sites:

·Less is more—avoid using frames, java script and database-driven text. ·Professional copywriting ·Keyword-rich text (in your tags as well) will make or break your site.

Simply put, here's what search engines do. They have "robots" that scour the Internet and gather up standard keywords, titles and descriptions. This knowledge is a powerful tool for webmasters, giving them some control over how their pages are ranked, which in turn determines how they appear in the search results.

We can't stress enough that content is king! The single most important aspect of your web site is how and where you've placed keywords and phrases — and which keywords you've chosen for your keyword tag. Think about what your prospects would type into a search box of an engine to find you. Those should be your keywords. The description tag follows closely on the heels of keywords, as it helps engines determine if the site is relevant to the search.

The page title tag is next in line of importance. It influences where your web site will rank within an engine. Keep it down to a maximum of 60 characters (including spaces), and place it at the top of the HTML code between and .

Search engines also use hyperlink popularity to determine your ranking. This means that it's important to have as many links to and from as many other sites as you possibly can. Talk with other reputable web sites —that relate in some way to yours —about a link-swap campaign, wherein each of you will provide a link to the other's site. The bonus to this is that each time someone visits this web site, they'll see the link to your web site, which can increase your traffic results.

Needless to say, search engine submission is vital to your online campaign as well. Your primary focus should be getting listed with the top 20 search engines, which are the most heavily trafficked. More than 97% of all search engine traffic comes from the 20 most popular engines and directories. Once you've accomplished that, you can move on to some of the smaller engines. Being listing with the little guys will actually help boost your rankings with the bigger guys.

Why focus specifically on the top 20 placements? Rarely will anyone look any further — and if your prospects don't find what they're looking for in those first 20 spots (and what they're looking for is you), they'll simply try again with a different search.

As the public becomes more educated about the importance of SEO, the competition for top-20 rankings becomes fierce. If your web site is not search engine friendly, better step to it —without one, you'll be left in the dust… leaving your competitors to snatch up what could have been your profits!

If you're thinking that getting these elusive top 20 placements on your own seems quite daunting (if not downright impossible), I don't blame you. Which is why a wise and logical investment for many businesses is to outsource this important task to a full service SEO firm who makes it their full time business to optimize sites and achieve top placements. After all, shouldn't you let your SEO expert worry about these arcane (but very important) issues; and focus your own time where it's most valuable…growing your business and serving your customers?

About the author: Aimee Cremasco founded Word Associates in 1999. She has been writing for various industries online, and has experienced many SEO companies. Aimee recommends GuaranteedTopRankings.com, to all her clients. Aimee is not compensated for this recommendation; it comes solely from complete satisfaction in working with GuaranteedTopRankings.com due to their level of professionalism and up to the minute SEO knowledge.