THEMES...The Next Evolution of Search Engine Optimization

Author: John Buchanan

Themes...many cringe at the mere word, being taken back to a time of term papers and book reports, however, in the field of search engine optimization and search engine positioning, ""themes"" are beginning to play a CRUCIAL role in the long term success of online businesses.

So what exactly are ""themes"" and why are they becoming so important?

To understand this we have to look at why the search engines implemented this new indexing technique.

With the incredible growth of the web, the search engines are constantly look for new and better ways to serve up relevant results while still maintaining a manageable database.

They have implemented filters to get rid of duplicate content and invisible text. They have reduced the importance or stopped indexing META tags completely as well as many other tags, and still they have been falling behind.

They have begun counting click-thru's, added link popularity and link quality to their ranking algorithms and much more and still find themselves falling behind.

This has led to the new concept of ""themes"".

Theme indexing takes into account most of what I previously mentioned, but instead of looking at each page as an individual entity, it takes the ""theme"" of the entire site into account.

An engine that incorporates ""themes"" into its ranking system, looks at the content as well as theme of the page, the overall theme of the site, the link popularity of the site, as well as what other sites are ""saying"" about that particular site. All these factors put together determine the ""theme"" of the site and page and thereby the ranking of the page in question. The narrower and more focused the theme of a site, the better the site will rank in regards to a matching search term.

Now trust me, this is an extremely simplified description of themes but my goal here is not to go into the technology behind it but it's impact on search engine optimization and positioning in general.

More and more search engines are incorporating the use of themes to at least some extent into their ranking systems, and because of this, it is crucial that any webmaster who wants to continue to succeed on the internet understand themes and how to use them to his or her advantage.

Now that we understand a bit about themes, the question becomes how does it affect you and your web site.

Quite simply, it means that we have to reevaluate the way in which we design our sites. The days of the all-purpose site are quickly coming to an end.

Think about it. If you offer a wide range of different products and/or services, when a theme indexing engine visits your site, what will it determine to be the overall theme of your site?

If a visiting engine can't determine a specific theme for your site you will have little or no hope of coming up well for the search terms you are shooting for.

To thrive in this new world of search engine technology, you must be able to describe the content or ""theme"" of your site in two words and three at the VERY most.

Can you do that? Can you describe the content of your entire site in two words?

If not, you need to begin rethinking the focus of your site. You might consider splitting your site into separate sites. Using the same look and feel for each site, only different domains for the different categories of your site. In this way, your visitors will still feel as if they are on the same site, but the engines will see different sites, each with their own ""theme"".

If you can describe the focus of your site in two or three words your already well on your way to having a very themes friendly site.

The next step should be your homepage. The homepage of your site should focus on the overall, two word theme of your site. The same two words you used to describe your site. These should be the focus of your homepage.

All of the subpages on your site, should focus on a narrower version of the same theme you targeted on your homepage using an extension of the same two word description of your site. If your two word description was ""computer hardware"", then your subpages should focus on keyphrases such as ""ibm computer hardware"", ""toshiba computer hardware"" etc.

The key is to always have the same two word description as part of the focus of your subpages. This keeps the overall theme of the site pure and focused, and easily picked up by a visiting engine.

A good example of an implementation of this would be an electronics store. A smart owner of an online electronics store would give each section of his store its own domain name. This could include a domain specifically for cell phones, another for televisions, another for stereos, etc. In doing this, he could then focus individual pages within each domain on specific types of those devices.

Let's look at an example.

Primary domain - www.daves-electronics-store.com

cell phone domain - www.daves-cell-phones.com

cell phone subpages: nokia-cell-phones.html motorola-cell-phones.html ericcson-cell-phones.html etc.

stereo domain - www.daves-stereos.com

stereo subpages: panasonic-stereos.html aiwa-stereos.html sony-stereos.html etc.

televisions domain - www.daves-televisions.com

televisions subpages: toshiba-televisions.html big-screen-televisions.html sony-televisions.html etc.

As you can see buy using the above technique you can focus the overall theme of each web site. The cell phone portion of the site may deal with different types of cell phones on each page, but the overall theme is still ""cell phones"" because this phrase would be found on each and every page.

When dealing with a themes based engine, focus is key. If all other things are equal, the site that is most focused around the specific search term, will come up on top.

About the author: John Buchanan is the author of the book ""The Insider's Guide to Dominating The Search Engines"", and publisher of ""The Search Engine Bulletin"", a FREE monthly newsletter. Visit him at http://www.se-secrets.com for more information or to sign up for the newsletter.

Keyword Advice - on keyword research and identification, keyword placement, keyword density and keyword marketing:-

Author: Thomson Chemmanoor

Keyword Identification is one of the most important part in a SEO process. Keywords are the doors and windows for search engine traffic. Surfers and information seekers through out the world use internet via keyword to find information on any products or services. These set of keyword phrases are vital for your search engine placement.

Keyword Identification is the first step while creating your content for your site. Identify keyword related to your niche topics should be the first priority while creating web content. The quality of these keywords is critical for a good ranking in search engines. Researching the right keywords for your website should be the key, so that when people perform a search for a particular keyword phrase they will be able to find your site. So how do you do that will be the questions in everybody's mind. I have categories this article into 3 phrases like keyword research or keyword identification, keyword selection,

keyword placement , keyword density, keyword ranking and keyword marketing.

Before I would go further I would like to discuss about building your website for your business you should focus on certain other SEO strategies like clean navigation, a search engine friendly website architecture so that search engine spiders or robots can easily gather information from your website.

Once your site structure is done it is time to create the content for the site, which is the crucial part and where they keyword research, keyword density comes into play. If you follow these steps which I have mentioned below it is sure that your website can enjoy a higher ranking in search engines.

Step 1 Keyword Identification or keyword research:- This should be first step while building your content, because your content will be build around with the keyword and phrases which has been identified at this stage. Which is very critical and if not done correctly you won't achieve the desired results. There are different ways to identify how people search on the web. 1) Think about what keyword would you chooses while you search for certain products or services. Think from the customer point of view and not from search engine or

SEO point of view. Collect and write it down. I suggest using a spreadsheet so that it will help you in the stages as well. 2) The other way is you can ask your own customers or friends that how do they search on the net to find that particular products or services. Usually all people think differently and might not use the same keyword phrase to find that product or services. Collect them and store it. 3) Keyword suggestion tools. There are 100's of tools on the web some of them are free and other charge a fee. I suggest using Overture keyword tool and Google keyword tool (free) and wordtracker (paid). Type in your keyword and phrases into these tools you will find 100's of keywords for that particular products or services is been search on the web every month. Also it will show how many times that words are been searched on the internet. Tools like wordtracker will help you to find that how many times these keywords are been searched and how much competition is there for that particular keyword phrases. If you focus on high searched keyword it would be hard for your website to rank well because of competition. So always choose a keywords that is less competitive, so that you website will rank well for that particular keyword phrase on the search engine results. 4) The other way is if you have already had a website online check its web log and gather that keywords which helps people to find your site. This will help for existing website to recreate the content.

After these steps are done use your spreadsheet to determine the keywords It is ideal to have more keywords rather than focusing on a few words. In that spreadsheet matches the following keyword in terms like how many times the keywords are searched and how much competition is that keyword facing on the web. As I said before always choose less competitive keywords. Once these stage is over start constructing your website content with the identified keywords.

Step 2 Keyword placement:- Placing the keyword is very crucial, because if the keywords are not place properly the search engine spiders will have a difficult time in identify and storing information from your web pages. You most important keyword should appear on the title of the page at least once which all search engine given relevancy. Next the same or related keyword should be there on the heading of the page. Also use a related keyword while starting a paragraph and through out the web page evenly. The density factor is discussed below.

Step 2 Keyword density:- Search engine robots are very intelligent spiders they can determine while some tries to cheat them. Some webmasters and SEO experts use keyword spamming or keyword dumping which is ethical for a good search engine optimization. If search engine spiders indexes a web pages it determine who much times that keywords has been used on a particular web page. So Keyword density is important. An ideal density would be anything between 10-15 % keyword densities on the page. Also use keywords which are related to that phrase so that it gets relevancy for that web page. For example When I search for a keyword ""dog supplies"" I found 100 of related terms which like ""dog supplies online"" ""dog supply store"" etc so think and figure out keywords which are more related to that topic. Also Sprinkle the keywords phrases right across the web page and not concentrate at a certain place.

At this stage you website content should be ready keep in mind with the 3 top priority factors. This will determine your website success or failure in search engine. The next stage is keyword marketing.

Keyword marketing:- Some of the techniques you will use as a off site factor rather than on the side, because it affects only the marketing process. As you all know all search engines give links more relevancies in the algorithm. So after your keyword identification, density and placement are over you should focus on marketing your site. Like site submission, article submission, link popularity while all these techniques are for increasing inbound links to your site. So you would be using your anchor text for creating a link pointing to your site. So here is where keyword marketing comes to play. You should use your key important phrase in these anchor text also mix up your related keywords. Keyword marketing is also vital for Pay per click marketing where keyword is the king. So gather keywords related to your business and use it widely in your PPC campaign. Pay per click industry is solely depends on keyword marketing. If you website want the maximum ROI (return of Investment) you will have to apply the maximum keywords while bidding your keywords. For example your website visibility will increase if you choose maximum keyword for your Pay per click marketing.

The bottom-line is to gain a high ranking in search engine use keyword which is related to your business on your onsite and offsite website marketing. Keyword is the king when it comes to content and content is the king when it comes to Search Engine Marketing.

About the author: Thomson Chemmanoor is a webmaster and a search engine optimization expert who operates the following websites Guaranteed Web site Promotion ,

SEO Services , Submit Articles

Search Engine 2000 Checklist

Author: James T Kendall

Check your web site for search engine readiness with this quick overview about what to do and what not to do for effective listing in the search engines. This list in and off itself is not the true path to millions of hits, but it can help you towards the goal of appropriate, effective search engine listings.

- Keyword Phrases

Identify your most important keyword phrases and design your site around them. In our experience keyword phrases are much more attainable than individual keywords for a high search listing. In addition keyword phrases are more descriptive than single keywords so they produce more targeted traffic. For example ""Handmade Furniture"" is not only more descriptive than ""furniture"" but is also easier to get the top spot in search results.

- Title Tags

The title tag should be the first thing after the head statement and should say what you do, not who you are. In most search engines the title of your document carries a lot of weight, in many they are the most important part of your document. Think of it this way - how many times do you think ""Tamara's Terrific Teas"" is searched for? A lot less than ""organic tea"", so which should be in your title tag.

- Where to Be Listed

We believe that the most important place to be listed is in Yahoo! Pay very close attention to the instructions and write a description with zero hype if you are lucky, you might get listed. Next we suggest getting all your pages listed in the Inktomi database that handles the spill over search results for Yahoo! and also powers HotBot, Direct Hit, Canada, Anzwers, and others. Finally we suggest getting all pages listed in The Open Directory Project, AltaVista, Infoseek, Lycos, Excite, Northern Light in that order.

- Getting into Inktomi

We've noticed that it's easier to get listed in Inktomi if you submit your pages to Canada or Anzwers then if you try to add them to HotBot itself. If you get them into the Inktomi database they'll show up in HotBot searches in around 7 days.

- Keep Good Records

Where is your site listed/not listed? When is the last time you submitted to Yahoo? Where is the majority of your search engine traffic coming from? These are questions you really should know the answer to. Refer logs help here, if you don't have access to them get your hosting provider to set them up for you. If they won't - change providers, they're that important. - Check Out the Competition

Now, I'm not abdicating stealing another site's title, tags, etc. but you do need to check out the sites at the top of the search engines for your chosen keyword phrases. This can show you not only what they are doing right, but can also give you insight into how the search engine works. Make sure you check out the top 2 or 3, as examining only the first result can sometimes be misleading.

- Make a ""SiteMap"" Page

One very simple idea is to include a page on your web site that has links to every page on your site. This way you can submit this page to search engines with good spiders to get all of your pages listed without having to submit them all individually. As an added benefit some search engines like Excite seem to favor lists of html links with descriptive titles.

- Use those Alt Tags

At least half of the large search engines index Alt tags, if you are not effectively using them you're loosing ground to the competition. This does not mean keyword stuffing though - give it a little thought and come up with alt tags that are descriptive as well as effective. One new thing we've been fooling around with is alt tags not only for pictures but also for hyperlinks.

- Make use of Heading Tags

A few of the large search engines rank words inside of very highly. Our recommendation is to put your keyword phrase inside of a heading tag near the top of your page. With a little work you can usually work it out so that it is aesthetically pleasing and if not there is always cloaking.

About the author: James T Kendall gets TurboPromo's clients sites listed well in the search engines - http://www.turbopromo.com and develops sites for http://www.jtkconsulting.com

Keyword Density - More Than Meets the Eye

Author: Ralph Tegtmeier

One of the standard elements of web page optimization is Keyword Density: up until very recently the ratio of keywords to rest of body text was generally deemed to be one of the most important factors employed by search engines to determine a web site's ranking.

However, this basically linear approach is gradually changing now: as mathematical linguistics and automatic content recognition technology progresses, the major search engines are shifting their focus towards ""theme"" biased algorithms that do not rely on analysis of individual web pages anymore but, rather, will evaluate whole web sites to determine their topical focus or ""theme"" and its relevance in relation to users' search requests.

This is not to say that keyword density is losing in importance, quite the contrary. However, it is turning into a lot more complex technology than a simple computation of word frequency per web page can handle.

Context analysis is now being determined by a number of auxiliary linguistic disciplines and technology, for example: * semantic text analysis * textlexical database technology * distribution analysis of lexical components (such as nouns, adjectives, verbs) * evaluation of distance between semantic elements * AI and data mining technology based pattern recognition; * term vector database technology etc.

All these are now contributing to the increasing sophistication of the relevance determination process. If you feel this is beginning to sound too much like rocket science for comfort, you may not be very far from the truth: it seems that the future of search engine optimization will be determined by what the industry is fond to term the ""word gurus"".

A sound knowledge of fundamental linguist methodology plus more than a mere smattering of statistical calculus will most probably be paramount to achieve successful search engine rankings in the foreseeable future. Merely repeating the well worn mantra ""content is king!"", as some of the lesser qualified SEO professionals and very many amateurs are currently doing, may admittedly have a welcome sedative effect by creating a feeling of fuzzy warmth and comfort. But to all practical purposes it is tantamount to whistling in the dark and fails miserably in doing justice to the overall complexity of the process involved.

It should be noted that we are talking presence AND future here: many of the classical techniques of search engine optimization are still working more or less successfully, but there is little doubt that they are rapidly losing their cutting edge and will probably be as obsolete in a few months' time as spamdexing or invisible text - both optimization techniques well worth their while throughout the 90s - have become today.

So where does keyword density come into this equation? And how is it determined anyway?

There's the rub: the term ""keyword density"" is by no means as objective and clear-cut as many people (some SEO experts included) will have it! The reason for this is the inherent structure of hypertext markup language (HTM) code: as text content elements are embedded in clear text command tags governing display and layout, it is not easy to determine what should or should not be factored into any keyword density calculus.

The matter is complicated further by the fact that the meta tags inside a HTML page's header may contain keywords and description content: should these be added to the total word count or not? Seeing that some search engines will ignore meta tags altogether (e.g. Lycos, Excite and Fast/Alltheweb), whereas others are still considering them (at least partially), it gets even more confusing. What may qualify for a keyword density of 2% under one frame of reference (e.g. including meta tags, graphics ALT tags, comment tags, etc.) may easily be reduced to 1% or less under another.

Further questions arise: will meta tags following the Dublin Convention (""D.C. tags"") be counted in or not? And what about HTTP-EQUIV tags? Would you really bet the ranch that TITLE tags in tables, forms or DIV elements will be ignored? Etc., etc.

Another fundamental factor generating massive fuzziness left, right and center, is the issue of semantic delimiters: what's a ""word"" and what isn't? Determing a lexical unity (aka a ""word"") by punctuation is a common though pretty low tech method which may lead to some rather unexpected results.

Say you are featuring an article by an author named ""John Doe"" who happens to sport a master's degree in arts, commonly abbreviated as ""M.A."". While most algorithms will correctly count ""John"" and ""Doe"" as separate words, the ""M.A."" string is quite another story. Some algorithms will actually count this for two words (""M"" and ""A"") because of the period (dot) is considered a delimiter - whereas others (surprise!) will not. But how would you know which search engines are handling it in which way? Answer: you don't, and that's exactly where the problems start.

The only feasible approach to master this predicament is trial and error. The typical beginner's inquiry ""What's the best keyword density for AltaVista?"", understandable and basically rational as it may be, is best answered with the fairly frustrating but ultimately precise: ""It all depends - your mileage may vary."" It is only by experimenting with keyword densities under standardized, comparable conditions yourself that you will be able to come to significant and viable conclusions.

To get going, here are some links to pertinent programs that will help you determine (and, in one case, even generate) keyword densities.

KeyWord Density Analyzer (KDA) ------------------------------ An all time classic of client based keyword density software is Roberto Grassi's powerful KeyWord Density Analyzer (KDA). It is immensely configurable and offers a fully featured free evaluation version for download. Find it here: (Expect to pay appr. $99 for the registered version.)

Concordance ----------- Concordance is a powerful client based text analysis tool for making word lists and concordances from electronic texts. A trial version can be downloaded here: (Expect to pay appr. $89 for the registered version.)

fantomas keyMixer(TM) --------------------- Our own fantomas keyMixer(TM) is the world's first automatic keyword density generator, enabling you to create web pages with ultra precise densities to the first decimal digit. Read more about this server based Perl/CGI application here: (Expect to pay appr. $99 for the registered version.)

About the author: Ralph Tegtmeier is the co-founder and principal of fantomaster.com Ltd. (UK) and fantomaster.com GmbH (Belgium), a company specializing in webmasters software development, industrial-strength cloaking and search engine positioning services. You can contact him at mailto:fneditor@fantomaster.com

Optimizing a Press Release for Search Engines

Author: Marcia Yudkin

Search engines increasingly charge for inclusion, and press release distribution networks charge hundreds of dollars to distribute your news. But I've come up with a way to legitimately let other people shoulder the time or effort for your news to show up in search engines.

The lightbulb went off for me when I was searching for very specialized software and came upon a press release for such a product posted at another site, not that of the company producing the software. Of course that release led me to the company's Web site, which was itself nowhere in the search engine listings.

I therefore went looking for sites that welcome free posting of press releases and found more than 100 of them. I posted my own press release at more than 20 of them and now, two months later, a Google search on the phrase ""free syndicated business content,"" which was the theme in the headline and the body of my release, turns up three of these in the first 20 listings, including in position #1. If I type in ""attract repeat business visitors,"" which is an exact quote from the headline, eight of eight items that come up are instances of the press release.

If you have timely news, for instance about an upcoming conference you're sponsoring, this technique won't benefit you as much as if you have offerings that will continue to be of interest for months or years in the future. I like this strategy because, like Tom Sawyer's legendary painting project, it enables you to let other people do the hard work, here of getting good search engine rankings. The site hosting your press release for free then benefits from the traffic your release draws and so do you. Search Engine Optimization and Free Press Release Distribution

Here's how to profit from this strategy, in six steps.

1. Decide on a keyword phrase that ties in to the product or service you are promoting and that people actually search for. You can research this conveniently at Wordtracker.com.

2. Place this phrase into your press release headline and repeat it around three times within the body of your press release. Make sure you also include two properly formed links to your own Web site (i.e., write "http://www.mydomain.com" rather than "mydomain.com") within the text of the release.

3. Unless the proper name of your product or service is already well-known, emphasize its generic description rather than its name. For instance, write "proposal writing software" rather than "PropWritePro."

4. Likewise, substitute keyword phrases for pronouns like "it" or "its" to increase their overall frequency in the release.

5. Post your completed press release at sites that allow free posting, such as prweb.com, pressbox.co.uk and dozens of others that turn up in searches on phrases like "free press release submission" or "free press release distribution." Through diligent and repeated searching, I found more than 20 general sites like that and more than 100 sites welcoming releases on a particular topic.

6. Wait a few weeks and check your standing in search engines for the phrases in your release. Positionagent.com works well for this. Then repeat the whole process for another message, another keyword phrase or another product or service.

Additional Notes on Press Release Optimization

Although these steps may appear simple, they are not intuitive or natural for anyone with experience in writing traditional press releases. Let's suppose you were launching a rental boat service in Truro, Massachusetts, which is on Cape Cod. Tourists would be much more likely to use ""Cape Cod"" as a search term than ""Truro,"" so the former is what should be repeated. And particularly if you happen to know Cape Cod, if you were not consciously writing for search engines, you would probably use ""Cape Cod"" only once and then revert to ""the Cape,"" which wouldn't help enough when people are typing in ""Cape Cod boat rental.""

A bonus benefit of this strategy is that by placing your releases around the Web, you may also boost the rankings of your own site at search engines that count inbound links as a sign of popularity.

Assuming you've chosen your keyword phrases wisely, enjoy the increased visibility and traffic that the free press release posting sites have worked hard to obtain for you!

About the author: Boston-based publicity and marketing consultant Marcia Yudkin is the author of a new special report, PR For the Internet Age, as well as of Six Steps to Free Publicity (Plume/Penguin), Internet Marketing for Less than $500/Year (Maximum Press) and eight other books; http://www.yudkin.com/printernet.htm.

Search Engine Optimization - Do-It-Yourself or Hiring Someone

Author: John Buchanan

Anyone who has had a website for any length of time has already come to the realization that to succeed, you need traffic, and to get traffic, unless you have some pretty deep pockets for more traditional forms of advertising, search engines are the most effective form of obtaining that traffic.

The next realization that comes is that simply being listed is not enough. To get traffic from the search engines, you must come up at or near the top of the results for those searches that relate to your site.

Some call it search engine optimization, others search engine placement, and others search engine promotion. Regardless of the name, it is all really the same thing. It is the art of getting traffic from the engines.

Search engine optimization is a big business, and understandably so, but the question is, ""Is it worth paying a firm to promote your site or is it truly something you can do yourself?""

Unfortunately, there is no cut-and-dry answer to this question as it is going to differ from person to person. In some cases, it can be well worth the money to hire an outside firm for your optimization needs, in other cases, you may be better off doing it yourself.

First let me answer a few questions and dispel a few myths that some of the less reputable firms like to promote.

Q - Can I do the optimization myself? A - Yes, and in many cases be extremely successful.

Q - Is search engine optimization hard? A - Yes and no. As with any new skill, there is a learning curve involved, but unless you are in an extremely competitive area, just having an understanding of how the search engines work and rank pages, can be enough for you to design some good ranking pages.

Q - Do I need to have any expensive software or programming skills? A - No. Anything and everything can be done by hand. All you need to be able to do the optimization yourself is a basic understanding of HTML.

Q - Don't I just need to put my keywords in the Title and Meta tags? A - Unfortunately, while this was true a couple of years ago, it is a bit more complicated than this now. Meta tags, play an extremely small role in optimization in todays search engines.

Now that we have a few of the most common questions out of the way, let's take a deeper look at which option may be right for you.

First let's start with hiring an optimization firm and look at the pro's and con's involved.

Pro's

- Optimization firms will already be trained in getting your site to the top of the engines. - The will know what is required and you will often see results fairly quickly and the results will often be better than if you were doing the optimization yourself. - You will have the free time to devote to other aspects of your business. Con's

- Optimization firms can range from moderately expensive to extremely expensive depending on your target market and the number of search terms you want to target. This could mean you may initially spend anywhere from $1,000 up to $5,000-$10,000 to hire a good firm and then a maintenance fee of near that amount monthly to maintain the rankings. - As with all firms, some will be top-notch, and some will be less than stellar. You could easily end up paying a few thousand dollars with little or no results ever seen. - No one will ever have the same enthusiasm for your site's success as you do. Many of the less reputable companies will often use tactics that will work in the short-term, but may have some very negative long-term effects. - Many optimization firms will create a new site that funnels traffic to your current site. The firm generally owns this site, which means, that you are trapped into paying this firm for your traffic. If you stop paying them, you stop receiving the traffic.

Now let's look at the pro's and con's of doing it yourself.

Pro's

- You will be saving yourself the cash outlay involved in hiring an outside firm (obviously one of the biggest benefits). - Everything you do to promote your site is yours. It does not belong to someone else. You have complete control. - Once you learn how search engine optimization works, you can create as many online businesses as you wish and be able to promote all of them without relying on, or paying, a third party. Con's

- An initial learning curve. It will take a while to get a good grasp of what you are doing and to begin to understand the game we call search engine optimization. - If your in a competitive market, a good deal of your time could be spent promoting and optimizing your site.

- Your results may never be as good as if you hired a top-notch firm. Well, there you have it. A good number of the pro's and con's involved in both avenues. When you get down to it, deciding whether to outsource your optimization needs, or keep it in house, really boils down to what you have more of...time, or money. If you have lots of money but little time, then hire a good firm. If you have lots of time but little funds, then you will be better off doing the work yourself.

If you decide to hire an optimization firm, be cautious with who you choose. Ask for testimonials from past clients. Find out if they offer any type of a guarantee. Do some research. Whatever you do, DON'T go on who is the cheapest. This is your success we're talking about.

If you decide to do it yourself, there are also some things you should do. The best thing you can do for yourself is to do some research on search engine optimization. Find someone who has been doing it a while and see if you can learn anything from them. Read books on the subject (electronic or printed). Visit newsgroups and forums on search engines. If you spend some time learning about how search engines work and what they look for when ranking pages, you will quickly begin to understand what it takes to make a top ranking page.

About the author: John Buchanan is the author of the book ""The Insider's Guide to Dominating The Search Engines"", and publisher of ""The Search Engine Bulletin"", a FREE monthly newsletter. Visit him at http://www.se-secrets.com for more information or to sign up for the newsletter.

It's the Little Things.....

Author: windsong

It's the Little Things.... by windsong

Optimizing for the search engines doesn't have to be a tough job. But you need to pay attention to detail. It is often the little things that you do to your pages that will improve your ranking in the search engines. Sometimes, it's also the little things that can get you banned from the same search engines. Pay close attention. First we will cover some things you can do to improve your ranking. Then we will get into what not to do.

* Did you know that some search engines read the alt tags in your images? You don't have alt tags? Better include them in all your images. These tags were originally meant for browers that don't support images. This way, people with older browsers would have an idea of what the image is about. However, you can place keywords in these tags. Use 2 or 3 word keyword phrases, as this is what most people search for. If your site does not have images, Don't despair. You can use a 1x1 pixel clear image, (which doesn't show up on your page) just to give yourself a place to include the alt tag. Use these images as spacers.

* Your pages are probably peppered with headlines here and there. Instead of just using a larger font size for these headlines, use header tags instead. ( H1, H2, etc.) Search engines think that the most important information is in the header tags. Be sure to place your most important keywords here. If you don't have headlines on your site, start using them. This is better than meta keywords!

* The most important meta tag is the title tag. Your title tag is within the head tag. It is what shows up on your search engine listing and in the title bar at the top of your browser window. It is a must that you place your very best keywords here. Don't just put keywords in the title tag. It must make sense. Most search engines put a very stong emphasis on the title tag. Get it right and get listed.

* Use comment tags throughout you pages, especially near the top. The search engines like to read these, and by having keywords, keyword phrases, and other pertinent data here you will boost your ranking. Comment tags do not show up on your page. They only appear in the code. A comment tag begins with Be sure to leave a space between the tags and the text.

* Probably the best boost in ranking that you can give yourself is a domain name. Some search engines won't index your site if you don't have a domain name, and they put a lot of weight on your domain name. Do you know what your domain name should be? *Your very top keyword or phrase.* Preferably something short and memorable. Don't get cute with domain names by using numbers and letters for words (u for you, 4 for for, 2 for to). Keep it simple so it makes sense to the search engines.

Now lets consider some things that can get you banned from the search engines, so pay close attention. These could be more important than the things you should do.

* DO NOT use text that is the same color as the background. Now this can get tricky. Some people have inadvertently broken this rule and don't know why they were banned. Lets say your site has a white background. So obviously you won't use white text. But what if you have a table on a page that has a black background and you use white text in this table? The search engines don't know the table has a different background. They only know that the page background is white, and suddenly here is white text. Oops! So make the text the palest gray you can. It will still look white to the viewer, but the search engines will know that its a different color from the background.

* DO NOT hide teeny tiny text somewhere on you page. The search engines know the viewer can't see it, and that you are trying to trick the search engines.

* DO NOT use keywords in your meta tags that are irrelevant. some people try to use 'the most searched for words' in their meta tags.... such as, sex, MP3, etc. You get the picture. Just stick to keywords that are related to your product or service. Remember that the search engines read the content of the page, so if you have keywords that do NOT show up in the content, you are likely to be ignored by the search engines. It doesn't make the viewers happy either, if they land on an irrelevant site.

* DO NOT use flash movies, frames, java applets, or image maps. You will choke the spiders to death. This is just garbage to them. They can't read it and can't index it. You should also limit your use of javascript and cgi scripts. Javascript will push your content farther down on the page, and the spiders generally look for content near the top of the page.

Sometimes it is the little things that will make or break your listing in the search engines. Just use common sense. And always remember the number one thing your site must have to get a good listing on the search engines: CONTENT! Without this, all the optimization in the world just won't do you any good.

----------------------------------------------- Copyright © 2002, windsong

windsong is a noted webmaster/editor/publisher at Marketing Resources: http://marketing-resources.com

Learn how to get great ranking in the Search Engines! Subscribe to windsong's free e-zine: 'All About Search Engines' Send a blank email to: mailto:aboutsearchengines-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

About the author: Windsong is a recognized author, publisher and editor with followers from many countries worldwide.

Using Keywords in the Body: Put Them Here, Put Them There, Put Them Everywhere!

Author: Janet L. Hall

Using Keywords in the Body: Put Them Here, Put Them There, Put Them Everywhere! By: Janet L. Hall

The keywords you are using MUST be reflected in the page content, the BODY, of the web page you are trying to improve or build.

There are many places you can, and should place your keywords to help you get a higher ranking in the search engines; remember, this is the ultimate goal. People searching for you WON'T find you if you don't use your keywords throughout your web page!

TOP Seven Areas to Place Your Keywords in the BODY of Your Web Pages:

1.Beginning and near the top of web page. 2.Headlines (Headings) and Subtitles. 3.Links. 4.Site Address in Links. 5.Name of Images. 6.ALT (Image) TAGS. 7.Background Images.

This month we'll look at the top first four, one at a time, and next month we'll finish up with the last three.

We continue building and organizing your web page from last time by inserting the BODY TAG: This TAG is automatically inserted for you by FrontPage and probably other web page design software after your ending or closing HEAD TAG

1. Beginning and near the top of web page : Here you want to type in a paragraph, or more, of information about your services, products, or yourself, being sure to incorporate and use the KEYWORDS you have selected for that page. Get your most important and relevant keywords as close to the top of your web page.

Many designers and beginners put logos, images, or banners near the top of their web page. Bad mistake! This can cause some of the search engine spiders to be "caught in the web," so to speak. They can't read the image, so they stop retrieving information from your web page and web site; they move on to another web site to spider. They might be able to retrieve the first few lines on that page, and those lines of text might get used as the description of your site when someone is searching for you. Since search engines seem to be in a constant change of what they want, it's important that your first few lines of text be your most important information, with your most important keywords in there!

According to wordtracker.com, "Make the first 25 words in the body of your page keyword rich…Spread your keyword phrases throughout the body of the page in natural sounding paragraphs. Put a keyword at the end of your body text as well."

Another trick you might try to boost your keyword relevance is by putting your keyword phrases in bold in your BODY text.

2. Headlines (Headings) and Subtitles: The headlines, subtitles, and titles in the BODY of your web page are considered headings. Not to be confused with the HEAD TAG I wrote about in issue 5 of OverHall IT! (http://www.overhall.com/issue5.htm )

Heading TAGS are numbered, one, , being the most important and largest. The Heading TAG is written as: , , , and so on. The ending or closing TAG is written as: , , , and so on.

Heading TAG Sample:

OverHall IT!

3. Links are usually presented on your web page as blue text and underlined. Links to other pages on your web site or to another web site are always written the same, with the exception that you place the web address (URL) of the web site or page that you want people to go to. It is also another place you can place your keywords. Below is an example of a link to my web's home page:

Click here to get organized

Notice the opening TAG is and the closing TAG is . After the first quotation sign you type in the web site address or web page you are linking to. Next, insert another quotation mark, then a bracket, after which you type the text that you want to be blue, underlined, and containing your keywords; the words that a person will click on to move to the web site or page you have linked to. Then your closing TAG .

Here is an example of linking from my home page to another: O rganizing tips and Organizing articles

Please notice how I used an underscore, _ , between the words in the web address. You can also use a dash (-) to separate words in addresses. By using the underscore or dash, the search engines will see the words as individual words in a phrase. If not broken up, issuesandarticles, the search engines see a single term, DON'T DO THAT!

4. Site Address in Links: When you are building your pages, make sure you name the new pages (the htm pages) after your KEYWORDS. Let's examine one of my addresses: My domain name is http://www.overhall.com and I've built a page about a dated filing system that I think is a terrific product, that I sell, and that I refer to as a tickler file. My keyword is tickler file. So that page is called tickler_file.htm and the address looks like this: http://www.overhall.com ickler_file.htm See how I used my keyword as the name of the htm page?

I'm still in the process of fixing some of my pages because when I made them I didn't know to put my keywords in the name of the address. I then have to decide whether to keep the old ones up on the Internet, because people might have bookmarked them, or I can redirect the person to the new page. Then I have the task of resubmitting them to the search engines. So, TAKE YOUR TIME when you start building other pages, carefully deciding on your keywords and using them in the address.

Okay, using this and last month's lesson, let's see what your web page should look like:

WEB PAGE EXAMPLE:

disorganized? organizing help, clutter tips, organizing tools

Field of Dreams: Getting a Homerun With Your Keywords

Author: Janet L. Hall

Field of Dreams: Getting a Homerun With Your Keywords By: Janet L. Hall

"If you build it they will come," from the movie Field of Dreams has become a popular phrase among newbies to the Internet, uneducated web site owners, and those filled with dreams of getting rich quick. That phrase is far from the truth when it comes to your web site.

Many factors and variables come into play when trying to get people to come to your web site, one of which is your choice of keywords.

If you're using Microsoft FrontPage or a similar software package to create your web pages, guess what? Keywords, page titles, descriptions, and META TAGS are NOT automatically put on your pages. These important variables may be missing from your pages unless you enter the information yourself.

Even worse, if you've hired someone to design your site and pages for you and they don't know how important these variables are and aren't including them…no one will find you, your services, your products…no sales, no business.

The key to STARTING your field of dreams is to determine the keywords people are using to find your web site OR the number one keywords that are getting your competitors the top rankings in the search pages. Please remember, this is just the beginning, you have a lot more to learn, such as where to place the keywords on your web pages, how many, and much much more.

In turn, each search engine has it's own set of criteria or requirements to enable your web site to be ranked near the top of the search pages. And some, you can even buy your way to the top of the pages.

So, how do you determine what keywords you need on your pages to make a home run?

Seven Homerun Keyword Strategies:

Game Plan: Write out a list of keywords and have your friends, family, and client's review for suggestions. Select two to three dozen that are the most important for your web pages. (NOTE - Each page on your site should have it's own keywords.) If you already have keywords - this is a good time to * OverHall * them .

Batting Order: Put your most important keywords near the beginning of your TAGS (more about TAGS next time) and at the top of your page.

Field Position: Know where to place your keywords throughout your pages.

Double Play: Look up your keywords in a Thesaurus, such as Roget's Internet Thesaurus at http://www.thesaurus.com , and use some of the alternative words as your keywords.

Signals: Don't forget to check out and use regional terminology and common misspelling of words.

Clean up: Keyword and Statistical Software can be purchased to assist in choice of keywords and the weight (sometimes referred to as keyword density) of your keywords.

7. Stealing Bases: What are your competitor keywords that are ranking at the top of the search engines?

I hope you can get a Grand Slam!

Smiles, not Piles, Janet L. Hall is the owner of OverHall Consulting, an organizing firm for office, home, computer clutter, and your life. Visit her website at http://www.overhall.com and sign up for her FREE organizing newsletter, OverHall IT! Phone consultations and coaching are available.

Copyright (c) 2001 by OverHall Consulting P.O. Box 263, Port Republic, MD 20676 All Rights Reserved. Permission is granted to reproduce, copy, or distribute this article so long as article is kept intact, this copyright notice, and full information about the author is attached.

About the author: Janet L. Hall is the owner of OverHall Consulting, an organizing firm for office, home, computer clutter, and your life. Visit her website at http://www.overhall.com and sign up for her FREE organizing newsletter, OverHall IT! Phone consultations and coaching are available.

A Dynamite New Web-Based Reporting Service

Author: Robin Nobles

A Dynamite New Web-Based Reporting Service May be Just What You Need to Check Your Search Engine Rankings

By Robin R. Nobles

We all agree that it's important to check your search engine rankings periodically. After all, unless you monitor your rankings, you won't know when pages have slipped in ranking or fallen from the index altogether.

While there are some excellent software programs for checking your rankings, such as our favorite, WebPosition Gold, until recently, there hasn't been a Web-based reporting service.

But why would you want to use a Web-based service? Let's look at a few reasons.

Advantages for Using a Web-Based Service

Believe it or not, many people still access the Internet using a modem. If those people have a lot of search engine marketing clients, or if they're dealing with hundreds (or thousands) of keyword phrases, using a software program could really tie up their resources for literally hours.

While you can certainly run ranking reports at night, that doesn't mean you won't be ""booted offline"" sometime during the night, to where you'll have to start all over again the next day or night.

Also, if you have a lot of clients, you've probably found that ranking reports take up an enormous amount of space on your hard drive. In fact, some companies devote entire computers just to ranking reports.

Another reason for using a Web-based service versus a software program is if you're in a location where you still have to pay by the minute or hour for Internet access.

Finally, some people like the idea of turning over various search engine marketing functions to someone else, to where they can concentrate on other areas. For those people, Web-based reporting is ideal.

Introducing WebRank (http://www.webrank.com). . . a new Web-based Reporting Service

Besides doing its job quickly and easily, there are two things I look for in a software program or tool: intuitiveness and good customer support.

Like most people in the search engine marketing industry, time is crucial to me, and I have none to waste. WebRank is so easy to use that you can get started immediately, without even having to access the help files. However, to help you get started, they have a ""SupportMail"" follow-up system, where new subscribers receive little tips through e-mail on how to use WebRank.

And, I found that if I had any questions or problems, their technical support folks answered those questions or concerns quickly and efficiently.

How does WebRank work?

You simply enter your keyword phrases and your domains in your Administration area. The service even offers a suggested list of new keyword phrases in your topic areas, similar to a keyword suggestion tool, which is very handy. You can also add competing domains, then have WebRank compare your rankings to your competitors'.

When you're ready to see your ranking reports for the first time, you click on the Run Report link. Within minutes, you're reviewing your rankings across 18 search engines and directories. You can choose to view the ranking reports by domain, by keyword, or by search engine, or you can create custom reports.

Then, once a week (or once per month, depending on your account type) WebRank will check your rankings and generate your reports automatically. Plus, you can choose to run the reports ""now,"" at any time, by going into your Administration area.

With WebRank, you can customize the service to suit your needs. Do you want to receive reports by e-mail? Would you rather view the reports online? It's possible either way.

The Email Notification Rules feature is also very handy, because it lets you choose when to receive e-mail pertaining to your rankings. For example, let's say that you've just created a new page. As soon as the page hits a 1-30 ranking, you can choose to be sent an email notification.

Once you've gotten your rankings and if they're not quite what they should be, click on ""Increase My Rankings"" for a comprehensive resource center that offers information on search engine marketing for do-it-yourselfers or for those who would rather hire a professional.

Also, their ""Software Integrated Help System"" will check your account periodically and send ""smart"" messages that will help you with your search engine marketing efforts. This system is designed particularly for beginners.

Another very interesting part of WebRank is the Doorway Domain Manager. Here's how it works. You decide on a domain name (with help from some handy online tools), then buy it for $19 a year through WebRank. Then, you use their step-by-step wizard to create the doorway site. Within 48 to 72 hours, the domain is live and accessible. You're then prompted to submit some of your pages through free AddURL pages or pay inclusion programs. Then, WebRank will begin notifying you when the pages have been indexed and what their rankings are. Can't set up a Web site much easier than that!

In Conclusion

If you're looking for an alternative solution to ranking software, be sure to consider WebRank. Visit http://www.webrank.com and sign up for their free trial, and test drive the service for yourself. You'll love it!

Copyright 2002 Robin Nobles. All rights reserved.

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 3-day hands on search engine marketing workshops in locations across the globe with Search Engine Workshops(http://www.searchengineworkshops.com).

What Your Web Designer Isn't Telling You

Author: Kalena Jordan

If I was to ask you right now ""Are you absolutely certain that your web site is optimized for high search engine rankings?"", what would you say?

What if I was to ask ""How many search engines has your site been registered with?"" Or how about ""Does your site have tailored title and META Tags?""

If you would answer ""No"" or ""I don't know"" to any of these questions, you would be amongst the 70% of web site owners whose web sites are missing out on search engine traffic because they are not designed for high rankings. Has your web designer optimized YOUR site? Have they submitted it to the top ten search engines and directories? More than likely, you don't know because they haven't told you. Ask them TODAY!

But what exactly is search engine optimization? Simply explained, it is the technique of attaining a high ranking in search engines and directories via changes to your site code to make it more search engine compatible.

Did you know that key search words and phrases in your ""title tag"" and ""META tags"" (in the HTML script of your site) and body text are often very important references that search engines use when ranking web sites for search relevancy? Optimizing your site meta tags and your body text for search engines ensures that it ranks highly for particular words or phrases that you would expect potential visitors to type in to search engines to find your site.

For example, if you are a Miami florist, you should have logical search phrases such as ""flowers"", ""Miami florists"", ""bouquets Miami"" and even target search terms such as ""Miami weddings"", ""Valentine's Day gifts"" etc integrated in your title and meta tags, as well as in the visible text of your site. That way, if anyone types in those phrases in a search engine, your site is more likely to appear higher in the search results.

So why wasn't your site optimised for search engines when it was built? Depending on who developed your site and how it was built, you'll find a million different reasons for this. Many web developers believe it is the site marketer's job to ensure the site is found in search engines and vice versa. Most don't bother submitting your site to the important search engines, assuming you or your marketing department will do it. Or perhaps it wasn't in your original development budget.

Not many web design firms know how or have time to optimize a site successfully, no matter what they tell you. They might feel it is outside their core business, or they might believe it is not part of the ""design process"". Consequently, your site can be launched for many months without the search engines having any idea it exists. Some web development firms don't include even the most basic META tags in your site code when building it. Or those that do include META tags without close consultation with you, resulting in the wrong search terms used and poor performance. This is quite typical! Remember that search engine optimization is a relatively new science and requires both client interaction and constant monitoring to be successful.

The bottom line? If your designer can't show you the high rankings they've achieved for other clients, they won't be able to optimize your site properly. Search engine optimization (SEO) specialists have sprung up to fill the need for these services. Many SEO's will work either directly with you or with your web site designer to ensure your site gets the exposure it deserves in the most popular search engines and directories. Find a specialist with a good track record and reap the results.

Remember, search engine users generally only explore the first 10 or 20 sites in the search results. If you site isn't in the top 20, you won't be found, it's as simple as that. Always include search engine optimization into your marketing budget or your site could be as effective as a billboard at the end of a dead end street.

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

The 5 Most Common SEO Mistakes

Author: Kalena Jordan

Having been in the business of optimizing web sites for high search engine rankings for over five years now, I have come across a number of ""optimized"" sites that use search engine optimization (SEO) techniques that are just plain WRONG. Most of these sites were optimized by persons just starting out; SEO beginners not yet familiar enough with the industry to determine SEO fact from SEO fiction. But what's scary is that some of the sites I've seen using incorrect methods have been optimised by so called search engine optimization ""experts"" who really should know better.

Some common themes develop amongst incorrectly optimized sites. Could YOU be making the same errors with your site? To find out, let's look at the five most common search engine optimization mistakes:

1) Non Utilization of the Title Tag

How many times have you looked at a web site where the browser title reads ""Welcome to [company name]'s web site"" or simply ""[Company Name]""? Nothing wrong with that, I hear you say? Well if you want to achieve high search engine rankings, there's PLENTY wrong with it.

You see, while it may not be common knowledge amongst web designers, most search engines index the content of title tags and consider it to be one of the most important factors in their relevancy algorithm. What you place in your title can make or break your ranking for particular search terms on the various engines. If you don't include your most important search phrases within your title tag, you are overlooking a vital opportunity in your quest for higher search rankings.

Having said this, you should try and keep your title tag to a maximum of 200 characters, as that is the average limit most search engines will truncate to. If you really insist on including your company name in your title and you're willing to sacrifice good keyword real estate to do so, put it at the very end of the tag, because search engines give more relevancy ""weight"" to content at the start of your tag.

2) Use of Untargeted Keywords and Phrases

Another common mistake made by webmasters and SEO learners is their choice of keywords placed in the META keyword tag. Sure it might seem logical to target the word ""printers"" if you run a printer repair business in Ohio, but think about it - even if you succeeded in ranking well for such a competitive term (you won't), how many of the people visiting your site as a result of this search would leave as soon as they saw your home page? That's right, most of them. All the people who wanted to buy printers, all the people looking for businesses outside Ohio, all the people not looking specifically for printer repairers.

Does it become clear now that targeting such a generic word is a waste of time? What you need to do instead is optimise your site for search terms and phrases that are highly targeted to your precise business. Use a tool such as Wordtracker.com (keyword location software) to find what people are actually typing in to the search engines to find goods and services similar to yours and concentrate on ranking well for those terms. The more qualified your site visitors are, the more likely you are to convert those visitors into paying customers.

3) A Lack of Optimized Body Text

This one is very common. How often do you visit a home page that is made up entirely of graphics? You know the ones - they consist of an enormous Flash file or maybe a large logo or a montage of images, but the thing they have in common is a distinct lack of text. Think they look professional? Think again. No matter what you read or hear, if a site has no text on the home page, it hasn't been correctly optimized and has little chance of ranking well in the search engines. Now that's unprofessional in my opinion.

Beginner SEO's often make the mistake of creating an optimized title tag and META tags and believing their work is done. WRONG. If you want a web site to rank well in the search engines, you need to give them what they want to see - visible content that is optimized just as well as the invisible content. That means adding keyword-filled body text to any page you want ranking high. Why? Because most search engines can't index images. Some engines don't even index META tags anymore. So a site with no visible content becomes effectively invisible to a search engine and has almost no chance of appearing in the rankings for logical searches.

Also, search engine algorithms have become smarter and are now checking that sites contain highly relevant content before including them in their index. If you expect to rank well for a particular keyword or phrase, it's not too much to expect to find that keyword or phrase within your site is it?

4) Submitting to 1,000 Search Engines

I love this one. I've lost count of how many banner ads or web sites I've seen boasting ""We'll submit your site to 1,000 search engines!"" I can't believe the hype is still prevalent that you need to submit a web site to thousands of search engines in order to receive traffic. This is just NOT TRUE.

In fact, studies show that approximately 90% of search traffic still comes from the 10 major U.S. search engines and directories (listed here: http://www.high-search-engine-ranking.com/List_of_Search_Engines. htm ). Companies that advertise submission to thousands of search engines are usually including in that list minor engines or directories that utilize the databases of major engines anyway (so don't require submission) or a large number of Free For All (FFA) sites. Submitting your site to FFA pages can damage your site's reputation in the search engines, because they consider FFA sites to be of very low quality and utilizing spamdexing techniques in an attempt to falsely inflate a site's link popularity. I've even seen examples of sites being banned from a search engine for having their pages listed on FFA sites by ill-informed webmasters without the site owner's knowledge.

If you are targeting specific geographic markets, you might like to submit your site to the most popular regional search engines in those countries, but the fact is that most people worldwide continue to use the U.S. versions of search engines such as Yahoo and AltaVista despite the fact that there are local versions available. The bottom line? Get your site listed on the 10 most popular search engines and directories and you will have the major worldwide traffic sources covered.

5) Resubmitting Too Soon and Too Often

So you've optimized your site and submitted it to the most important search engines. But it's been three weeks and you haven't received any traffic. Time to resubmit, right? WRONG. Depending on the search engine, they can take up to twelve weeks to include your site in their index. Each search engine and directory work to their own time frame. You need to check their average submission times (a chart is here: http://www.high-search-engine-ranking.com/search_engine_indexing. htm) and be patient.

So when you're in, what then? You should regularly submit to ensure you're ranked above your competitors, maybe once a month or once a week, right? WRONG AGAIN. Once you're in a search engine's database, there is no need to resubmit your site. It's pointless actually, because they already know about your site and their robot is scheduled to revisit and reindex all sites in the database on a regular basis. Resubmitting wastes everybody's time and can actually get your URL permanently banned from a search engine for ""spamdexing"".

The only time you need to resubmit your site to a search engine is if your URL changes or if your domain suddenly drops out of their database entirely. NOT if your ranking drops, NOT if your content changes, but if the domain is actually nowhere to be found in the index (this can happen from time to time as the search engines Spring clean their databases). A good SEO will monitor your rankings regularly (monthly is fine) and only resubmit when absolutely necessary.

So those are the five most common SEO mistakes. Any sound familiar? Don't worry, you're in good company. Now that you've recognized the problem areas and are better equipped with the correct information, you'll be able to reverse the damage.

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

Web Promotion - SEO Strategy

Author: Johnny Mayer

What's it like to work for a world class SEO? What secrets could you glean on website promotion? The SEO business is sexy, exciting and challenging. While most people want to improve and promote their site, web promo companies often deal with such diverse clients, it sharpens their instincts for what works and what don't work in the SEO game. This article presents a few tricks, tips and myths about how to SEO your website into GOOGLE heaven.

Content + SEO = Top GOOGLE Positions

If you have great content and decent SEO techniques, you're webs site should do pretty well in the search engines. If you have SEO stuffed pages full of garbage keyword phrases, sooner or later, you're gonna pay the price. There are too many billions of dollars at stake for cheap tricks to raise search engine rankings for long. Combine great content with great SEO instincts and bang... you're website traffic will skyrocket. Here are some common tips, you may have heard, but are worth repeating.

Website Design - SEO Strategy

If you can't highlight and grab the text off of your website - look out! If you can't grab it and paste it into a document, how do you think a search engine is gonna read it put it in their search engine. Sure, people will tell you, don't worry, the search engines index it not problem. Maybe they are right, my gut say Watch Out! Keep it simple!

Keyword Selection - SEO Strategy

You can spend hours researching your keywords, try lots of combo's and still get zero results in the search engines. What the problem? CONTENT! The key words and the content have to flow together. For example, if you write about dog grooming and switch to a few cat grooming examples, you may defeat your SEO efforts. If you write for the search engine like you were talking to a ten year old, you'll probably get much higher SEO results.

Meta Tag Mania - SEO Strategy

There are tons of meta tag how to's to read and confuse you. Here's a tip for writing better meta tags - pretend you're asking them out on a date and just say what you have to say without all the bull corn. For example, ""I'm ah, going to be in the area this evening, and wonder if you would ahh. oh yeah and I just rebreed something... ah, what was I trying to say is ahh, there's a nice film tonight if you would like to ah... Now compare that speech that never got to the point with, ""Look girl, I think you're beautiful, would you like to see a movie with me?"" And shut up!!!

Copy Writing - SEO Strategy

Ditto for the copy writing - less is more. Pretend you're writing for NPR. What do they do? They tell you what they are going to tell you, tell you what the have to say and then tell you what the told you. NPR are no dummies, if that's what they do, it must be good so jump on the band wagon and blow your trumpet.

Image Tags Copy - SEO Strategy

By the time you're concerned with adding image tags to SEO your website, you either have a great site way, way up their in the search engines or you're a SEO junky that needs help. No body can assure you #1 rankings on Google so don't set your sails for impossible goals. Someday, we'll all wake up in the 1980's again and discover the sense of freedom people back in pre-internet era.

Compucall is a leading web marketing company specializing in search engine marketing techniques. For more info, please visit Compucall .

About the author: Johnny Mayer is a content writer for Compucall Web Marketing Ltd.

SEO Portal or Free SEO? You Decide.

Author: Kevin Gee

Our company JUMP Internet Marketing http://www.jumpinternetmarketing.com has been providing search engine optimization and marketing services since 1995. During this time we have been approached with some very inventive ideas. The latest proposals are from companies wanting to partner with us to create so called ""SEO Portals.""

These companies have explained that our company would create the portal, optimize and market it. After doing so they would provide the clients/content for the portal. The company would charge clients to be placed onto one of these high-ranking portals and in return pass a fee along to our company.

At first glance, this doesn't sound like a bad idea. However, I cannot help but wonder how much of the content/clients would be affiliate links of the company and useless Spam? Ethically these so called portals are starting to sound like an optimized ""link farm"" or ""FFA"" page.

Furthermore, based upon industry research and analysis we are aware at how much the search engines do not like sites that consist of nothing more than useless Spam and affiliate links.

Proper search engine optimization and marketing takes hours of research and hard work if it is to be done correctly. Let's face it folks our reputations are at stake here. Do we really want our company name associated with a portal that could possibly be banned by the search engines?

It is of my opinion that these companies are sugar coating an effort to spam the engines and use SEO companies to do it. Think about this for one second, how quickly would a porn site jump at the opportunity of free SEO? The answer? Well, you know the answer.

Legitimate companies wanting to create a portal would take morally correct actions to do so. Why not hire an SEO firm? It would save them learning and research time and money. Why not learn to do it themselves? Ethically correct companies would take steps such as these instead of trying to rip the shirt off the back of legitimate search engine optimization companies.

I think for now, we here at JUMP Internet Marketing http://www.jumpinternetmarketing.com will pass on this latest attempt at search engine trickery, as we prefer to stick to the straight and narrow and do things ethically and by the book.

So, do these companies really want an SEO portal? Do they want free SEO (search engine optimization) services? You decide.

RE-PRINTING RIGHTS: You are free to re-print this article on your web site, newsletter or ebook. Just display the following resource box at the end of the article: Article by Kevin Gee. Kevin and JUMP Internet Marketing are one of the most respected and recognized search engine positioning specialists on the Internet. For more articles and advice on search engine placement, subscribe to the JUMP Internet Marketing Newsletter by going to http://www.jumpinternetmarketing.com/Newsletter.asp . For a complimentary competitive analysis of your website, visit http://www.jumpinternetmarketing.com/FreeReport.asp

About the author: Article by Kevin Gee. Kevin is a certified SEO specialist through Coastal Carolina University and has been performing SEO strategies for over 3 years. He is currently employed as Internet Marketing Manager at JUMP Internet Marketing.

Are We Looking Stupid?

Author: Kevin Gee

It seems LookSmart has once again rocked the SEO world with its recent implementation of a new pay per click module called "Small Business Listings."

Recently I've been receiving mail correspondence from my friends at LookSmart letting me know that they have automatically upgraded my client site listings to this wonderful new program. I naturally decided to have a look at the details.

Upon further review I have found that because I had already paid entrance fees into their directory my sites would be grandfathered into the new program. Isn't that exciting? For new users the setup fee is $49.00.

The documentation of this program says that on top of the $49.00 setup fee new users will need to deposit a minimum of $150.00 to begin receiving clicks from the directory at .15 cents per click. Again, for privileged customers such as I there is not a fee at this time because they are giving me 100 free clicks per month for the next 20 months!

Okay, I know you are asking yourself what the catch is right? Well, lets get a little deeper and take a look.

First off lets start with the LookSmart letters. The letters state that to receive my free clicks I must login and activate my account before a July 11, 2002 deadline. Upon further review and in follow up correspondence from LookSmart I found this to be false as I have already been receiving clicks and have not yet activated my accounts.

In another letter from LookSmart I was told that my sites had reached their 100 free clicks per month limit and that my listings would be disabled until the following month. This, is also un-true as the listings are still active and when clicked take visitors to my sites.

Let's face it folks, LookSmart has told us things in the past that have also turned out to be un-true. Should we believe them this time when they say, "Small business listings are a great investment for my business." This remains to be seen.

Let's do a bit of math here, and focus on the important issue at hand. Aren't conversions the really important issue? Website traffic alone is not our goal nor yours I am sure, you want to sell your products right?

Based upon fees and average conversion rates this is what I have concluded. At $49.00 for the initial setup fee and a minimum of a $150.00 deposit this comes to $199.00. So, this $199.00 would buy you 1000 clicks at .15 cents per click. This comes out to, are you ready? A whopping average of 83 clicks per month over a 12-month period. Wow! Excited yet?

Okay so now you're probably asking, "what ranking will my site have" and "how much traffic can I expect?" I also had these questions so I've done a little research and here are the results.

It is my opinion that with nobody out-bidding each other on LookSmart, site listings will be ranked according to site optimization techniques (Site Title, Description, etc.). Of course LookSmart still has editorial control over these things and from past experience it is probably safe to assume that LookSmart's editorial staff has not improved to a point to increase your ranking. Overture allows site owners to modify their site listings, why not LookSmart? They do now? That's right, I almost forgot. For another $49.00 I can modify my site listings title and description. Woo Hoo!

But, with all site owners paying .15 per click and nobody getting a boost based on the cost per click, it seems rankings will stay the same without paying the additional $49.00 fee to change the listings and only if LookSmart uses the title and description that I submit for them to use.

How much traffic can you expect? Well of course that depends on how well your site is optimized for rankings. But, just for fun I've looked into just exactly how much traffic LookSmart is bringing to my sites. While I realize that LookSmart has several partner sites that show its results, I have found using a tool called WordTracker that LookSmart is actually only receiving less than 1/2% (one half percent) of all search engine traffic. This isn't starting to sound too good is it? Based upon an average conversion rate of 1% and only 83 clicks per month over the course of 12 months I am starting to question whether or not "This is a great investment for my business."

After the July 11, 2002 activation deadline LookSmart says it plans to remove site listings of those who have not paid. What will this do to their database? Will their partners such as MSN still want to use their depleted results? Will the results be relevant to searches? Will LookSmarts listings get good click traffic? Will this be the death of LookSmart?

These questions and more all remain to be answered but as for now, my money is on Google AdWords Select and Overture. 83 clicks per month over 12 months for $199.00 just doesn't seem like "A great investment for my business."

Thanks LookSmart but at this time, no thanks!

RE-PRINTING RIGHTS: You are free to re-print this article on your web site, newsletter or ebook. Just display the following resource box at the end of the article: Article by Kevin Gee. Kevin and JUMP Internet Marketing are one of the most respected and recognized search engine positioning specialists on the Internet. For more articles and advice on search engine placement, subscribe to the JUMP Internet Marketing Newsletter by going to http://www.jumpinternetmarketing.com/Newsletter.asp . For a complimentary competitive analysis of your website, visit http://www.jumpinternetmarketing.com/FreeReport.asp

About the author: Article by Kevin Gee. Kevin is a certified SEO specialist through Coastal Carolina University and has been performing SEO strategies for over 3 years. He is currently employed as Internet Marketing Manager at JUMP Internet Marketing.

Part 2-Using Keywords in the Body

Author: Janet L. Hall

Part 2-Using Keywords in the Body: Put Them Here, Put Them There, Put Them Everywhere! By: Janet L. Hall

PLEASE NOTE: All HTML code in this article is placed inside ( ). I've done this because some people receive their email as HTML and they might have problems receiving or viewing without the ( ). You WILL NOT put YOUR code in ( ).

Image TAGS are a great place to "plug" in some of your keywords but be careful not to use too many images on your pages. Why? Too many images can slow the loading process of your page to appear. Your visitors don't want to wait, and WON'T, if you have packed too many images onto a page. They will move onto your competitors, getting what they came looking for, information, and NOT images.

I use FrontPage to create my pages on my web site; however, FrontPage DOESN'T automatically include all the information you should have in your Image TAGS that will aid in a quicker loading time. Nor does it place YOUR keywords in your Image TAGS. You have to take the extra steps to insert them.

Let's look at what a basic Image TAG looks like behind the scenes in HTML:

( )

NOTE: .imagetype is the format, such as .jpg, .gif, or .tif that the image was saved as. These are the abbreviations for compression formats for graphics that help make the small file size. .jpg is good to use for photos or graphics without text, and a .gif is wonderful to use for a tape or book cover that has text, such as the title, that you want your visitors to be able to read.

Your images are placed in a folder or directory in FrontPage, usually called Images; although I renamed mine PICS. You should also name your folder or directory on your web host the SAME. This consistent naming of folders will help save a lot of time and hassles.

So now I have another element in my code. It looks like this:

( )

Continuing From Last Time: 5. Naming your Images: Search engines could care less what you name your images, they can't read them. 6. BUT they can read an ALT TAG, a place where you can insert a description for that image or your keywords. This will also allow visitors that have images turned off, to read what the image is that they can't see when the page is loading. Go to http://www.overhall.com/contactus.htm and place your mouse pointer over the image of me. A small yellow box will appear with text. This is what I typed into my ALT TAG for that image.

Including the Alt TAG your Image TAG will look like this:

(

)

Here is an example of one of mine: (

)

7. Background Images: Does it really matter if your page has a background color? It's probably better not to have one. Or how about those sites that have not only color but also images included in the background, and images on the page? Talk about slow load time for the visitor!!

The best advice is to keep your web pages simple. If it's not needed or is slowing the load time of your page, get rid of it!

Height, width, and alignment TAGS should also be included in your Image TAGS. You can read about those in our guest article below.

Editors NOTE: In the examples above, anything typed in lower case should be replaced with YOUR information and YOUR keywords. In the examples above the TAGS have been typed in UPPER CASE; however, this is not necessary when entering this information onto your web page. All brackets and other symbols need to be typed in as presented in the above examples EXCEPT for the ( ).

The Organizing Wizard, Janet L. Hall, is a Professional Organizer, Speaker, and Author. She is the owner of OverHall Consulting, and Organizing By Phone. Subscribe to her FREE organizing newsletter at http://www.overhall.com/newsletter.htm or visit her web site at http://www.overhall.com

Copyright 2001 by OverHall Consulting P.O. Box 263, Port Republic, MD 20676 All Rights Reserved. Permission is granted to reproduce, copy, or distribute so long as article is kept intact, this copyright notice and full information about contacting the author is attached.

About the author: The Organizing Wizard, Janet L. Hall, is a Professional Organizer, Speaker, and Author. She is the owner of OverHall Consulting, and Organizing By Phone. Subscribe to her FREE organizing newsletter at http://www.overhall.com/newsletter.htm or visit her web site at http://www.overhall.com

TAG, You're it! Using Keywords in Your Tags

Author: Janet L. Hall

TAG, You're it! Using Keywords in Your Tags By: Janet L. Hall

Did you know that in order to get your web page a top ranking in some of the search engines that you MUST use your keywords in certain TAGS?

The basic language in which most web pages are written is HTML (HyperText Markup Language). In order to turn your regular text into HTML you must use TAGS. Most TAGS use a start (beginning) and end (closing) TAG.

To indicate a document is written in HTML you must start the document with the TAG: (this is placed at the very top of your document) and then to end your document you place the TAG: at the very bottom of your document.

TIP: All start TAG elements are surrounded or enclosed by angle brackets: and all end TAG elements are surrounded by angle brackets with a forward slash inside:

BIG TIP: NOT ALL TAGS need the ending TAG. (more on this later).

There are many TAGS you need to include in your HEAD TAG (which this article will be addressing), and in your web page, in which you should include your keywords. This can help (but doesn't guarantee) better ratings with some search engines.

Search engines generally consider anything near the top of your document or within the HEAD TAG with more relevance, so it's important to include the proper TAGS and your keywords within those TAGS.

NOTE: META TAGS are HTML TAGS that will give the search engines information about your web page and should be included in the HEAD TAG also. They DO NOT have a start and end TAG but are enclosed with angle brackets.

So after the tag, place your start HEAD TAG:

TAGS you MUST catch:

(Please note that I am presenting MY keywords in lower case, and TAGS in upper case in examples)

1. disorganized? organizing help, clutter tips, organizing tools

These are the TAGS you use for the title of your page. The title tag is very important so please don't use Home Page for your title. Some web page software will generate home page or new page for your title, YOU MUST CHANGE THIS.

On the Internet, your title appears in the blur bar across the top of the monitor screen.

Make sure you use your keywords in your title to help ensure a * higher * score with some of the search engines. Many search engines will display your title and your description in the search results when people are searching for you.

According to a report I received from WordSpot.com, * The #1 biggest mistake that web page designers make is leaving out keywords from the area of a web page. *

masterpromotion.com suggests, *The optimum length for a title is between six and eight words. Do not repeat keywords more than once. * Another article I read suggests a title length of 60 characters.

2.Your next important TAG is your description TAG:

This TAG can be thought of as a mini ad for your web site. You should also place your keywords here. The suggested length for your description is between 10 and 25 words or 150 characters.

3.Next is your keyword TAG in which you need to enter YOUR relevant keywords YOU have selected for that page.

No more then a 1,000 characters are advised; however, please remember that each search engine and directory may have their own set of criteria of what is acceptable and what's not. The keywords you include here MUST and should be used throughout that web page to help get a higher ranking in some of the search engines.

4.Another TAG, that many don't utilize, is the author TAG, yet another place you can insert your keywords. HotBot is one of the search engines that will recognize your keywords use in this TAG:

5.HotBot and Inktomi search engines also consider keywords found in your comment TAG:

An Ingenious Way to Use Wordtracker . . . that's actually easier too! (Part 1)

Author: Robin Nobles

An Ingenious Way to Use Wordtracker. . . that's actually easier too!

By Robin Nobles

If you're in the search engine industry, or if you're a Web designer or Webmaster, it's an almost sure thing that you've heard of, and probably used, Wordtracker (http://www.wordtracker.com).

But, for those who may not know about Wordtracker, let's back up for a minute.

What exactly is Wordtracker, and why is it so important?

Most search engine optimizers would agree that one of the most important things you can do for your Web site is to target the right keywords. If you target the wrong keywords, you may get scores of traffic but no conversions to sales, or no traffic whatsoever. Either is disastrous for an online business.

Before Wordtracker, it was up to the search engine marketer, or the client, to choose the right keywords for the site. We also had GoTo's Search Term Suggestion Tool, which was one of our only sources for keyword help at that time.

Then Wordtracker (http://www.wordtracker.com) entered the picture. With Wordtracker, you can plug in some keywords, and the Web-based service will give you ideas for additional keywords that might work for your business. Not only that, but the service will also tell you how competitive those keywords are (how many other Web pages have been optimized with those keywords in mind) and how many people have actually searched for those keywords in the past 24 hours at each of the major engines.

Ideally, your goal is to choose a keyword phrase that doesn't have a huge amount of competition but that (hopefully) a large number of people are searching for. This is where the KEI comes in. KEI, which stands for Keyword Effectiveness Index, refers to the number of times a keyword has appeared in Wordtracker's data compared with the number of competing Web pages, which points to which keywords would be most effective for your search engine marketing campaign.

In other words, the higher the KEI, the more popular your keyword phrases are, and the less competition they have. According to Wordtracker, a ""good"" keyword to target is one that has a KEI of around 100, but an ""excellent"" keyword to target has a KEI of over 400.

Okay, enough of the background into Wordtracker. Most of you probably already know all of that. In fact, your path through Wordtracker most likely looks very similar to mine.

The ""old"" way to use Wordtracker

In the past, I have always started at Keyword Universe, or maybe at Keyword Projects. From there, I work my way through the system. Does it work? Yes, very effectively. Is it time consuming? Yep.

But, let's look at an easier, and even more effective, way to use Wordtracker. And with this alternate way, you're actually considering keyword phrases based on your target audience.

Introducing John Alexander

To write this article, I interviewed John Alexander, an authority of Wordtracker who has spent countless hours working through each of the features and developing his own unique strategy.

As means of introduction, John is a professional search engine optimizer with Beyond-SEO (http://www.beyond-seo.com) and a trainer of onsite search engine marketing workshops through Search Engine Workshops (http://www.searchengineworkshops.com).

Besides using Wordtracker to find keywords, John actually uses the service to target an audience's surfing behavior. Once he determines the surfing behavior, he can use that knowledge to target those who are most likely to purchase his clients' products or services.

Unlike most of us, John doesn't get ""stuck"" in Keyword Universe to where the system does all the thinking for him. Instead, he begins at Comprehensive Search (found under the Multiple Search heading).

He explains, ""Where you'll find most of your 'revelations' or 'insights' is in the Comprehensive Search feature of Wordtracker. Try entering one part of a search phrase and letting Comprehensive Search figure out the best 'full use' of the phrase.""

Let's look at an example

John has a client who sells baby furniture and products online, so he needed to find the target audience for baby furniture. Putting his creative mind at work, he started thinking about who would want to buy baby beds and strollers. Not people with newborns - after all, they already own all of the furniture they need. The true audience for his client is soon to become parents, grandparents, etc.

His next step was to use Comprehensive Search to try to determine what his target audience is looking for. John typed in ""baby,"" and he found some very interesting results.

People searching for the word ""baby"" were searching for keyword phrases like ""baby names,"" ""Baby Names,"" ""Baby Boy Names,"" and so forth.

Bingo! He had the angle he needed to get traffic to the site. Rather than concentrating on the actual product he was trying to sell, he thought of a way to pull in traffic through a different window. After all, what will his target audience be looking for on the Internet? Ideas for names for their new babies!

John adds, ""Keep in mind that this angle is also based on the fact that babies are always on the way, around the world, day after day, which creates an extremely unique market for certain products. Understand the advantages of identifying people's behavior, and you'll never look at keyword research quite the same.""

After he has captured the visitors at his site, he can easily slide in the fact that the site is also selling baby products and furniture. He's gotten them to the site, which is step #1; they are his target audience, which is step #2; and with compelling content, he can increase the site's conversion rate to go along with the increase in traffic.

How did John proceed? He created a page that focused on the meanings of baby names.

Keep in mind that the page he created has value and unique content. He didn't just toss together a page, simply for the sake of getting a top ranking. Instead, he worked hard to find links all over the Web to sites that offer the meaning of baby names. His page offers tremendous value to the search engine and users as a one-stop resource for finding links to the meanings of baby names. Then, in strategically placed spots on the page, he subtly added pictures of his client's products with links to related pages.

John explains, ""Don't ever trick your audience or they will simply never buy. Give them exactly what they are looking for right up front. In this example, I created a page that offers baby names and the meanings of baby names, and I subtly offered a few product listings or links to my client's storefront. It is essential that you always provide content related to their search first, and then offer links to appropriate products within your client's site.""

The bottom line?

How did John's strategy work out for his client? The baby names page alone pulls in an additional 500 unique visitors of extremely targeted traffic each month.

John adds, ""I cannot give you the percentage in terms of the exact increase in sales, but I can tell you that the client has been very pleased with the results.""

Remember that this is just one page that John added to the site.

He explains, ""Had I really wanted to pull out all the stops, I could have created several entry pages around this one theme. For example, targeting keyword phrases such as: 'most popular baby names,' etc. You could also build the content right into the site and extend it through all of the races:

* Spanish baby names

* Italian baby names

* Jewish baby name

* French baby names""

(See Part 2)

About the author: Robin Nobles is the Director of Training of the Academy of Web Specialists (http://www.academywebspecialists.com), where she has trained several thousand people in her online courses in search engine marketing strategies (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.