SEO Dictionary

Author: Wendy McLeod

There are many SEO terms which a self starter of SEO will not understand this article will help SEO beginners to understand the meanings of terms used in SEO, search engine optimization.

Words starting from A to D

1,Algorithm:

Algorithm is a stet of rules and regulations followed by search engines to rank websites in order. Each search engine has its own set of algorithms.

2, Alt tag:

Alt tags are HTML tags used to optimize an Image on the webpage. It can be a picture, company logo or any other image on the website. It is also called as alt attribute. The syntax of the tag is <IMG C=""companylogo.gif"" ALT=""Web design logo""> Web design logo is displayed until the page gets loaded.

3, Anchor text:

The text used on any link is called an anchor text. For example is there is a link Click here to e-mail , In this case 'Click here to e-mail' is the anchor text.

4, Automated submission:

There are many softwares available on the internet which can be used to submit your website to hundreds of search engines and directories automatically. But it is not much useful to submit your website using a software.

5, Back link OR Backward link :

Number of links pointing out to your website is called as backward links. Backward links are also called as Inbound links.It is very important to build backward links to gain good rankings on search engines

6, Black hat SEO:

Black hat SEO are the techniques used to fool the search engines in order to bring in more traffic to websites. You are not suppose to use Black hat techniques because there is a chance of your website being black listed on the search engines

7, Black listed :

A website is black marked by the search engines for various reasons like using Black hat SEO, Illegal content, Spamming etc. Black listed websites never show up on search engines. So you have to be very careful in the SEO techniques you use for your website because once you are on the black list you will never have hits and sure toloose business.

8, Broken link:

A link that existed before but does not exist at present is called a broken link. The search engines might have indexed the link when it existed now the link may havemoved to a different page or removed in this case the search engine removes the indexed link from its database. It is not good for a website to have broken links.Broken links are also called as Dead links.

9, Crawler is also called as spider.

Crawler is a program which is similar to a browser it is owned by search engines, to ""surf"" the web by following links from one page to the next and from one site to the next. It collects information from the sites it visits and that information is stored in the search engine's database.

10, Cross linking:

Suppose you own multiple websites and link all the websites you own into each other it is called Cross linking. cross linking is done to improve link popularity.But when you do too much cross linking there is a chance that your website may get black listed in Google for using bad SEO process.

11, Description tag :

Description tag is a HTML tag which gives a brief description about the website to the search engines. It is not visible on the website but it helps the search engines to index your website by showing it the exact content of the page. Now a days search engines do not give much importance to the description tag.

12,Directory:

Directory is a website with a collection of different websites belonging to various categories. A directory can be a general directory and there are also directories belonging to one particular category. There are some directories which allow free site listings and few offers only paid listings.Directory listing is the best method to build inbound links.

13, Doorway page :

Doorway page is the page which redirects to another page. It is a black had SEO technique where a keyword rich page with no proper content, this page is where search engines land you on but the page gets you redirected to another page or domain.This is not a advisable technique to bring traffic to your website.

14,Dynamic content:

Web site content generated automatically, usually from a based or user selections. Dynamic content typically changes at regular intervals, for example daily or each time the users reload the page. SERPSs are dynamically generated pages, changing depending on user input.

Words starting from E and others will be continued in the next article of mine

About the author: Article written by Wendy www.bizwala.com Wendy McLeod is working for Bizwala.com as a SEO consultant

SEO - Does it work?

Author: Mark Nenadic

Copyright 2006 Mark Nenadic

When someone enters the search terms into Google, Yahoo or MSN and press enter, they will have pages of results return. Pages that have been search engine optimized (SEO) and earned their page rankings. Inevitably, the end user skips the banner ads and sponsored results. SEO pages deliver not because they have paid the search engine to premier their results but because the work invested in the pages shows up in the ranking system.

In the world of SEO, individually owned businesses can compete with corporate giants. The playing field is still not completely level, because in contrast to those large corporate entities that can dominate in a local retail market - it is the individual small business that can create a stronger foothold with their niche focus.

SEO counts on the natural search function versus the sites that pay for the number of hits they get. Natural searching is organic because as stated above, the results are more real to what the visitor is looking for. The difference for the visitor is much like watching a paid advertisement on television and talking to a friend who used the product. Chances are greater that a person will be more influenced by their friend's experiences than they will by the paid advertisement.

In world where marketing dollars number into the billions, it is not surprising that the average consumer whether in 'real' or 'virtual' marketplaces is less swayed by the 'advertisement' than they are by the 'experience.' As the search engine visitor scans the results to their search terms, they'll be looking at the links and descriptions as much as they will on the highlighted terms.

A person entering a search for 'do it yourself grout' is likely to get hits like Home Depot, Lowe's and even Sears. There may be paid advertisements for book links on doing it yourself from the larger book chains. There may even be an advertisement for Do It Yourself television shows featuring names like Bob Vila. But if all the person is looking for is some quick instructions on how to use grout, they are highly unlikely to click those links. They will be looking for the more organically returned results that feature step-by-step instructions and more.

Upcoming changes in the Internet market may also influence the effect that SEO companies have on search engines and individual websites. Yahoo, for example, has a new SiteMatch program that will be mixing both organic and sponsored results. The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) is taking an interest in the process. Paid fees are not supposed to affect rankings. That is why sponsored sites are listed as such. Yet, the very nature of sponsoring puts those websites up on the top part of the page.

Internet visitors are savvy, however and with the scrutiny being put on search engines by the FTC and other marketplace outlets, education in SEO and how it affects a web page's ranking is going to become a must know for all Internet consumers and visitors. Some search engines are removing their sponsored results altogether or separating them to allow visitors to choose what type they want to see. AskJeeves.com is one that announced it was impossible to present sponsored and organic results together in an unbiased format. The end users don't want to see results from the company that pays the most money to get their advertising out there. They want to see the results that most closely match what they are looking for.

In a world of organic search engines, SEO is king. By using SEO web design and professional web designers, a web site can achieve higher page rankings and visitor traffic by being exactly what it is. A hardware store shouldn't pay to be listed on the same page as a lingerie search. They certainly wouldn't be hanging it in their own retail stores.

By the same token, search engine visitors have a right to expect that the results they get are real. That the pages they are going to follow links to will have the information or related information to their search terms. When SEO is done right, promoting the click through links and SEO copywriting supporting the information already presented, then everyone wins. In a world of organic search engines, SEO DOES work.

About the author: Mark Nenadic Mark is the director and face behind FifteenDegrees-North http://www.15dn.com , where you will find articles and resources to help with SEO, marketing and Web design.

Why an SEO Company?

Author: Mark Nenadic

Copyright 2006 Mark Nenadic

What exactly is an SEO company? Why would a business or person need one? What is SEO? Acronyms are popular on the Internet and new ones crop up every single day. SEO, like the Internet however, is here to stay. Businesses both company and individually run are spending more and more on SEO Company services every day.

Why?

Well, to understand the why of it is to understand what an SEO company does. SEO Company's understand the pivotal role that search engines play in the Internet marketplace. As the old phrase goes: location, location, and location. Location is exactly what an SEO company specializes in.

The market for online advertising is on the rise and well over the ten billion dollar mark. The search engine Google dominates the market when it comes to search engines. While there are numerous others, Google gets a whopping 42% of online searches and generates two to three times longer session times according to studies. This isn't small and an SEO company that knows what it's doing knows that to achieve the market saturation on location, they need to show up in the top page rankings on Google.

If you're still wondering why, the answer is simple. Most people who search the Internet limit their page scans to the first page or two that is returned by the search engine. Depending on the setting that limits the results to about the top 40 or 50 hits that are returned. For a business to use a search engine as their market penetration point, they need to be in the top 40 to 50 hit range to be found on the search engines.

Marketers that know what they are doing recognize this and use an SEO company to optimize their website. This involves everything from paid advertising, click through and populating the website with informative SEO articles. The algorithms behind how Google handles its searches remains a mystery and if Google has its way, it will continue to be so. Understanding the complexity of the search engine's algorithm is what the SEO Company does.

Search engines are getting better about how they filter the optimized material. They can sort the chafe from the genuine. A website that is found to be promoting itself with paid for links, junk articles with repetitive phrases and cheap tricks won't find itself in the top rankings if the page isn't discarded from the ranking system altogether. The marketing budget for a business on the Internet must include an SEO company to secure their spot in a real estate market where the boom doesn't show any signs of slowing.

About the author: Mark Nenadic Mark is the director and face behind FifteenDegrees-North http://www.15dn.com , where you will find articles and resources to help with SEO, marketing and Web design.

How to be the SEO King (and make a lot of money)?

Author: Marek Stacho

Do you want to be a SEO King? What is it the ""SEO""? Ok, it is time to describe it a little bit. SEO means ,,search engine optimization"". Search engine optimization is a set of methods aimed at improving the ranking of a website in search engine listings.

Ok, and what does it have common with money? It's very, very easy. The better SEO your website has, the more traffic you can have. Consider this: there are two sites. The first is SEO optimized, the second is not. Random internet user searches some words in Google search. And now the question is: which of the two pages is he going to visit. Clear answer - the one with better SEO, because it is listed at the first position so it seems that information on this page must be more relevant (but in real the situation is different).

And now think about increased traffic to your site. Do you use google adsense? I hope you do. And believe me, the more visitors, the more click, the more money for you. We can say the better SEO, the more money (direct proportion).

Now I'd like to talk about how to improve your SEO. There are some basic things you should follow: keyword within the title tag, keyword in domain name, URL directories and file names including your keywords, HTML tags: headings, bold and emphasized text including the same keywords, keyword density in your text - one keyword should appear in the firs paragraph, keyword proximity and alt attributes for images including your keywords.

Let's talk about some example. You want to have the most visited website about fruit (or whatever). You should place the word ""fruit"" everywhere. Your domain should be www.fruit-something.com, the title should be Fruit , in meta description should be word fruit, the same word in the text of your page. At least three times, once in the first paragraph. You should use tags and place some Fruits onto your page. And remember, the rest of the text must have something to it. Nothing irrelevant, OK? That all is truth. But to be the real SEO king, we must go further. The following, though, are some of the considerations search engines could be building into their algorithms: Age of site (it looks like the new ones have better ranking), length of time domain has been registered (older have better ranking), age of content (who knows?) regularity with which new content is added (add content every day), age of link and reputation of linking site (never link to bad sites), standard on-site factors, negative scoring for on-site factors (for example, a dampening for sites with extensive keyword meta tags indicative of having being SEO-ed), uniqueness of content (do not copy, write something new), related terms used in content (the terms the search engine associates as being related to the main content of the page), external links, the anchor text in those external links and in the sites/pages containing those links (the best is when some very good sites with good ranking link to you), quality of HTML coding, presence of coding errors (yeah dude, make it valid), unsafe or illegal content (don't make porn or other webs with this stuff - it is considered unsafe) and broken outgoing links are also not good. It is a lot of things, but remember it and what more: UTILIZE IT.

As a result, SEO practices that improve web site quality are likely to outlive short term practices that simply seek to manipulate search rankings. The top SEOs recommend targeting the same thing that search engines seek to promote: relevant, useful content for their users. Means of improving web site quality include: 1. Clean, fast loading websites, that are content rich, and frequently (google robot will come more often) updated. 2. Websites that follow the web's simpler conventions (short and descriptive titles, easy navigation, no disabling of browser buttons, no keyword stuffing or other blatant SEO work). 3. Natural-looking link building: a few links from directories, very minimal reciprocal or three-way linking, no apparent buying or selling of links, no attempted PR manipulation (buying/selling/hogging), no outward links to less reputable sites. 4. No auto-generated nonsense content and no machine translated content, but original, useful material. 5. No technical errors, no duplicate pages, a valid robots.txt, a sitemap, and custom error pages. 6. When optimizing a site, it seems like Google is on the top of everyone's mind, but there are niche search engines that add very targeted and useful traffic to make a site's job postings much more effective.

After considering all these facts, you are ready to increase your adsense revenues in an instant. Look at your site and ask yourself: does my site meet all the requirements of well optimized page? If not, repair it. Every detail is important. Only the best webmaster can be the SEO king and earn the most money so be thoroughgoing.

About the author: Marek Stacho is a full time student of the University of Economics in Prague, Czech Republic. His main specialization is Business and Law. He is also interested in web commerce, you can visit his blog 2010 - Future Is Nearly Here . During last year he studies trade negotiating skills and business behavior.

Black Hat SEO - What You Should Know

Author: Cari Haus

Copyright 2006 Cari Haus

Like it or not, the search engine optimization (SEO) strategies implemented by your webmaster may impact more than your company's keyword rankings. Black Hat SEO, as unethical search engine optimization practices are generally called, can have negative consequences for your company's public image as well.

A relatively recent case in point would be the doorway pages utilized by automaker BMW. Google penalized the BMW site for using doorway pages, which trick search engines by showing them different content than what is presented to users. BMW got a lot of free publicity out of the deal, but probably not of the type they were hoping for. BMW quickly removed the doorway pages from their site, and more than likely, someone behind the scenes got their hand slapped too.

If your company is intent on building not only a brand, but a stellar public image, the last activity you'll want to engage in is Black Hat SEO tactics. Although there are some gray areas, certain practices are widely considered unethical and could tarnish one of your firm's most valuable assets, your company image.

Black Hat Techniques to Avoid

Building doorway pages into your site is forbidden with just about every search engine. Doorway pages, which are really ""fake"" pages or ""spider food"" that cater to search engine algorithms but are never seen by users, have one primary goal: to trick search engines into higher rankings. They should be avoided at all costs.

Placing invisible text on your site can also get you into trouble with search engines. An example would be putting black text on a black background on your site. This practice is also unethical. Keyword packing or stuffing, which involves putting long lists of keywords on your site without anything in the way of content, can also get you banned from the search engines.

If your webmaster or SEO firm is engaging in any of these tactics, beware. Your site could be penalized by the search engines for these tactics, and any gains that result from them early on could be more than offset by the cost of being de-indexed by the search engines, not to mention the black eye that unethical practices could give to your company.

Link farms and linking schemes with the primary intent of manipulating search engine rankings, as opposed to providing valuable content on the web, can also get your site dropped or banned from Google. Google also has a very dim view of duplicate content, which involves the promotion of two or more nearly identical sites.

Black Hat SEO is simply not worth the risk. Your best choice will always be to engage an SEO firm whose ethics reflect the stellar image your company has or is striving to achieve.

About the author: Cari Haus retails Amish log furniture and log beds on the Internet from her website, http://www.logcabinrustics.com/

The Heavily-Optimised SEO Article As Legitimate Search Engine Doorway Page

Author: Bill Kruse

The doorway page, the satellite page, the channeling page, the information page, the landing page, the entry page, the bridge page..., whatever you call them they've long been considered the bete noir of seo or search engine optimisation. Everyone's got their own definition but all of them embrace roughly the same principle, a heavily optimised keyword or keyword phrase-riddled page built solely to attract the search engines that then links back to a main web site.

Some of these will be made up of pure and absolute nonsense bar the top paragraph, that will be proper English with a link back to the main site using the keyword or key phrase as anchor text in the backlink or IBL (Inbound Back Link). The same keyword or phrase will similarly appear in the page's title tag, the meta description tag and the header or H1 tag, while the rest of the page will be utter gobbledegook, machine-generated Babel spam with the keyword or key phrase sprinkled randomly through the content just to a density which will appeal to the search engines.

Others will be made up entirely of this machine-generated keyword or phrase riddled spam and will automatically redirect through use of javascript or a meta-refresh to a completely different site. SEO techniques like this, when (not if) discovered will inevitably suffer some kind of search engine penalty if not necessarily an outright ban.

Traditionally it will characteristically also be a page that stands alone outside the main body of a site, existing on it's own as an individual entity. It will have no incoming (IBL) links from the site; any that it does have will probably be coming from series of similar pages, all created with the same aim in mind, to rank highly in all or a particular engine for a particular specific search term.

If you do a search for doorway page in Google amazingly there are still adverts for companies who openly announce their dubious expertise in this frowned upon SEO practice despite the very highly-publicised decision by Google to ban BMW for, among other things, their blatant use of this forbidden SEO technique.

Perhaps a better approach would be to note that now, though, you can legitimately use this basic optimisation technique by making each page into an article and submitting it to an article distribution site. No-one seems to have realised yet, or if they have they haven't drawn any particular attention to it, that while using doorway pages is still very much a Black Hat SEO technique, one that can and has been known to get sites banned, you can exercise good White Hat SEO by creating articles that perform exactly the same SEO function as a doorway page and no-one will complain or even adversely comment. It seems that, in the eyes of the engines, if you hang the label ""article"" on a certain kind of doorway page it then becomes perfectly acceptable to all.

For instance, is this article linked to from my site? No it is not. Is this article heavily optimised with keywords related to SEO and key phrases related to search engine optimisation? Indeed it is. It fulfils, then, at least some of the criteria exponents of so-called ""Ethical SEO"" would use to label it as search engine spam, but manifestly, in commenting on the phenomenon it is itself a part of, it isn't spam at all, more (I believe myself) an example of social commentary on the search engine optimisation or SEO industry.

So then, is this article itself a doorway page? Like so much in search engine optimisation, that really depends on your own individual point of view. My advice? Look not at what I say I do, look instead at what results from what I do - if I have a high-ranking stand-alone page for popular SEO keywords with a link back to my main site from it, one that can not be banned for being a doorway page because it is in fact an article that's about doorway pages, what will the consequences actually be?

Strange, Grasshopper, strange are the ways of the SEO!

About the author: ""Big"" Bill Kruse occasionally takes time out from philosophical debate to offer SEO Services from his site at Kruse Internet Services .

Why SEO Training Courses are Becoming so Popular

Author: Ben Howarth

Hiring an SEO professional can be expensive but with high rankings becoming increasingly necessary for online success, the importance of optimisation can not be ignored. That is why more and more people are considering SEO training courses as an alternative to hiring a professional to do the work for them.

The interest in SEO training is a direct result of the benefits it offers over the ""professional route"". In this article we will discuss the benefits of SEO training in order to explain its growing popularity.

The Importance of SEO and the Search Engines

According to recent statistics, 90% of internet users using search engines to find websites. Furthermore, the majority of those people only look at the top two results pages. Therefore, being well positioned in the search engines can significantly enhance your chances of online success by ensuring that potential customers find you.

The Benefits of SEO Training

The biggest benefit of SEO training is that you can learn SEO techniques that you can apply yourself for a fraction of the cost of using an SEO consultant. On average it costs around £1,500 ($2,500) to hire an SEO professional to run a campaign for you. However, it only costs around £275 ($500) a head to attend an SEO training course.

As a result SEO training is both an affordable and effective way to achieve high search engine rankings. As such, SEO training courses enable small businesses learn basic SEO skills that they can apply themselves at a price that they can afford to pay.

Furthermore, even if you want to use a professional to do your optimisation, SEO training can still be extremely useful. This is because it equips you with the necessary understanding to brief and work with professionals.

This is particularly helpful because one of the areas covered by most SEO training courses is spam. Spam refers to a set of techniques that some unscrupulous professionals use to try and boost their clients' rankings artificially. These techniques are banned by the search engines who de-list sites that use them. Participants of SEO training courses can ensure that people they might hire do not apply these techniques to their sites.

About the author: SEMS Consultancy offers

SEO training courses throughout the UK. These SEO training courses are run by highly experienced optimisation consultants and are suitable for all individuals regardless of programming experience.

Common Sense Algorithm Chasing for SEO

Author: Stoney deGeyter

I used to be a strong proponent of common-sense SEO (

search engine optimization ) and a detractor from optimization by algorithm chasing.

While I still believe strongly in common-sense SEO (now more than ever) my views on algorithm chasing have evolved a certain degree. Many SEOs believe that the two are mutually exclusive, meaning you can't optimize in a common sense manner if you are going to optimize specifically for a search engine algorithm. There is some truth to this; I think that those that are proponents of either one method or the other are missing the big picture.

Algorithm Chasers:

I still don't believe in algorithm chasing in the way that most who practice this technique do because it tends to be very shortsighted and too narrowly focused in the approach. This is the main argument for the proponents of common-sense SEO, and in that they are correct. Algorithm chasers tend to focus on a very narrow set of elements in an attempt to ""beat"" the search engine at it's own game. Often times, these algo chasers are effective, but only for a single search engine, and only until the search engine algorithm changes in ways that do not favor their techniques. This leaves them looking for the next set of elements in which to manipulate, and in doing so, rankings for their clients drop significantly while they attempt to figure out what ""works"" now.

The basic problem here is that the search engine algorithms analyze a very broad range of factors (more than most SEOs are aware of) and are very dynamic. Algorithm chasers are all about finding what works and trying to make that work for everyone. In the past, this type of SEO was very effective, but today's search engine algorithms are not only broad in their range of analyzed elements; they are extremely dynamic in how those elements are analyzed. This means that using a mathematical formula to create an effective title tag or body copy is not longer effective from one site to the next. Optimizing from one site to the next requires a whole different set of ""formulas"" in order to be effective.

Common-Sense SEO:

Today's search engine algorithms favor ""common-sense"" SEO now more than ever. Search engines have gone beyond analyzing the mathematical elements of keyword usage on the page and are striving to analyze normal human behavior. All things being equal, if you write keywords into text so they sound natural, you should rank better than those who are simply trying to get the right number of keywords on the page.

But it goes far beyond that. Search engines are no longer just looking for keywords on the page; they are looking for other related words that should be on the page as well. Such words would be stemmed variations, natural alternatives and similarly related words. Again, there is no magical mathematic formula, which is why common-sense often works well.

This is also where most common-sense SEO proponents go wrong. They simply don't believe they need to know or understand search engine algorithms. As long as its common sense then no additional knowledge or skills are required. This, too, is shortsighted and narrowly focused.

The biggest problem with common-sense SEO is that it relies only on what is commonly known. What is in the search engine algorithms is NOT commonly known but those who seek to understand how and why search engine algorithms do as they do will end up knowing far more than that which is common and are therefore more apt to succeed against those that rely only on what is common.

Common-Sense Algorithm Chasing:

The best SEOs are those that utilize what I will call common-sense algorithm chasing. They have a thorough knowledge of SEO that will make sense to the visitor as well as knowing and understanding where search engine algorithms are and where they are headed as well.

In any industry, you can hire an expert that knows you need the very best products, services, techniques etc. for the job to be done right. But if said expert doesn't know which of these are best for different types of jobs, you won't end up with the very best result for YOUR particular needs. You can also hire an expert that knows one particular product, service or technique very well, but if the expert isn't aware that there are other product, services or techniques better suited for your particular job you're going to find that the effectiveness of the work is limited.

SEO works in the same way. You need an SEO that understands search engine algorithms, how they function, their goals in producing quality results, while not focusing too narrowly on a few analyzed elements. Anything less than that and you'll find that optimization will only end up being moderately successful. Common-Sense Algorithm Chasing is essential for any successful optimization campaign. If your SEO cannot provide that, its time to consider one that can.

About the author: Stoney deGeyter is president of Pole Position Marketing (PolePositionMarketing.com), a professional search engine marketing firm . He contributes daily to the (EMP) E-Marketing Performance (eMarketingPerformance.com) marketing blog as well as the author of his E-Marketi ng eBook .

Subcontracting your SEO and Web development

Author: Mark Nenadic

Copyright 2006 Mark Nenadic

Web development for the SEO (search engine optimization) expert includes using copywriters to generate SEO articles. Writers are tasked with generating copy based on lists of keywords. The challenge for the SEO expert is to find a writer that is capable of generating informative, interesting and at times entertaining copy that also meets the requirements of needed for SEO web development.

SEO experts use web copy to generate page ranks from search engine spiders that tabulate searchable terms and assign rank based on algorithms that remain a closely guarded secret. The use of copywriters by SEO experts in web development is the difference between a tastefully decorated and attractive storefront versus one with a single door facing a back parking lot.

Web development requires the designer to take into account the many facets that make up a web site and the best ways to generate traffic. Traffic generation is the SEO expert's area. While the use of an SEO expert may not jump a site from a 100 visitors a month to a 1,000,000, it can and does improve the opportunities for search engine visitors to find the site. That increases click-through and traffic.

Subcontracting the copy writing to professional or freelance writers is one of the tools of the SEO expert. The generation of copy can be at time-consuming task requiring dozens of pages of copy to be generated in very specific formula that neither plagiarizes nor appears to be anything less than professional. Since this is a tool and a style, it's important for the web development team or lead to know what to look for in good web copy.

The following is a list of ideas that will help the SEO expert and web development team narrow their requests to the copywriters. When everyone is on the same page, the work will be better for it.

When it comes to form and style, web copy needs to be sharp and focused. Long paragraphs with few breaks are tedious on the eyes. Spacing, short sentences and bulleted lists can bring the points home in a crisp format that the average web reader can scan and absorb in a glance.

Bulleted Items Should Be:

* Short, to the point.

* Informative.

* Descriptive.

* Inviting.

Bold Headlines let people know when a new bullet is being talked about or that a new idea is being offered. Bold lettering or italics are strong visual clues to alert the reader about specific issues, points or names. The reader wants this information. They want it boxed up and delivered in a quick, easy to digest format. The copywriter needs to be able to present their articles in this format and still make the SEO expert's list of terms appear in their copy.

While web copy can be used for marketing, SEO expert articles are not generated for marketing purposes. The articles help the site achieve a page rank. They inform visitors. They build consumer confidence. They might even entertain. They shouldn't be layered with heavy-duty terminology discussing the articulation of the message to be disseminated by the visitor with a handy thesaurus or a Master's Degree.

Web copy is not written for stupid people either.

It's written for the person on the go. It's written for the mom who needs to find a recipe or a quick diagram on how to change a tire. It's written for the Dad looking for blue prints to build a tree house or a source for a special drill bit. It's written for the student who needs to get the research paper done tonight. It's written for the shopper who needs to compare products and has no idea what one is.

It's written for everyday people. Those are the audience the SEO expert is targeting with their web copy and supporting materials. They are using the copywriter-generated articles to achieve a page rank that brings these everyday visitors into the site that matches their search terms.

SEO expert web development generates page ranks. SEO expert web development brings the visitors who want to be there a way to find it quickly and efficiently. In the end, everyone involved when the job is well done shares the reward.

About the author: Mark Nenadic Mark is the director and face behind FifteenDegrees-North http://www.15dn.com , where you will find articles and resources to help with SEO, marketing and Web design.

Breaking SEO Myths Part One: The SEO Expert

Author: Daniel Dessinger

Could there be another industry more inflated by ego, misinformation, and repetition than search engine optimization? Perhaps there are a few others out there, but not many. But what else can one expect from an unregulated industry? There's no FCC, FTC, FEC, FMC, FERC, HIPAA, ATF, SEC, FAA or any other acronymed agency standardizing legitimate SEO practices.

Search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask Jeeves each have their own secret algorithms which mathematically select, arrange, and prioritize search results. No two search engines work the same. No two search engines yield exactly the same search results (unless they are actually powered by the same search engine but packaged under different names). No SEO ""expert"" or firm knows all of the search engines' secrets. So how do they write so many articles, blogs, and forums with such authority? And why are the ones pinky swearing that they're honest only telling you enough to maintain enough mystery to keep you relying upon their expertise and yet still wondering what the heck they are doing behind those closed doors?

Am I saying that they're all scam artists? No. Many of them aren't. But even the ones who are legit are still count on an air of mystery and difficulty to keep the client from demanding too many specific answers. Why? Because if these search engine specialists revealed all that they know to a client, they know that an intelligent client would be unimpressed. The truth is that most companies could perform their own SEO and be quite successful. There are exceptions, like the home mortgage industry. Certain industries are so competitive in organic search that most companies will not be able to compete even with professional natural SEO services.

So why should a company hire an SEO professional? In my opinion, such contracting of services only makes sense when a company either has enough money to throw around or they have much more important tasks for their own employees to perform. I compare it to online grocery shopping - it saves you time and effort, but unless you're disabled, filthy rich, or ungodly busy it is not a cost effective option.

Of course, I'm not going to begrudge anyone the opportunity to sub out a service they do not feel comfortable with performing themselves. Every executive has the right to decide which is more valuable to the company in this situation: time or money. I understand that, and I also respect a person who focuses on contributing their strengths rather than faking strengths that eventually cost the company due to incompetence and pride. You will find those same types of people in the search engine marketing profession. Men and women have forged careers in search engine marketing because they learned how to retell someone else's stories and to write ""new"" articles containing recycled information. Those types are actually better at sales and personal PR than SEO.

So what exactly makes a person an SEO expert? Seriously. Don't accept someone's claims without critically examining them. There's no federal or industry-wide standard. So who makes an expert an expert? What's the difference between an expert and an expert fake? And how can you tell one from the other?

It's a slippery slope. Sadly, it is an industry where many companies profit from client ignorance. Am I going to present clear-cut evidence here of my claims? Not a chance. I don't have to, and I don't want to make any specific enemies. I learned what I know by studying SEO online wherever I could because I was trying to join the industry. What I realized through my extensive online reading and professional relationships is that a good humble businessperson is always more trustworthy and reliable than a self-proclaimed expert. Humility is key. Use your discernment.

If you don't believe me, subscribe to a few SEO newsletters and catch up on your SEO articles. See for yourself if you don't read the same thing over and over, only presented in a different order or from a different angle. Study which groups or individuals support and compliment each other in SEO articles, forums, and blogs. Notice how they build a castle of thoughts out of thin air. In this industry, some will corroborate each other if it means reinforcing the fuzzy logic that has benefited their own business. The lack of fresh information is fairly convincing evidence that search engine optimization and keyword research are not all that complicated. If they were, the experts wouldn't have to recycle to put out new articles and blogs.

For all of you still willing and ready to hire an SEO professional, all I ask is that you make an educated decision based on research. And always check with clients the firm claims to have serviced. Find out if they were really a client, what type of service they received, and if they were satisfied with that service. And, of course, make sure you aren't verifying one firm with one of their bread-and-butter partners. Remember, things are not always what they appear. If you keep these basic considerations in mind, you should do well when choosing the right SEO professional.

About the author: Daniel Dessinger is a copywriter in the Dallas / Fort Worth area. He holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in English from Dallas Baptist University. In addition to compulsive blogging, he writes for various marketing firms, corporations, and small businesses around the country. His writing services include SEO friendly interactive press releases, search optimized website copy, industry-specific articles, creative ads, copy editing, and online public r

SEO and Expired Domains: Is It Worth It?

Author: Joe Balestrino - Mr SEO

So you want to start a business, sell a product or have the next big dot Com idea, huh? Well, undoubtedly, you will need a domain. Wouldn't an expired domain name give you a head start? Think about it...the site attached to the domain already has a page rank and backlinks. Maybe the site is listed in Dmoz or several other directories and search engines. By purchasing an expired domain, you wouldn't have to worry about Google's age factor for new sites. It would likely save you a whole lot of time and money, right? Wrong. Like most things in life, nothing is that easy. Expired domains are viewed by many as a way for a new domain owner to capitalize on a the previous site's page rank and traffic. Unfortunately, that's simply not the case. Once a site expires, it loses its page rank, meaning all existing links are no longer counted towards the site. That's right...you start fresh. You'll have to re-establish PR. Dmoz has even mentioned that they will pull a site's listing once it expires. Of course, depending on the popularity of the name in terms of it's relation to search traffic, you'll probably get more traffic than if the site was new. The site already has established links that bring in traffic, they just won't count toward your page rank...ever. But honestly, that's really the only benefit you get, unless you are lucky enough to buy a domain whose name you can benefit from because of a direct relation to your products or services. The chances of that happening are pretty slim. Think about it...if someone owned a successful site with a successful name, would it be expired and available? This is why even the best attempts at garnering an expired domain usually only result in a loose association by name at best. If you want to sell computers, you won't find ""computers.com"". You might find ""discountcomputerperipheralsupply.net"", but that's not exactly memorable, is it? There are many SEO gurus who advocate buying expired domains. I don't necessarily disagree as long as you know what the benefits will and won't be. Google has stated that expired domains will lose their PR and backlinks. I have even heard of instances where attempts to re-establish PR after purchasing the expired domain and registering it have failed. In fact, more than a few people have had problems with Google failing to recognize backlinks set up after the domain is re-established. So, is there any safe way to get a jump on the SERP's? Well, if possible, you'd want to purchase a domain before it expires. This way, there is no chance of losing the backlinks and PR. Still, if it holds a site with a high PR and good backlinks or is simply a popular phrase or term, it's likely going to cost you a lot more than the registration fee on a domain. The cost could be justified, however, in some instances. In my research, I couldn't find one instance where Google or any other search engine had a problem with a transfer of ownership regarding domains. This basically entails buying a business with the location, not just an empty store with a sign. Of course, someone could own a domain with no site on it, but then pre-existing PR and backlinks wouldn't be a factor. You would simply be buying a name. For domains with successful sites already established, it's a good way to get a head start if the price is right. If you can afford it and find someone willing to sell, this is one way to avoid the loss of any pre-existing PR and backlinks. Of course, we are talking about domain purchase in the context of small business. If you bought ""Sears.com"" in 1990 and you don't own the company, it wasn't because your last name is Sears. Back to expired domains... If you do decide to buy an expired domain, keep one thing in mind. The site already has backlinks, anchor text and other off site SEO factors. There are two considerations you will need to make before you plunk down your cash: 1. Are you buying the domain because the domain name is related or because the previous site had high traffic? If the site you are planning is unrelated, you won't benefit from the traffic (provided there is any) or off site SEO work. 2. Make sure you know what you are getting into when you buy an expired domain. Any ""black hat"" methods, links to bad neighbors, paid links and other unethical practices can affect you. If all else fails or your search for a related expired domain bears no fruit, start from scratch. You will be able to develop your site knowing that the success or failure of it can't be attributed to someone else's efforts. In other words, you will know if your SEO methods are effective for the particular business you are in and not a result of traffic already established by the previous owner. I have written many articles that can help you boost your pagerank and get indexed faster. Sometimes, it's better to start fresh than go through the headache of searching for the right expired domain.

About the author: Joe is an SEO expert. His SEO/SEM firm has helped many companies increase there organic placement. He also writers articles and creates a weekly podcast on SEO. Win SEO for your site just for posting on the Mr SEO message board.

Top Ten SEO Myths - Mr SEO

Author: Joe Balestrino

Ever wonder what the biggest SEO myths are? I have taken the most prevalent myths that seem to be constantly resurfacing and examined them for you. This is a must read for anyone looking to hire an SEO firm or someone looking to do SEO for themselves.

Myth # 1 All meta tags are of equal importance Some meta tags are useful while others are not. I have stated this many times. Search engines are relying more and more about what is on the website than what the tags are telling them. The description tag is used by some (but not all) search engines. The same goes for the keyword tag. Keyword tags are used more by spammers and people using software to find you as a link partner than the search engines. In my opinion, the only tags you should concentrate your efforts on are the robot tag and the description tags.

Myth # 2 You should submit your site to search engines weekly or monthly Honestly, I never submit any site more than 1 time and sometimes I don't even do that. If you submit your site once, you're good. The engines will come back on their own. You can sometimes speed up the process of getting your site indexed by linking it to a high traffic or high PR site. The search engines will find the URL to your site and index it automatically.

Myth # 3 SEO is too expensive Actually, SEO is probably the most cost effective form of online marketing. Organic SEO is cheaper to set up and maintain than a PPC campaign or banner advertising. With PPC and banner advertising, you pay for clicks or impressions. With SEO, all clicks are FREE. You simply pay for the set up and monitoring of your site's pages.

Myth # 4 PPC is more effective than natural SEO In the short term...true. In the long term...false. Why, you ask? Organic SEO is preferred by traffic over 5 to 1 to PPC. People trust organic searches to return relevant results. People also know that the ads to the right of the page are sponsored ads. They have long ago figured out that anyone can bid on any term they want, as many often do, without even a hint of relevance. So, long term SEO structuring can indeed be more effective than PPC, especially when considering the preferences of search traffic. A top 5 ranking may take some time to get, but once you are there (and provided you can maintain it), you will get better results than from a PPC ad.

Myth # 5 Hiring an SEO specialist ""in house"" is cheaper The problem with hiring someone in house is, they are paid hourly or by salary. Most SEO firms (Mr-SEO included), charge per item or project. It doesn't matter how long it takes us, you pay a one time charge. When you hire a firm, it's like having a team of SEO experts on your payroll. Paying a flat rate saves you money and speeds up the time it takes to complete a job. Additionally, most SEO firms (again, Mr-SEO Included) have specialists who write, submit, redesign sites, post pages, etc... Hiring one person who can do all these things competantly is highly unlikely.

Myth # 6 I can only optimize my homepage for keyterms You can and should optimize every page on your site. Each page should have it's own keyterms, with no more than three phrases per page (preferrably one).

Myth # 7 All I need to do is write content with the correct keyword density and my site will rank well Wrong...especially if you want to rank on Google. You will need off site SEO as well as onsite SEO. Keyword density may work on MSN (for now), but it will take more than that to rank well for all search engines.

Myth # 8 I shouldn't aim for the most competitive keywords and phrases If the keywords you are competing for are very competitive, should you optimize your site for them? Of Course! I would optimize for some high, medium and low competitive keyterms. Cover all your bases. The worst case is that you won't rank well for the high competitive keyterms and that's ok. You can always work to improve them. Don't shy away from top keyterms just because they are competitive. You may never know how close you could rank for them unless you try.

Myth # 9 Only work with companies that give you a guarantee Guarantees would be nice if they were worth the paper they are printed on. In fact, most guarantees from SEO firms have the same stipulation in them. This stipulation usually states that as long as they get one of your keyphrases to the top of any major search engines, they have fulfilled their end of the agreement. This is irrelevant to the competition of the term. In other words...it's easy to be number one for terms no one is competing for. Don't be deceived by high rankings listed on SEO sites as they can be misleading.

Myth # 10 SEO requires a 1 year commitment on my part It certainly shouldn't. Don't lock yourself into a year contract with any company unless you already have an established, favorable business relationship. SEO, in most cases, should be performed on a month to month basis with a mutual understanding of the objectives and relative timetable. Often, both the long and short term maintenance contracts that many firms insist on including with each job are unnecessary. As an example...If you have a new site optimized, especially right after an update, you may not see results for three months. Why pay for maintenance in the interim time? Additionally, you may not be happy with the results of an SEO firm or even the level of service. A long term contract may only ensure that you receive a full year of bad service. So, don't lock yourself in with a year contract, at least until you are comfortable with who you are dealing with.

Hopefully, I put a few common SEO myths to rest. Feel free to contact me with questions you may have regarding these or other SEO myths you want more information on.

About the author: Joe is an SEO expert. His SEO/SEM firm has helped many companies increase there organic placement. He also writers articles and creates a weekly podcast on SEO. Win SEO for your site just for posting on the Mr SEO message board.

SEO What Does it Stand For?

Author: David Mclauchlan

SEO stands for Special Equipment Operator? Senior Executive Officer? Sponsors for Educational Opportunity? Special Equipment Operator? State Engineers Office? Seasoned Equity Offering? Software Engineering Organization? Society of Education Officers? Special Equipment Option? Security Engineering Officer? Special Exemption Order? OK, OK let's get serious here. South Eastern Ohio? Sorry I'm done now. Actually all of these are actual acronyms for SEO but not the one we want to talk about here.

First a quick dictionary definition: ""The term used to describe the marketing technique of preparing a website to enhance its chances of being ranked in the top results of a search engine once a relevant search is undertaken. A number of factors are important when optimising a website, including the content and structure of the website's copy and page layout, the HTML meta-tags and the submission process.""

Search Engine Optimization. SEO is a critical skill to learn if you want your Web site to rank well in free search engine listings. E-commerce sites are notoriously difficult to optimize for high rankings due to a number of factors that hinder their ability to rank well, including poor shopping cart designs, lack of content, poor linking structures, lack of inbound links, etc. This is the place to learn how to build or modify your Web site to achieve better rankings in the free listings Google™, MSN™, Yahoo! ™ as well as in other popular search engines.

Content is one of the biggest influences on the success of your search Engine Optimization program. There is a saying that content is king and this is true whether it is for your optimized web pages, you're paid advertising message, or your optimized news releases.

Search engine optimization is a lot like weight loss. The one big difference being that when you get SEO right it usually doesn't come back to haunt you after a few years. You've got some things that are effective and some that are not, and it's hard to trust the claims of one over the other. You want to believe the great-results-with-no-effort claims, and you hope they are true... but are they worth wasting your time and money on.

Did you know that most search engines can't ""read"" graphics? Did you also know that key search words and phrases in your ""title tag"", ""META tags"" (in the HTML script of your site) and body text are often very important references that search engines analyze when ranking web sites for search relevancy? Optimizing your title tags, meta tags and your body text for search engines gives it a much better chance of ranking highly for particular words or phrases that you would expect potential visitors to type in to search engines to find your site.

About the author: David McLauchlan has this outstanding e-book titled ""Article Cash Creator""

This ebook is making a lot of people very rich

http://www.article-cas h-creator.com/

SEO copywriting services allow your website to get higher page rank

Author: Gagandeep Dhaliwal

Advertisement plays an important role in promoting a company and its products. No business can survive successfully without advertisement. In earlier times, salesman, traders and advertisers convince public towards their product with the help of inspiring content or message. But now-a-days, each and every business whether big or small, should advertise itself online.

Online promotion or advertisement convinces potential buyers towards products and services of companies. Attractive, conscientious and convincing texts are essentials of online advertisement, which force the searchers or readers to take action.

Your ad should be such that it attracts the attention of readers as well as major search engines. It also helps your site to obtain high rankings. To gain their attention it's necessary that your text should be Search Engines Optimized.

With the help of Search Engines Optimization or SEO copywriting, the text on your website is examined both by your readers and search engines like Google, Yahoo and others. It enhances the visitor experience with rational, focused content.

The readers put search terms or words in search engines box in order to find your site. So, there is need to fill your website with frequently used or searched words, known as keywords. Keywords help researchers to search related information on your site.

But it is essential that the words (keywords) should match your web matter and website content. This method allows maintaining high search engine rankings, whereas other methods are less predictable. There are several special search optimization techniques, which allow your site to communicate directly with your visitors.

Good SEO copywriting service helps you to increase traffic on your site and you can easily mange your targeted sales. SEO copywriting allow the user to stay on the site for a longer time, reads more sites content and is more likely to make a purchase, bookmark the site or contact the site.

About the author: Author presents a website on SEO copywriting services http://www.seocopywritingservices.info/. This website provides information about meaning of copywriting, SEO copywriting, its importance and SEO copywriting services. You can visit his site http://www.gmwebsitepromotion.com/

Articles and SEO

Author: Cody Moya

SEO is a big word these days. It stands for ""Search Engine Optimization,"" and it's the holy grail of web design.

Search engine optimization really refers to the development of keyword strategies that make your website rank high in search engine placements - giving you a spot in the top fifty, rather than in the top thousand. The most effective advertising technique online today is good placement in the search engines. If you are #996 instead of #23 in the primary listing for your product, the likelihood that a customer will find your site through Google to click on it is remote. And most traffic to sites these days comes through search engines.

Without an optimized website, you probably will not make many sales.

Start at the top. On a web page, before the title and anything else that appears onscreen, metatags should be filled in. If you look at the source of any website, (view - source on most browsers), you'll see where the metatag description and keywords are placed.

Choosing your keywords wisely, fill in the metatags first. Make certain your page title (that's the data that shows up in the blue bar at the top of the browser) uses at least some of the same keywords. And make sure your first page header does the same.

Keywords should be carefully sprinkled through your well-written and edited text as well.

That's it. That's all there is to SEO. But it raises its own questions.

How do you figure out what keywords to use? Http://www.nichebot.com is a site that will suggest keywords for your site. You enter your main site theme (shoes, for instance, if you sell shoes) and Nichebot will return a list of keywords and keyword phrases in order of search popularity that you can then use on your website. There are several other keyword suggestion engines as well.

How do you get the articles? This is more difficult. Some people can write their own, particularly those who have written for the Internet for a long time and have seen the changes along the way. But not everyone can write well, and not everyone has the talent for careful placement of keywords in text. Besides writing them yourself, you can try to get articles from an article broker, or you can download them for free from online article directories.

Free, however, isn't always free. Articles you purchase from an article broker are yours to use as you will, without any strings attached. If you download from an online article directory, be warned: you are required to place a resource box referencing the article's author and his or her website on your page. You may not mind this. But if the author is a direct competitor, you're risking the loss of customers.

How do you keep customers at your site, then? Providing customers with unique, easy-to-use information will make them happy and keep them with you. Don't advertise other services on your front page. Don't put up flashy animations on your website. And don't make it hard for them to find content. Regular fresh content is the best way to keep them happy with you. And if you have relevant content on every page of your website, your customers will stay longer, and the ranking of your website on search engines will go up.

You can purchase articles from article brokers instead of using the online article directories. These articles can be published on your website as your original work, they aren't duplicated elsewhere on the web, and if they're good, your customers will continue to come back, hungry for more.

Increasing Traffic

The best way to sell your product or service is to keep new customers coming in, and keeping old customers returning. There are several ways to do this. First, you can provide free articles to article directories so other people will direct traffic to your website from theirs via your resource box. Second, you can ensure you always have fresh, accessible content on your site.

Ebooks are another tool you can use. Put together a number of your old articles into an ebook, and provide it to your customers for free, with your name and web address embedded in the book's cover and at the end of the book. You can even use the ebook to direct them to special tools on your website.

Yet another trick is to provide a free newsletter generated from your website. Allow customers to sign up to be on your mailing list, and send them regularly-published newsletters containing fresh articles not available on your website, information on sales and special bargains, and other things you think your customers would be interested in that will drive sales to your site. Newsletters ensure you have a constant pool of customers interested enough in your product to ask you to send them advertising; what better tool can there be?

About the author: Cody Moya writes about Article Marketing in his free 50 parts course on Internet Marketing. You can sign up for his Free Internet Marketing Course and get additional information at his website: http://www.marketing.us

Catherine Bach Posters, Introducing Data Centres, And The End Of High Ranking As A Measure Of Successful SEO.

Author: Bill Kruse

My Catherine Bach posters page used to be on my site at www.kruse.co.uk/ but for various SEO reasons I moved it and all my other poster pages over to my web space at my broadband provider NTL so her posters landed up at my ntlworld homepages. Around this time I registered www.here-be-posters.co.uk/ and pointed it from the registration company using a 302 temporary redirect to my ntlworld web space.

This was a far from perfect solution to anything at all. I was rushed with this, flustered with that and I didn't take time to do a proper job. This threw up an unlikely benefit, though, one I may not have noticed otherwise.

What I should have done was to move the posters, as soon as they began to get successful in their own right, over to their own dedicated web space under their own domain name. Which, just recently, I did, I've been kind of busy with my SEO work plus, of course, there's always a ton of optimisation-related study to be done. So I just recently got round to this and now my SERPS are in great confusion.

Plus, of course, a lot more than is usual is affecting Google's results just now. We're experiencing the end of the Big Daddy Data Centre upgrade. Some say we're still suffering the aftershocks from the Jagger algorithm update from last year. So the SERPS are turbulent. You can input a query into Google one minute and get a certain set of results, try the same search a few minutes later and the returned results will show a significant difference. This makes life quite extra-ordinarily difficult for the practicing search engine optimiser as clients will most often judge results purely by the position that they see their site returned in Google's results in a search for their keywords or phrases. It doesn't look good if you inform a client that they're now at position three and when they look for themselves they're at position thirty-three.

Those of you who have the Google toolbar can probably check the variations in the results for yourselves. Open your browser to a Google search page and input a phrase where you know a particular site should normally be returned in the top ten. Examine the SERPS. Then try the same search in the search box in the Google Toolbar. It's increasingly probable that, while the returned results won't be wildly, hysterically at variance with the ones you've just seen, they will be different to a significant degree.

Google doesn't give its results out from just one place, it distributes them from a series of data centres which are located around the world. When a new set of results is sent to the individual data centres the nature of telecommunications being what it is they don't all arrive at the same time. This results in what could be described as a series of mini-Google Dances across the range of data centres. In practice this means a search will produce different results from different geographical locations around the globe at different times. This wasn't a problem when it was a regular and predictable occurrence but now it's so frequent it can be confusing for searchers. Worse, of course, if my client's in the States and I'm here in the UK. I can click through to Google America but still there's no telling which data centre I'm going to get, and I've no idea what my client's going to get either, which complicates matters even further. Not to mention, of course, the problem of the Google ""Sandbox"" causing sites to appear briefly at the top of some SERPS thus muddying the search waters still more.

The practical consequences of all this are that in one set of search results I get my old page about Catherine at ntlworld appear and the page at www.here-be-posters.co.uk/ isn't even anywhere in the SERPS. In others, neither appear, while in some the ntlworld page is in the top ten with here-be-posters nowhere in evidence. Encouragingly, though, in some others the here-be-posters page is rising rapidly through the ranks. So, if I can't rely on a stable ranking for input, what can I do to determine if I finally now have the content and link strategy right?

Noting an increase in traffic could well be part of the answer. With SERPS fluctuating the way they are an accurate rank is difficult to pin down but a significant rise in properly targeted traffic should make its presence felt by an increase in ROI - and that, after all, is what SEO is all about. High ranking itself, in all the confusion, is starting to take a back-seat to what should have been foremost in our endeavours all along, an increasing volume of interested visitors.

Indeed, the good news for Catherine Bach is that, judging by her traffic, her poster page seems at last to have found a home at www.here-be-posters.co.uk/. Her stream of visitors, quite justly I say, rises as I speak. I mean, Jessica Simpson is fine but hey! She's no Catherine Bach!

About the author: ""Big"" Bill Kruse is easy to spot at SEO conventions. Apart from loudly talking about his SEO Services and his celebrity posters site he's the balding fat one in the white suit shouting ""Them Dukes! Them Dukes!"".

SEO Elite Review - Don't Buy This Software Until You Have Read This!

Author: Michael Morris

You have done everything correct, used proper and legitimate SEO techniques, chosen quality link partners but how can you be sure THEY aren´t using any dangerous SEO techniques? Well, it recently happened to a well known internet marketer that his website was penalized by the search engines, apparently because some of his link partners had been penalized (Page Rank down to 0).

If you wanted to find out if your linkpartners were still of good quality, you´d have to visit each of them to check their PRs - a very tedious task. Thanks to SEO Elite, you can have all that crucial information (and much more) at the click of a button. Simply enter your link page URL and SEO Elite will spider the websites of all your link partners to search for your link. It then tells you

- if the link to your website is still active

- the URL of the page where your link was found

- the PR of that page!

- the title of that page

- number of outbound links on that page!

- the anchor text of your link!

Now you can discover immediately when some of your link partners websites have been penalized and protect your website from getting this penalty, too (for linking to bad websites) - simply by removing them from your link directory.

But SEO Elite has much more to offer:

1) Analyze backlinks using a specific search engine

That´s a pretty useful feature to spy on your competitors. Simply enter the URL of your competitor, click a button and SEO Elite checks all backlinks. Nothing spectacular? Well, the main advantages here (over checking backlinks with Google´s toolbar) is that you get a list of all web pages including important information like: PR, Alexa rating, title of linking page, anchor text used to link to your competitor, total number of links on the page, and you can sort the whole list in several different orders, e.g. from A-Z (find out if your competitor is buying text links), PR / Alexa ranking / total number of links (to find only high quality link partners).

2) Check how many pages are indexed

Simply enter any URL, select the search engines you want to check and in seconds you´ll know how many pages are indexed in any of the major search engines.

3) Ranking Check

That´s a great new feature of SEO Elite. You can check the ranking of any website you like. Just type in the URL, one or more keyphrases, select the search engines you want to have checked and SEO Elite will show you where your website is ranked.

4.) Find high PR link partners

Actually, this feature is way more than just about finding link partners. There are two ways to find high PR link partners with SEO Elite. You can enter the URLs of your competitors, tell SEO Elite to check their backlinks and get a list of their link partners including PR and other great information. Or you can find link partners by keyword: select a keyword, choose how many you want to find, select the minimum PR value and SEO Elite will return a list of related websites, showing you also their backlinks, Alexa ranking and number of outgoing links.

SEO Elite optionally allows users to plug in their Google API number so that it is very search engine friendly.

I generally think a lot of SEO software programs do not have much value and spend more time on hype than on actual results, many of them are also outdated and lack vital features. I am glad to report this is not the case here. SEO Elite is by far and away the best and most valuable search engine optimization program. It's maintaining a strong focus on analyzing linkage details and keeping a simple functional user interface. The information contained is comprehensive, clearly laid out and the bottom line is it works.

SEO Elite is constantly being updated, meaning your website will continue to reach its full profit potential with the latest in search engine optimization.

Visit the SEO Elite Website for more information!

Yours Truly

Michael Morris

About the author: Michael Morris - Experienced Internet Marketer and Advertising Specialist

How to know which SEO software tool suits your search engine optimization needs?

Author: Andy Jones

Search engine optimization has become the most crucial element of ranking high in the major search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, Altavista, Dogpile etc. There are several websites on the internet which boast about SEO techniques & tips and guarantee top placement in days. How do you believe and invest your hard earned money in a company who does not have a background in search engine optimization believing their claims?

The question is ""are you ready to play a gamble with your site?"" Honestly the answer would be a big NO .

No one would like to waste their money. So, what is the way out? How about doing your own search engine optimization? It is a very long drawn and tedious process if you do it manually. So, how to go about it?

Are there any softwares available to do the SEO?

Yes! there are several SEO softwares available in the market. But, how do you know which SEO software is reliable and meet your search engine optimization needs and most importantly, whether they would live up to their claims?

The answer is did you do enough research?

SEO software is the answer to implement the major SEO techniques. What are they? SEO is primarily divided into two parts.

On page optimization Off page optimization On page optimization

On page optimization involves:

Title Tags Meta Tags like meta keywords (lost its importance now due to keywords abuse) & meta description. Alt-Image tags H1, H2 tags High keyword density Quality content Ease of navigation Internal Linking and more.....

Off page optimization

Off page optimization involves:

Link Building to improve Link popularity Reciprocal Linking - Two way links Non-reciprocal linking - In-bound links Use of keyword rich anchor text in linking text Improving Google page rank PPC advertisements Directory submissions

It is a well known fact that off page optimization has more value than on page optimization. It does not mean that on page optimization has no value and requires no optimization. On page optimization has its value and should not be ignored.

There are several SEO softwares available to implement the off page optimization by improving link popularity by building both reciprocal and non-reciprocal links. There are websites which offer monthly membership accounts to use their Link Popularity software and some other websites have their software available for one time fee. For a beginner it is always better to go with one time fee software to keep the fixed expenses low. You are here to do business so you need to think and plan every dime you spend towards business success.

So, what to expect from a SEO software selling website?

Not a one time seller without any future upgrades A website with good technical support A website with a proven track record A website with a forum with quality user feedback Most importantly these website's SEO software should have good product reviews.

We see many SEO software companies doing their own product reviews and it looks more like self propaganda than an honest product review. We need websites who test and verify the claims made by the SEO software companies and publish their honest feedback. This would help the newbie website owners to make an educated decision after reading the detailed unbiased analysis published on a third party website.

There are very few websites that do this and should be encouraged to test and verify more of these SEO softwares and help the website owners to learn and implement the off page optimization techniques. This would save time and money of the online entrepreneurs to improve their link popularity and increase their search engine rankings. Higher search engine rankings bring more traffic to the websites and hence more sales. It is a known fact that we can drive visitors to websites but converting them into buyers totally relies on how effective is the content and ease of website's navigation.

We should develop effective content in the form of relevant articles linking to your website. Writing an effective article is a skill which needs to be developed by reading other articles and other e-books focusing on writing best articles. Now we should know the list of quality article directories to submit to in the right category. This would be another tedious and time consuming process and this demands an SEO software whose sole aim is article submission to various article directories.

Submitting to SEO friendly directories is another tedious process but the rewards worth the effort involved. The list of SEO friendly directories and the article directories is available at SEO Softwares-Resources

Another way of getting traffic to the website is thru PPC i.e Pay Per Click. There are several PPC programs available like Google Adwords, Overture PPC, FindWhat etc. Now the question is choosing the right keyword relevant to the content of your website is very important. You might choose the right keyword which is highly competitive and may have to pay a high bid price to get the higher placement in the sponsored links. We need an SEO software to optimize the adwords campaign to choose the right keyword combo to choose for the PPC. This would save money and time and helps beat the competition.

There are several other effective methods to do the off page optimization and there are several SEO softwares available in the market. So, in conclusion read the product reviews, and see the important features of the selling website as mentioned above for the final decision as which SEO software you should get your hands on.

I hope this SEO software information is of good help and to learn more about SEO softwares click on SEO Softwares .

Wishing you all success in your website's search engine optimization.

About the author: Andy Jones -Media Relations

http://www.seo-softwares.com

Ezine articles expert author

Copyright ©2006 SEO Softwares, All rights reserved. Free reprint rights with proper credit to the author.

Do I Need A Long-Term Strategy For SEO?

Author: David Mclauchlan

One of the biggest mistakes that newbie web marketers make is they make a website and then just sit back and not wait but hope that the money starts coming in. Like any other business, things around you change. The competition changes, more competition comes around. The market changes, the demand for the product changes. Has an online business owner you not only really need to have long term strategies but you also need to be able to adapt to the ever changing world of the internet. Some experts call it ""Business and the speed of thought"". There are a lot of very sharp people out there that will snag every dollar they can. Don't expect all of us marketers to be nice guys that will share the piece of the pie because most of us don't.

Unfortunately or fortunately, search engines change their algorithms from time to time. If today's rule, for example, is that just the right combination of text in the title tag will make or break a site, and you know this is true, and then all you have to do is to tweak the title tag to fit within that rule, and you will automatically rank very high...today.

Suppose that tomorrow, however, that rule is changed. Suppose that now the most important factor that the search engines use to rank a site is the content of the META Description tag. All the work you went through yesterday to fix the title is now useless. All of your attention is now focused on fixing that description tag.... and then there's the next day when Google decides that all website must have title bars that state that they are God...

Clearly, over time the focus of the search engines will vary. The best way to deal with this is to not deal with it! This means that rather than tweaking a site one way today and another way tomorrow, the best way to approach optimizing a page or a whole site is to not try to beat the system. Instead of trying to ""psych-out"" the search engines, why not add value to the site? A ""common sense"" approach to search engine optimization, looking for long-term results, is the way to go. When you try to help a site rank better by making it the best it can be, everybody wins. In other words Good Content is and will always be King.

About the author: David McLauchlan has this outstanding e-book titled ""Article Cash Creator""

This ebook is making a lot of people very rich

http://www.article-cas h-creator.com/

How to know which SEO software suits your search engine optimization needs?

Author: Andy Jones

Search engine optimization has become the most crucial element of ranking high in the major search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, Altavista, Dogpile etc. There are several websites on the internet which boast about SEO techniques & tips and guarantee top placement in days. How do you believe and invest your hard earned money in a company who does not have a background in search engine optimization believing their claims?

The question is ""are you ready to play a gamble with your site?"" Honestly the answer would be a big NO .

No one would like to waste their money. So, what is the way out? How about doing your own search engine optimization? It is a very long drawn and tedious process if you do it manually. So, how to go about it?

Are there any softwares available to do the SEO?

Yes! there are several SEO softwares available in the market. But, how do you know which SEO software is reliable and meet your search engine optimization needs and most importantly, whether they would live up to their claims?

The answer is did you do enough research?

SEO software is the answer to implement the major SEO techniques. What are they? SEO is primarily divided into two parts.

On page optimization Off page optimization On page optimization

On page optimization involves:

Title Tags Meta Tags like meta keywords (lost its importance now due to keywords abuse) & meta description. Alt-Image tags H1, H2 tags High keyword density Quality content Ease of navigation Internal Linking and more.....

Off page optimization

Off page optimization involves:

Link Building to improve Link popularity Reciprocal Linking - Two way links Non-reciprocal linking - In-bound links Use of keyword rich anchor text in linking text Improving Google page rank PPC advertisements Directory submissions

It is a well known fact that off page optimization has more value than on page optimization. It does not mean that on page optimization has no value and requires no optimization. On page optimization has its value and should not be ignored.

There are several SEO softwares available to implement the off page optimization by improving link popularity by building both reciprocal and non-reciprocal links. There are websites which offer monthly membership accounts to use their Link Popularity software and some other websites have their software available for one time fee. For a beginner it is always better to go with one time fee software to keep the fixed expenses low. You are here to do business so you need to think and plan every dime you spend towards business success.

So, what to expect from a SEO software selling website?

Not a one time seller without any future upgrades A website with good technical support A website with a proven track record A website with a forum with quality user feedback Most importantly these website's SEO software should have good product reviews.

We see many SEO software companies doing their own product reviews and it looks more like self propaganda than an honest product review. We need websites who test and verify the claims made by the SEO software companies and publish their honest feedback. This would help the newbie website owners to make an educated decision after reading the detailed unbiased analysis published on a third party website.

There are very few websites that do this and should be encouraged to test and verify more of these SEO softwares and help the website owners to learn and implement the off page optimization techniques. This would save time and money of the online entrepreneurs to improve their link popularity and increase their search engine rankings. Higher search engine rankings bring more traffic to the websites and hence more sales. It is a known fact that we can drive visitors to websites but converting them into buyers totally relies on how effective is the content and ease of website's navigation.

We should develop effective content in the form of relevant articles linking to your website. Writing an effective article is a skill which needs to be developed by reading other articles and other e-books focusing on writing best articles. Now we should know the list of quality article directories to submit to in the right category. This would be another tedious and time consuming process and this demands an SEO software whose sole aim is article submission to various article directories.

Submitting to SEO friendly directories is another tedious process but the rewards worth the effort involved. The list of SEO friendly directories and the article directories is available at SEO Softwares-Resources

Another way of getting traffic to the website is thru PPC i.e Pay Per Click. There are several PPC programs available like Google Adwords, Overture PPC, FindWhat etc. Now the question is choosing the right keyword relevant to the content of your website is very important. You might choose the right keyword which is highly competitive and may have to pay a high bid price to get the higher placement in the sponsored links. We need an SEO software to optimize the adwords campaign to choose the right keyword combo to choose for the PPC. This would save money and time and helps beat the competition.

There are several other effective methods to do the off page optimization and there are several SEO softwares available in the market. So, in conclusion read the product reviews, and see the important features of the selling website as mentioned above for the final decision as which SEO software you should get your hands on.

I hope this SEO software information is of good help and to learn more about SEO softwares click on SEO Softwares .

Wishing you all success in your website's search engine optimization.

About the author: Andy Jones - Media Relations

SEO Softwares - SEO Software Reviews Ezine articles expert author

Copyright ©2006 SEO Softwares, All rights reserved. Free reprint rights with proper credit to the author.

7 Steps Organic Search Sngine Optimization in 2006.

Author: Arun Tibrewal

Last month Google wrap-up its Jagger updates and we have seen changes in rankings of many sites. Basically this is one indication before the beginning of New Year that crawlers are getting smarter and smarter and have much better filters for producing relevant search results.

Search results are the most important thing for any search engine. Giants like Google, Yahoo, MSN are working more on producing the filtered results, so that results match the queries. I still feel organic SEO will have edge over others. Sites which are well structured and have balanced contents will improve there rankings. Soon SE's will filter out maximum sites which have duplicate contents or involved in content spamming. Below are the few things which should be the focus areas for a website owner:

1. Ranking mostly depends upon the maturity of the site. Older sites will have better rankings and will have more indexed pages.

2. Site structure is the most important factor in producing higher rankings. I am not debating the theme based sites or a journalized site, but talking about structuring the contents of the site in a proper manner. SE's should know where your home page is located.

3. Relevancy of contents. This is another important aspect and site owners need to work on it. Meta tags are irrelevant to some extent, but important is relevant contents on site. Each section of the site should contain unique contents, to obtain desired results.

4. Design the site for humans not for crawlers. Usability factor should be analyzed properly and more and more focus should be given towards human visitors so that they can easily navigate your site.

5. Say no to invisible texts. This is unacceptable practice. I still believe larger texts which can be read clearly by human eyes. Invisible text or contents may lead your site to delete permanently from search index.

6. I am a strong opponent of Text link trade. This is my personal view. Few good incoming links from major directories can help your site's performance in search engines. Even after you go for a link exchange or a buy a link from a broker, you need to find links from the sites which are higher rank than yours, legitimate site offering few outbound links and should be relevant to your site theme. Please stay away from sites which are made only for link exchange.

7. Review and updates for your sites. Your designer must focus on designing clean codes. A monthly updates in your site will help a lot. Each month or biweekly you must review your site's performance and act according to that.

Above are few quick shots for obtaining better results in SE's in the year 2006. Please read More article on Search Engine Optimizations 2006 and Online Marketing Promotions here. Please took your time and read my

Marketing Blog

About the author: Arun Tibrewal is an online marketing expert with 14 years of experience. Presently he is the CEO of an outsourcing company at www.kpoweb.com. More articles of him can be find at his Free online marketing guide here .

SEO For MSN

Author: Dave Davies

This is article one of a four part series on optimizing your website for the ""Big Three"". Part two will focus on Yahoo!, Part three will focus on Google and part four of this series will explain how to perform SEO on your website to attain high rankings across all three major engines. We are beginning with MSN as rankings are generally faster attained on this engine and thus it is a good place to begin, especially if you have a new site that is likely still in the sandbox on Google or are just at the beginning stages of link building.

Like all of the major search engines, MSN builds their index of sites using spiders to crawl the web finding new and changed information. This information is then processed by the MSN servers using complex algorithms to determine which sites are most relevant to the search query entered. This may seem like an extraordinarily complex process and it is however the resulting environment is simple: all search engine algorithms are mathematical and thus, there is a fixed set of rules and factors which, if addressed correctly, will result in a high ranking. In short, because it's math we have the benefit of knowing that if we take action x and action y we will get result z.

The Rules For MSN

Assuming that you are following the right rules, the results you can achieve on MSN can be fast and solid. MSN does not apply the same types of aging delays that the other two engines do and thus, when you change your content the change in results can be realized as quickly as they reindex your site and as quickly as your incoming links get picked. This differs greatly from Google and Yahoo! in that those two engines age both domains and links requiring a longer period of time before the full effects of your efforts are realized.

As an additional note on MSN, users of MSN are 48% more likely to purchase a product or service online than the average Internet user according to a comScore Media report.

So what are the rules for MSN that can help us get top rankings? As with all the major engines, there are two fundamental areas that need to be addressed to attain top rankings. The first is the onsite factors, the second is the offsite. Because they are fundamentally different we will address them separately.

Onsite SEO Factors

The problem with writing an article about the onsite factors is that by the time many of you read this some of the weight these factors hold and the optimal levels noted may well be out-of-date. Thus, rather than listing overly-specific-and-sure-to-change factors we will focus on how to know what the factors are, how to get a handle on what you need to adjust and by how much, and how to predict what will be coming down the road. And so we'll begin:

How To Know What The Factors Are:

Unfortunately there's no one over at MSN Search calling us up weekly to let us know what the specifics of their algorithm are, we have to figure it out for ourselves with research, reading and playing with test sites. From all of this there is only one conclusion that an SEO can make: the details matter. When we're discussing onsite factors this includes: the content of the page including keyword density the internal linking structure of the site (how the pages of your site are linked together) the number of pages in your site and the relevancy of those pages to your main topic and phrases the use of titles, heading tags and special formats

There are a number of lower weight factors however the ones noted above, if addressed correctly, will have very significant results on your rankings if the offsite factors noted below are also addressed.

Page Content:

The content of your page must be perfect. What I mean by this is that the content must appeal to both the search engines and the algorithms. In order to write properly for the visitors you must be able to write clearly and in language that is both appealing and understandable to your target market. While there is much debate about whether the keyword density of your page is important I am certainly one who believes that it is. It only makes sense that a part of the algorithm takes into account the use of the keywords on your page. Unfortunately the optimal keyword density changes slightly with each algorithm update and also by site type and field. For this reason it would be virtually impossible for me to give you a density that will work today and forevermore. For this reason you will need a keyword density analysis tool which you will want to run on your own site as well as the sites in the top 10 to assess what the optimal density is at this time. You may notice a variation in the densities of the top 10. This is due to the other factors including offsite which can give extra weight to even a poorly optimized site. I recommend getting your site to a keyword density close to the higher-end of the top 10 but not excessive. Traditionally this percentage will fall somewhere near 3.5 to 4% for MSN.

Internal Linking Structure:

The way your pages link together tells the search engines what the page is about and also allows them to easily (or not-so-easily) work their way to your internal pages. If your site has an image or script-based navigation it is important to also use text links either in your content, in a footer, or both. The text links are easy to follow for a spider and perhaps more importantly, the text links allow you the opportunity to tell the spiders what a specific page is about though the anchor text and, in the case of footers, allows you to add in more instances of the targeted phrases outside of your general content area.

The Number Of Pages & Their Relevancy:

MSN wants to please their visitors. For this reason they want to insure that highest likelihood that a searcher will find what they need once they get to your site. For this reason a larger site with unified content will rank higher that a smaller site or a site with varying content topics. (note: this assumes that all else is equal in regards to the other ranking factors)

When you are optimizing your site for MSN be sure to take some time to built quality content. Do a search on your major competitors to see how large their sites are, over time you will want to build yours to the same range through general content creation or the addition of a blog or forum to your site.

Titles, Heading Tags & Special Formats:

Titles are the single most important piece of code our your entire web page for two reasons. The first is that it holds a very high level of weight in the algorithm. the second reason is that it is your window to the world. When someone runs a search the results will generally show your page title in the search results. This means that a human visitor has to be drawn to click on your title or rankings your site is a futile effort (this isn't about bragging rights, it's about return on investment).

Heading tags are used to specify significant portions of content. The most commonly used is the H1 tag though there are obviously others (or they wouldn't bother numbering them would they). The H1 tag is given a significant amount of weight in the algorithm provided that it is not abused though overuse (it should only be used once per page). Try to keep your headings short-and-sweet. They're there to tell your visitor what the page is about, not your whole site.

Special formats are, for the purpose of this article, and text formatting that distinguishes a set of characters or words apart from the others. This includes such things as, anchor text, bold, italic, different font colors, etc. When you set content apart using special formats MSN will read this as a part of your content that you want to draw attention to and which you obviously want your visitors to see. This will increase the weight of that content. Now don't go making all your keyword bold or the such, simply make sure to use special formats properly. Inline text links (links in the body content of your page) is a great way to increase the weight of specific text while actually helping your visitor by providing easy paths to pages they may be interested in.

Offsite SEO Factors

With MSN, the offsite factors are much simpler to deal with than either Google or Yahoo! MSN will give you full credit for a link the day they pick it up so link building, while time consuming, is reworded much quicker on MSN. When dealing with MSN and offsite SEO there are two main factors we must consider when finding links: Relevancy. The site must be relevant to yours to hold any real weight. Quality is better than quantity. Because PageRank is Google-specific we can't use it as the grading tool for MSN however upon visiting a website it's generally fairly clear whether we're visiting a good site or not. Spending extra time to find quality is well rewarded. Also, finding one-way links as opposed to reciprocal links is becoming increasingly important and I'd recommend utilizing both in your link building strategies.

You will have to begin your offsite optimization by running link checks on your competitors to see what you're up against. This is also a good place to start for potential link partners though those of you using a tool such as Total Optimizer Pro or PR Prowler will find it far faster and more effective to use these tools.

Conclusion

This entire article may seem fairly simplistic and there's a reason for that, what we've noted above is a list of the more important areas however to save you frustration and me from receiving hundreds of emails a few months from now noting that the keyword densities don't work, etc. I've tried to keep it general. Below you'll find a list of recommended resources. These are tools and SEO resources to help keep you updated and on top of the rankings.

Next week we will be covering Yahoo!

Resources

Total Optimizer Pro - A keyword density and backlink analysis tool. This tool breaks down a variety of onsite and offsite factors giving you a full snapshot of how the top 10 got their positions.

Microsoft Press Room - Read the latest press releases from Microsoft. This may not give you the algorithm but it will tell you the direction they're going. Understand this and you'll be better equipped to deal with changes down the road.

S earchEngineWatch's MSN Forums - Read the latest news, feedback and discussions on the SearchEngineWatch forums. A great way to keep updated but beware, not everyone in there is a qualified opinion.

About the author: Dave Davies is the CEO of the SEO services firm Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning, Inc. Beanstalk provides guaranteed search engine positioning and SEO consulting services to clients from around the world. If you're more interested in doing it yourself please visit our