SEO-Search Engine Optimization

SEO Dictionary

2009-01-30T03:03:00.000-08:00

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?

2009-01-29T03:02:00.000-08:00

Author: 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?

2009-01-28T03:02:00.000-08:00

Author: 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)?

2009-01-27T03:02:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-26T03:02:00.000-08:00

Author: 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

2009-01-25T03:02:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-24T03:02:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-23T03:02:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-22T03:02:00.000-08:00

Author: 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

2009-01-21T03:02:00.000-08:00

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?

2009-01-20T03:03:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-19T03:02:00.000-08:00

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.

SEO What Does it Stand For?

2009-01-18T03:02:00.001-08:00

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

2009-01-17T03:02:00.001-08:00

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

2009-01-16T03:02:00.001-08:00

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.

2009-01-15T03:02:00.001-08:00

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!

2009-01-13T03:02:00.000-08:00

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?

2009-01-12T03:02:00.001-08:00

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

Do I Need A Long-Term Strategy For SEO?

2009-01-10T03:02:00.001-08:00

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?

2009-01-09T03:02:00.001-08:00

Author: Andy Jones

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

Are there any softwares available to do the SEO?

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:

Off page optimization

Off page optimization involves:

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

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

7 Steps Organic Search Sngine Optimization in 2006.

2009-01-08T03:02:00.001-08:00

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

2009-01-07T03:02:00.001-08:00

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

8 magical SEO techniques!(submit your articles now!)

2009-01-06T03:02:00.001-08:00

Author: Clyde Barry

I know most of you will be surprised to read the title of this article. Actually this is what search engine optimization is all about. There are a few points which every search engine optimization engineer should remember. Going through this will not only get you a better SERP's ranking but also will increase your Google PR.

1. Submit to as many quality directories, article sites and Press Releases as possible like this site http://www.submityourarticlesnow.com. While doing so the most important factor to remember is that all these should have a unique content and anchor text. As this is what I am using for several years successfully and which I am promoting as ""The Magician's Wand SEO Technique"".

2. Many people do submit articles to various sites and think there job is over. But if you really want your article to make headlines, you should make it as unique as possible like the title above which is ""8 magical SEO techniques!"". So now you know what this technique means.

3. Getting Linkbacks: Most SEO's think the more the linkbacks the better the PR and SERP's which is one of the most biggest rumours going around in the world of SEO.

4. Don't place common anchor text on hundred's and thousands of sites as these can be identified by Search engines as link spam or a Black hat technique.

5. Avoid Link Farms: Avoid sites which offer thousands of links instantly by placing a folder on your site. This is one of the worst methods of getting linkbacks. While submitting to directories, have a close look at the PR and the quality of the backlink.

6. Make use of all tags in your pages like title, description, keywords, header 1, header 2, alt of images by focusing on 10 main keywords for optimization.

7. Install a sitemap script for your website if it has thousands of pages and set a cron to update it daily if you wish search engine's to crawl your site regualarly. You can find many such scripts on the internet today.

8. The more your websites content is unique the more chances are that it will rank at the top. So place your website content with some unbelivable words like for example - thought provoking content.

So start Submitting your articles now!

Here's a huge list that you can submit your articles:

Tell me if theres a broken links.

About the author: Article author in www.submityourarticlesnow.com

What exactly is a SEO selling?

2009-01-05T03:02:00.001-08:00

Author: Haze Westerlund

Some clients have problems to understand why a site optimizing is needed on their brand new website. Why put more time and money in a site they just developed together with us, a site that looks and works just like they wanted it to be.

All websites we build nowadays has a basic optimizing build in from start, without using frames and other things that will hurt the chances to get a high ranking. You can say it's like building a new house. You have to preinstall all water pipes and electrical wiring long before you add wallpaper, painting and finishing up. But to get the kitchen and bathroom working you have to do a few more installations after the paint is dry and the house seems ready to move in to. You also have to install lights, heating etc.

That is easy to understand for most of us, and the same way all wiring and water pipes are invisible inside the walls and floor, the same is the pre-SEO works invisible behind your websites final design and functions. But to get the site ready for the wide world, we need to add a few more working hours.

So what ARE we selling except for the design and functions? Today we always use organic optimization techniques when we start a new website production. We build the site with clean validated code so the engines will find the page easy to read. Sometimes a websites first design has to be changed so an optimizing can be done, and this is a decision our client has to take together with us.

Most common is that the client will put all information about their business on one single page. And the text he has chosen is far from the main subject and chosen keywords. That's mainly because he think a website only has one front page to the world, the index or default page, as it was before when the search engines worked in a totally different way.

The index page is the one you will find if you already know the www-address (URL) you want to visit and write that address in the browsers address field. That's super, and it works every time, if you write it correct. But if you DON'T know the exact www-address you will probably never find the page if you do a search in Google, MSN or Yahoo.

Only five years ago it was very common that a web site was build on an index page all visitors was linked in to when they visited a website. On that page was a menu with links to all other pages inside the site. It was like a door to the big world and Internet all visitors had to pass to se your website. Like a small drugstore door you will find somewhere out in the bush, with the door and walls full of signs saying, in here you can find anything you need.

Nowadays ALL pages are open doors, depending on subject, and all representing them self and nothing else. Like a new super mall. On the shirt department you only find shirts, nothing else. I think a customer will be quite confused if they found harmonicas and car tires in the shirt section. And they would probably never find the shirts they were looking for.

The same way works a web site, each new page (department) you are producing shall only have one subject, like High Quality T-shirts. Or if you have more models of shirts, High Quality red T-shirts or High Quality blue T-shirts long sleeve. And each one shall be optimized with names, meta, keywords and text that stay with the same subjects.

All chosen pages have been built for best ranking possibilities, a work with about ten different parts from finding keywords to submit articles. These pages will then be found by someone, searching the web for any of your keywords related to your products, and not only by people who knew your company's web address from before.

So far it's just an organic optimizing we have done, but 90% of our optimized web-productions in 2003-2006, have been number one, or on page one, on Google, MSN and Yahoo. And that with keywords a searcher really would use, and not a fake phrase that will put anything on the top. ( I mention that because there is a lot of ""top-ten-salesmen"" on Costa del Sol offering SEO works with keywords no one ever will use in an actual search, but it looks good at the presentation, and the site owner pay for it.)

Some other clients use Google click ads as a complement on the most common keywords they just HAVE to use. Spanish mortgage is one of them. Spain Property is another.

Other's who don't want to spend any money on SEO works is choosing magazine ads to advertise the web address. That's ok but they will miss a lot of clients, as the ad is - a one time - local or country spread - to some x00.000 readers, Value?

What they don't think of, is that optimizing a normal sized website in Spain doesn't cost more than one single A4-ad in a monthly magazine, if they deliver the copy, around 800 -1.200 . And that is a long time investment with billions of possible clients, growing bigger every day, if they have the keywords.

About the author: By HazeWesterlund Graphic Designer/Art Director Active Consulting SL in Spain www.activemarbella.com ( Swedish graphic designer living in southern Spain. Any complains about bad written English can be sent in correct written Swedish to

haze@activemarbella.com )

SEO versus Marketing: The Fine Art of Copywriting

2009-01-04T03:02:00.001-08:00

Author: Frederick Townes

Forget everything you've ever read, heard or seen about web marketing. Forget the marketing gurus and poo-bahs who tout the need for SEO (search engine optimized) text. The information upon which you've based your on-line marketing strategy is outdated. It is soooo last millennium.

SEO text is an aberration - a nasty bump on the digital road to real, Internet marketing. Marketing to humans. Traditional SEO text is an outgrowth of the earlier, primitive search engines. Remember, SEs as we know them today have only been around since '94 and, initially, they were as dumb as a box of rocks.

The Curse of Keyword Density

To rank individual sites by their relevance to a user's query, early search engines relied heavily on keywords - words that appeared in headings and within the site's corpus (body of text).

These early spiders didn't do much except count the number of times keywords appeared within the corpus. The higher the frequency, the more relevant the site. And thus was born SEO text.

Murphy's Olde Time Canoes are all hand made. You won't find a better hand-made canoe than a Murphy's Olde Time Canoe. When it comes to hand-made canoes, Murphy's Old Time Canoes deliver more canoe bang for your canoe buck.

Gibberish. Garbage text. Words written for a machine, not for humans. An SE bot that spidered Murphy's website would have no trouble determining what the company sold. Unfortunately, to any literate carbon-based life form, this was hardly the stuff of which sales were made.

The Quality of SERPs

Search engines live or die based on the quality of their search results. That's the whole raison d'etre for a search engine - to find the search engine results pages (SERPs) that list the most useful sites.

Google, Yahoo and the hundreds of other SEs spend a bundle tweaking the rating mechanisms used to assess and rank a site. These complex, algorithmic formulas are top secret, eyes only information. In fact, Google's search algorithm is its most valuable asset. It's the product it sells to all of us who use it everyday.

SE algorithms are constantly being tweaked. Weighting factors are added, deleted, increased or decreased with one goal in mind - to deliver the highest quality SERPs possible.

That means that sites providing useful, helpful information and other on-line amenities, like relevant links, are more valuable to SE users and, therefore, should rank higher than sites that don't provide helpful data.

So What Do Search Engines Want Today?

With each tweak of the algorithm, spiders became more sophisticated at determining the usefulness and helpfulness of a given site. Oh sure, keyword counts still matters. So does the placement of keywords. But SEs are smart enough to detect SEO-keyword-stuffed-text. And they don't much like it.

Instead, the sophisticated algorithms employed by Google and Yahoo (the two biggies) want more than keyword density. A lot more.

Keep It Fresh

Google spiders at least once every two weeks. Yahoo makes the rounds every 48 hours. When a spider visits, it takes a snapshot of the site. When you do a Google search, simply click on 'cache' to see the site as it was when last indexed.

Now, when that spider comes back a few days or weeks later, it compares the cache with the current site looking for new content. Search engines like new content. No new content, you may lose a few points in the PR race.

Now this doesn't mean you have to update your site daily or weekly to maintain a nice PR. But update it now and then and you'll keep your rank and maybe even move up a few pages.

Keep It Informational

SEs want to deliver quality results. Part of that means delivering good, useful information. Not sales hype. Quality content that visitors can read and use. Of course, because it's your site, a good copywriter can provide text that's informational, with just a pinch of sales thrown in.

Is It Helpful?

Keep thinking - quality SE results. Quality.

Is your site helpful to the visitor? Does it offer useful outbound links? Does it offer resources, alternatives and, again, useful information? Will visitors feel that this is a site worth a bookmark? Helpful sites will be. And that return traffic is gold.

Review your site from outside in. Does it contain helpful, useful, accessible information? Or, is it page after page of hard sell. A mixture of the two will help your visitors and help you improve your PR.

How To Make Your Site Attractive to SEs and Humans

There are two layers to your site: the 'presentation layer' and the 'behind the curtain' layer. The new key to truly successful on-line marketing is to use both layers in a solid, licit, unified marketing strategy.

The Presentation Layer

You can write (or have written) motivational, inspirational, informational or educational copy. This differs from the hard sell you see on the home pages of too many sites. Do You Want to Earn $1 Million In Just 21 Days???!!!!!* (*Note the extraneous punctuation intended to convey a sense of urgency.)

No hard sell. It's insulting and smacks of Dr. Whizbang's Traveling Medicine Show. Snake oil. Hogwash.

Assume some intelligence on the part of the visitor. Sure, push the goods. They're the 'best, cheapest, greatest, lightest, biggest' in the world. No problem selling. Just be sure to include some informational content about the product.

Use a two- or three-column layout on your site's home page. This allows for numerous headlines ""above the fold"" where spiders will easily pick them up.

Break text up into small blocks.

Write like you talk.

Add pictures and graphics for eye appeal. (Note: SEs don't spider graphics, so this is for humans only.)

Behind the Curtain

If you don't know a Meta Tag from a dog tag, call a designer or SEO expert. There are numerous 'black hat' tactics that can be employed to 'fool' search engines. Pure, 100% SE poison.

Example? Invisible text. Display white text on a white background and voila - it's disappeared ! Well, maybe to your eyes, but spiders read this text. So, while you're reading about gift baskets on the home page, the company is also selling marijuana grow lights out the back door. SEs hate black (or gray) hat tactics. Because it's deceitful, it diminishes the quality of the SERPs.

So, if you don't know how to maximize your 'behind the curtain' marketing, talk to a site design pro. And if you've forgotten your 8 th grade rules of grammar, punctuation and spelling, hire a genuine, dyed-in-the-wool, Internet copywriter.

These professionals more than pay for themselves by designing sites that appeal to human sensibilities and SE bots alike.

The cyber landscape has changed and for the better. As site owners, we can develop site copy that appeals to humans - their wants, needs and desires. Real marketing and sales copy that compels human action. We've been liberated from keyword counts.

It's quality that counts today.

About the author: Frederick Townes is the owner of W3 EDGE, a business web design company out of Boston, MA. W3 EDGE provides

SEO copywriting services as a key compliament to their design and web hosting offerings. If you have any questions about web design, SEO copywriting, hosting or online marketing feel free to contact F

SEO is Obsolete - A Better Way To Get Traffic!

2009-01-03T03:02:00.000-08:00

Author: Larry Scott

Let's face it - search engines suck!

How can anyone possibly build a business on the quicksand known as ""search engine results""?

How many man-hours have been wasted ""optimizing for search engines""?

If you're like me, you've about had it with Google, Yahoo and MSN search engines.

I've been trying, in vain, to get good search engine rankings for several years now. Every time I start to get good rankings, and therefore some good website traffic, the search engine algorithms change and I lose the bulk of my traffic. Now I start to re-optimize for the latest changes and the viscious cycle repeats itself.

I currently operate about 200 websites - over 100 are ""black hat"" sites produced using a high-end cloaking service and the remaining sites are a mixture of complete ""white hat"" sites and many sites developed purely for adsense.

How I built my sites:

My ""white hat"" sites were produced using SEO Website Builder, optimized templates and hundreds of keyword-focussed, 100% original, articles (contracted from elance.com). I found link partners that were 100% related to my site and were not ""spammy"" in nature. These sites are mostly PR 3 sites that have been fully indexed, over a year old and have many pages listed as supplemental results - though I have absolutely no understanding of why.

My ""black hat"" sites were mostly produced using a very high-end cloaking service. This service allows me to build an optimized keyword site in less than an hour. These sites are also over a year old and have a PR of 5 with no backlinks!

My ""adsense"" sites were produced using XSitepro. They have a combination of private label articles and republished public articles from sites like goarticles.com. These sites are a few months old and currenlty show a PR of 0 - I guess Google hasn't updated the PR yet.

My results:

With the latest Google ""upgrade"", I have found that the vast majority of my income comes from my ""black hat"" sites and my ""adsense"" sites. All my ""white hat"" sites have pretty much dropped off the face of the planet.

So what's the message that Google's sending us?

Stop creating valuable websites and start producing volumes of non-sensical, garbage sites!

I don't want to build a business based on garbage - I want to build a quality business. To do that, it looks like I need to dump the search engines in order to build a respectable business.

The Solution:

Harvey Segal understands this problem and has produced ""

The Ultimate SuperTip "" (a FREE downloadable ebook) that sheds light on how to get traffic without relying on the search engines.

About the author: Larry Scott has years of experience developing Internet income. The FREE Ultimate SuperTip ebook (http://not-sold-in-stores.com/free-tips) has reinforced his belief that producing quality materials should be what the Internet is all about.

SEO Content Writing - Converting Artificial Keywords Into Natural Keywords.

2009-01-02T03:02:00.001-08:00

Author: Ed Rodriguez

The Role Of Keywords Within SEO.

One of the major aspects of search engine optimization (SEO) is the use of keywords both in the Meta tags of a site and throughout the website content. In particular, the density, the placement and the actual keywords themselves are hotly debated topics. It is certainly no secret that keywords play a vital part to any good SEO program, but because search engines like Google and many others change their algorithms on such a regular basis it may seem difficult to keep up with the current best practice. However, there are some good general guidelines to follow that should always ring true regardless of how you personally approach SEO.

Keeping Abreast Of SEO Times.

It can be difficult to say at any given time what the keyword rules are when it comes to SEO content writing, but there are always common worst-practice factors that should be avoided completely. That is, search engines like Google will not only ignore your website content but they will actively penalize you for certain things.

Spam - The Big NO!

Search engines do not take spam, or the sites that contain it, lightly. This is the most important thing you should remember. It used to be 'acceptable' in the eyes of search engine robots for your content to be 100% keywords with absolutely no meaningful text. However, this practice of keyword cramming or keyword stuffing is now something that does not go unnoticed and you will face a penalty for using this technique. Yes, keywords are important but you also have to provide solid and informational text for your visitors.

So, What Is The 'Correct' Keyword Density Then?

Of course, this leads to the question of how to determine what is considered spam and what is considered an acceptable level of keywords within your text and again this is a topic that leads to debate between SEO experts, webmasters and content writers alike. The general belief was that including a keyword within your text with a range of 5% to 10% was best practice. It certainly wouldn't get you penalized and it made it blatantly obvious that your site was relevant to that topic. However, some believed the figure could legitimately be taken as high as 20% without any negative search engine effects.

Err On The Side Of Caution.

While these high densities of around 20% may not have got you penalized at one time it is increasingly likely that they will be regarded as being geared primarily towards search engines. Search engines do not want to display sites that are created for this purpose; their aim is to display websites that are geared towards visitors. As such, sticking to a lower percentage is likely to produce better results for you.

Playing It By The Rules.

Keeping the keywords to this sort of level is an art, but it is not one that should elude most people. The art, of course, is to combine search engine optimization with informative content that will appeal to your visitors as well. In order to do this it is important that you use natural keywords.

What Are Natural Keywords And Artificial Keywords?

A natural keyword is one that you would use in everyday conversation relating to a given topic. In the case of your website, if you were to sit down and write 500 words of informative content you would find that certain words naturally creep into the article and appear several times. These are your natural keywords, but unfortunately natural keywords may not provide you with the results you require. For example, a little keyword research may prove that a natural keyword of ""divorce attorney"" is a very well searched phrase but there are also 2 million websites geared towards this key phrase. Further research may turn up the fact that ""Find Divorce Attorneys"" may be a little less popular with regards to searches but there are only 10,000 sites aiming for this keyword. This instantly improves your chances of being closer to the top of the search results and that coveted top spot.

Replacing Natural Keywords With Artificial Keywords.

So, you now need to go back over the content you have already written and see if the term ""Find Divorce Attorneys"" appears within your content. In all honesty, it is quite unlikely that it would appear more than once, if at all. You have to make it fit into your content and you have to make it appear to do so naturally. Find the areas where you specifically used the keyword ""Divorce Attorney"" and see if you can swap the phrases with just a little alteration of the surrounding text.

Start From Scratch With Your Artificial Natural Keywords.

Another method is to look for your artificial keywords before you begin and make sure you have them in the back (or the front) of your mind when you sit down to write your website content. Because you are already thinking of the phrase you want to use you will naturally include it within the content of your site. It's not a trick, although you may want to consider it a subliminal tactic if you wish, but it will work.

The Result Of Keyword Conversion.

By converting your artificial keywords into natural keywords you should be able to effectively optimize pages towards both search engines and your visitors and this will mean improved search engine rankings as well as improved conversion rates. Even a small increase in visitors combined with a small increase in conversion rates will show a good level of increase in your income so you should not overlook this technique.

About the author: Ed Rodriguez is the owner of Mysearcharoo a metasearch engine part of the ISEDN network providing website owners affordable and effective search engine & directory advertising

The Trials And Importance Of SEO

2008-12-31T03:02:00.001-08:00

Author: Mark Flanighan

For affiliate marketers or webmasters who started a few years ago, pay per click marketing was the thing. Pay your price per click (PPC), measure this against how many clicks it would take to create a purchase and then calculate your relevant profit. But as time moved on, more and more entrepreneurs and corporations saw the benefits of PPC, pushed the price of clicks up to the extent, that is it no longer cost affective in certain industries to use, unless you have a high margin of return.

In many cases the only way forward now, is to try and get some free traffic from normal listings. So search engine optimisation (SEO) has now become more important than ever to balance out the costs of advertising.

You would think all you had to do was buy a book, learn the skills and apply to your website, but it isn't that easy. First of all, the search engines do not tell you what the recipe is for a top place. They will tell you some rules what not to do, but all this does is guaranteed you will listed, probably somewhere down at number 789 or so.

SEO is a skill that can only be learned by trial and error. Find someone who has made the errors and find someone who has been successful and learn from them. I say this because search engines like Google tend to change their algorithm every now and again, without any warning or knowledge of what they will be doing. It is not uncommon for a regular first page web page being taking down many pages in one swoop. The only way to keep abreast is to join some of the many SEO forums and hear it as it happens. It is almost like watching the news sometimes.

I have spent probably the last 18 months or so reading, learning and then adapting, making mistakes, getting successes then, falling lower in the rankings and staying there, then regaining again. The bottom line is, SEO can be a roller coaster ride and no-one should assume that once you have got the desired slot, you will stay there forever or even more than a day.

SEO requires continuous effort and time, study, training and much patience. It is no wonder, that respectable SEO companies charge a small fortune to keep your site high in the rankings, because of the time, up to date knowledge that is required. Anyone who does SEO on the cheap, either works for love or does not know the size of the challenge.

If you want to know how competitive SEO, the next time you do a search on any search engine, just look at how many websites or pages are competing for 10 places on the first page. Take the word SEO for instance. 175m, yes that is 175 million pages fighting for one of 10 slots on Google, granted multiple pages may be from one site and may be related to more specific search terms, but you get my point.

SEO is a rich get richer and the poor get poorer scenario. There are 10 rich people in the world and just fewer than 75 million poor ones. However it has to be said that SEO is here to stay and until the internet is replaced with something else, this will probably be the deciding factor whether you business will make a profit or not.

About the author: Mark is webmaster for SEO Training North East and Business Consultancy Cleveland and ICS

SEO for Beginners Part 1: SEPOV isn't a Russian Hacker

2008-12-29T03:02:00.001-08:00

Author: Ross Lambert

SEPOV is an acronym for ""Search Engine Point of View""; it is usually used in the context of search engine optimization (SEO) discussions. If you really want to approach SEO with confidence, you need to learn to look at your web site from the search engine spider's perspective and consider its motivation (if you'll forgive a little anthropomorphism).

Fortunately, search engine spiders are actually rather simple creatures.

""What's My Motivation?""

There is, in fact, one simple, central, and obvious search engine truth from which everything else is derived: A search engine's popularity is directly related to the quality of its results.

Never forget this truth. Do not minimize its importance or allow yourself to think of it as simplistic. There is much hand-wringing and money-spending by those who try to predict what Google is going to do next. The simple fact is that all the search engines will do what they've always done and always will do, namely try to improve the quality of their results.

Google rose to prominence because its results were the best. Their primary user interface was (and remains) ridiculously simple. Their results were just better than everyone else's. And they still are--although Yahoo and Microsoft are gradually closing the technical gap.

The search engine spider's motivation is therefore that of its creators: Find valuable, easily categorizable information so that the rest of the search engine software can match it to search queries and thereby provide good results.

All of the major search engines apply advanced contextual analysis to return links to pages that have the greatest amount of high quality information about specific search terms. Think about that statement again for a moment, ""...return links to pages that have the greatest amount of high quality information about specific search terms.""

There are profound implications to that simple statement that the vast majority of web site designers just flat-out miss.

""Go Deep""

For a given web page, depth is more important than breadth. A lot of information about one subject is far, far better than a little information about a lot of subjects. When the Google spider is examining one of your web pages, you have to convince it of two things:

1. Your page has a lot of information about the search terms. That is, it is relevant to the search query.

2. Your page has good information about the search terms (do you have high quality or authoritativeness)

Of those sites that are relevant and authoritative, Google makes one last value judgment: Freshness. The site with the most recently updated content wins.

""Playing Favorites""

Research has also proven that search engines in general and Google in particular tend to favor web sites that have one or more keywords in their URL. For example, one reason I liked the ""web-marketing-advisor.com"" domain name is that it contained some of my top keywords right in the name itself.

If your web site has the keyword in the URL, it also implies that depth is more important than breadth for an entire web site, too, since you'd want all the pages on the site to be highly relevant to the keywords in the title.

In other words, in my opinion, it is better to have several sites, each of which is focused on a narrowly defined subject matter than one site that has a shot-gun approach to many subjects.

And a word from the ""Do as I Say, Not as I Do"" department: Unfortunately, chopping up portals into individual sites that each tackle a tiny subset of a larger subject is at odds with how people want to actually use a portal. But there is a way... And we'll talk about it in part two.

Coming up in the next installment: Spiders are more human than you think!

About the author: To learn more about SEO, visit Midnight Marketer . Ross Lambert founded Midnight Marketer and authored Sonic Page Blaster and Ross's Guide to the Masters of Marketing .

SEO Tips: Link Building

2008-12-28T03:02:00.001-08:00

Author: Will Spencer

This article is a follow-up to an article I wrote about

On-Page Optimization . On-Page optimization enables each of your web pages to make the most out of the mojo that they have -- but you need i nbound links to create that mojo in the first place.

I use the term ""mojo"" as a generic descriptor for the importance given to a web page or a web site based upon inbound links. Similar terms include page rank, site rank, trust rank, and authority. Those terms tend to carry too much linguistic baggage, so I use the term ""mojo"" for simplicity unless another term is specifically required.

Mojo is created by getting inbound links to your web site and to your web pages.

Getting inbound links is one of the most important, and time consuming, tasks involved in SEO.

Here are a few tips to generate inbound links. Each of these tips are appropriate for some web sites, but none are appropriate for all web sites. Select the link building strategies which are most appropriate for your specific web site.

Submit to Web Directories

Start with big slow directories like the Yahoo Directory and the DMOZ Open Directory Project, but don't stop there.

Search out the small directories which are dedicated to topics relevant to your web site.

For more suggestions on finding directories to submit to, read

How can I find web directories ?

Reciprocal Linking

Write individual e-mails to specific webmasters whose web pages compliment your own and tell them that you would like to trade links with them.

Make sure to personalize each e-mail, or your e-mails will be quickly deleted as spam.

To achieve the best results from your e-mail, include the following in your initial e-mail:

* Mention two positive items about their web site, so that they know that your e-mail is not a generic spam. * Include directions to the specific web page where you have added the link to their web site. * Mention the

Page Rank of the page where you have added a link to their web site.

These web sites exist to help you search for reciprocal link partners in the same market niche' as your web site:

* Find Link Partners * Link Partner Finder * Themes Reciprocal Link Finder

Write Articles for Other Web Sites

One method for getting inbound links is to write quality articles and submit them to other web sites for publication.

Each article should include a link back to your web site.

These links are better than links from link pages, because there tend to be very few outbound links on the article page.

Write a brief article on some topic related to the topic of your web site. Do not write an article about your web site, but write an article that would be interesting to people who would also be interested in your web site.

Send this article to webmasters who maintain web sites on topics similar to the topic of your article. Explain to them that they can post your article for free on their web sites, in return for a link to your web site.

To find web sites to submit articles for publication, visit

Where can I submit an article for publication?

Create and Submit Press Releases

Write press releases about your web site and submit them to press release distribution services.

To find places to submit press releases for publication, visit Where can I submit my press release?

Join a Reciprocal Link Program

Reciprocal linking programs exist to help webmasters share links with similar web sites.

Some of the reciprocal link programs are:

* Link Market * Info Wizards * LinkExchanged * Link Partners * Links-Pal * Linkateer * Webmaster Link Exchange * GoTop Link Exchange ($19.95 fee to join) * LinkLeads * Link Traders * LinkExchangeIt * SiteSell * 123ExchangeLinks * Ads4Links * Spocka * Links For You

If you have a blog, try blogLinker, the automatic link swapper for blogs.

These link networks can generate a lot of e-mail. You will probably want to create a new e-mail account just for these networks.

Join the DigitalPoint Ad Network

The DigitalPoint Coop Advertising Network enables you to automatically trade links with thousands of web sites across the Internet.

Join a Reciprocal Linking Forum

Several web forums exist for the purpose of sharing and trading reciprocal links. These linking forums include:

LinkRequests Link Trade Forum

Start a Reciprocal Linking Program on Your Web Site

You can also setup a reciprocal linking program on your own web site.

For more information on setting up a reciprocal linking program on your site, read

How can I add a reciprocal link manager to my web site?

Start or Join a Web Ring

You can use an existing web ring service such as WebRing, or you can create your own web ring using the PHP-Ring webring script.

Join or Create a Top Site List

Search for top site lists which are relevant to your web site.

Add yourself to the existing lists. If no relevant top site lists exist, create one.

Provide a Useful Service

Create dynamic content on your web site which other web masters can include on their web sites by linking to it.

Every webmaster who uses your content automatically adds a link to your site.

Firearm News is an excellent example of this. If you add a small bit of JavaScript to your web page, your users will receive up-to-date news on firearms.

Of course, you will also have to contact other webmasters to let them know about your service -- perhaps even with a press release.

Buy Links

If all else fails, you can always

buy links to your web site.

About the author: Will Spencer is the webmaster of The Internet Search Engines FAQ , SAN Security , and Enterprise Storage Management .

10 SEO Tricks to Attract More Traffic to Your Blog

2008-12-26T03:02:00.001-08:00

Author: David Cowgill

As fancy as the term ""blog"" sounds, it's actually just a website that uses a content management system. While most blog software is more search engine friendly out of the box than many web sites, the opportunities for blog optimization are readily available.

Here are 10 tricks that will increase your visibility in search engines and eventually drive more traffic to your blog.

1) Use keywords in your blog post titles - This is a given for SEO. Most blogging software uses the post title as the url so take advantage of it.

Example: ""10 SEO Tricks to Attract More Traffic to your Blog - Search Engine Journal"" Search Engine Journal is included on every blog post title tag automatically.

2) Optimize your blog categories - When you create categories for your blog, be sure to use keywords in the titles. When you post, be sure to default to a general category that is relevant no matter what the post is about. Choose multiple categories on each post when appropriate. This will create a ""SEO-friendly"" url for each post you make.

3) Syndicate your blog - Make it easy for people to subscribe to your blog. Sign-up with a free service like Feedburner and then create a ""syndication"" area on your site.

4) Offer RSS to email. Anywhere from 10% to 40% of your blog traffic can come from individuals that perfer to read blog posts via email. RSS readers and aggregators can be confusing. Adding email services to your blog isn't. There are several free services available for this including: FeedBlitz, Squeet, and Zookoda.

5) Ping blog search engines - This can be configured with blog software such as Movable Type or WordPress to work automatically. If you're using Blogger.com, then you can do this manually with Pingomatic.com or Pingoat.com.

6) Make comments on other blogs. Your name will be linked to the blog url that you enter. Don't make comments that offer no value to the blog post. Don't use keywords in the field for your name, use your name or blog name.

7) Submit your blog directories. Also submit the blog to regular directories such as (DMOZ, JoeAnt, GoGuides, Google Blog Search, etc) that have categories for blogs.

8) Targeted advertising - Now this doesn't really drive traffic to your site but will make you money. It's possible by using Google AdSense to display highly targeted ads on your blog. Once you've setup an account and placed the ads on your site, just sit back and watch the cash come in. Cha-ching.

9) Snatch up hot keywords - Now before you place ads on your blog, be sure your keyword density is good for the right terms. A great tool to improve your traffic for high-paying keywords is to use a product called Keyword Elite (http://www.seojuice.com).

10) Use track backs - If there is a blog that you refer to or quote and it is highly relevant to your subject, leave a track back. It increases your link popularity and may even score a few interested readers from the linked site. A TrackBack is a mechanism used in a blog to show, around an entry, a list of other blogs that refer to it.

Summary The important thing to remember is that no matter how many optimization tactics you employ with a blog, there is no substitute for quality content. Blog optimization is only as effective as the quality and usefulness of the content you're optimizing. So do not limit yourself to tips and lists. Use your imagination and you will come up with thousands of ways to drive traffic to your blog!

About the author: David Cowgill is a SEO enthusiast who manages several informational blogs.

Author: David Cowgill iStock Blog Founder

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Dreamweaver too complicated?, Go Live and Frontpage too steep a learning curve?

2008-12-25T03:02:00.000-08:00

Author: Paul Lewis

I think that some web design packages have too steep a learning curve. That's why I want to tell you about a product that I've just reviewed called XSitePro. Here is a brief summary, and you can see the full review by using the link indicated at the end of this article.

I was looking for something more versatile than a lot of the lower end website building software such as Web Easy Pro, and Web Plus, yet with a good deal of the functionality of the higher end products such as Dreamweaver and Frontpage. As I needed to start quickly I didn't want the steep learning curve that these higher end products demanded.

Quite by accident I came across XSitePro. At first I was nearly dissuaded from taking it further, because I was presented with a one-page sales website which the software authors put out. Personally, having spent a great deal of time, recently, researching web products, the one page sales letters deter me from going any further, as I have subscribed to several, and always been disappointed. I also dislike parting with money before I 'touch and feel' a product, and particularly like to download a fifteen or thirty day demo, which was just not available.

Erring on the side of caution I posted a request on the Warrior forum, and asked for advice as to which website development software I should opt for. More replies were positive about XSitePro than any other, so I subscribed and downloaded the software, putting faith in the promise of a 365 day refund.

I was certainly not disappointed and initially completed the tutorial, where I constructed a ten page website in around 11/2 hours. You can view the website completed in the tutorial by going to the web page indicated at the end of this article.

XSitePro is feature rich and I have picked out my 12 favorits.

XSitePro optimizes each page to rank well with the search engines and gives suggestions as to what tasks you need to carry out, to bring this about.

The 'Help' functionality is very good with on-screen pages supported by 'Index' and 'Search' facilities. There is 'Context Sensitive Help' throughout providing immediate help relating to the function you are currently performing. 'Online Help' accesses a 'Knowledgebase' of frequently asked questions with the ability to 'Submit a Ticket' if the answer is not found.

Using a 'Template' principle it is possible to make amendment to all pages by making alterations to the template. Therefore if you want to change text, site colours, logos etc. on all pages, this is easily achieved.

The Multi-Page Creation Wizard provides a quick and easy way of creating the infrastructure of a new site, or adding whole new branches to the infrastructure of an existing site.

You can simplify your web creation tasks using the valuable To Do Report automatically produced by XSitePro. The software produces a checklist of suggested actions still needed for each page so you never forget to carry out essential tasks.

Two mouse clicks will introduce Google Adsense ads to your web pages bringing about another income stream.

Powerful functionality immediately available which includes pop-ups, pop-ins, link pages, automatic sitemap, page import, scripts, redirect pages and much more.

The software comes with 163 website templates included, making website creation even faster and easier.

Built-in Article and Product pages which are of considerable benefit to internet marketers.

No knowledge of HTML needed, making it also a beginners tool. If you can use Microsoft Word, or similar then XSitePro is for you.

Print out an incredibly detailed report that tells you exactly what you need to do to each of your pages, which means you can make sure that all your pages are exactly right before you publish them to the Internet.

Easily add a links page to your site that looks great and is easy to update, which means you can benefit from a reciprocal linking campaign (i.e. exchanging links with other sites).

In summary we found it to be easy to learn, intuitive and we were able to produce results fast.

About the author: © Paul Lewis 2006. All rights reserved. Reprints welcomed with article and resource box unedited. See our completed web pages using the XSitePro web page tutorial. You can see detailed functionality, screen movies, tutorial samples, free e-books and much more by visiting our XSitePro full review

How To Become An SEO Ninja

2008-12-24T03:02:00.000-08:00

Author: Anton Cheranev

Every website listed in the search engines has a position, or 'ranking', and each one of these rankings can change very quickly, in some cases as often as weekly or even daily. One day your website's in a good position, then the next you're wondering what happened to it. Staying on top of this situation is a must for any SEO professional - you need to become a search engine ninja. If that's what you want to do, then you need to keep these things in mind at all times:

1. Good SEO requires frequent updates and ranking checks.

You might have a good spot today, but all it takes is for a few new sites to open, and before you know it you're back down at the bottom. If you pay attention to your rankings, then you have a shot at fixing things that go wrong before your rankings fall too far.

2. You should check all your links weekly to make sure they work.

Maintain high-quality, relevant reciprocal links and check them weekly to make sure they're working. Remove any dead links, as search engine crawlers may mark you down if they find them on your site.

3. Tweak and assess your website on a daily basis.

You need to continually assess and tweak your listing to keep your site in its proper place - that is, at the top. This ensures that your site is in the best position possible, and helps you keep your competitive edge.

4. Maintain the content on your website.

Update your content weekly at the very least, to make sure that search engine crawlers come back frequently. Even the smallest changes will be picked up on by the search engines and will help to maintain your ranking. If you can't write, find someone who can: you need content.

5. Keep up-to-date with the latest developments in SEO.

If you can't decide what you should be doing or you don't want to keep up with SEO on your own, you could consider hiring a specialist. Consulting with an SEO specialist will still allow you to make your own changes to your website and learn which things work best, but you'll have someone to answer your questions if you need them.

You should review your SEO techniques at least every few months, to see how the algorithms have changed and to devise new plans and strategies for increasing your rankings based on those changes. Any SEO ninja will tell you that there are only really two major search engines that you need to worry about: Google and Yahoo. You can do well even if you only have the time or energy to focus on these two engines. Being an SEO ninja is hard work, but it can be very rewarding if you've got the dedication for it.

About the author: Do You Want Your Own Digital Detective That Investigate Your Competitors' Websites And Reveal All Necessary Information To Dominate Over Them? If Yes, Check Out Here => http://www.TheSeoDetective. com

How To Know Which SEO Software Tool Suits Your Search Engine Optimization Needs?

2008-12-23T03:03:00.000-08:00

Author: Andy Jones

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

Are there any softwares available to do the SEO?

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

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.

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

3 Easy, but CRUCIAL SEO Tips

2008-12-18T03:02:00.000-08:00

Author: Pj Germain

Today I wanted to share with you a couple important tips for any reciprocal linking campaign in order to get the maximum results in your search engine rankings. These may seem obvious to some people, but I see far too many websites that don't understand the following points.

Tip #1: Optimize the wrong keywords and you will likely never see results. Keyword research is very important to building traffic. A great resource for building keywords and finding niche phrases is located here: http://inventory.overture.com . Type in your main keyword and it will give you a list of related keywords and how many searches were performed on those keywords in the previous month. Generally, you don't want to start off by going after the keywords that get hundreds of thousands of searches as you will be facing some pretty stiff competition. Instead go after the niche phrases that get 5,000-30,000 searches per month or so. And, these are far cheaper in the PPC campaigns such as Google Adwords.

Tip #2: Include those keywords in your anchor text. The anchor text is the text that is hyperlinked to your site, but actually shows on the webpage. I can show you how you can get thousands of incoming links almost instantly, plus earn $10 per month per referral.

The anchor text used should be the keywords that I want to be found when surfers run searches in the search engines.

Tip #3: Include your keywords in the title tag of your website. Use only your main keywords, don't use filler words. Having a title such as Welcome To My Website will do you no good at all. Try separating key words with the ""pipe"" symbol, such as:

Affiliate Marketing | Tools | Coaching | Training

Losing the conjunctions and article words makes for a much stronger ranking for the search engines.

Offpage optimization is THE most important aspect of ranking well in ANY search engine, period. It's critical you know this. For offpage optimization...

*You must have links pointing to your website. *These links must include your main keywords in the ""anchor text"". *Try to get links from as many different IP Addresses as possible. Subdomains coming from the same IP are frowned upon and could to more harm than good!

You do not need to pay big bucks to get good search engine ranking. Just be patient though, it doesn't happen overnight. Your efforts will be rewarded within a few months. And, remember, Content is King!

To your success!

About the author: Pj Germain is a webmaster, trainer and online marketer. Visit our sites and learn the secrets for explosive sales & magnetic marketing!

http://www.affiliate-success.org

http://www.knowyourpc.net

FREE System Earns Recurring Monthly Income for Life!

5 Methods For Self-SEO. If You Have The Time.

2008-12-17T03:02:00.000-08:00

Author: Conrad Sear

So you want to Search Engine Optimize (SEO) your website.

Well, despite what you may hear it's easy & fun.

The caveat is time. In such a ""fast food"" ""I want it now"" mode, the web gives us just that. So why does SEO take TIME? The answer is the millions of others out there fighting for the top spots has created a niche industry by the search engines. They want to thwart the unethical scammers out there. So, we have to follow their requirements so that millions can see my website. Sure you can pay to be in the very first position. But that costs money. Capitalism at is finest.

The early days are long gone. Laws are in place now. Laws made by Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.

So the simple advice is, know the laws. Ignorance will not get your site seen by anyone but you.

Follow the slow steady path & you'll be richer for it.

5 sure methods:

1. Your reading it now. ARTICLES! Write articles about your field of interest. Relate it to your website. Set these articles across the internet. Content is KING.

2. Content. You must add some relevant content to your site. It keeps the search engines & people coming back for more.

3. Links. Links are not a dead art form. Links from other sites will always help you. They help bring people to your site & help search engines see that you are popular. However, find related industry linkage. It is highly sought by Google.

When linking find high ranked sites willing to add your link. Try not to buy if you can help it. If you must, okay. But this is the only Quick Fix I recommend.

4. Another domain. Set up another domain with lots & lots of content & links. Keep the them & info related to your main site. Add your main site links. There, you've created your own network!

5. Patience. You don't get to the top overnight. (unless you pay) Submit (manually) to as many search engines & directories as possible. Do this every 30 days.

So, this works. Caveat: Do you have the time? Expect 30-40 days until your in the top 5-10 pages.

Have patience & good luck.

About the author: Conrad Sear has been a web developer for 14 years. He now manages a startup SEO company called http://TrafficXTC.com. Their growing list of clients are all making to the top with his guidance. Samples-(http://KataraCattery.com #1, http://AirOnSale.com(new), http://MyHomeTrainer.com #5, http://Ebooks.easyincomeinfo.com #1, http://Christineboccio.com

The Ultimate Keyword Optimization Guide for Search Engine Positioning

2008-12-16T03:02:00.000-08:00

Author: David Gikandi

We all know it and we all do it. Whenever the typical web user needs to find something on the web, he or she will almost always instinctively go to one of the top search engines and run a search. Then, he or she will have a look at the first 30 search results returned (usually the first three pages of results), hardly ever looking beyond that. If nothing looks appealing, they will run another search using a variation of the keywords they used on the first search. Again, they will look at the first 30 results. If they still find nothing of interest, they may switch to a different search engine and repeat the process. This, believe it or not, is the typical web navigation behavior of at least 86% of the 110 million all web users out there. The question is, does your web site capitalize on this behavior?

If the answer is yes for you, then no matter what a user searches for that has any relation at all to your products, they should find you even if they hadn't thought of finding you! That translates to a very high amount of daily traffic to your site. Is this what is happening for you?

I bet the answer is no. Very few web sites really capitalize on this behavior. However, you can learn how to do so. For this tutorial, we shall assume that you are in the business of selling wedding gowns. You have a web site that does a good job of displaying your wedding gowns, but like most other web site owners, your web traffic is really low and clients are simply not finding you. You have done everything you can think of, but your pages hardly come up on the search engines. What next? Well, get ready to learn one of the most effective online marketing strategies.

We know that the web user will think of a keyword or phrase and type that into a search form on an engine. That is his or her first step, and so it should be ours. This is a very important step! Get a piece of paper or open up your text editor and keep writing all the keywords and phrases that you think of as you go through the steps outlined below. Selecting the right keywords or keyword phrases will skyrocket your traffic. Research has shown that most people use phrases of 2 to 3 keywords when searching. People have come to learn that just typing in one keyword in a search will get them thousands of records that they just do not need. Therefore, they combine two or three keywords in their searches.

Your list should end up having about 50 or more keywords and phrases. You must write down every word that a person might use to look for your site PLUS words they may use to look for other related information or products. This is no easy task. It involves some research and a fair bit of thought. Remember, thousands of people out there looking for wedding gowns may not all think alike, look for wedding gowns directly, or even realize at the time that they can get wedding gowns on the net! To get a good list, here are the steps that you should go through. Keep your pen and paper handy so that you keep writing as you go along each step.

1. Think! Brainstorm! Sit down for several minutes and think! Write down whatever keywords or phrases come to mind. Then look at your list and see what other word combinations you can make out from the keywords you have already written down.

2. Look at your products and services and see what words relating to them will pop up in your mind. Write the names of each product or service that you deal in. These product names will also be part of your keyword list.

3. Ask your family, associates, clients, and friends what words and phrases they would most likely use to search for products or services like yours.

4. See what keywords your competitors use. See what keywords are featured on their pages and in their meta tags.

5. Be specific AND general in scope. Think of words that also describe things related to what your site is about. For example, if you sell wedding gowns, also think about other things and words related to weddings, such as honeymoon, bridal registry, wedding rings, engagements, and other wedding accessories and services. The idea here is to capture people who may be looking for other things related to weddings, whether they are directly looking for wedding gowns or not at the time. Chances are that someone looking for any wedding related information will also be interested in knowing about wedding gowns. Get the idea? This is a very powerful way of getting more targeted traffic to your site.

6. Do not forget misspelled words. People often misspell words when they enter their search terms. Include commonly misspelled words or phrases as part of your list.

7. If your site deals with a particular region, remember to include that in your keyword list. E.g. 'Los Angeles wedding gowns' if you deal in wedding gowns within Los Angeles. A lot of people will search for wedding gowns, get a big list of returned search results, and decide to add the words ""Los Angeles"" (or wherever else they may be interested in) to get more specific search results.

8. Use the long and short form of words, e.g. consult, consulting, and consultants.

9. DO NOT SPAM! Do not use keywords that have nothing to do with your web site. Do not list the keyword ""sex"" or ""free pics"" just because they are frequently searched for if they do not have anything to do with your web site. You will only get traffic that is of no use to you anyway because surfers will come to your site and leave angrily when they realize you just cheated them. Also, search engines are on the look out for such deceitful practices and can sometimes ban your pages for spamming. As long as you stick with keywords related to your core business, you will be fine, but do not go way out of line.

10. Now its time for some research. You now need to look at what people are actually searching for on the various engines and get more phrases for your list. Here is a list of sites that will help you out with that. When doing your research at these sites, remember steps number 5, 6, and 8 above - people often misspell words, they use different word forms, and they may be looking for a whole lot of different stuff all related to your products.

(a) GoTo.com Keywords Inventory Search (http://inventory.go2.com/inventory/searchInventory.mp) - search for your keywords here and see how popular they were on GoTo.com. The service will also tell you what other related keywords and phrases were searched for. This is perfect for finding related keywords that you may not have thought of. For example, a search here for wedding gowns returns the following information:

Suggestions for: wedding gown Searches done in March 1999 Count Search Term 2590 wedding gown 53 wedding gown designer 43 discount wedding gown 33 wedding gown rental 33 designer wedding gown 29 plus size wedding gown 27 low priced wedding gown 24 lazaro wedding gown 21 informal wedding gown 21 wedding gown pattern 17 vintage wedding gown 14 custom wedding gown 13 used wedding gown 13 wholesale wedding gown 13 victorian wedding gown 12 vera wang wedding gown 11 wedding gown online 11 demetrios wedding gown 10 amsale wedding gown 10 alfred angelo wedding gown 10 paloma blanca wedding gown 10 mon cheri wedding gown 10 los angeles wedding gown 9 wedding gown and supplies 9 wedding gown ivory 9 sweetheart wedding gown 9 galina wedding gown 9 eve of milady wedding gown 8 african wedding gown 8 western wedding gown 8 wedding gown at discount price 8 mori lee wedding gown 7 wedding gown restoration 7 full figured wedding gown 7 diamond collection wedding gown 7 christos wedding gown 7 casablanca wedding gown 6 emanuelle wedding gown 6 badgley mischka wedding gown 6 wedding gown in metro detroit michigan 6 wedding gown dress 6 venus wedding gown 6 prviate label by g wedding gown 6 wedding gown catalog 6 wedding gown bargins 6 wedding gown outlet 6 used wedding gown for sale 6 princess wedding gown 6 moonlight wedding gown 6 medieval wedding gown 6 romantic and sexy bridal or wedding gown 6 lazarus wedding gown 6 jasmine wedding gown 5 guzzo wedding gown 5 mature bride wedding gown 5 jessica mcclintock wedding gown 5 how to make wedding gown 5 wedding gown in rome 5 wedding gown consignment 5 wedding gown texas 5 wedding gown for second marriage 5 wedding gown discount 5 wedding gown and veil 5 wedding gown maine 5 renaissance wedding gown 5 used wedding gown in southern california 5 wedding gown wholesale canada 5 wedding gown prom 5 wedding gown preservation 5 california wedding gown 5 bride wedding gown 5 discount wedding gown and supplies 5 dimetrios wedding gown 4 bargain wedding gown 4 carolina herrera+wedding gown 4 carmela sutera wedding gown 4 bianchi wedding gown 4 consignment wedding gown 4 cinderella wedding gown 4 dicounted wedding gown 4 amy lee wedding gown 4 jacquelin wedding gown 4 picture of wedding gown 4 michaelangelo wedding gown 4 hawaiian wedding gown 4 wedding gown in paris 4 wedding gown by galina 4 wedding gown search 4 uk wedding gown 4 used wedding gown for sale tampa 4 wedding gown used 4 wedding gown marys 4 wedding gown in emma style 4 short wedding gown 4 wedding gown preservation in edinburgh scotland 4 wedding gown pics 4 wedding gown history 4 wedding gown with bow 4 wedding gown under $300 4 wedding gown by alfred sung

(b) SearchTerms.com (http://www.searchterms.com) - See what the top 100 search terms worldwide were. Remember that it is not advisable to use terms that are not related to your web site's content, but this service can still prove useful.

(c) SearchSpy (http://www.searchspy.com) - SearchSpy is a database of search terms captured from the top search engines. Use this to find even more words and phrases for your list.

Now that you are armed with your big list, what you do with it next is what will get you all the traffic you need. The next process is long and complicated if done manually, but there are ways of making this automatic, easy, and fast, saving you the agony of doing it yourself. This article is too short for the technical details on search engine optimization techniques, so I will just give you a quick explanation and a link to where you can get all this done for you automatically and easily.

Basically, there are 8 major search engines today - AltaVista, Excite, Infoseek, Lycos, HotBot, AOL Netfind, WebCrawler, and Northern Light. Yahoo is a directory so this technique will not work with it. What you need to do is figure out what kind of pages rank well with each of these engines. Search engines use a mathematical formula to rank all the pages in their index. It is hard, but not impossible to come really close to knowing exactly what kind of a page will rank well on a particular engine. Basically, the text statistics on a page are what are considered most by the engine's ranking formulas. Now, for each keyword or phrase on your list, you need to create a web page that focuses on just that one keyword or phrase and ranks it highly on a particular engine. Because each engine ranks pages differently, you will need to create a different page optimized for each engine.

Stop and think about this strategy for a second. You have a list of virtually every phrase that someone interested in your products and other related products can ever use in a search. Then, you have pages that make sure they rank highly for all those searches. No matter what people search for that has any relation to your products, they will find you even if they had not thought of finding you! Do you now see how much qualified traffic you can get? It is amazing!

The only set back is the amount of work you would have to put into figuring out what kind of text statistics on a page will rank it well on an engine, then creating these optimized pages for your entire list of keywords for each major engine. That means creating about 300 or more finely tuned web pages! But do not worry! As long as you have compiled your list of keywords and phrases, there is an online service that will automatically create the optimized pages for you in a couple of minutes. SearchPositioning.com (www.searchpositioning.com) uses a set of online scripts to cleverly generate web pages optimized for the major search engines. All you need to do is give it your list of keywords and phrases, a short piece of text describing your site or business or products, and your email address (the pages are emailed to you as attached HTML files). To my knowledge, this is the only service on the web that works in this way.

Once you have your pages, upload them to your web server and either submit them to the engines if they aren't too many, or have the engines crawl over them and index them by only submitting a page that links to all of them. That's it! Now simply step back and watch your traffic skyrocket!

Granted, there are many other ways that people use to find new sites, such as following links on other sites, reading about sites on magazine, hearing from friends, etc. But no matter what other methods they use, they almost always use them in addition to using the search engines, especially when actively trying to locate new information. By knowing how to use the search engines to your advantage, you will become an empowered Internet marketer. No other method of marketing is so powerful, effective, and affordable (virtually free)!

About the author: David Gikandi support@searchpositioning.com SearchPositioning.com http://www.searchpositioning.com

What's in a Listing? Do a Search of your Site or Ezine.

2008-12-15T03:02:00.000-08:00

Author: Donna Sweat

Recently while doing a search for content to put in my ezine, I thought I might see just how many listings I had for my ezine,""Dee's Helpful Info."" I typed my ezine name into the search bar and hit enter. I was amazed with the results. There were several hundred listings, many of which I had forgotten about. I began with the top listing,working my way though the huge list. Right away,I ran into problems.

1] I did not have Id's and passwords for some of the listing updates.As a new entrepreneur months ago,I used Netscape 4.7,which had no ability to keep these important pieces of information.I recommend using Internet Explorer 5.5 and higher along with a great little companion,Gator! Both remember these tidbits of information for you.Gator will accept more than I user,and my children wouldn't be without him.You can download the most recent version at http://www.gator.com

2] Once I viewed my listing,I was shocked at the information listed. This really is old content,I thought. The summary: Update often! At least monthly and keep a list of the sites you submit a listing to. I had not only increased subscribers by hundreds,but I also designed a new web site, and these listings sent everyone to a ""non-existent"" site! And to top this all off, my subscription address had also changed. I started out using Aureate Group Mail,progressed to listbot, got all settled in and listbot folds..so I moved on to Topica.The moral of this tip:If you make any important changes, UPDATE!

3] Moving down the list...Now we have a new problem,we can't update this listing because there is no contact e-mail or login box.Be careful of sites like this one.

4] Now we are finding listings not related to my newsletter at all.Why? The key words are Dee's, Helpful,Info. and Newsletter. One or all of these describe many other listings not related to my newsletter.Maybe I should change our newsletter name?

Now lets change to another search engine. I have tried several but lets face it, Yahoo is the best. Now you ask.....what's the point to this article? The point is...your losing business if your listing is not correct! A wrong e-mail address, or web site url,can take away business from your site. Always stay a step ahead.. UPDATE YOUR LISTINGS OFTEN!

About the author: Donna Sweat Endless Mts.Home Business http://www.homebiz.pa.32668.com donna@sosbbs.com

Smart Goto Gambits

2008-12-14T03:02:00.000-08:00

Author: John Gergye

Feeling gouged by Goto.com?

A pawn in a game of Gotcha?

Need a game plan as to what to do next?

I've seen a lot of angry spleen venting over the recent changes in GoTo.com's pricing policy. Problem is, going postal won't change it. That's the way it is. Like Yogi, we've now got to be smarter than the average bear. So, I wanted to offer some resources for improved Pay-Per-Click (PPC) efficiency.

For starters, I don't want to rehash the obvious. I mean I could tell you not to touch those one cent bids (well, duh!) as they are grandfathered in until September 1. Or that you should make your bids work harder with better titles and descriptions. Or suggest checking out other PPCs to lower your average cost per bid. Still...

==> GoTo Gambit #1

Here's a useful tool to see what keywords might run you in other PPCs. Just plug in keywords and a maximum bid for each. By return email you'll discover where your proposed max bid would slot you in the bidding hierarchy. Pretty slick, huh? Makes it easy to find the lowest cost PPC deals. http://www.did-it.com/prospector.htm/

==> GoTo Gambit #2

Put on your thinking cap and come up with relevant two and three-word phrases. Why? Efficiency. Phrases have fewer total searches. Bids for those top spots cost less. And they usually give you better click-through rates.

Stuck? The best tool I've found for coming up with phrases is the new and improved keyword wizard. Just eliminate one word suggestions and in a matter of minutes you'll have tons of search phrase possibilities. http://www.jimtools.com/

==> GoTo Gambit #3

How much can you afford to bid? Don't know? Well, it all comes down to three letters: ROI. Return On Investment. There's a handy form that was specifically designed to help you find out how much you can bid profitably. http://www.payperclickcalculator.com/

Once you know that, head over to the Goto.com Keyword Interrogator and enter a keyword. It returns a list of search terms along with the number of searches and the Top 10 (or however many you want) bids for each. Bid away after checking here. http://www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/goto.cgi?action= reset&ti=985821682/

==> GoTo Gambit #4

Make every click count. If a visitor doesn't buy, do you use a pop-up box to ask them to sign-up for your ezine or a mini course as a fallback? You would at least get something out of the click.

==> GoTo Gambit #5

I assume you know which keywords send you the most traffic? Guard those puppies like a junk yard dog! Don't know how? Piece of cake with this next FREE tool. It shows you where you can save money by keeping you on top of bid gaps. That is, where you can lower your bid and still not lose your position. I mean, why over bid it you don't have to? http://www.positionguardian.com/

Or you can pay to automate this task using PPCBidTracker or Keyword Bid Optimizer (KBO). Pricing may favor KBO. Especially with multiple domains. http://www.PPCBidTracker.com/ http://www.paidsearchenginetools.com/

==> GoTo Gambit #6

Ever consider optimizing your site for GoTo's default search engine, Inktomi? You might want to. That way, if a search term at GoTo.com doesn't have enough (or any) bids, it pulls in results from Inktomi. Top positions there could mean free traffic from GoTo. Don't know much about Inktomi? No problem. Get help at this forum: http://searchengineforums.com/bin/Ultimate.cgi/

==> GoTo Gambit #7

Finally, while not really a gambit, a FREE piece of software I can't live without since GoTo's suggestion tool is down too much, is Good Keywords. It works great and is a big help in getting the most from the PPCs. http://www.softnik.com/?gkw/

Hopefully these suggestions will save you time and/or money. And make the pain of the recent pricing decrees at Goto.com easier to swallow.

About the author: John Gergye. Is Your eBook as Silent as a Mime? Well, Make It Talk! Digital publisher John Gergye has more ideas like these, as well as a clever way to make your eBook stand out from the crowd! Find out how at http://www.makeyourebooktalk.com/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?a03

How to Get 100,000 Visitors or More from Yahoo

2008-12-13T03:02:00.000-08:00

Author: Johannes Garrido

How would you like to reap the benefits of getting listed in the largest and most popular searchable directory on the net?

At last count, Yahoo receives over 180 million visitors a month.

Can you imagine the kind of traffic you'll receive by getting just a small percentage of Yahoo's traffic?

For many, getting listed in Yahoo is like winning the lottery: millions enter, but only a few are accepted.

However, by following the 7 simple steps listed below you'll be able to :

o jump past the millions of websites vying for a listing o get your site listed o receive more targeted visitors o and ultimately earn more money.

Here's how to get your site listed in Yahoo:

1. Focus on a GOOD Keyword

Understanding which keywords people are actively searching can mean the difference between your site getting 50 visitors a day or 1000 visitors a day. So, you'll need to target keywords that people are actively searching for to get any meaningful source of traffic.

Here are 3 ways to Discover Popular Keywords:

o Wordspot - http://www.wordspot.com o Goto Search Term Suggestion Tool http://inventory.go2.com/inventory/Search_Suggestion.jhtml o Good Keywords - http://www.goodkeywords.com

2. Set Up an New Domain

It's a good idea to create an entirely new domain using the Keyword you came up with in Step 1.

Sure, it may involve an upfront cost:

o $15 / year for a domain name + year worth of hosting (Find this Amazing price at http://www.doteasy.com) o $199 for an Express Submission. o Total Cost = $214 dollars

However, just imagine how many visitors you can bring with a Yahoo listing. For instance, let's say you can bring 500 visitors a day (a conservative estimate). This comes out to about 182,500 visitors in a year.

A total cost of $214.40 for 182,500 adds up to less than 1/10 a penny a visitor. Plus, if you submit this new site to the various search engines, you will gain even more visitors. You won't find a better bargain out there.

3. Create Unique Content

Setting up a new domain is not enough for getting into Yahoo. To get into Yahoo, you'll need to present unique content for the Yahoo editors. Remember, each site that's submitted to Yahoo is reviewed by live humans.

So how do you create unique content for the Yahoo reviewers?

One way to do this is to find gaps in Yahoo's listings, and provide the information to fill in those gaps.

Simply search Yahoo's category listing in the subject area you plan on submitting to and finding an area that is lacking content. Then, your job is to simply create the content to fill in the gaps for them.

Don't worry, you don't have to create a massive 500 pg. website. 7-10 pages of unique content (including links to other sources) should be more than adequate to get you listed.

4. Title of Your Site Should Be On Your Actual Website.

In most cases, the yahoo reviewers will use your company name as the title of your listing. So if you have the ability to do so, you might want to consider this in choosing your business name. When deciding on your business name, be sure to include your most important keyword (Step 1 above) in it.

If you already have a business name, you might want to fill out another ""Doing Business As"" form with your local courthouse and create another assumed name for your business.

5. Create a Very Brief Description

Try and keep your description text to 12 words or less of advertising and hype free text. However, be sure to include your important keyword (Step 1) into the description.

6. Choose a Specific Category and Secondary Category

Yahoo distinguishes sites as either commercial or non- commercial sites. If your site is selling anything at all than your site belongs in the Business and Economy section of Yahoo.

Try and be as specific as possible when trying to submit your site into Yahoo's first and secondary categories. This will help target your visitors and limit the amount of competition your site will have.

7. Implement a Back Up Strategy

Even though you did everything right, you still may not be included into Yahoo's directory. Don't worry, follow this back up strategy:

If you used the Business Express service to submit your site and didn't get in with your first try, you'll be sent an email within 7 days stating why you weren't listed. Here's you second chance to get in. Simply fix the problem that they've indicated and then recontact your reviewer to inform them of the changes you've made in what's know as the ""appeal"" email by Yahoo.

If you did not use the Business Express service, you may want to contact Yahoo about your submission. When contacting Yahoo, I suggest you include the date of your submission as well as the title and URL of your web site.

Yahoo is swamped with emails, so sending them an email to them may be ineffective. What I suggest is that you either call or write to them about your site's listing (writing is the preferred method). Here's Yahoo's contact information:

Yahoo!, Inc. 3420 Central Expressway, 2nd Floor Santa Clara, CA 95051 Main Corporate Telephone: (408) 731-3300 Fax: (408) 731-3301 User Support Telephone: (408) 731-3333 - LISTING NUMBER Extension #1: For information on submitting a new URL Extension #2: For information on making changes to an existing listing in Yahoo! Extension #3: Information about Yahoo! search results

When contacting Yahoo, it's a good idea to get to the point quickly. Simply ask if they have had a chance to review your web site and reiterate how your site adds value by providing unique content to their directory.

So now you have the information needed to get your site listed in the biggest directory on the net. WHY STOP HERE? Why not use the information presented above to get more sites listed?

About the author: Johannes Garrido is creator of the 'Killer Classified Ads Magic System' http://www.roibot.com/w.cgi?R351_Article2 ""STOP Wasting Your Precious Time and Money - Discover How to Increase Your Sales by 1700% with a Killer Ad Campaign. 100% Guaranteed."" http://www.roibot.com/w.cgi?R351_Article2

Promotional Content... It's the little things that count

2008-12-12T03:02:00.000-08:00

Author: Edward B. Toupin

Promotional content is the invisible content in the various recesses of a Web page. This type of content is used by search engines and directories to properly categorize your site and its pages during indexing.

--- Site Title ---

The title is the first thing a search engine displays as a result of a search. This makes it imperative that the title contains something readable and descriptive. Do not place a bunch of redundant terms in your title---make sure that the title can be read as a sentence. If the reader cannot understand the meaning of the title, then chances are they will not visit your site.

Once you create your page title, place it once within the header of the page using the tags. Many marketers will place their title as many as five to ten times within the header of their page! This is good in that your relevance increases from the number of keywords; however, this repetitive approach is poor netiquette and is usually not accepted by most search engines.

--- META Tags ---

Meta Tags are information fields located in the header of a Web page. These tags store information about your browser, keywords, site description, and authoring information. The two main Meta Tags are ""description"" and ""keywords."" The ""description"" tag contains a short description of your page while the ""keywords"" tag contains a search keyword list for your page. These two Meta Tags are used by search engines to index your site and are critical elements of every Web page. When your site is indexed, users can enter search topics into the search engine to locate your site based on these two tags.

The Meta Tags should look like this in the of your Web page:

To ensure the proper indexing of your page, you will have to devise a content scheme that targets numerous types of search engines. Note that different search engines will index your site in different ways, depending on the content. For instance, the following list provides information on the different ways that search engines can index your site:

* Some search engines look for an agreement between the description, keyword, title, and body.

* Some search engines use only the information located in the first line of the body of the page.

* Some search engines use a combination of the Meta Tags and the body content to weight your page based upon consistency.

Obviously, you would want to maintain a consistent content and style throughout your page. It is important, however, to learn how the different types of search engines work to have your page properly positioned in the lists.

--- Hidden Form Fields ---

Once you've developed the keywords for your site, you'll find that you still have over a dozen or so discarded phrases and words that are relevant to your page. Your Meta Tags are probably filled to the maximum 255 character limit and that the first line of your page body is a graphic and contains no pertinent text. Forcing any of these additional phrases and keywords into the page can get you rejected from several search engines for ""keyword stuffing,"" described below.

These types of dilemmas are quite common for many Web page developers, but the solution is simple: a hidden form field. This form field is identical to every other form field (e.g. input fields, radio buttons, check boxes, etc.), however, it cannot be seen on the page in a browser.

The hidden form fields go in the body of the Web page and look like the following:

Many search engines will recognize hidden form fields and use the information to index your site in the same manner as they would standard text in the body of your page. Some search engines ignore such fields, however, it is important to create pages that are acceptable across all search engines.

Hidden form fields can be used as the first line of text in your Web page and should reside in your page before any other content. The reason for this placement is that most search engines will only use the first 2,048 characters in a document. With hidden form fields, you can still get those extra keywords into your document without forfeiting space and layout.

--- Keywords ---

Keywords are one of the more important elements of a Web page since they describe the page to which they belong. The keywords that you select for your site must be relevant to the page as well as frequently used within the page's content.

Relevant keywords provide a better position in a search engine for your target market. For instance, if your site is specific to a new piece of financial software, it's important to stress the keywords that best describe the general and specific characteristics of the software. If someone performs a search for ""automobile"" and your site appears, it's certain that you will get a few users. The problem is that these users will do you no good since they are interested in another topic.

Obviously, if you're selling some product that's important to a wide range of markets, then nearly any choice of keywords would be relevant to your site. The point is that you want to ensure that you're bringing in only those users that are interested in what your site has to offer. In this way, you are maximizing your marketing effort.

The following rules may not make sense immediately, however, by following them, you're sure to increase your search engine position as well as the number of hits your site receives:

* Plural Form of Keywords When a user performs a search, it's unlikely that they will enter a search term that exactly matches the keywords you selected for your site. In some cases, the user will enter the singular form of a keyword and in others, they may enter the plural form. It's essential to capture both forms of a keyword to maximize your exposure!

* Repeat Important Keywords In the days of old, we could repeat a keyword numerous times to increase the relevancy of a site in a search engine. This repetition allowed sites to be placed higher in the search engine's list so that the user would see that site first. Today, search engines filter out those sites that over-repeat keywords. It's best to repeat the most important keywords no more than twice to increase your relevancy without being eliminated.

* Diversify Keyword Meanings Assume that every user has a different vocabulary--some users say ""book"" while others may say ""publication"" or ""document."" Each word refers to the same thing, however, unless your keywords are properly selected, you may only get one-third of your potential hits! When devising your keyword scheme, take into account the different forms of a given keyword. Create the keywords important to your site in such a way that, regardless of the search terms used by a user, your site will appear in the results list.

* Keyword Variations Consider the fact that users will not enter the keywords into a search engine the same way every time. For instance, some users may enter ""real time software"" while others may enter ""real-time software"" or ""realtime software."" Think about the keyword variations to ensure the capture of as many users as possible. Also, consider common misspellings of keywords. I know many intelligent individuals who tend to misspell certain words because of the phonetic spelling of the word---consider ""eves"" and ""eaves."" If a user consistently misspells such a word and you happen to sell plant hangers for under eaves, you might lose potential clients.

* Keyword Combinations and Phrases Some search engines will only take the first 255 characters of a keyword list, while others accept a nearly unlimited list of keywords. The problem is that you must target the 255-character limitation to be accepted by as many search engines as possible. One method to accommodate the keyword list limitation is to use phrases that best describe the page. For instance, I could use ""ebook marketing"" as a phrase that could be found with several combinations of search topics in a search engine. Another method is to ensure that the most relevant keywords are located at the front of the keyword list---even with a 255-character limitation, the most important keywords are accepted.

--- Keyword Selection ---

Your objective is to attract as many relevant visits to your site as possible. With that in mind, you will have to select keywords that are commonly used by users and that are relevant to your site.

You can easily attract users by entering such keywords as ""naked women, adult, sex, ..."" into your keyword list. Since these are some of the most searched-for keywords, I can guarantee that your site will get hits. Do you think that someone searching for pornography is going to spend very much time on your page? The problem here is that you will be attracting people who won't provide a relevant hit to your site. This tactic wastes bandwidth, time, and money.

--- Developing Keyword Lists ---

Using the information we've reviewed, let's look at creating a keyword list for a page. This is actually a more difficult task then creating the page itself since you must determine the best keywords that describe your page. To begin this task, let's ask ourselves: ""how would people begin to search for a site like mine?""

Immediately, you could come up with about three-dozen keywords to place in a keyword list, however, many of the keywords that you think are relevant may turn out to be useless. Think about how you perform searches for certain information and apply that experience to the selection of keywords for your page. You'll find that the time taken to create a good keyword list will be most beneficial.

The best way to weed out useless keywords is to use the steps outlined in the following list. These steps are proven and have worked on several sites I've marketed.

* Create an exhaustive list of words that describe your site. * Review and eliminate words that are least descriptive or redundant. * Create plural versions of words without altering their form. * Consider and note misspelling variations. * Combine words into phases. * Eliminate duplicate phrases. * Eliminate phrases with words duplicated in other phrases. * Check for other words or phrases that can diversify the list. * Create a comma-delimited list of all phrases and remaining words. * Move and order the most relevant words to the front of the list. * Duplicate the four more important words and phrases twice. * Ask an associate to review the words and phrases. * Ask an associate to edit the list based on their search preferences. * Clean up and limit the list to 255 characters. * Perform searches using your keywords to locate other relevant sites. * Go to these sites to see how they created their keyword list.

About the author: Edward B. Toupin is a freelance consultant, writer, and published author living in Las Vegas. With 10 years of experience, Edward provides quality Web site design, development, and marketing as well as writing, document design and planning, and e-book publishing services. You can visit his Web site at http://www.toupin.com or contact him at etoupin@toupin.com.

Ten Places You Must Submit Your Site

2008-12-11T03:02:00.001-08:00

Author: Jim Daniels

(Seven still-free listings and three worth paying for.)

This tutorial will not promise you a top search engine position. It will also not reveal how to get your site into thousands of search engines.

Instead, you will discover the exact locations where you can submit your website for free and the few ""paid submissions"" that are actually worth the price.

Yes, there ARE still places where you can submit your website for free. There are actually seven extremely busy search engines that have not (not yet anyway) migrated to requiring payment for listings.

Here's a listing of these engines along with the URLs where you can add your site(s) for free:

1. Lycos Add URL: http://home.lycos.com/addasite.html

2. Google Add URL: http://www.google.com/addurl.html

3. HotBot Add URL: http://hotbot.lycos.com/addurl.asp

4. Northern Light Add URL: http://www.northernlight.com/docs/regurl_help.html

5. DMOZ - The Open Directory Project Add URL: http://dmoz.org/add.html

6. Direct Hit - An Ask Jeeves Service Add URL: http://www.directhit.com/util/addurl.html

7. Fast - (Formerly ""All the Web"") http://www.alltheweb.com/add_url.php3

Those seven search engines above have been responsible for sending literally thousands of visitors to my website over the past year. And they will send thousands more. And perhaps the best part is that I didn't have to pay them a dime.

But that's not to say that paying for a listing in a search engine is a bad thing. Sure, lots of ""purists"" have been bashing the search engines' move to charging for listings. But let's face it, they are in business to make money too. And advertising revenue is not what it used to be for many of these companies. Their CPM (cost per 1000 banner impressions) rate has dropped significantly and they need other revenue sources. So why not charge businesses for a listing?

Now as a small business owner you cannot go around and start paying every search engine that wants a hundred bucks or more just for the privilege of listing your site (or just considering it!) So you have to concentrate your budget on just the search engines that can deliver serious website traffic. Those are the engines, or networks of engines with the most traffic themselves.

After researching the field, I've narrowed this down to just three that are undoubtedly worth the price. They are...

8. Yahoo! Business Express http://help.yahoo.com/help/bizex/

Currently $199 for non-adult sites, Yahoo! still has the busiest directory by far and you'll get lots of traffic from a decent listing.

9. The Looksmart Network's Express Submit http://submit.looksmart.com/

Also $199, this network powers over 1/2 million websites including AltaVista, CNN, Excite, iWon, Microsoft Network, Netscape Netcenter, NetZero and WebCrawler.

10. Inktomi's Search/Submit service www.networksolutions.com/catalog/searchsubmit/welcome.jhtml

At just $30 a year for the first URL and $15 for each additional, this is a cheaper solution to the Looksmart Network submission. Inktomi powers searches through AOL, iWon, MSN and the Looksmart directory itself. The best part is that the network updates every 48 hours so you get your listing in quickly.

OK, there you have it. A quick, cut to the chase, search engine submission guide. Just be sure that before you submit your site to ANY search engine or network that your site is ready to be listed favorably. This means adding targeted keywords to your content, META tags and title as well as spell checking and browser checking your site. Once you are sure everything is set to go, visit those 10 URLs and submit your site!

About the author: Tutorial by Jim Daniels of http://www.bizweb2000.com Jim's new, no-hype, step-by-step Guide to Making a Living from the Internet is at http://www.make-a-living-online.com Read Jim's free web-based guide and discover how you could make your living online.

How to easy track results from any google datacenter

2008-12-10T03:02:00.001-08:00

Author: Coca Bogdan

So, what is a google datacenter ? Google datacenters represent diferents locations where google iskeeping their servers for protecting their system from possible overloading. Inothers words, a user from Romania will be served by a different serverthat a user from California, even they type the same url of http://www.google.com !!!How come they do this?! By entering www.any-domain-name.com into your webbrowser will take you to one IP address. (www.any-domain-name.com representthe domain name, the address of the website , and the IP address,represent the physical adress of a real computer. [Actualy every computeron the internet has an IP address, including yours, but not everycomputer must to have a domain name pointed on it's IP, but this is anatherstory! ] ) How do you see what's your current

write : ""command""(without """" of course ;) and write down ping www.google.com in the blackscreen that's apearing. You will be able to see the IP address of yourcurent google datacenter. Sweet. Why should I care about using different Google datacenters?! Some datacenters are updating faster then others, some datacenters maycontain diferents results from others, some datacenters have ""freshmeal"" , so Search Engine Optimisers can quickly see more the results of thier efforts. How do I set up my default Google datacenter?! Setting a default google datacenter for when you call-up www.google.commight be simpler then you ever dreampt of. Now, you will only edit your HOST file! In Windows 98 the file resides in C:\Windows\hosts In Windows XP it is in C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\etc\hosts So if

:""notepad C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\etc\hosts "" and press enter! Okay, now add this lines on the end of HOSTS file: 216.239.53.104 google.com 216.239.53.104 www.google.com Now go

press enter! write down ping www.google.com and press enter.You will see that the returned IP it's 216.239.53.104. You may now delete those 2 lines, and replace them with : 66.102.9.104 google.com 66.102.9.104 www.google.com Now ping again the www.google.com and see what IP you have. Now let's pass in something more advanced, maybe you will want to change the google datacenters 100 times a day , so you may wishto add some virtuals domain names , like : 216.239.51.104 result1.google.com 216.239.57.104 result2.google.com 216.239.59.104 result3.google.com 216.239.51.104 www.result1.google.com 216.239.57.104 www.result2.google.com 216.239.59.104 www.result3.google.com Try to access result1.google.com in your web browser to see about whatI am talking about , and result2.google.com , etc , you may also pingthem. Here is a cool list of Google datacenters you may wish to add : 216.239.37.99 216.239.39.104 216.239.51.104 216.239.51.105 216.239.51.147 216.239.53.104 216.239.57.98 216.239.57.99 216.239.57.104 216.239.57.105 216.239.59.99 216.239.59.104 66.102.7.99 66.102.7.104 66.102.7.147 66.102.9.104 66.102.9.99 66.102.11.99 66.102.11.104 66.249.93.99 66.249.93.104 64.233.179.99 64.233.179.104 Just add them one by one, and call them however you want. For Example : 66.102.9.104 www.google.softgroups.com /// if you wish so 66.102.9.104 google.softgroups.com Feel free to also modify the hosts files for others domain names asweel. The host file may also help you to access your web server while you didsome DNS chanes (You won't nead to wait for those 48 hours) For example, if I changed my www.softgroups.com to anather hostingprovider, that are hosting my websites on websites on : 70.86.140.11I will do : 70.86.140.11 www.softgroups.comM 70.86.140.11 softgroups.com Where I can find a list of more google datacenters?! Here is a good list : http://softgroups.com/gcenters.php

About the author: Coca Bogdan is writing free php scripts for http://softgroups.com

Building Doorway Domains for Optimized Search Engine Positioning

2008-12-09T03:02:00.001-08:00

Author: Ralph Tegtmeier

Doorway pages have been around for a long time and most people trying for search engine optimization are more or less familiar with them. To recapitulate: a classical doorway page is focused on a certain keyword or search phrase, carrying highly optimized text, pertinent meta tags, title, etc. It is submitted to the search engines to achieve better rankings. When human visitors hit the page, they are required to click a link to get to the site proper.

More often than not, doorway pages are quite ugly. That's because they are so highly optimized with the search engines in mind, who happen to dislike graphics, nested tables, Flash, Java applets, JavaScript, frames, and the like. So while they may perform nicely in the search engines' indices, many of them don't exactly spell out cutting edge marketing skills from the human visitors' (= clients'!) point of view. Granted that quite a few webmasters have caught on, resorting to generating more appealing pages featuring navigation elements and blending better with their sites' overall layout and design, but creating these can be a very time consuming effort.

What's more, some search engines are regularly conducting witch hunts to weed out discernible doorway pages, one of the most notable examples being AltaVista. The reason for this is the ongoing abuse the doorway page technology has been subject to over the years. With fairly cheap programs around generating hundreds of doorways at one go, you can hardly blame the engines for implementing some self-protective countermeasures.

Another major issue concerns the restrictions imposed on volume of page submissions. Search engines tend to limit the number of pages a domain may submit per day. While such limits are seldom publicized and may vary widely from one engine to another, a general guideline adhered to by most search engine optimization professionals is about 5 pages per day and domain.

For large web sites generating hundreds or thousands of new pages (dynamic or static) per year, it is therefore paramount to work around this limitation in order to get as many pages indexed as possible. The more web pages represent a web site in a search engine index, the greater the chances of generating pre-qualified traffic.

Even if you're only selling a handful of products, any web marketing expert will tell you that you are well advised to feature each of them on a highly focused mini-site because this will considerably increase your search engine exposure and, hence, your chances of driving visitors your way. The obvious drawback of this strategy lies in the fact that while you may make a lot of one-item sales this way, getting customers to buy several products at one pop isn't quite that easy without diluting your site's thematic focus again.

This is where Doorway Domains come in. They differ from tread-of-the-mill doorway pages in that they constitute dedicated web sites in their own right - highly focused, very targeted and immensely positionable. On the other hand, they are not identical with mini-sites because human visitors will never get to see them!

Instead, they are search engine spider fodder at its very best - optimized to the last byte, they can achieve excellent rankings. They will usually consist of several pages, each of which is optimized in a different manner: meta tags, titles, keyword density, etc. With every page following a slightly different basic optimization method or algorithm, they can target all important search engines and their various references in an incredibly effective buckshot strategy.

Search engines don't rank isolated pages very well, if at all, so the various pages of a well constructed Doorway Domain will all be interlinked with one another. Neither should they be mere clones: duplicate content on any given web site will usually be penalized.

But if, as I claimed above, human visitors don't ever get to see them, how are they supposed to boost your sales? The answer to this is redirection: surfers hitting your Doorway Domain's well positioned link on an engine's search results list will simply be forwarded to the corresponding page on your main site.

""Hey,"" you may groan now, ""hold it! Haven't I read all over the place that search engines take a very dim view of redirects and may actually ban sites from their indices if detected? So what are you trying to propose here - kamikaze optimization?""

You read right: search engines do indeed penalize web sites for redirection! However, there's a fairly easy, well established way out of this, and it goes under various names ranging from ""Cloaking"" through ""IP Delivery"" to ""Stealth Technology"", and others more.

Note that I said it is human visitors who will be redirected, not the search engine spiders. The latter will be served with their optimized ""fodder"" pages from the Doorway Domain itself and will never know the difference.

There are various technical methods to achieve this. You can employ specialized software which will determine automatically whether a site hit is generated by a search engine spider or a human visitor. If you have administrator rights on your system (most people haven't, but if you're running your own dedicated server this is normally a given), you can tweak your configuration to achieve the same effect, etc.

So you may think of a Doorway Domain as a ""cloaked mini-site"" fronting for your home page without annoying visitors with that 'ol ""Click here to enter"" spiel. Remember that many studies indicate that you have only about 8-15 seconds to capture your visitors' attention if you want them to actually stay on your site. If in doubt, check your server's traffic logs! You shouldn't make life more difficult for your visitors than absolutely necessary - it's uncourteous, and it doesn't particularly motivate buyers either!

The technical fineries of cloaking are, unfortunately, beyond the scope of this introductory article, but there's a lot of fine material around which will help you get started if you're interested.

A detailed tutorial on the DOs and DONTs of cloaking can be found on our site at: There's also a guided tour on cloaking available here (JavaScript enabled browser required):

Note that cloaking is not without its risks! The tutorial mentioned above will explain this in more detail.)

While these risks are widely overrated, they do indeed exist, so you should know exactly what you're doing before you actually go for it. However, once you have become familiar with the technology and seen its fantastic ranking results, you'll hardly settle for less again!

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

An easy way to build traffic

2008-12-08T03:02:00.001-08:00

Author: Jerks.Com

In the old days of the Internet (1995) people said the phrase ""build it and they will come""

This has changed however.. with more and more sites on the net you have to do something that will attract people. I have found some things that have worked.

Look at all the largest sites on the Internet. Yahoo, Altavista, Lycos, and Jayde you will see something very similar with them. There is hardly any advanced graphics or Javascripts on these sites. It is very straight forward with simple text based menu with simple compressed graphics.

I will use Yahoo as a example. It is the Largest site on the Internet in terms of traffic. The site layout is VERY straightforward with no moving graphics or Javascript. This is something that people should note when designing a site. GRAPHICS TAKE TIME TO DOWNLOAD!

When I visit a graphic intensive site I might take the time to wait until the download is complete if the graphics are really cool... but trust me.. the second time I go to the site (if there would be a second time) I will hit that stop button faster than you can say ""long download""

Design your site as if it is a portal or search engine. Portals have dealt with huge volumes of traffic and have done their research. It's the cheap way to do market research.... my college professor once told me that if I were to open a store.. choose a location right next to a new McDonald's. In order for the McDonald's to be built a invest a serious amount of money for market research is spent.. how much traffic does the street get.. how close is it to businesses (the people on their lunch break have very little time for lunch and have a tendency to eat fast food)

Trust me when I say that Yahoo or Altavista does their research. Their livelihood depends on how their visitor reacts to their site. They measure click through from the main site to other areas.. they even measure the spacing and the fonts to make sure it appeals to their massive audience as well as design their site for the least amount of bandwidth traffic. They don't want to slow down their site. So their site is VERY efficient.

About the author: Jerks.Com http://www.jerks.com

Input! Input!

2008-12-07T03:02:00.001-08:00

Author: Ken Garner

In the classic 1986 Film ""Short Circuit"" the main character is a cute Robot with an acute thirst for knowledge known only as 'Number 5'.

http://www.dvdreview.com/fullreviews/short_circuit.shtml

One of Robot number 5s most engaging traits is that whenever he stumbles across anything interesting he rushes off enthusiastically to collect and index the data with cries of ""Input! Input!"".

Robots designed to collect and index data actually exist but they are not made of exotic metals, they are software programs and are used by Search Engines to gather information about the relevance of your web site to a particular search term. These Robots ( sometimes called spiders or crawlers ) are smart but not very selective. Unless you provide unambiguous ground rules for visiting Search Engine robots, excluding them from areas you don't want them to enter, then every file on your web site will be perceived as ""Input!"" and is likely to get indexed. ""But"", I hear you ask, ""I want to get indexed by Search Engines, why is this a problem""? Indexing everything sounds superficially smart, however as part of a coherent web site promotion and Search Engine optimization strategy it has a number of important disadvantages. * Search Engine spiders should be actively discouraged from visiting areas where sensitive information might be stored. * Indiscriminately indexing everything can seriously dilute the relevancy of your web sites overall theme and can produce a sub-optimal rank in Search Engine listings. * Allowing a Search Engine spider to index everything can even inadvertently lead to the perception by some of the Search Engine that your web site contains spam, this can lead to your site being blacklisted. * For multilingual web sites it's imperative to focus English language robots onto the relevant English language pages and to direct robots from international Search Engines, who might be looking for Spanish, German or French language resources, to the appropriately localized content areas of your site. * Search Engine robots can only ""read"" text. Dynamic content or graphical components cannot be read or indexed, rendering your site effectively invisible to Search Engines. * Some robots ""rapid fire"" requests causing severe, server loading problems which can detract from your visitors browsing experience and ultimately cause loss of business. The answer to this problem lies in having a Robot exclusion file on your web server. Robot exclusion files, normally in the form of ""robots.txt"" are ASCII text files which reside in the document root directory of web servers and are used to set access permissions and control the actions of robots or spiders. Most of the major US and international Search Engines deploy spiders which look for a robots.txt file during their visit to a web site. There is an agreed industry standard for robots.txt files and, in order to work as anticipated, robots.txt has to be correctly formatted and placed in the proper location on the web server. Once uploaded to your server robots.txt is utilized to notify individual spiders about which elements of a web site cannot be visited and should not be made available on the public Internet. Used in conjunction with Search Engine optimization tools and/or services robots.txt can significantly enhance your sites chances of that all-important first page listing on the major US and international Search Engines by focusing individual spiders on specific content.

Although only a small ASCII text file, robots.txt enables a significant degree of fine tuning to be applied to your Search Engine optimization program. Used intelligently robots.txt can do a big job, significantly improving your knowledge about, and control of, visiting Search Engine robots. This is particularly the case where a web site owner either wishes to deliver specific content optimized for a particular Search Engine, or has paid for an accelerated Search Engine listing service where if would be useful to track the activity of the robot associated with that specific paid-for service.

Just as Robot Number 5 gathered more and more input and transformed this data into useful information, so web site owners can use the data generated by the interaction between robots.txt, visiting spiders and their web logs to gain significant competitive advantage.

About the author: Ken Garner is the CEO of Atlanta based Analyst Software Inc. Visit their web site ( www.analystsoftware.com ) for links to outstanding Internet tools, products and services designed to enhance the immediate growth of your on-line enterprise.

A Short Tutorial on Website Submissions & Linking to your site

2008-12-06T03:02:00.001-08:00

Author: LORDWOLF

Submitting your site to the search engines is a pain, make no mistake. But with a top twenty listing on Webcrawler alone having the capability to bring 50 visitors a day to your pages it's a pain that is worth suffering.

There are a great number of search engines around, but only the top 15 or so really generate serious traffic for most sites. Many of the lesser search engines are 'meta search' types, meaning they actually get their results from the bigger engines anyway.

Of the main engines, there are two categories - Directory based, and Spidered based. The Directory based (which includes Yahoo, Looksmart and the Open Directory Project) are generally added by hand. This means an editor for the chosen category looks at your site and awards it a position (or not) based on how he/she rated it. The Spider index types, (including Lycos, Inktomi and AltaVista) use robot browsers to check and index the sites based on pre-programmed criteria.

In general, to get a good listing in the Directory engines means you must impress the editor with the look, ease of navigation and content of your site. Make sure your first page loads very quickly (empty your browser cache before checking) as this is an important factor. If your 'front' page doesn't open within 10 - 15 seconds you will not get a high placement. If need be, create a simple 'Welcome' page that opens quickly and use it as a front door to your site with the more graphic laden pages with in it.

With Directory engines, if you have midis on your page be sure you include an ""off "" control. You will be penalized if not. Don't over do images or clutter - the editors read hundreds of these sites a day and will be likely to have a lot in the queue behind you. They want to judge your site rather than your taste in art or cartoons and music selections.

Spider based engines are more predictable. Spiders scan your pages looking for your keywords, count the number of times the keyword occurs through out that page, and measure it against the overall length of your text to calculate how relevant your site is to the keyword.

Your keywords need to be set in the keywords meta tag, and should also be included in your description, and to occur AT LEAST once in the first 200 characters of text in your page. For this reason it is wise to not try to target too many keywords on a single page, try to pick simple word-pairs. Make sure you pick phrases or words that you will repeat several times in the actual text of your page and that they describe your site to a viewer not to a robot.

For the same reasons of relevance to keywords, try to stick to one specific topic per page. If you deal with two different topics then you risk the chance of only 50% of the page being deemed relevant to either topic.

Assuming your site is now optimized to be rated by the engines you need to start submitting. There are some tricks to this too. Firstly, submitting to FFA (Free For All) Links pages is a good idea. Most spiders will place your site far more highly if they have found lots of other sites linking to you. Once you submit to any Spidered Search Engine you should add your site to as many FFA pages as you can find, once per day, for about two weeks. You will get a lot of junk mail in response to these submissions - one from each site generally, but most have exactly the same text in them so you can set your mail program to automatically delete them by using filter settings.

The best value listings of all are the Inktomi database. Those used by Yahoo, Hotbot, ICQit and many others, and the ODP (Open Directory Project) which is used by a list of Engines too long to even consider listing. Getting into the ODP database is now the only way to get listed in the AOL net search. AOL use spiders to index sites found in the ODP directory so you can see why it would be so important to be listed.

Top Five Directory Databases (1) Open Directory (2) Snap (3) Yahoo! Web Sites (Inktomi) (4) Yahoo! Directory (5) LookSmart

Normally, you will submit to these directories one time for a given web site. It is extremely important that you submit to them correctly the first time and choose the very best category. Be aware that it's often difficult to get a directory to change your listing later unless you send them a letter of explanation.

Here's where it gets complicated: Submitting to (6) HotBot (an engine) - will get you listed in all Inktomi based engines.

(7) Netscape: Netscape draws its results from Open Directory first. If no matches are found there, then it searches (8) Google. Therefore, we submit to Open Directory (a directory) and Google (an engine) to become listed on Netscape.

(9) AOL Search: AOL will search Open Directory listings first. After those matches are displayed, it will then draw results from Inktomi. Again, we submit to Open Directory using our directory guide, and to HotBot to be fully listed in AOL Search.

(10) Magellan: By submitting to Excite will get you listed here.

(11) Excite will get you listed in Magellan. They pull from each other's database.

(12) MSN: MSN draws results from LookSmart.com first, then after that, matches are displayed from (13) AltaVista. Therefore, we submit at www.looksmart.com (a directory) and to AltaVista to be found in MSN.

Additionally there are very popular Search engines to submit to that can be found on many web sites using search box's.

(14) Infoseek/Go Network (15) Lycos (16) Planet Search (17) WebCrawler (18) What-U-Seek (19) WhatsNu (20) Northern Light I hope the information given will aid you to get your sites placed in the search engines so give some thought to your keywords, check your load times, make sure your site is easy to navigate, and get submitting. To learn more about how Search engines rate sites and other tips I would recommend visiting http://www.searchenginewatch.com

---------------------------------------------- Resubmission's are just as important

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

After all the hard work you've done to submit your site, don't neglect it by hoping you will stay on top - YOU WON'T! You must resubmit your site at a min of every 4 weeks. There are some great programs and sites out there that can submit your site for you so be sure to book mark at least 3 sites if you don't have sumitting software.

I use a calendar here to remind me when I am due to resubmit. But for beginners the easiest thing you can do is, submit on the 1st of every month. Your site will remain fresh in the databases and show it as a current site submission. With the information above you are armed now so you know what sites will give you the best results.

With out question you NEED to get listed in the ODP site - though the evaluator may be your competitor and my not register your site in his section, this may not be the case with other link categories that follow the the same theme. You want to be listed in as MANY categories as you can (what's the worst that can happen? They say no?) So submit to each available listing in the main category.

---------------------------- Linking to other sites ----------------------------- Who should you try to get to link to you? In simple terms, anyone and everyone. In more practical terms however, it depends on the effort and what you have to give up in return. Exchanging a banner ad on your site for a link from a high quality busy site may be extremely valuable for attracting new visitors. The banner may however, redirect your hard sought visitor to the banner site and away from yours.

Banners also tend to clutter a web page, increase the load time and distract your visitors. You can only put up a limited number and then what do you exchange?

When was the last time you cruised a link exchange site looking for somewhere interesting to go? The fact is people look for sites with search engines or by search lists and recommendations at related sites. Link exchanges will produce few if any visitors and if they do they will probably not be prime candidates for your product or service. That is not unless you have a link exchange site yourself.

Not necessarily. There is actually a growing value to having these links to your site. As previously mentioned, many search engines, especially second generation engines, are starting to use site popularity as a way to rank your site. In other words, a site with 100 links to it will rank higher in the search results than a site with only 5 or six. It is consequently important to establish links to your site both for the traffic they can generate directly and for the indirect value of improving your search engine ranking.

Although Link Exchanges may be of value, it is better to put your initial efforts into exchanging links with other related sites. Not only will they generate more visitors, the visitors they do generate will be better qualified. What about competitors? Sometimes competitors attract viewers who may not find exactly what they need. If you allow your competition to also have a link what's the harm? The idea is to attract the viewer. link pages if you have a lot of links and put any Link Exchange banners on your site. Put these at the bottom if you do decide to use them all to often these banners will hang while loading and cause the page itself to hang - most viewers will not wait long so play it safe, and put it at the bottom. This way the viewer can still see your site and then the banner later.

Joining Web Rings related to your topic if one is available or create one if not is another option available to attract viewers. With E commerce now on the rise shoppers want to find the best deals by having all the related competition in one ring it makes it easy to find what and were the best deals are. The key to using rings, is in the registration of the page - you must use the full URL address of the page that will host the banner for that ring. This is especially important if your site uses frames.

About the author: LORDWOLF AND IRC HELP RING Email: mailto:irchelp@lordwolf.com Join our help ring for irc at http://www.lordwolf.com/

Getting Sure Profits Through Google, Goto.com and DirectHit

2008-12-05T03:02:00.001-08:00

Author: David Gikandi

Pay-for-inclusion is becoming highly popular lately and is an excellent way to get guaranteed traffic in a guaranteed time from major engines. That is, if you know how to use them well. So on the upside you have guaranteed quick listing and ranking. Google.com, Goto.com and DirectHit/AskJeeves can give you page one listing for searches of your keywords in as little as one hour or less from the time you sign up. On the downside, well, you have to pay for it, although even just $25 will get you started. To win and profit from these giants, you have to know your math, and your keywords. You need to know how to minimize your expenses, maximize your click throughs, and optimize your return on your investment.

Many webmasters avoid these pay-for-inclusion engines for fear that they will waste money and not get any results. If you use these engines and directories correctly, you can be sure that you will profit from their use. It is highly recommended that you do list with the pay-for-inclusion engines - it's one of the best, most guaranteed way to get traffic fast and profit from it.

To start with, you need to collect and calculate the following values for your web site:

1. Unique visitors per month. How many unique people visit your web site (not hits or page-views)? You need a log file analysis tool or similar tool to be able to get this figure. You can use Hitbox.com or WebTrendsLive.com free.

2. Total gross profit per month in US$. This is the total sales of all your products in a month, minus what those products cost you. For example, if you sell tables for $100 a table, and the table costs you $60 to make, and you sell 30 tables a month, the figure you should enter here is (100 - 60) x 30= 1200. Have your monthly average total gross (not net) profit for your business for all products and services you sell.

3. Number of unit sales per month. How many items or services do you sell in a month? This is the total number of items or services you sell in a month.

4. Average gross profit per unit, which is calculated as monthly gross profit divide by monthly unit sales.

5. Conversion ratio, calculated as monthly unit sales divided by monthly unique visitors. It is very important to have a high conversion ratio. The conversion ratio is a measure of how many of your unique visitors actually turn into buying visitors. You should try to increase your conversion ratio using various marketing techniques on your site and products. A higher conversion ratio will mean that you get a higher return on your advertising dollars. It also means you can spend more on advertising and advertise more times, resulting in a cycle of increasing profitability.

Now, let us use these values to get sure profits through Google, Goto.com and DirectHit/AskJeeves. You can use software such as PositionWeaver PRO (www.positionweaver.com) to manage all your calculations and keywords and all, or you can do it manually using a calculator and some way of keeping records. Remember, the following calculations tell you when you will be making a gross (not net) profit on your using the engines.

Google.com

Google.com is one of the largest and most used engines today. They now offer their AdWords program at https://adwords.google.com/AdWords/Welcome.html. Your AdWords text ads appear on search result pages for the keywords you buy, and can be targeted by language and country. Pricing for AdWords is based on the position in which they're shown. Google positions your ad based on how many users click on it over time. Current rates are $15, $12 and $10 (per thousand ads shown) for positions 1, 2, and 3 respectively, and $8 per thousand for positions 4 through 8. Accounts are opened with a credit card and no minimum deposit is required.

The trick is to choose very targeted keywords that will trigger your ad. Which means that only very targeted buyers will ever see your ad and your conversion ration will be incredibly high. If your keywords are not well selected, you will end up having your ad showing often but with very few people clicking on it. And because Google charges you for ad displays and not click throughs, you will be loosing money. You can set how much you wish to spend. Google takes the money out of your credit card after it reaches $50, by which time your ad will have been displayed roughly about 5,000 times! If your keywords are highly targeted, many of the people who see your ad will instantly become buyers and you will actually get your money in before you even pay Google! Your listing shows up in about an hour of your creating it.

Google allows you to create campaigns. A campaign holds its own keywords and adverts. Each campaign has its own statistics that are reported to you. The best strategy to use is to create a separate campaign for each keyword and each advert, rather than put all your ads and keywords into one campaign. That way, you will easily be able to tell which keywords and ads are doing well and which ones are not so that you can eliminate those that are wasting your money.

You should also ensure that for each ad you create for a particular keyword or phrase, that keyword or phrase appears in both the title and description on that ad. Click through rations can be significantly improved when you have the keyword being searched for included in the title and description of the ad.

Once you start advertising on Google, Google will give you reports showing how your ads are doing. From the reports, take the average amount of money in dollars you are paying for every 1,000 impressions/displays of your advert (this is called CPM or cost per 1000), which varies depending on the positions your ad gets, and refer to the conversion ratio and gross unit profit figures you calculated earlier for your web site. Now, in that Google report, you will also be told what click throughs you are getting for your ads, in other words, what percentage of the times your ad is show does someone click on it.

This is how you know when to advertise and when not to advertise with Google: if the reported click through percentage is equal to or higher than:

(Your Site's Conversion Ratio x Reported Google CPM) / Your Site's Gross Unit Profit

... then you are making a gross profit on sales generated by that advertising!

Goto.com

Goto.com is another powerful pay-per-listing search engine. The trick is to pay for the top 1 position, or at least the top 1 to 3 positions. Depending on your product, how much gross profit you make out of it, and what your conversion ratio is, you may be able to profit very well with the top spot. Why is the top spot so important? The partners that Goto.com has have a very wide audience. Goto's top search results reach 75 of all Internet users through their affiliate partner network, which includes America Online, Microsoft Internet Explorer, EarthLink, Lycos, and AltaVista! But these partner sites only show Goto.com's top one to three results for any search. Goto uses the bidding model to charge for listing your site. You pay for click throughs, not the number of times your ad is shown. How much you pay for a click-through on your listing depends on what the target keyword is and how much other webmasters have bid to pay for a click. The more you bid, the higher your listing is ranked. You can list your site using multiple titles and descriptions, all targeted for different keywords. So just look for the top spot if your gross margin can allow it. The good thing about Goto.com is that they only charge you for a click through, so you only pay when someone clicks on your link. Top spots can cost you anywhere from 0.01 cents to over $4 depending on the keyword. Your listing shows up in about 3 days.

It is more effective to have about 20 or more keywords/phrases you are targeting, specific and related to your site, than it is to have just one, so come up with 20 or more very specific and targeted keywords/phrases if you really want to win this game hands down. Because Goto charges you for clicks and not displays/impressions, you can list for as many keywords as possible. Their Power Advertiser Change form at http://www.goto.com/d/about/advertisers/uspowerform.jhtml allows you to easily compose and submit up to 25,000 adverts - we advise you submit for as many keywords as possible that related to your site because you only pay for clicks on those ads. That form also helps you compose ads in the right format, especially including the appropriate keywords in the title and description of the ads.

You should ensure that for each ad you create for a particluar keyword or phrase, that keyword or phrase appears in both the title and description on that ad. Click through rations can be significantly improved when you have the keyword being searched for included in the title and description of the ad.

Based on your conversion ratio and unit gross margin, you will make a gross profit on all sales generated by your advertising here as long as you bid less than this amount for each click:

Gross Unit Profit * Conversion Ratio

DirectHit/AskJeeves

DirectHit/AskJeeves (http://sponsor.directhit.com) also has a paid text ads system similar to Google's. Your link appears alongside their search results for every search topic you sponsor. Your link also appears alongside search results on Web sites that participate in the Jeeves Text Sponsorship Network, including MSN, Searchalot, Bomis.com, SuperCyberSearch, and Direct Hit. Your ads appear in a few days and you just need a minimum deposit of $25 to start. You pay for the number of times your ad is shown. They use a bidding system to arrive at this payment amount. How much you pay depends on what the target keyword is and how much other webmasters have bid to pay for their ads to be shown. Bids start at $5 for every 1,000 times the ad is displayed. For most keywords, that is all you will pay.

DirectHit allows you to create sponsorships. A sponsorship holds its own keywords and adverts. Each sponsorship has its own statistics that are reported to you. The best strategy to use is to create a separate sponsorship for each keyword and each advert, rather than put all your ads and keywords into one sponsorship. That way, you will easily be able to tell which keywords and ads are doing well and which ones are not so that you can eliminate those that are wasting your money.

You should also ensure that for each ad you create for a particluar keyword or phrase, that keyword or phrase appears in both the title and description on that ad. Click through rations can be significantly improved when you have the keyword being searched for included in the title and description of the ad.

Once you start advertising on DirectHit/AskJeeves, DirectHit/AskJeeves will give you reports showing how your ads are doing including the CPM, which varies depending on the bids. Now, in that AskJeeves report, you will also be told what click throughs you are getting for your ads.

This is how you know when to advertise and when not to advertise with AskJeeves: if the reported click through percentage is equal to or higher than:

(Your Site's Conversion Ratio x Reported AskJeeves CPM) / Your Site's Gross Unit Profit

... then you are making a gross profit on sales generated by that advertising.

Well, there you go. A simple way to make sure that you will make gross profits from having your site on page one of related searches on engines that reach over 75 of the world's Internet users. It is highly recommended that you do list with the pay-for-inclusion engines - it's one of the best, most guaranteed way to get traffic fast and profit from it.

About the author: David Gikandi (support@positionweaver.com), CEO at PositionWeaver.com/AboutWebmasters.com.

The Best Way To Get Listed On Yahoo!

2008-12-04T03:02:00.001-08:00

Author: David Gikandi

Yahoo! http://www.yahoo.com/ has an immense reach. They receive, directly, more traffic than any other search engine or directory. Being listed on Yahoo! and DMOZ.org gives you a great boost on your Google.com rankings as well. So if you are not listed on Yahoo! and DMOZ, your pages on Google may never rank as highly as they should. You simply must be in Yahoo! Fortunately, you can now guarantee that you will be reviewed and possibly added within 7 days by paying a fee of $199 to Yahoo! The free submission service has no guarantees and most sites never do end up getting listed through free submission. The $199 fee guarantees that you will get reviewed. But to be definitely added to Yahoo!, especially in a way that gets you the most traffic, you must fulfil certain things:

Yahoo! rankings depend very much on the keywords in your title and description, and the keywords in the category name you are listed under. Select your category very wisely. The best way to find a category for you is to search on Yahoo! for your major competitors. See which category they are listed under and get listed there as well. That way you will be sure you are at a spot where your potential visitors are used to going to.

The title you get listed on Yahoo! with is usually your business name. Yahoo! Is quite strict on this, insisting on listing sites by their business name (company name) and not their site name. Remember, the title is very influential when it comes to how high you will come up on Yahoo! Searches. Because the traffic from Yahoo! is so heavy, we suggest that you get a DBA (doing business as) business name that has the keywords in it. Example: if your primary keyword is 'wedding gowns' but your company is called Tippy Fashions, Inc., register a business name under your company name that has your keyword. If you specialize in a certain geographic region, include that as well. For example, if your business is in Miami, then register the name Wedding Gowns of Miami. Then have your title tag on your web site read Wedding Gowns of Miami - and that's all, nothing more in the title tag. Then, on your home page, place Wedding Gowns of Miami prominently at the top of the page, so that it looks as though this is what the site is called. All your logos and graphics should be changed to reflect the new name, Wedding Gowns of Miami - remember, this is only temporary for 7 days while Yahoo! reviews your site for inclusion. You may change everything back to normal once Yahoo! indexes you. In your About page or company info page, have Wedding Gowns of Miami as the listed business name (you can add that Wedding Gowns of Miami is a Tippy Fashions, Inc., business). Yahoo! also looks at the Whois database to see what company name is listed as the owner of your domain. You should also edit that Whois info at NetworkSolutions.com to include your new DBA name. While we are on the topic of domain names, it is a good idea to register a domain name that reflects the new business name you have for Yahoo!, such as weddinggownsofmiami.com for our example here. When you submit your site to Yahoo!, in the company field, place Wedding Gowns of Miami as the business name. Once you are listed by Yahoo! in 7 days, you may change back your home and about pages to be how they were before. This may sound like a lot of hassle just for one listing, but it is very important to have your primary keyword in the title that Yahoo! lists you under if you want to get massive traffic. And the only way to do that is to have those keywords in your legal business name. Remember, have your title and new business name (DBA) start with your most important keyword - the position matters very much when it comes to search rankings on Yahoo!

The description you submit to Yahoo! is also something that should have your most important keyword. It should not read like an advert - it should be descriptive. Try to make it in a way that it sounds interesting and informative to a potential client, without sounding like a blatant advert, otherwise Yahoo! will re-write it. Start your description with your most important keyword - the position matters very much when it comes to search rankings on Yahoo! For best results, make the description just one sentence long that is readable and descriptive. Yahoo! Has the habit of cutting down descriptions longer than one sentence long.

Before you submit, make sure all your links are working - Yahoo! tests your page HTML before it includes you. Generally, have a good look at your site and remove everything that would make Yahoo! not list your site - or list it in a way that isn't as you would want it to be. Yahoo! gives a lot of information on how they review a site - see their submission help pages at http://add.yahoo.com/fast/add and http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/faq.html. Follow them to the letter and follow the above instructions to the letter. Once your site is listed at Yahoo! it is next to impossible to have the way the listing is worded changed. So make sure you get it right the first time around.

To submit to Yahoo!, simply go to the category where you wish to have your site listed on Yahoo! and click on the Suggest link at the bottom of that page.

Once you get listed, you should also sign up to have your site become a sponsored site within Yahoo! It costs $25 to $300 or more a month at the time of this writing, depending on the category. Sponsored sites appear in a separate, clearly demarcated listing box, located on appropriate category pages in the directory at the top - which means that you will get a lot more traffic - significantly higher than the non-sponsored listings. To sponsor your site, simply go to the directory page on Yahoo! where it is listed, then click on the Sponsor link and follow the directions.

We keep mentioning 'most important keyword' all along. What is this keyword or keyword phrase? This is the keyword or phrase that most people use to find your site. Try to use a two word phrase. A one-word keyword is usually too general and will result in a lot of traffic that is not very interested in your site. So you will end up having a lot of people who just get back out of your site. It is better to use a two-word keyword because that makes sure you get people who are ready to spend time and money on your site. The easiest way to illustrate this is to use the adult industry. If you have an adult site that specializes in live video, you may be tempted to use 'sex' as the keyword that is most popular with searches in your industry. Indeed it is, but you will get people looking for free pictures, looking for medical advice, and more. A better phrase would be one that contains the words 'live video' and 'sex' in it. That is the kind of keyword phrase you should enter here. Tools such as Word Tracker and the Goto inventory window will help you see what are the most common keyword searches in your industry.

If you need help finding your important keywords and composing your title or descriptions, you may find an appropriate online marketing company to do that for you at http://www.aboutwebmasters.com or use a software package to guide you, such as PositionWeaver PRO, which also has links to keyword searching tools. Generally, even if you do get someone to write your title and description for you, make sure you review it carefully before you submit it - after all, it is your site and you only get one shot at this when it comes to Yahoo!

About the author: David Gikandi (support@positionweaver.com) is CEO at SearchPositioning.com (http://www.aboutwebmasters.com). AboutWebmasters.com is a large interactive webmasters portal featuring everything an e-commerce professional needs.

Use keywords and meta tags to get the click!

2008-12-03T03:02:00.001-08:00

Author: Steve Nash

Now everyone knows that you need to choose keywords and meta tags to make your site search-engine-friendly (don't they?). And pages should be 'optimised' BEFORE you submit them to the search engines.

Optimising your site for the search engines is really not that difficult, but it is important: no-one visits your site if they can't find it on the first few pages of a search engine.

A good way of 'getting found' is to choose high-demand low- supply keywords (like ""free nokia ringtones""), and to create pages optimised for those keywords. (Obviously, you need to find keywords relevant to your website.) The basic guidelines, below, show you how to optimise your pages - how to make sure your site gets the click - but how do you find these profitable high- demand low-supply keywords in the first place?

=> USE THIS RESOURCE

Wordtracker is a free tool that allows you to brainstorm keywords and determine which of those keywords (if any) have little competition on the net (which are most 'profitable'). You simply add suitable keywords to a basket, and their profitability is determined using AltaVista as the search engine (the paid-for tool determines profitability using all of the major search engines).

Wordtracker is a powerful tool endorsed and used by many so- called search engine experts. You should use it too, to improve your chances of getting the click.

Wordtracker - http://www.wordtracker.com

=> THEN STUDY THESE BASIC GUIDELINES

Many of the major search engines behave differently to each other when it comes to choosing the best pages. Worse than this, though, is that some use meta tags and some ignore them completely, preferring only to rely on page content (with weighting given to words at the top of the page). Even worse still, the search engines constantly change their ranking rules (algorithms).

So understand that these are only basic guidelines. However, they should help your web pages rank better with the search engines, *over time*:

- TITLE tag should be between 5 and 12 words

- Meta DESCRIPTION tag should be between 5 and 20 words

- TITLE and Meta DESCRIPTION should be different. Combine both to encourage someone looking at a busy page of search results to click your link, rather than someone else's.

- Meta KEYWORDS tag should be between 0 and 50 words

- HEADING Tags should be used, if possible (and these tags are used for ranking purposes instead of Meta DESCRIPTION tag, sometimes)

- Meta KEYWORDS tag should contain words that exist in TITLE and Meta DESCRIPTION tag (as well as in page content)

- Do not use too many COMMENT tags, or Image ALT tags, especially if you stuff them with keywords

--- sidebar ---

Don't know what the above means? The HTML tags are shown below:

* TITLE - Your page title here * DESCRIPTION - * KEYWORDS - * HEADING - H1,

--- end sidebar ---

Again, these are basic guidelines - don't take them too literally. Remember, the most important content for the search engines is also the most important content for your site visitors - *your actual page content*.

=> READ MORE...

You can find out a great deal more about keywords, meta tags etc. from the following excellent resources.

- http://spider-food.net - http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/meta.html - http://www.searchengines.com

Remember that search engines are getting more and more sophisticated. Concentrate on creating valuable keyword-rich pages that your site visitors will like; the search engines will like them too! And your site is sure to get the click!

About the author: Steve Nash edits Promote! Promote! Promote! a twice-monthly newsletter. Subscribe, and learn more about promoting your business (or site) online: mailto:pppromote@getresponse.com This article appears on his latest site called How I Promote My Website - http://www.HowIPromoteMyWebsite.com/bin/ap.pl?find-out

Creating Keyword Specific Doorway Pages - A Step By Step Guide

2008-12-02T03:02:00.001-08:00

Author: Shelley Lowery

If you're doing business on the Internet then you know the importance of ranking high in the Search Engines. The competition is fierce, but it can be done. What I am about to reveal to you will increase your traffic immensely, but it must be done correctly. The goal is to create powerful doorway pages that not only rank high in the Search Engines, but are Search Engine friendly and provide some valuable content for your visitors. What is a doorway page anyway? A doorway page is a webpage specifically designed to rank high in the Search Engines for a specific keyword or keyword phrase. Not just a blank page with a link that redirects to your main page, but a powerful, content rich page packed with your keywords. First of all, select three of the most specific keyword phrases that best describe your website. If your website is about dog grooming, then your keyword phrases might be: dog grooming, pet care, pet groomers. Place these keyword phrases, separated with a comma, in your KEYWORD meta tags between the HEADING tags of your HTML. (Notice: Some of the opening and closing brackets have been left off some of the examples below to enable you to view the code.) Example: Next, write a descriptive sentence about your website packed with your keywords for your DESCRIPTION Meta tag. Example:

Write a descriptive TITLE for your page that includes your KEYWORDS. The Dog Groomers Salon: Dog Grooming Tips From Top Professional Pet Groomers Your doorway page should load very quickly, so keep your graphics to a minimum. Make sure you don't include any banners and place your main logo at the top of your page, linked to your main page. Place your keywords within the image tag using the ALT tag. Below your logo, include an intriguing sentence and link it to your main page. Example: IMG SRC=""mainlogo.gif"" WIDTH=""300"" HEIGHT=""60"" ALT=""dog grooming,pet care,dog groomers"" BORDER=""0"" For More Professional Dog Grooming Tips, Click Here In addition to placing your keywords in your Meta tags Title, and Image tag, you can also use the Comment tag. Comment tags can be used throughout your page to organize your content and make updating easier. They also provide another great way to place your KEYWORDS. They won't be visible on your webpage, just in the HTML. Example: !--Begin Dog Grooming Navigation-- !--End Dog Groomer Navigation-- The key to creating powerful, keyword rich, Search Engine friendly doorway pages is to provide some valuable content. In the body of your webpage, provide your visitors with a free 250 - 300 word article or report loaded with your keywords every couple of sentences. Example: Dog Grooming Tips From The Top Professional Dog Groomers If you're not comfortable writing your own reports, you can find over 1,000 free reports here: http://www.web-source.net/content.htm Here's the basic HTML outline for your doorway page: HTML HEADING META name=""KEYWORDS"" content=""dog grooming, pet care, pet groomers"" META name=""DESCRIPTION"" content=""The Dog Groomers Salon: Dog Grooming Tips From Top Professional Pet Groomers"" TITLE The Dog Groomers Salon: Dog Grooming Tips From Top Professional Pet Groomers /TITLE /HEADING BODY !--Begin Dog Grooming Navigation-- IMG SRC=""mainlogo.gif"" WIDTH=""300"" HEIGHT=""60"" ALT=""dog grooming,pet care,dog groomers"" BORDER=""0"" For More Professional Dog Grooming Tips, Click Here !--End Dog Groomer Navigation-- Dog Grooming Tips From The Top Professional Dog Groomers /BODY /HTML After you've created your doorway page, save your page using one of your keywords. Example: dog_grooming.html If you're creating many pages, simply add a number to the end of your page. Example: dog_grooming_1.html dog_grooming_2.html pet_grooming_1.html pet_grooming_2.html dog_groomer_1.html dog_groomer_2.html When you're ready to submit your pages to the Search Engines, submit only one page each day. If you've created several pages you'd like to submit, you may want to create an additional page that contains links to each of your doorway pages. That way, you can submit just your links page and let the Search Engines crawl the rest of your links. Creating doorway pages is a powerful way to increase your website traffic, but don't stop at just one. Imagine how much traffic you'd receive with 100 keyword packed, doorway pages all pointing to your website...

About the author: Shelley Lowery is the Webmaster of Web-Source.net - A complete resource portal for the Internet entrepreneur. The site assists the entrepreneur in developing a serious Web presence by providing a wealth of free information, resources, tools and content. http://www.web-source.net

Change Your Site Now!

2008-12-01T03:02:00.000-08:00

Author: Holly Janion

Change your site! That's right, if you want the edge in this highly competitive market, you need to change your site now!

In order to increase your traffic you need to change the content on your site to reflect current trends. By this I don't mean simply changing a few words, layout etc etc, I mean really changing it to keep ahead of your competition by providing services that people really want.

This by no means has to affect the theme of your site, you simply need to enhance it to provide additional much sort after services or products. If you're happy with the amount of visitors your site is currently receiving, and I doubt you are, then leave it as it is, but if you want more visitors, and you want your visitors to keep coming back, then read on!

Let's get to the how's and the why's.

How?

Firstly find out what people want, what they're really looking for. If you can offer this service or product, people are more than likely to buy it from you. Remember they're looking for it because they want it and if you provide it, chances are they'll buy it from you.

To find out what people are looking for go to a site like Searchwords.com. If you think you know what the most popular search word at the moment is, you may be somewhat surprised when I tell you its MP3. That's the word now, but things change so fast in this technical age, you need to keep a close eye on this.

Why?

There are two major reasons for doing this. Firstly, if people want it and are looking for it and you consistently fill this need, you will soon establish a reputation for always being ""hot"". Make the most of the current trends why they're happening. I am not talking about words that have always been searched for or products and/or services you would not want to associate your site with, but new and different trends. If you discipline yourself to check these trends on a regular basis, you can offer the desired services long before the word is out and everybody else is doing the same thing. This is a major key to how successful you will be - act fast and stay ahead!.

In order to have your own site ranked well with the search engines, you need to have relevant keywords in your metatag area. What could be better than having the most popular search words in your own metatags? Of course you would have to have that content on your own site. If people are searching for Holly Janion, and you have Holly Janion in your metatags, be sure to contain information on Holly Janion somewhere within the content of your site. How many times have you looked for something via the search engines and visited the sites to find they have nothing to do with the subject in hand. This is a dirty trick and won't do the webmaster any favors in the long run. Be professional, make sure your metatags correctly reflect the content on your site.

Key Benefits

1. By changing your content regularly, your visitors will come back often because you offer the services they want. Your site is interesting and doesn't have the same old stuff on month in and month out. By keeping your site content current, you will be one step ahead of your competitors.

2. You'll be seen as a site that is current, knows what is going on, a true professional. This will increase your visitor returns. If someone has purchased from you once, they will be more likely to purchase from you again. Look after your current visitors, don't lose them to other sites that keep current!

3. If your main theme is kitchens but everyone is looking for MP3, add it to your site. It doesn't have to be a huge section that detracts from your theme at all, something small will be enough. Remember just because I'm on your site looking at kitchens, doesn't mean I don't have any other interests!

4. Don't depend totally on people using kitchens as a keyword. You know they they're using MP3, so use it too - get them to your site!

5. You'll still get the visitors you would have had anyway as kitchens is still your main metatag word and what your site is about. This method only increases your site visitors. You're getting visitors that weren't looking to buy a kitchen at the moment but may soon be, or know people who are, and now they know you provide a great kitchen service.

Wade's World is an internet business solutions company offering various free marketing resources, but we've added a whole page on MP3 to our web site and people are using it! For how long I don't know, but I'm keeping a watch and when the trend changes, so will our site!

About the author: Holly Janion is webmaster for Wade's World Ltd, a UK Internet solutions company. To contact Holly, send an e-mail to webmaster@wadesworld-usa.com or visit the Wade's World site at http://www.wadesworld-usa.com

THEMES...The Next Evolution of Search Engine Optimization

2008-11-30T03:02:00.000-08:00

Author: John Buchanan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let's look at an example.

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

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

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

stereo domain - www.daves-stereos.com

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

televisions domain - www.daves-televisions.com

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

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

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

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

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

2008-11-29T03:02:00.000-08:00

Author: Thomson Chemmanoor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SEO Services , Submit Articles

Search Engine 2000 Checklist

2008-11-28T03:02:00.000-08:00

Author: James T Kendall

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

- Keyword Phrases

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

- Title Tags

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

- Where to Be Listed

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

- Getting into Inktomi

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

- Keep Good Records

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

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

- Make a ""SiteMap"" Page

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

- Use those Alt Tags

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

- Make use of Heading Tags

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

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

Keyword Density - More Than Meets the Eye

2008-11-27T03:02:00.000-08:00

Author: Ralph Tegtmeier

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Optimizing a Press Release for Search Engines

2008-11-26T03:02:00.000-08:00

Author: Marcia Yudkin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Additional Notes on Press Release Optimization

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

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

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

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

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

2008-11-25T03:03:00.000-08:00

Author: John Buchanan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pro's

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

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

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

Pro's

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

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

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

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

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

It's the Little Things.....

2008-11-24T03:02:00.001-08:00

Author: windsong

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2008-11-23T03:02:00.001-08:00

Author: Janet L. Hall

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Heading TAG Sample:

OverHall IT!

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

Click here to get organized

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

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

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

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

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

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

WEB PAGE EXAMPLE:

disorganized? organizing help, clutter tips, organizing tools

Field of Dreams: Getting a Homerun With Your Keywords

2008-11-22T03:02:00.001-08:00

Author: Janet L. Hall

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Seven Homerun Keyword Strategies:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I hope you can get a Grand Slam!

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

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

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

A Dynamite New Web-Based Reporting Service

2008-11-21T03:02:00.001-08:00

Author: Robin Nobles

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

By Robin R. Nobles

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

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

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

Advantages for Using a Web-Based Service

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How does WebRank work?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Conclusion

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

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

What Your Web Designer Isn't Telling You

2008-11-20T03:02:00.001-08:00

Author: Kalena Jordan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The 5 Most Common SEO Mistakes

2008-11-19T03:02:00.001-08:00

Author: Kalena Jordan

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

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

1) Non Utilization of the Title Tag

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

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

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

2) Use of Untargeted Keywords and Phrases

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

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

3) A Lack of Optimized Body Text

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

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

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

4) Submitting to 1,000 Search Engines

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

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

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

5) Resubmitting Too Soon and Too Often

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

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

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

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

Web Promotion - SEO Strategy

2008-11-18T03:02:00.001-08:00

Author: Johnny Mayer

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

Content + SEO = Top GOOGLE Positions

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

Website Design - SEO Strategy

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

Keyword Selection - SEO Strategy

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

Meta Tag Mania - SEO Strategy

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

Copy Writing - SEO Strategy

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

Image Tags Copy - SEO Strategy

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

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

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

SEO Portal or Free SEO? You Decide.

2008-11-17T03:02:00.001-08:00

Author: Kevin Gee

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are We Looking Stupid?

2008-11-16T03:02:00.001-08:00

Author: Kevin Gee

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks LookSmart but at this time, no thanks!

Part 2-Using Keywords in the Body

2008-11-15T03:02:00.001-08:00

Author: Janet L. Hall

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

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

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

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

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

( )

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

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

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

( )

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

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

(

)

Here is an example of one of mine: (

)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2008-11-14T03:02:00.001-08:00

Author: Janet L. Hall

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So after the tag, place your start HEAD TAG:

TAGS you MUST catch:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2.Your next important TAG is your description TAG:

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

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

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

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

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

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

2008-11-13T03:03:00.001-08:00

Author: Robin Nobles

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

By Robin Nobles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The ""old"" way to use Wordtracker

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

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

Introducing John Alexander

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

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

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

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

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

Let's look at an example

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The bottom line?

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

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

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

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

* Spanish baby names

* Italian baby names

* Jewish baby name

* French baby names""

(See Part 2)

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

How to Use Keywords to Optimize Your Site for Search Engines - Part 2

2008-11-12T03:02:00.001-08:00

Author: Herman Drost

Placing keywords strategically throughout your web pages will greatly improve your rankings in the search engines. Many sites, however, leave them out altogether so your Site won't get ranked at all. Inserting too many keywords in your web pages or repeating them too often, will result in your site getting banned from the search engines.

How do you sort all this out so you can effectively market your web site to the search engines?

My last article (www.isitebuild.com/keyword), discussed, what is a keyword and how to create targeted keywords for your site. Next we will discuss where to place keywords, how many to use and some tips on what to avoid.

Where to place keywords in your web pages?

Title Tag - this tag should contain your most important keyword phrase. Make the title interesting enough to grab the visitor's attention. Only use 5 to 6 words in your title with your most relevant keyword in the beginning.

Description Meta Tag The search engines often use this tag when they display the description of your web site in the search results. Try to make the description inviting for your visitors. The length should be less than 200 characters, including spaces.

Keyword Meta Tag This tag will contain a listing of your keywords and keyword phrases that are relevant to your page and enable a Search Engine to find you. Here are some things to remember:

Don't use the same keyword more than 3 times. Use keywords that occur in your Title Tag and Description Tag. Use only 200 characters for all your keywords. Use different keywords for all your pages. Only use keywords that are relevant to your site. Use lower case letters. Use the single and plural forms of your keywords. Use commas or spaces between your keywords or keyword phrases.

Heading Tags These tags hold separate topics between paragraphs and range from , which is very large and bold to , which is very small and bold. Your page heading should contain your most important keywords or keyword phrase.

Alt Tag This tag is used to add text in place of the image. The user may have turned off reading the graphics to make the page load faster. Therefore he will read the ALT Tag text instead. Add short keyword rich text to your graphic links. Make sure the ALT text describes the link destination.

Hypertext Links Include your keywords or keyword phrase in your link text.

Content Search Engine spiders put more weight on keyword rich content that is higher up on the page rather than in the middle or lower sections. Insert your keywords and keyword phrases in your text at least three times.

Types of Sites that won't get indexed by Search Engines. Flash and Frame Sites - pages created this way will be avoided by the Search Engines spiders.

Dynamic Pages - any web address that contains a question mark (i.e. ASP, Perl, Cold Fusion), will not be indexed by the spiders.

Password Protected Pages - Search Engines Spiders will not index any area that is protected by a password.

Meta Tag Generators These are tools that can be used to automatically generate your keywords. Here are some resources you can use:

http://vancouver-webpages.com/META/mk-metas.html http://www.bcentral.com/products/metatags.asp

Conclusion: Consumers are 5 times more likely to purchase your products after seeing search engine listings versus banners. Implementing these strategies mentioned, may not get you a number one ranking in the Search Engines, but you definitely have a distinct advantage over those Web Sites that have not done any optimizing.

About the author: Herman Drost is a Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW) owner and author of iSiteBuild.com Site Design and Low Cost Hosting from $30/year. (http://www.isitebuild.com) Subscribe to the ""Marketing Tips"" newsletter for more original articles. mailto:subscribe@isitebuild.com.