Holistic Search Engine Optimization

by: Biana Babinsky

We all have heard that search engines are the number one resource for consumers to research and buy products or services online. In fact, marketing studies have shown that over 70% of web surfers use search engines to locate online merchants. The ramification of this statistic is simple: if you want to reach the members of your target market you need to make sure that your business web site appears in popular search engines.

Search engine optimization (SEO) can help you achieve this. SEO is a crucial online marketing technique. It helps you to get your web site to appear in search engine result pages (SERPs) for keywords that that are relevant to your business. For example, if you are a business coach, and someone is searching for "business coach", it would be great for your business if your web site appears in the first 10 results.

So what exactly is search engine optimization? SEO includes selecting the best keywords for the body of the page as well as other page elements (the title tag, keyword and description meta tags, etc.) Carefully chosen keywords provide "hints" that search engines use to classify your site and to determine whether your site should appear for certain search keywords. On-page keyword optimization by itself will help your rankings. However, holistic search engine optimization is required to achieve optimal results. For the best placement, focus on SEO as a whole, rather than concentrate on a particular technique.

Here are a few important elements of holistic search engine optimization:

- Have good content. After all, content is king (or queen, whichever the case may be). Without content there isn't much of a site. The content must walk a fine line between providing useful content and including sufficient and relevant keywords for search engines.

Often it is difficult to optimize your product or service pages for search engines, since the main goal of these items is to showcase the benefits of your offer. On the other hand, it is easier to optimize blog posts and articles. In fact, you can create entire articles and blog posts around keywords that are popular with your target market.

- Have consistent navigation. Both your web site visitors and search engine spiders navigate your web site through links that connect different pages. Consistent navigation ensures that your visitors can reach every page on your web site from every other page. On top of that, you will you get the most out of your search engine optimization efforts.

- Get links to your site. Links to your web site play a very important role in holistic search engine optimization. Many popular search engines evaluate your web site's popularity based on counting the number of links that point to your site. The more popular your web site is, the better rankings it gets on search engines. The best links are links from reputable, quality web site that have complimentary or related content.

You can get links to your web site by using a variety of techniques, such as writing articles, participating in link exchanges, and participating in online networking.

Take a holistic approach to web site optimization. Apply SEO to your web site as a whole, and always evaluate the overall impact of your marketing efforts.

About The Author
Biana Babinsky shows you how to drive thousands of targeted visitors to your web site in her Step by Step Search Engine Optimization Special Report. Learn more about the report at http://avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zseo.

Search Engine and Online Marketing Optimization

by: Danny DeMichele

RESEARCH WHITE PAPERS - TIPS

Search Engine and Online Marketing Optimization

Most reputable Online Markers, whether they are from multi-million dollar e-commerce mega-sites or small companies with just a few employees, know the importance of high Search Engine Rankings by the top search engines.

Large firms can afford to dedicate several full time staff members to a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) program, or write five-figure checks every month to out-source the project to a specialized SEO company. While many small companies don't have that luxury, there are companies such as VNS Search Marketing that provide superb SEO programs at affordable prices, programs that deliver results.

Any company can realize a decent amount of success in their SEO efforts if they follow the guidelines we will cover in this article. Improving your Search Ranking can have a very significant impact on your bottom line. The higher your Search Engine Rankings, particularly if you appear on the first page of Google, Yahoo and MSN hits, the more traffic you will see on your web site, increasing your potential to turn that traffic into revenue.

We would like to warn you about highly questionable SEO practices some firms use, while these may have short term benefits, they are ultimately destined for failure, and at a high price that may include de-listing of a web site by search engines! Tactics such as cloaking, keyword stuffing, doorway pages, or invisible text or links are practices that should never be used by your site. VNS recommends that you avoid any firm that suggests you use any of those approaches at any time.

SEO is not a science, there are no sure-fire ways to get top Rankings. All of the top search engines guard their Page Ranking algorithms very carefully. They do this to prevent people from artificially modifying their sites to get inappropriately high Search Engine Rankings. Any firm that tells you they know how to guarantee you top Rankings is trying to take advantage of you.

Reputable SEO firms will always recommend that you follow widely known practices used in optimizing your web site design, and include appropriate content and keywords in your pages. This will help the Search Engine crawlers, which the Search Engines use to locate and evaluate your site content. Reputable SEO firms will also advise you to implement a comprehensive linking strategy, which can significantly improve your Search Engine Rankings.

In this paper we will discuss four important SEO strategies that can be implemented without great expense, that should improve your web site Search Engine Ranking over time. (Linking and reciprocal linking strategies will be discussed at length in another white paper.)

Choosing and Including Keywords for Your Site

Choosing and including the correct keywords in your site can make very large improvements in your Search Engine Rankings, and in your site traffic. Experienced Online Marketers often have an intuitive understanding of which keywords (the words or phrases that people enter into Search Engines) are most relevant to the products their company sells. If you want professional help identifying appropriate keywords for your site, Online services such as Wordtracker.com can help you with keyword selection, but don't underestimate the value of in-house brainstorming.

Large companies can have tens of thousands of keywords, but even a few dozen can be invaluable in improving your web site Ranking. Once you've decided on what keywords you are going to use, you should make sure that those keywords (words or phrases) are integrated into your web site correctly, both in HTML Title and Meta tags, and within the textual content displayed on your site.

Every page on your web site has its own Title tag in the HTML source code. It is important that you include as many keywords as possible in the 7-10 word Title tag, but only use keywords that are relevant to the page content. It is important to note that using the same Title tag on every page will lower your page Ranking. Including Title tags that are unrelated to the page content can lower your Page Ranking as well. Try to make your Title tags unique, and relevant to the content of the page they are one.

We recommend that you include text similar to the Title tag in the page content. This can help potential customers quickly see what the page is about, and it can improve your page Ranking as well. We don't recommend that your pages become too wordy, but if you can, include appropriate keywords in your page content if it won't distract people from your advertising efforts.

The Importance of Relevant Page Content

Content relevancy is what the Search Engine crawlers evaluate when they locate and evaluate (crawl) your site. If you are in the business of selling “gadgets,” the more content you can include about "gadgets" in your pages, the better your page Ranking will be. Of course you don't want your pages to read like an encyclopedia, and you don't want to distract potential customers from your advertising style, so you will have to experiment to find the right blend of advertising and content that fits with the overall style of your site.

We recommend that you include several Links on your Products or Services pages, so potential customers can have easy access to information that will help them understand your Services or Products, such as Press Releases, Customer Feedback, or related Industry Research. We also recommend that you create a Directory for your site that includes keyword-rich descriptions of the your pages, Services or Products.

Maintaining a good Site Ranking will also depend on you keeping your site updated. Search Engine crawlers notice when a site's content has not changed for a few weeks or more, and they lower your Ranking when they see this happen. Updating your site with the latest Products or Services, or any related information, can protect your Ranking.

Submit Your Site to Business Directories

Business Directories can be very helpful in bringing traffic to your site. Services that offer bulk submission to hundreds of directories and Search Engines can be found everywhere online, but they are almost all a waste of time and money. You can achieve very good results, and a much better return on your investment, if you submit your site to hand-picked Business Directories and Search Engines.

Most of the big Search Engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN, let you submit your site to them at no charge. Some of them offer you “paid inclusion” programs that guarantee their crawlers will locate and evaluate your site quickly. These programs DO NOT have any impact on your Page Rankings, they are only in place to make sure the Search Engine spiders perform a quick evaluation of your web site. This can be very valuable if you are trying different optimization strategies on your site and you want the instant feedback. Without paying for this service, it may take one or more months for the crawlers to evaluate your site. At this time, Yahoo offers this service for a fee, while Google plans on offering a similar service in the next few months.

Don't neglect to submit your site to DMOZ.org. They are an Internet directory organization run by volunteers, and are widely used and respected.

Many Business Directories can help you improve your Site Ranking. When your site has been submitted and approved, they will provide one-way links to your web site. Links of this sort are very important in Search Engine Ranking algorithms.

At VNS, we submit our clients' web sites to a thoroughly researched and carefully selected group of 115 Business Directories that have proven to be very valuable in the Ranking process - due to the back-links they provide to the accepted sites.

Search Engine-Friendly Web Design

Search Engines have trouble crawling web sites that include certain features. Generally, the easier it is to navigate a site, the less chance there is that the site is hurting its Ranking by being difficult to crawl. Sites that use frames, that include a lot of Flash presentations, that use javascript navigation, or make heavy use of in-page CSS (style sheets) run a high risk of lowering their page Rankings. Dynamically generated sites, particularly those which produce URLs with long query strings, also have problems in being indexed properly.

All of these issues have one or more solutions: servers can be used to “rewrite” query stings, static pages can be used to parallel the content on dynamically generated pages, and alternate forms of page navigation can be provided on pages that need help. Also, moving javascript and CSS from the page HTML to external files is a good idea.

The best rule of thumb is to keep your site as simple to navigate as possible, while maintaining a great web surfing experience for your potential customers.

We at VNS would like to wish you Good luck in your Search Engine Optimization efforts. SEO is a rapidly changing world requiring site owners to do research and make adjustments in order to stay current. Please let us know if we can be of any help your Business in developing or improving your Online Presence.

SEO and Marketing Services Offered by VNA

Comprehensive Search Engine and Marketing Optimization - We offer small companies a comprehensive Online Marketing and Search Engine Optimization program. With our comprehensive Marketing and SEO strategies, you will see an increase in traffic to your web site, and we will help you convert that traffic into customers. What we ask you to consider is this: How useful is a web site if no one can find it? And how useful is a web site if people come to your site but don't buy anything? VNS has established an excellent track record in the past 8 years in helping Businesses Improve their Online Marketing and Site Ranking. We can help your business increase its revenue by bringing more traffic to your web site, and helping you refine your Marketing Strategy. Our Comprehensive Service starts at $600/month.

One-Time Optimization Package - We understand that long term service contracts are not appropriate to the needs of every company. VNA offers a one-time Marketing and SEO Optimization package to give your Online Presence an instant tune-up, to help you get current with the latest developments in the SEO world, and make your Marketing efforts as efficient and profitable as possible. We offer this service at $1000.

About The Author
Danny DeMichele is an experienced Internet Marketing Strategist in San Diego, California. His interests include surfing and playing with his kids. Danny DeMichele highly recommends http://www.zipweb.com for more information.

Simple Search Engine Optimization

by: Pawel Reszka

Search engine optimization has become a major factor in internet marketing among webmasters. We can all say that if your website is nowhere near the top 10 rankings on Google, Yahoo, or Msn then you simply don’t generate any traffic from search engines and you don’t make money with it. Many webmasters are constantly trying to get on top by tweaking their websites and using all kinds of methods and tricks that usually won’t do much for you anyway. Search engine optimization is actually easier than you think. It’s all about three major things like original content, unique quality of links, and popularity in searches made specifically for your website.

If you even want to be included in Google index then you must have original content on your website. Your content cannot be duplicated and you should carefully review everything you decide to publish on your pages. Write your own content and never try to duplicate someone else’s site which could result in permanent penalty from Google. Sometimes it’s hard to keep up with fresh original content simply because we do not have all this time to write it. There are a few ways you can gain content without writing it on your own. You could create a forum on your website where visitors could interact with each other and make constant posts. This would keep the search engine spiders revisiting more often. Also creating possibility for visitors to submit their articles to be published on your site in exchange for a link back is another way to do it.

How to gain unique one way links to your site? Well, it’s also easier than you might think. Writing press releases is highly beneficial to get the word out and gain links back from highly trusted mediums like PRweb.com. Also writing your own articles to be published on other people’s websites can produce not only many links but also lots of targeted visitors which could result in many sales for your business. This actually saves you a lot of time and money because you don’t have to look for webmasters to exchange links with or even buy links as some webmasters do.

Another factor that effects your search engine rankings is popularity of your site within searches being made. Let’s say your site was featured in one of the major nationwide newspapers that would result in many visits to your site and searches being made for your particular domain name from different IP addresses. Google would notice that and immediately put you out in front all of the search results. If your site is popular and people are looking for it then you could gain rankings even without many links to it.

I believe that trying to trick search engines and gaining tons of links in a short period of time with one example of anchor text in it would result in red flag for Google which could put you out of search results or even get you banned. If you gain many links by writing articles and press releases then you should be fine. Remember that original content, quality one way links, and search popularity is the key to your success.

For some seo resources please visit http://www.affhelper.com/search-engine-optimization.html

About The Author
Copyright Policy: If you wish to publish this article on your website or newsletter you must include all the urls and make them clickable and followable by search engine.
Pawel Reszka is the author of this article who earns $300,000 per year promoting affiliate programs online. Affhelper website is published by Pawel Reszka and provides affiliate marketing resources.

How To Stand A Chance In The Search Engine Optimization Maze

by: Ian Simpson

Despite all the other methods available for obtaining a decent web ranking for your website, for instance, link exchanges, search engine optimization or SEO is still regarded as the way to go to ensure that your website is listed high in the search engine rankings.

Search engine optimization is a method of analyzing your site and modifying it to allow search engines to read and index it. Search engine optimization is about building and maintaining a website that will get ranked highly on the major search engines. SEO comprises of a set of techniques used in order to attract visitors or prospective customers to your website, and the aim of a search engine is to provide high quality, relevant content to the users of the Internet. Search engines are now more particular on what they list in their databases and a content relevant site is the requirement if you are to stand any chance of getting ranked successfully.

It's a fact that when surfers conduct a search and the results appear, that they do not generally look further than the first twenty results that are displayed and to make you really miserable, it is widely accepted that the first 10 results is the target to aim for if you want to get customers to your website. You see, people are generally lazy and they will not deliberately look for you; you have to seek them out. So the bottom line is you need to get a top ten position or at the very least be in the top twenty out of potentially thousands of websites that are all trying to achieve the same as you.

It is important therefore, that if you intend to use search engine optimization as one of your arsenal of tools, that you encourage the search engine spiders to not only find your website but also to index it as well and you can do this through the keywords that you use on your website. You need to encourage the search engines to rank your website in that all important high position and for this you need good page content containing your chosen keywords. If you use keywords in your Meta Tags for instance, that do not appear in your page content, then your site could be penalised.

Bear in mind also, that you want the search engine spiders to keep coming back looking for something different on your site to give them a reason to continue to list it. So, ongoing maintenance is important. You simply cannot just submit your website and think that the job's done.

So, having established what is required, how do you go about search engine optimization easily? You will find many websites that provide free SEO tools, or you can pay a professional to take care of it for you. But bear in mind that "professional" also means professional pricing. Also, remember that FREE normally comes with a price tag anyway and you will have to visit numerous sites to use the various SEO tools available and these will be limited in their functionality.

A quality SEO tool that can perform all of the functions required for website optimization will become your time saver when it comes to SEO, especially when you're just starting out and the intricacies of optimizing your website becomes a chore.

So consider an SEO tool that can at least analyze websites of your top-ranking competitors so that you can emulate them by making the relevant changes to your own website. In addition, you will need a keyword generator and a keyword density analyzer tool and search engine and directory submission functions that will allow you to make automatic and semi automatic submissions. Extra functions could include link popularity and pay per click management.

In conclusion, to obtain high search engine rankings, you must optimize your web pages before submitting them to the search engines as it is pointless to submit an un-optimized site. You can do this by visiting numerous sites to use free tools with limited functionality or use an award winning software program that will do it all or you. For further in depth information on search engine optimization software please visit http://www.1st-4-income.com.

About The Author
Ian Simpson reviews software and informational products on the internet for their value and usefulness. Subscribe to his free tips newsletter at http://www.information4income.com.

Search Engine Optimization - Only One Part Of A Successful Internet Marketing Strategy

by: Enigma Valdez

Search Engine Optimization – Only One Part of a Succesful Internet Marketing Strategy

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is not the means to an end. It should only be one part of your total Internet Marketing strategy. It is a fundamental part of your strategy and it is considered the baseline.

High search engine ranks and listings can brand your website and drive a high awareness of your site. When search engine listings are within the first three, consumers are able to recall those sites at least 50% of the time. Banner ads and titles are usually ignored and avoided like the plague.

In the years before the Internet explosion, businesses had to identify a market and craft their messages in such a way as to target those markets. They used mass medio to deliver these messages, hoping that the right person will read them and buy.

Now things have changed. People are searching on the Internet for products, goods, and services. They are actively pursuing these online.

When keywords are typed in that are relevant to your business, then these people are sent to your website. These are highly qualified leads, with a high conversion and response rate.

Now the next step is to offer valuable web content. There is a saying, “content is king” and this is very true. People go to a website for the content. Your site has to be usable and it has to excite the user. You have to be able to balance usability and visibility of your website.

You could have a perfect site with great content, but you must take care to make sure it can be found. Or you could be ranked number one on all of the major search engines, but when people get to your site, there is nothing useful on your site.

Having useful web content and being visible go hand in hand. Using SEO as part of yoru overall brand and Internet marketing strategy will position you at the higher rankings of your industry.

About The Author
Enigma Valdez is an Internet Marketer dedicated to providing valuable tools for businesses and individuals to increase their success rate.
You can visit his sites at :
Http://www.Enigma-Valdez.com
http://resultsbasedmarketing.blogspot.com
http://athomebizopp.blogspot.com
http://sevenfigurecopywriter.blogspot.com

Search Engine Optimization Is the Key

by: Desmond Mantor

There are three ways for a customer to get to your site :

1.The customers can type in your website address and directly come to your site, only if they have your address. Naturally, this will restrict your customers to the few who know you already. 2.The second method involves linking to your site from another website. Though this is a great way of generating traffic to your site it is subject to the permission of other sites to let you post a link on their site. And, unless you have sufficient traffic already coming to your site, they may not want to be an affiliate.
3. The final method for a customer is to find your site through a search engine.

A search engine is a tool that helps surfers to find websites. Let us say, you type a keyword like tea kettle? Immediately, the search engine will comb through the web and find every page with the keyword tea kettle on it, and present them in a ranked order. In order to enhance your chances of success, you would want your site to be ranked in the top ten, because most people don't bother to go beyond the first page, not to mention the hundreds that follow.

Search engine optimization is one of the most effective internet marketing tools available. Consider this: if you get a visitor to your site from a search engine, he is already interested in your products. While we cannot rule out the possibility of some high school kid doing an essay on gift ideas, it is more likely that it is potential customers wanting to buy a gift basket. Your website simply has to convert this visit into a sale!

On the flip side, the search engines consider dozens of factors to rank sites. Google says they have more than a hundred criteria in their ranking system. Basically, the search engine has to be convinced that your site contains the information that the browser is looking for. For this purpose you need a lot of keyword rich content. If you have lots of articles with information on tea kettles but you have not used the keyword tea kettle often enough, you may lose the battle. Generally, 3-5% keyword density is considered okay, although it varies from one search engine to another. So, in a 500 word article, you should use the keyword tea kettle at least 15 to 25 times. If you use it more often than that you can be penalized. Apart from keywords, you can boost your search engine rankings by using links on your site. This convinces the search engine that yours is an important site therefore more likely to have useful information.

Search engine optimization is, without doubt, the most effective marketing tool provided you use the two strategies of keyword rich content and lots of links to other sites relevant to your own. Then you will succeed in improving your search engine rankings and consequently bring more customers to your site.

About The Author
Desmond Mantor is the Director of Sales and Marketing for Have Traffic a company specializing in delivering highly targeted traffic for commercial web sites, proven to convert to sales at higher rates in comparison to regular major pay per click sources. Please visit http://www.havetraffic.com for further details.

Web Site marketing and Search engine optimization

by: Eric Gurr

Marketing Your Web Site.

You wouldn't put a bill board in the desert, so why are you hiding your web site?

Too many companies spend too much money developing a really nice web site that no one will ever see. Before starting any web site design or re-design make sure you've allocated at least half of the budget to getting the site optimized in the search engines.

For those selling a service.

There are a few steps you need to take. The first step is to create meta-tags with a description of your site and keywords that are relevant to the content on your site. The keywords and content should stress the service you provide, why a potential customer should use your company for this service and how to contact you to buy this service. A meta tag generator will help you to create the properly formatted code for you web site based on keywords you select. These can be found on google or msn by searching with the keywords “meta tag generator”.

You'll then need to submit the site to the major search engines like Google and MSN. For Yahoo! you have to pay a yearly fee of $299 to get listed. There are dozens of search engine submission services that will perform these services for you at a very reasonable price.

When you've completed your submissions you can expect an increase in traffic but it's going to take some time. Anywhere from a few weeks to a few months is not out of the ordinary. To increase traffic more quickly you'll need to use a service like overture or Google adwords. These services allow you to place small ads for your site whenever someone does a web search that includes your the keywords you've purchased. You probably only offer your service to a limited area so you'll want to make sure you include this area (City, state, town or region) in your keywords. That way you won't be paying for clicks and visitors to your site when you do business in California and the visitor is from Texas.

For those selling a product.

The process is essentially the same. The difference is you're selling to a much bigger audience. Sounds great right? More potential customers equal more sales. Not necessarily. You've also got a lot more competition and much more pressure on your prices. I'd recommend starting out selling regionally. Your own backyard doesn't have to be the starting point but it may help with shipping costs. When you've got that system ironed out you can expand geographically and still control your web advertising costs by including the locations in your keywords searches.

About The Author
Eric Gurr is the president and CEO of Intralink.
A Cincinnati Ohio based web site design search engine optimization business since 1994. http://www.intralinkinc.com.

Stanley Amazan got his website ranked #1 in GOOGLE using this Search Engine Optimization Technique.

by: Stanley Amazan

How I got my website rank #1 in google when you search my name Stanley Amazan as a keyword. Fist of all I would like to say SEO is probably the most important field in the online industry. If you have a well optimized website you will make money online even if you don’t sell anything. I know it, you know it and everybody reading this articles knows it. That said, I just wanted to give you a quick tip on how to get to the top of search engines using this tip.

Instead of trying to brand your website name (www.yourcompany.com) or keywords around your website theme which will be extremely completive and will cost time, money and takes so long. Why not try to brand your own name (example.. Stanley Amazan as a keyword for my website www.stanleyamazan.ws). This technique won’t work for everybody, but for some like me it will work wonders. This technique will only work if you plan on branding your company name around your name, or you just want your name to be associate with your business when your name is searched online. If you go on google.com right now and type in Stanley Amazan or stanleyamazan you will find my stanleyamazan.ws website comes up. My main goal was that when you type in Stanley Amazan you will find my website.

Why I chose to brand my name online you wondering, I wanted to brand my name from others that have my name online. Now everybody that search for Stanley Amazan will associate that name with a Home Business Marketer or Work at Home Guru ( even though right now in Feb 06 I am not close to being a guru yet, but see me in Feb 07 ). Did you know that it will be much faster to optimized your name as a keyword than optimizing keywords around your name or website. Just imagine how much traffic you can get from your name if your are a online coach or tutor or you just want to your name to point to your website when it is searched.

The same strategies still applies when optimizing your name as a keyword.. You need a great title, description, keywords and your heading tags need to be very well optimized. Don’t forget about your linking strategies as well. It will much easier since your keyword will be your name. If your name is common you still can get it out there on top if you optimized properly and it might work to your advantage because you will get extra traffic and extra traffic is always a plus in my book.

In conclusion trying this method might help your web presence more than you know. So take the time and do it. Trust me it works.. Stanley Amazan is searched online more than you know. How much is your name searched online…

Copyright 2006 http://stanleyamazan.ws

About The Author
Stanley Amazan is the owner of the Popular GDI training website http://stanleyamazan.ws . Stanley Amazan is also the owner of the following website.

What Is Black Hat Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

by: Dana Goldberg

Seo has been very useful and famous in internet marketing. There are many techniques that make boosting your site a success through different seo strategies. But despite the success of seo, there are some black practitioners who tend to see the field of search engine optimization as war, and the search engines are doing anything to beat the competition whether it is fair or foul. Those white hatters market with the other search engines as associates or partners who can help them drive links and business to their client’s sites.

Cloaking happens when a website or a web page displays different content for a certain search engine spider in opposition to a human user. Cloaking is the one that delivers a version of a page to an Internet user and a different description to a search engine. You will notice a cloaked page is filled with keywords and phrases that the site wants to make them rank high.

This is done by cloaking the programs that weigh the IP address of the other party to a database of the known IP address which comes from a definite search engine spider. If there is a match in the IP address on the list, it serves a page which is particularly written for the search engines.

Cloaking has several good reasons which include increasing advertising and promotion. If you are trying to control your rankings in the different search engines, it might result to penalize your site or it might be banned.

Spamming or the keyword stuffing is a long list of keywords placed in the content and also the code on the page which makes it unreadable. Have you seen a page that repeatedly displays an ad with certain words? It is obvious that the site is trying to rank its page. This is known as keyword spamming but it is just one tip that most SEO companies are trying to do to increase page rank.

You might not notice the page may have invisible text, title tags, meta tags and comment tags. If a page repeats a certain keyword repeatedly, google might place a filter to lessen the ranking or much worse, ban the site. Keyword density can be quite tricky but following the general rule, 3% t0 12 % is the percentage to which a site can use the targeted keywords.

You will notice there are some hidden texts in SEO strategies. This happens when a text or link is invisible to the website visitor but can still be seen by the search engines. If this happens it is considered hidden. Before, people used small fonts to hide the text or they would even use the same color for the background.

This makes them able to put some links which are unseen, but has long been noticed by the search engines that is why they have come up with another strategy this time. Spammers are using the cascading style sheets in order to hide the text. Some are also using tags which are set to hide the text on the page. These strategies are considered hidden if they are left unseen but search engines have their own technique of spotting invisible links so better not do it at all.

The doorway pages are those that exclusively exist to rank well in the different search engines. You may notice some of the pages being ugly and some contain paragraphs which do not have any relation to the topic. Most of the time these doorway pages are not part of the regular navigation of the site which are called orphaned pages.

A black hat SEO can use very good software to filter or generate the doorway pages. This happens when they plug a few keywords and search the page.

You may notice some sites linking to other sites which are have no relation at all. Some sites just link to other sites which is part of their strategy. Now, you will find this truly spamming.

If you are going to put up your own website, make sure that you will avoid these things and keep SEO marketing fair and do not think of competition. Think of how you can increase your site ranking fairly.

About The Author
Dana Goldberg is editor of Make More Money Easily. Insider tips on creating wealth online. http://www.makemoremoneyeasily.info

Back in Time to the Advent of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

by: Wendy Suto

As long as the Internet has been around, it has remained a mystery to the mainstream public how Web sites are listed at the top of search engine results. There are many theories of how search engines and search engine optimization (SEO) initially began.

The 1990s

Alan Emtage, a student at the University of McGill, created the first true “search” program in 1990 called Archie (still in use today), to archive Web documents. The following year, Gopher started at the University of Minnesota, and this is when the concept of search engines began. In 1993, Matthew Gray created the World Wide Web Wanderer, the earliest known search engine robot that assists with ranking Web sites. But search engines as we use them today were born in 1994. In that same year, Galaxy, Lycos and Yahoo! were all started, two of which are still widely popular search engines today.

Yahoo! was among the first to implement SEO techniques, even though at the time they were unaware of the potential growth the industry would soon have at the turn of the century. Yahoo! Founders David Filo and Jerry Yang were trying to get their site seen by others on the Internet by giving it more exposure. Some excellent structure and tricky hand-coding, their site became more available for new visitors. They were not questioned about ethical business practices because nobody was sure what was considered ethical or unethical – there were simply no standards in place yet.

As the initial search engines were cataloging the early Internet, many business owners soon learned to appreciate the value of their Web site being listed in the search engines, as they first saw increases in visitors to their Web sites. They began submitting their URLs on a continuous basis, and changed their sites to support the needs of search engine robots. SEO companies started showing up, when they began experimenting with the concept of search engine optimization, with the emphasis initially on the submission process alone. Soon afterwards, the first automatic submission software was released, and it was then the notion of Spam came into existence.

The 2000s

SEO professionals have been seen in a negative light over the last five year, due in part because in early 2001, enthusiastic webmasters quickly realized they could overwhelm search engine result pages by over submitting Web sites. Unfortunately, as the Internet industry developed, search engines quickly became cautious of new SEO companies attempting to generate visitors for their clients at any cost, however unfair or unethical. Tactics such as keyword spamming, doorway pages, cloaking, and hidden white text placed on white backgrounds proved too much for the search engines to tolerate. As a result, the search engines replied with numerous countermeasures, created to filter out any techniques considered spam. That is good news, although it forced ethical SEO companies to start using more subtle techniques to assist their clients Web sites with obtaining rankings in the engines.

The “big 3” search engines, Google, MSN and Yahoo!, have recently come to the realization that SEO as an industry is here to stay, and to maintain effective results, they needed to accept the industry, even embrace it, and engines eventually partnered with successful, ethical SEO companies to establish typical standards for fair and ethical optimization. This is important to help keep information relevant and beneficial to visitors while still being unbiased to people who create the content on their Web sites.

The Current State of SEO

Today, there are major differences in how search engines work and how to get ranked in them. With the assistance of proper search engine optimization, Web sites can now have a equal fighting chance of obtaining high rankings. Because SEO is a highly specialized trade that requires both technical skills and business marketing knowledge, it is only through the combination of these two skills that one can properly implement SEO techniques to obtain high search engine rankings. Many SEO specialists have since now realized it is “search engines or bust.”

About The Author
Wendy Suto is president of Search Circus (www.searchcircus.com), a Web site marketing firm based in Cleveland, Ohio. She keeps pace with the latest optimization, link building and article submission tactics. Before becoming an SEO consultant, Wendy was a computer instructor for a wide range of businesses, teaching software and security programs to children and adults alike. Businesses included Gateway Computers, Stautzenberger College and a Catholic school in Toledo, Ohio. As a certified SEO consultant, she will be starting SEO training classes this spring at local adult education facilities.

Basics of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

by: Biana Babinsky

Have you heard stories about legendary online entrepreneurs who hit it big after getting a #1 rank in several popular search engines? You probably wondered what it would take for you to achieve that elusive #1 spot in the search engine result pages (SERPs). Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plays a vital role in ensuring that your business gets the best possible search engine ranking, which can lead to increased sales for your online company.

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

Search engine optimization is the process of modifying web page content and meta-information to improve the search engine ranking of the page. Meta-information includes certain HTML tags (title, heading, emphasized text, keyword and description meta-tags), as well as the internal (links between pages on the same site) and external (links between pages on different sites) link structure of a web site.

Impact of High Search Engine Rank on Sales

Internet market research estimates that between 70% and 90% of online shoppers use search engines to find a specific product or service. Let's examine factors that influence sales to see how effective search engine optimization can boost your revenues.

Three metrics are required to forecast online sales: the average ticket, the conversion rate, and the amount of web site traffic:

* The average ticket is the amount of money spent by a customer on a typical transaction. Computer and electronics stores have high average tickets (hundreds or thousands of dollars), while bookstores have low average tickets (tens of dollars).

* Web Site traffic is measured by the number of site visitors, typically expressed as the number of page views per month.

* Conversion rate is the number of sales divided by the number of page views per month, expressed as a percentage.

Let's look at an example. The Ultimate Taupe Widget (UTW) store has an average ticket of $25, a conversion rate of 2%, and gets 5,000 page views per month. The estimated monthly sales are $2,500 ($25 average ticket * 0.02 conversion rate expressed as a decimal * 5,000 page views per month). Achieving a high search engine rank will increase the number of page views, and therefore increase sales. In this example, if traffic doubles to 10,000 page views a month, UTW's monthly sales should (approximately) double as well (to $5,000).

Keep in mind that a high search engine rank will produce a measurable increase in traffic only if there is significant marketplace interest in taupe widgets and your web site appears in the first thirty search engine results.

However, search engine optimization is not going to produce measurable results if there is very little demand for taupe widgets. The #1 spot in search engine result pages is not particularly impressive if only two people search for "taupe widgets" each month. Role of Keywords in Search Engine Optimization :

Keywords are words or phrases users provide to search engines to locate information. Search engines examine page content to determine whether a specific page is relevant for a particular search word or phrase. Thus, effective keyword selection is one of the cornerstones of search engine optimization.

Each keyword is characterized by supply (number of search engine result pages) and demand (number of searches). The easiest way to improve search engine rank is to select keywords that have favorable supply-demand characteristics; that is, ones with a relatively high demand and a relatively low supply. It is much more difficult to improve the search engine position of a page on a high supply, competitive keyword.

Good keywords must be relevant to your product line, as well as your line of business. A #1 rank for "navy widgets" is worthless if you sell taupe widgets exclusively. A potential customer will find your page, quickly discover that you don't sell any navy widgets, and promptly go elsewhere. In effect, the conversion rate for irrelevant search engine hits is very close to zero.

Using Keywords Effectively

Choosing a set of target keywords is the first step in search engine optimization. The second step is using them in the body, title, headings, and meta-tags of a page.

Include the target keywords in the text of the page. Don't overdo it, though --- the keywords should fit smoothly into the surrounding text. Search engines use several techniques to detect excessive keyword density, or too many keywords stuffed into very little supporting text, and will reduce the rank accordingly. A page has too many keywords if they interfere with the general flow of the text on a page and appear to be glaringly out of place

The title tag should contain information that describes the page. Unless you operate a multi-national conglomerate that is already a household name, your company's name is not a descriptive title. Most search engines use the title tag as the first line of your listing in the search engine result pages. Strive to make your title tag say "click me" to a prospective customer. "Superior taupe widgets - 50% off every day" is a good page title, while "Ultimate Taupe Widgets, Inc." is not.

Incorporate keywords into the headings on the page, as well as into emphasized sections (bold or large text). Even though search engines are de-emphasizing descriptive meta-tags, include keywords in them nevertheless. The description meta-tag should have an accurate description of your page, and the keywords meta-tag should contain a set of keywords (separated by commas) that list key concepts mentioned on the page.

Understanding the basics of search engine optimization is an important first step in creating an optimized, well-positioned web site.

About The Author
Biana Babinsky shows you how to drive thousands of targeted visitors to your web site in her Step by Step Search Engine Optimization Special Report. Learn more about the report at http://avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zseo.

Organic Search Engine Optimization

by: Sharon Housley

The fabled tales of successfully tricking search engines into high rankings have given way to a new truth, to achieve decent consistent ranking you cannot engage in tricks but on focused optimization done in a professional ethical manner. According to search sources, with the latest Google update, there is no longer an even playing field when it comes to search placement. The new Google ranking system gives an advantage to large, established businesses that have achieved brand recognition. Does this mean small businesses should give up on the Web as a marketing model? No, of course not, they simply must develop quality content. To increase your natural ranking (search engine rankings that are not paid for) you must:

Write Good Text Copy.

The website copy should contain relevant text. Websites that use text rather than large images will load faster and the search engines can easily spider the text of the website for themes and keywords. Search engines cannot discern the meaning of words and phrases that are presented as an image. If you do use an image, be sure to include a brief phrase or keyword as an ALT tag. The ALT tags help website visitors who are visually impaired. ALT tags also convey the meaning of the image to search engines.

Research Keyword Phrases.

Using terms and phrases that relate to your product or service is critical. It is important to use terms that potential customers would use when searching for your product or service. Often products can be described by a number of terms, for example soda, tonic and pop all identify soft drinks. One term might be more prevalent in a specific geographic region, which is fine if you are selling locally, but if you are selling globally, optimizing for a single popular term could be problematic. Consider optimizing different portions of your website for various keywords and phrases that relate to the product or service that you are promoting.

More information on Determining Keywords - http://www.small-business-software.net/determining-keywords.htm

Provide Valuable Content.

Websites linking to a website are seen by many search engines as "votes". A link typically implies quality content. The easiest and most effective way to achieve a large number of links is to provide unique quality content. This might be a free web based tool, information or other content that is unique and relevant.

Examples of free valuable content: Website RSS Button Creator - http://www.feedforall.com/public/rss-graphic-tool.htm Reprint Articles - http://www.small-business-software.net/free-website-content.htm

Monitor.

Monitor blogs for online chatter about your product or service. If you find a product review or question on a blog consider posting a comment. Ego searches are an excellent way to stay informed and maintain a strategic advantage over competitors. Monitor keywords or phrases that relate to your product or service, and join conversations that are relevant.

More on Ego Searches - http://www.feedforall.com/ego-searches.htm

Measure.

In order to know what strategies are most effective in an industry or sector, it is important to track the results. The easiest way to track web traffic and conversions is web logs. Take a critical look at referrers, trends, and what keywords result in the most traffic. Evaluating web logs will assist a webmaster in determining what optimization techniques are most effective.

Understanding Web Logs - http://www.small-business-software.net/understanding-web-logs.htm

Ultimately its is foolish to attempt to trick search engines into high rankings, efforts are better spent on building quality, consistent, valuable, content.

Copyright 2006 Sharon Housley

About The Author
Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for NotePage http://www.notepage.net a wireless text messaging software company.

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

by: 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?

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

1. 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…..

2. 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 http://www.seo-softwares.com/Resources.html

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.

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

About The Author
Andy Jones -Media Relations, SEO Softwares http://www.seo-softwares.com Ezine articles expert author Copyright ©2006 SEO Softwares, All rights reserved. Free reprint rights with proper credit to the author.

Search Engine Optimization’s Frequently Confused Concepts

by: Jason Bland

When I started working with the parent company of the search engine optimization company I currently manage, I spent a lot of time on the phone with prospects and clients. I was always amazed by misconceptions given to so many people about how to get a top listing in a search engine. Often times, I felt as though people were educating themselves with literature written in the early nineties.

Unfortunately, the penalty for some of these techniques is not just a bad ranking but rather permanent delisting or banning. Nobody wants to be banned! I have organized a list of concepts that people confuse or as I like to call them “Frequently Confused Concepts”.

The most frequently confused concept of search engine optimization is the value of meta tags. Way back before search engines were sophisticated enough to scan and save the content of your web site, they would simply review your meta tags. A meta tag gives the title of your site, a description of what you do, and a list of five to ten keyword and keyphrases that are relevant to your web site. The problem with relying on these tags is that many people caught on to the unfortunate truth that pornographic keywords would generate more traffic than the terms related to their web site. Now, this is not traffic you want since the person looking for his favorite centerfold does not want what you have to offer. Also, this makes the search engines quality of results very poor for the searching public.

All the major (and most minor) search engines index your entire site and use the meta tag as a minimally valuable map of what your web site has to offer. You content is the most important. If you have “dogs, girls, basketball, superbowl” in your keywords list in your meta tag and your web site pertains to “pet care” then you are spamming with your meta tags and they will not be positively received by the search engines robots. At the same time, piling a whole encyclopedia of keywords and keyphrases into your meta tag and not mentioning these words in your general wordage of your site will also not help you. Your meta tags should have descriptive, relevant, descriptions and keywords pertaining to your sites content.

This brings me to the second frequently confused concept of search engine optimization which is keyword lists. You have all of your literature and content in tacked on your web site. Then at the bottom of your web site, you put a long list of keywords such as:

Animal Care
Pet Care
Pet Medications
Pet Bathing
Cat Toys
Dog Toy
Dog Leashes

Since these words are not in anyway (other than a list) part of your wordage, the search engines will disregard this as low quality content. You do NOT want to have low quality content as it is high quality content the search engines are looking for. After all, you will be in much better shape if you are holding hands with Google and Yahoo as apposed to thumb wrestling them. So avoid long lists of keywords and use that time to include your keywords and keyphrases frequently in your wordage. For example:

“Animal care is the foremost part of our goal at XYZ Pet Company. We are here to help you with your pet care needs. Whether you are looking for pet medications or pet bathing products, we are your one stop shop. You can entertain your pets by checking out our Cat Toys (link to cat toys page) and Dog Toys (link to dog toys page) products. XYZ Pet Company currently has a sale on Dog Leashes (link to dog leashes page).”

The above paragraph will be welcomed as quality content whereas a list of unused words will simply look like garbage.

I have had the unfortunate task of waving warning flags at prospects that come to us after working with a black hat search engine optimization specialist or misguided web designer about hidden keywords. This is my next frequent confused concept. Hidden keywords are lists of keywords in the header or footer that are the same color as the background. This makes them only viewable to search engine spiders. Do not do this! This is an offense that is punishable by black listings, banning, and overall delisting of your web site. Once again, use this time to creatively mention your keywords in your wordage.

Now that you have a quality web site, you need a few relevant web sites to link to you. Not all links are created equal. A much used (and still very popular though useless) technique is submitting to free for all link pages. These are pages that accept links to everyone’s web site. The search engines hate these as they are just lists of links. Aside from that, these sites are NOT relevant to your web site so the link you wasting your time posting will not benefit you. The best way to add your link to other web sites is by searching for relevant directories and web sites then offering link exchanges. Our friends at XYZ Pet Company could add their link to pet related directories, forums, and blogs. Another valuable technique is simply writing informational articles and include your link in the footer of the article. Then submit these articles to places like ArticleCity.com who will post your article for others to use. They use your article with the understanding that your link and footer stay in their original context.

Last but not least in my list of frequently confused concepts of search engine optimization is “hocus pocus”. Yes, we still get calls from people that believe the key to optimization is by the use of magic tags and invisible mojo. The truth is, search engine optimization is based on the three pillars of Relevant Content, Fresh Content (update your information frequently), and Relevant Link Population. If all of your techniques are centered on ethically doing those three things, you will have a better ranking and sleep better knowing that the search engines will not kick your site off their index.

About The Author
Jason Bland is the Vice President of Adviatech Corporation (www.adviatech.com) and has recently taken over their resell search engine optimization department (www.resellseo.com) which enables web designers to offer search engine optimization services. Adviatech also manages search engine, SpivO Search (www.spivo.com).

Why Businesses Need Search Engine Optimization

by: Steve Pavis

If you have an internet business or are planning to put your homebased business on the internet, you should invest in search engine optimization. Research shows that the amount of traffic (and sales!) you generate depend on how visible you are on the web. Search engine optimization puts you on top of the lists that crawlers generate whenever people look for information related to your site. Without search engine optimization, your website will gather dust.

Look at the facts. The George Institute of Technology said that 85% of website used search engines to find information, while 58% used directories. The Forrester Research replicated the results, with 81% of users using search engines. These two independent surveys affirm that search engine optimization is crucial to hitting the market majority.

Search engine optimization doesn’t just benefit those who make the websites, but those who use them. An NPD survey found that 81% were happy with the results they got when searching the web. In other words, search engine optimization makes sure that your website is read by the people who really want to hear more about the product, service or information you’re providing. This means search engine optimization makes your internet marketing more effective.

Search engine optimization is also important given the reading habits of Internet users. Studies show that people rarely go beyond the top 30 results from a search. The 30 websites with the best search engine optimization get 90% of the total traffic of the website, while those in the top 10 get 80% more traffic than those who rank 11-30. Penn State University found an even stronger result for search engine optimization: most users will only visit the top three!

These studies prove that search engine optimization is an important business investment. There are many search engine marketing companies that offer search engine optimization services. Given the wide range of search engine optimization techniques available, most search engine optimization firms can offer several packages within your budget.

About The Author
Steve Pavis tries to be at the cutting edge of new concepts that are profitable for the small to medium size business, who need all the help they can get. Go see http://stevepavis.com To learn more about how to claim $50 in FREE Advertising, plus easily earn Pay-Per-Click money to promote your Web site(s), go to http://www.bigdaddypays.com/payperclick

Search Engine Optimization popularly known as SEO

by: Jeni Dalton

According to recent surveys the growth of internet users has gone up drastically and every 1 out of 3 internet user says we regularly use Search Engines for buying goods and services. Search Engines now days are called as traffic generating machines, when the word search engine comes into mind then few popular names comes into frame which now days rules search industry Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Now days every webmaster who owns a website for the purpose of either selling products or services dreams to get huge traffic and generate leads and sales through there websites. How it possible is there a way to get good traffic and generate leads then only one thing comes in mind “SEO” Search Engine Optimization.

The other ways of getting traffic from search engines is pretty costly and small companies or website owners cannot afford to pay such high cost. Organic Seo is the only way through which we can get good traffic with less cost. Now how does this Seo works.

Seo (Search Engine Optimization) the word itself conveys a message that it can be achieved by optimization of websites with respect to search engine guidelines and algorithms based on which search engines position there search results. Seo has opened enormous opportunities for professionals who can do optimization based on search algorithms of major search engines.

Few Tips which suggested by few big Seo companies:

Step 1: Onsite Optimization.
Step 2: Internal Seo on Content
Step 3: Inbound Link Building Campaign
Step 4: Directory Submission
Step 5: Internal link Building
Step 6: Link Exchange Campaigns
Step 7: Regular Content Updates
Step 8: Ranking Analysis
Step 9: End Results.

As a webmaster I have started following up few good Seo companies who says they have done so many things and puts up results on there websites as a reference. But now the question arise can my website also comes up on top search results for major search engines www.tucsonrealestategroup.com www.ojairealestateteam.com and www.madisonrealestatewisconsin.com get huge traffic but then they say hire us. I am not confident on these tips which cannot ban my websites for ever.

I followed keenly on search engine strategies and algorithms and after a research of about 3 years I found the magic behind search engine positioning and now I started optimizing my websites on my own. I am far more successful in achieving top results then any Seo company can do it for me. If you would like to know about the magic behind this visit my website and you will know how a search engine works and indexes a search result to top searches.

About The Author
Hello I am Jeni Dalton working as a Seo and do search engine optimization. I have an experience of more than 3 years in Seo field for content writing and Seo Visit My Company website: http://www.seo4webs.com and http://www.acting-international.com.

Link Building For Effective Search Engine Optimization

by: James Day

When you begin the task of acquiring quality and relevant backlinks to your website there are many factors that can increase or decrease your search engine rankings. This article outlines the difference between good and bad backlinks.

A quality backlink pointing to your site should be in the same category and relevant in content to your website. The page where your link is located should be indexed by Google and the page should also have a Google page rank. The webpage where your link is located should also contain no more than 30 other out-going links to other websites. Link pages with more than 30 out-going links are less relevant to the search engines. Having your link posted on this type of webpage can affect your search engine rankings in a negative way. Other excellent techniques of acquiring backlinks are directory submissions, posting articles, blogs and forums.

For directory submissions select the proper directory category and take a look at how many other websites are contained in the category where your link would be posted, if you can manage to get on the first or second page of the listings, this is a quality backlink. Also look at the Google page rank of the landing page for your link. If the page has a Google page rank this is also a quality backlink.

Stay within your category, relevant content is very important to the search engines. Write an article preferably relevant in content to your website and submit the article to high quality article directories. Blogs are an excellent way to get quality one-way backlinks, Blog sites also receive tons of traffic, which in turn give your site more exposure. Posting your link on forum pages is also an efficient method of aquiring backlinks instantly.

Backlinks to avoid would be a 0 page ranked webpage, especially if the home page has a zero page rank. Links posted within framed webpages which will also steal your traffic. Especially avoid link farms, webpages which contain more than 100 unrelated outgoing links, This type of link page is frowned upon by many major search engines. Avoid Webpages with mirror sites containing the exact same content with a different URL, also pages that utilize redirects and URL cloaking. Never post your link on a webpage that contains a "no follow" or "no index" robots meta tag within the source code. Dynamic websites with question marks in the URL should be avoided because they are not always indexed by the search engines.

Also avoid posting your link on a page that opens very slow or contains mostly ads and flash banners. Try not to aquire or purchase great numbers of backlinks in a short period of time, backlinks should be accumulated gradually. Also avoid webpages and directories that list their results in alphabetical order, as their database increases your link could be moved to a less relevant page with less pagerank. Quality backlinks are one of the most important factors involved in the process of acheiving high search engine ranking.

About The Author
James Day
Article written by the CEO of: http://www.submit-site.org/

6 Simple Steps For A Search Engine Optimization Strategy

by: Donovan Baldwin

The professionals can do a lot with their take on search engine optimization strategy, but I'm not writing to them. This is for the person with limited website design expertise and who does the website design and internet marketing for their own home based internet business.

There are many other ways to optimize you website for success, but here are some simple, basic things to think about.

1. Determine your key words and phrases. This is going to require a little research, and will be driven to some extent by the subject matter of your website and the products and services offered by your home business. In order to stand out from the crowd, you might want to think more in terms of key phrases rather than key words. Ask yourself the question: What would I type in if I were searching for a website related to MY website or home business?

You are trying to stand out. The words are distributed through billions of sites. The phrases are much less widely distributed, and your chance of success as a big fish in small pond is much better than trying to make it as a small fish in a monstrously large pond. One free research and search engine optimization tool I have found is called Good Keywords, and may be downloaded from http://www.goodkeywords.com/products/gkw/ for free.

2. Pick a URL in line with your search engine optimization strategy. One of the simplest yet most effective techniques is to have your key phrase right in your domain name. This is especially effective with people if it is short, to the point, and easy to remember. At the very least, having a domain name that incorporates your key phrase elevates the potential position of your website in search engine results.

3. Draft a title tag that addresses your topic and includes your main key phrase. In many instances, the title is the first thing a web surfer will see, and you know the attention span of web surfers! The title tag should not only address the needs of the person, but needs to include the key phrase to optimize your website's position in search engine results.

The title is just like the headline of an advertisement or newspaper article. It has to say enough very quickly to hook the reader and create a desire to read more. At the same time, it cannot say too much for two reasons. If "too much" just means the number of words, then the effect will not be noticed as most browsers and many search engines will only show a certain number of characters anyway, and you may wind up with a title like this: "You should pay the exorbitant price I ask for my product because..."! On the other hand if "too much" means too much information, the person may figure out what you're going to tell them and move on without taking the time to see what you do have to say.

4. Construct your Meta tags with your search engine optimization strategy in mind. Particular attention should be paid to the "description" tag. A short time ago, only a few search engines paid any real attention to the keywords any more and find their keywords within the body of the website itself. I have been hearing for some time that NONE of the search engines pay any attention to them, and recently attended a workshop on search engine optimization where this was stated as a fact by the internet marketing professionals who presented the workshop. But you never know! As long as they are still part of the Meta tags, make sure you include them.

The description, on the other hand, particularly for some search engines, is the text presented in the search engine results. For this reason, if you think of the title tag as the headline for your "advertisement", you should consider the description to be the ad itself while still retaining enough mystery to lure the surfer to the site itself.

5. Within the first few sentences of your web page, reinforce the promise of value hinted at in the title and description, and make sure you use your key phrase. In fact, the key phrase, or phrases, should show up throughout the page, but the first few lines of text are very important. Not only will humans key onto the presence of the key phrases, but so will many search engines, and this can raise the search engine ranking of the site. After all, that's what search engine optimization is all about.

Be careful not to overdo the use of key phrases, however. Search engines are continually changing their algorithms, or programs by which they assess and rank web pages, so it is difficult to give an exact percentage of use that is best. Additionally, one search engine may give your website a good rank for the way you have used keywords, while another may give it "demerits" for the same usage. This leads us to item #6.

6. One phrase you hear over and over when search engine optimization comes up is, "content is king!" In other words, the quality and inherent value of your webpage's presentation is paramount. A neat, simple page, or website, with lots of relevant info may trump the most beautifully designed and presented sales pitch.

When I began marketing online in 2000, I knew nothing about search engine optimization strategy (if it even truly existed back then), and probably less about website design. I started with free websites because I didn't know how to purchase domain names and hosting, and because many free web hosting sites provided templates where I simply filled in the blanks.

After a period where I tried everything I could think of to get an internet business started, I finally simply tried to make sure that most websites I constructed were small, neat, simple and full of information. Many of those websites still exist today and many are still driving traffic and helping me make sales.

Copyright 2006 Donovan Baldwin

About The Author

Donovan Baldwin is a Dallas area writer and entrepreneur. A graduate of the University of West Florida, a member of Mensa, and retired from the U. S. Army, he provides articles and other website content for webmasters. His personal internet business site is at http://www.donovanbaldwin.com/.