search engine optimization

Holistic Search Engine Optimization

2007-04-30T09:38:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-30T09:29:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-30T09:24:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-30T09:22:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-30T09:17:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-30T09:07:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-30T09:00:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-04-30T08:38:00.000-07:00

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…

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)?

2007-04-30T08:36:00.000-07:00

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)

2007-04-30T08:34:00.000-07:00

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)

2007-04-30T08:31:00.000-07:00

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.

Organic Search Engine Optimization

2007-04-30T08:28:00.000-07:00

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.

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?

2007-04-30T08:22:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-30T08:19:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-30T08:17:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-30T08:13:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-30T08:10:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-30T08:03:00.000-07:00

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.

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/.

Search Engine Optimization and Site Evolution

2007-04-30T07:58:00.000-07:00

by: Steve Loszewski

Well-known elements weighted in search engine algorithms are html titles, body text, and back-links. SEO companies talk about these elements one dimensionally – choose the keyphrases you’re targeting, put them in the html titles, put them in the body text, get back-links from related sources with the keyphrases in the linking text. This kind of search engine optimization works over the long term, although it is becoming increasingly difficult to become a contender for competitive phrases. The reason has a lot to do with site age.

From previous patent applications and from support for the existence of a “Google Sandbox,” it is safe to assume Google tracks the age of a site and the site’s history, including linking history. In fact, establishing a good history with Google may be as important as having well written html titles and high quality back links. Because of this new dimension, it is important to talk about keyphrases, titles, body text, and back links from a temporal point of view. Most importantly, the keyphrases you choose to target for a site in the short term may not be the keyphrases you want to target in the long term.

Short Term Vs. Long Term Keyphrase Targeting

Observed from optimization experience, there seems to be a Google ranking timeline:

1. No Sandbox. Quick rankings for a couple weeks.

2. Sandbox. No rankings for moderately competitive terms 9-12 months.

3. Short Term - out of the sandbox. Rankings for less competitive terms.

4. Long Term - more than a couple years old. Rankings for more highly competitive terms that are related to the less competitive terms.

Of course a couple years is a long time in terms of search engine evolution, so this observation is definitely subject to change. The point to this, however, is it may make sense to target less competitive (perhaps “tail end” keyphrases) in the short term and change the focus of a site (slightly) to target more competitive terms once the site has reached maturity. The maturity of the site has to do with the number and quality of links it has acquired (a good portion should be naturally acquired because of business relationships or high quality content), rankings for less competitive terms, and the amount of content (number of pages) in the site. When a site has matured, old less competitive terms that were once targeted on the home page can still be targeted on sub-pages. More general phrases that are typically fewer words in length can then be targeted on the home page. The site should already have a history of good rankings with the less competitive phrases and should maintain good rankings for these terms. The links to the home page should still count toward rankings for the new, more competitive terms since the new terms are related to the old terms.

Benefits to Making the Divide

The short term is a long time for a small company that is new. It is important to get results immediately, so it is important to target realistic terms that generate traffic immediately. By planning these phrases so that future expansion can be made, a smooth transition can be made to a long term, higher traffic goal without altering a site’s text or navigation significantly.

About The Author
Steve Loszewski manages pay per click accounts and search engine optimization campaigns for Pure Visibility Internet Marketing ( http://www.purevisibility.com ).

Search Engine Optimization of Your Blog

2007-04-30T07:46:00.000-07:00

by: Rakesh Ojha

Now-a-days installing blogging softwares are just few minutes of click and run jobs. In few minutes you can install a nice looking blog ready to be published. Until this stage, everything seems simple, but when it comes to promoting something as complex as blogging softwares or CMS (Content Management System) applications for that mater, on which blogging softwares are based, can be quite tricky and painful. It is as much painfully easy to install blog software, as it is painfully hard to promote it on search engines if you do not know the correct direction to make headway.

Even though Wordpress comes with features which will help you to make your blog search engine optimized, but these are too basic features to be relied on and you will still need to make changes yourself to better it.

Meta Tags

Meta tags which are important for search engine optimizing your blog, doesn’t come bundled with your Wordpress, when you install it. You will need to install a plugins to have your meta tags displayed on your blog head. Meta tags can be added in the header.php file of your blog. A list of popular Mata tags plugins can be found at http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins/Meta.

Permalink Tag

Every blog has a Permalink feature; it is the permanent link (URL) to a post or page on your blog. Having keyword rich URLs will surely help your blog being pulled for important keywords. You can customize your permalink structure to have more keywords instead of default /category/year/date/time/hour/minute/second/post_title as your post URL. For instance, you can remove %seconds%, %hour% or %post_id% in your parmalink tag. These are not necessary and having them as your URIs will only make it look longer. Also you can do away with %date% tag altogether to just have %category% in the URIs.

Category names

Be careful while making categories. You can always have the category names as keywords so that your final URIs will be full of keywords.

Tagging

You can have tags especially Technorati Tag plug-in installed for your blog posts. Tags are basically names of categories or subjects. With tags in your post, you can categorize your posts based on these tags. While tagging will increases traffic to your blog, it will also make it search engine friendly.

Making above changes to your blog will definitely make it look more search engine optimized and will help you increase its online visibility in Search engine result pages (SERPs).

Happy SEO Blogging!!

About The Author
Rakesh Ojha is a SEO specialist and Online Marketing Consultant with over 5 Years in SEM Industry. Visit his website at http://www.searchengineoptimization4u.com.
Read latest SEM and SEO articles on his blog at http://semblog.searchengineoptimization4u.com

Benefits of Search Engine Optimization for your Website

2007-04-24T21:56:00.001-07:00

by: Rohan Davare

Since I’m into online marketing, today, I’d like to talk about one of the key elements in marketing online and achieving that vital element called traffic needed for every website.

Find out how search engine optimization and internet marketing can help your company reach new customers online like never before. The purpose of search engine optimization is to increase web site traffic by obtaining quality results within the most used search engines. In simple terms, search engine optimization is making a Web site generate traffic from relevant search term queries. Effective search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC), internet marketing strategies and implementation bring sustained visitor traffic to your site. Correct implementation of search engine optimization will significantly affect where your web site is positioned against pears.

Major players include Google, Msn, Yahoo, Exact Seek etc.

Any good marketer focuses specifically on how to succeed at internet marketing through website design, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, submission, analytics, email, and branding programs. A very small investment in web site promotion and SEO will produce major revenue and profits for you. Either you can do it yourself, or hire SEO experts to do it for you; specialists tweak your web site in order to deliver more traffic, although you should not let just any web site solutions provider tell you they can give you search engine optimization.

Here is an interesting tool: http://www.googlerankings.com/ultimate_seo_tool.php all you have to do is enter your website URL and hit enter. This tool will show you the list of most frequently used phrases and words along with keyword density. You can also check how your website ranks for each term by creating a “position report”. The Google toolbar is another good tool which will help you keep track of your website ranking.

I do my own SEO identifying the market and making my websites earn more money for me. It’s a whole process that includes web design, web site planning, traffic analysis, and a range of other internet marketing methods. I always recommend ethical and effective methods, link popularity services, traffic building and search engine submission services to avoid getting a ban.

Web site promotion is achieved with effective optimization of your website for top listings in search engines. Find out which search engine optimization service is right for your Website or learn the tricks yourself. Its fun, its good income and can be easily achieved; however website design and search engine optimization is a very specialized area and most website design companies don't know how to build in search engine optimization apart from tall claims, its best to hire the right services or do SEO yourself. If you do hire the services of an SEO company, carefully review with them exactly what website design, graphics, database programming, search engine optimization and hosting you need.

Give importance to website design, program code of the website, its structure within all levels of Search Engine Optimization and website promotion as a whole package to achieve the desired results, invaluable as an online internet marketing strategy.

The combination of natural search engine optimization and website design brings your company successful online marketing results. Internet marketing and SEO go hand in hand and are inter-related. An online marketing strategy without a search engine optimization component is doomed to fail. Precise, robust, and accountable search engine optimization, marketing and promotion are the vital elements for any online website business to succeed. SEO brings in FREE organic search engine quality traffic and without a proper SEO strategy your website just cannot be complete.

About The Author

Rohan Davare - Online website promotion expert, SEO specialist and Ex Asst Marketing Director for a well known NWM company, working online for close to 5 years now.

Most of his income comes from Online Affiliate marketing.

http://forex4riches.com (primary website)

The 10 Biggest Search Engine Optimization Mistakes: #1: Wrong Keywords

2007-04-24T21:54:00.000-07:00

by: David Bain

The vast majority of websites haven’t got a clue about keywords. If you don’t know what words your potential customers are using in search engines to try and find a business like yours, then it’s hardly worth while having a website.

The Meta Keywords Myth

Most people setting up a website guess at which words or phrases their potential customers might associate with their business. These words and phrases are then thrown into the Meta Keywords Tag, with the belief that before long website visitors will start rolling in. Nothing could be further than the truth.

The reality is that the right keywords have to be placed strategically in many areas of website coding before they can have an opportunity to positively impact an increase in right kind of visitors from search engines.

However, before the correct placing of your keywords can be considered, you have to make sure that you’re using the right ones for your website.

Making sure you choose the right keywords

There are many websites that let you search for how many times a particular keyword or phrase was searched for on the Internet over the past month. Once of the best and most popular is the Overture Keyword Selector Tool: http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

This free-to-use research tool should be experimented with to determine the single best keyword phrase for the most efficient optimization of your home page.

It’s extremely tempting to research the most commonly searched for word in your industry, and then optimize your website for that word in an attempt to attract as many website visitors as possible. An important factor to bear in mind though is that thousands if not millions of websites in your industry will be competing for those single keywords. The trick is to aim for your website to be on the top page of search results for Google, Yahoo and MSN search results for a keyword phrase that is moderately popular for your industry.

How to choose the right keyword phrase

Your chance of appearing in the top page of search engine results is greatly enhanced if you focus your website optimisation efforts on two or three-word phrases instead of single words. But how do you choose the right keyword phrase?

Start by typing what you think your most popular industry keyword would be into the Overture Keyword Selector. You will then be shown other phrases that contain your chosen word, and the amount of times that word has been searched for on Internet search engines over the past month.

An example of a good keyword phrase to aim for

For my website, http://www.DavidBain.biz I initially considered the word ‘Internet’, because I advise businesses on how most effectively to use that medium. Although it’s searched for on average over 600,000 time for each month, the reality is that I have no chance whatsoever of ever featuring in a top page of search results for that word.

I then briefly considered the phrase ‘Internet Marketing’. This is still too popular as well though, as it is searched for over 200,000 times a month

I finally opted for the keyword phrase ‘Internet Marketing Consultant’ which is searched for around 4000 times a month. I’m confident that although my website doesn’t appear on top pages in search engines for that phrase now, it will in the future. And even if 10% of those 4000 searches convert into visitors to my website, it’s well worth it. Why see if you can use the Overture Keyword Selector Tool to improve your chosen keywords now?

About The Author

David Bain is an Internet Marketing Consultant based in Edinburgh, Scotland. His key skills include Search Engine Optimisation analysis of existing websites and Internet Marketing Consultancy. David can be contacted either via his website http://www.DavidBain.biz or by telephoning 0131 2 080808.

Search Engine Optimization: Your Key to Online Success

2007-04-24T21:52:00.000-07:00

by: Steve Waganer

Search engine optimization is all about taking your site to the top of search engine rankings. Everyone wants and has an online site about any goods or service they are offering. If you want to sell something to the public, you must have a website. Everybody is busy these days, and consequently does not have the time to actually go to stores to check out and buy any goods that they need. The internet has become the market place to sell anything. Quick and easy accessibility is what people look for in the internet. Internet is the best source for you to sell your goods and services.

Ok, so now you have a site that has all relevant information about your business, but many people do not know about your site. This is where search engine optimization is needed for your site. Search engine optimization is the different methods that can be used and implemented for popularizing your website. Yes you need to tell everyone that you have a site and tell them really well. Search engines are the key if you want to be successful in online business.

There are different things that can be done for search engine optimization of your site. Link building is the most popular and the most effective means for popularizing your site very quickly in the web. For link building it is vital to search in the web and find out those sites that deal with similar product to yours. This means that your link will be place don those sites, and visitors can actually come to your site through that link. One way inbound links are more beneficial for your site.

Blogging is another great way for you to become visible in the web. The key to blogging is to write quality blogs about different elements of the product that you are selling. If your blogs are very well written chances are there that your site will become very popular. People will even start talking and discussing about your blogs in forum. Imagine how much of publicity you can gain form this. So simply go ahead and start blogging and increase the popularity of your site.

Search engines are the kings in the web. So if you want your site to be successful, you have to get recognition from search engines. For this you need to get high rankings in search engines. Search engines give rankings to websites based on different criteria. Search engine spiders also known as bots crawl different sites to find out if they are meeting all search engine requirements or not. Based on this websites are given rankings by search engines. And it is this ranking that determines how your site is faring in the web.

This is not all; there are many other reasons for you to gain popularity in search engines. A study has shown that most of the people using the web take the help of search engines to find information about any thing in the web. So anyone who is searching for information about your product and service, your site will be listed at the top of search findings. This means visitors will automatically come to your site and buy your products.

Before you embark on any search engine optimization process for your site, it is very important for you to know what you are exactly doing. Try to gather as much information as you can about any method that you are undertaking for the purpose of search engine optimization of your website. This is your site and you must know everything related to your site. After all your business performance depends on this.

About The Author

Steve Waganer is an SEO specialist who works for Comet Search Engine Marketing. Steve knows what needs to be done to take your site to the top.TO know more about Search Engine Optimization, pay per click,affiliate marketing to help online business earn profit visit http://www.cometsearchenginemarketing.com

Ethical Search Engine Optimization

2007-04-24T21:49:00.000-07:00

by: Andrew Zirkin

When writing an article about ethical search engine optimization, I felt it better to focus on what not to do, as opposed to what to do. The reason for this is that there are many rumors on the internet, about search engine optimization that are not true. The worst damage caused by these so- called advisors is getting your website permanently banned from the search engines. To start, we will list some of the techniques suggested that should be avoided in order to keep your site on good terms with Google Tm and other search engines.

Hidden Text

An old technique that is often suggested is to hide massive keywords in white text, on a white background. Once caught, this technique can get you permanently banned from the search engines.

Search engines want to see your keywords visible on the page. Therefore this technique should be avoided at all costs.

Cloaking

Another technique to be avoided is cloaking. Cloaking is through the use of cloaking software that shows one thing to the search engines, and another thing to the public. Even recently the German BMW site was even banned for using this tactic.

Keyword Spamming

The worst form of keyword spamming is when you repeat the same keyword over and over again in a short amount of space. And once again, if caught this has the potential to get you banned from major search engines.

There is no shortcut to making a good quality site with good content. The long term advantages outweigh any of the short term benefits of devious tactics. Your best bet is to make a high quality site with a large amount of interesting content using your keywords sparingly. I know this may sound boring but it works.

About The Author

Andrew Zirkin
Ethical Search Engine Optimization Specialist San Diego, California. Andrew Zirkin has been working diligently in the search engine optimization field for many years now. As an SEO Expert, his focus is to be one of the very best on the planet at ethical search engine optimization. Andrew currently runs an SEO consulting and Optimization Firm that prides itself not only on ethical but also economical search engine optimization. For more information please visit www.brandseo.com.

The 10 Biggest Search Engine Optimization Mistakes: #6: No 'Alt Tags'

2007-04-24T21:47:00.000-07:00

by: David Bain

‘Alt Tags’ – short for Alternate Tags were originally designed to contain the text to be displayed on web pages instead of images if a user’s computer did not have the capability (specification) to be able to display images.

However, as time has gone by, nearly all computer monitors now have the capability of displaying images. This has meant that some web designers have decided to forget about adding Alt Tags to their images. Big mistake.

Alt Tags – A keyword tool

Alt Tags on images provide a great way of getting your keywords near the top of your pages, without reducing your website readability. As long as if you don’t abuse this by using multiple phrases on the one image or the same phrase on multiple images, then this should positively impact your web page being found from your desired keyword phrase in search engines.

Helping positively impact your internal linking

Alt Tags can also positively impact your internal website keyword linking. This means that if the Image link contains Alt Tags that are the same as or have a similar context to the page that the image is linking to, then some search engines will deem the page that is being linked to, to be of greater value than it might have otherwise had if the image link had contained no Alt Tags.

This is because some search engines believe that instead of being just a standard link, the image link is in effect saying, “Visit this page, because it contains this Alt Tag Text information”.

Helping create additional entrance paths to your website

For a website to be really successful, you have to create as many different ‘entrances’ into it as possible. You create a new site entrance by adding Alt Tags to each image - the search engine image search.

You can use the Google Image Search (http://www.google.com/imghp) exactly like a search engine. Simply type in what you’re looking for into the search box and you’ll be presented with images that relate to your query. There are also other image search search engines such as MSN (http://search.msn.com/images) and Yahoo (http://images.search.yahoo.com).

Unless you request specifically otherwise in your page coding, such image searches will list your website images that contain the search phrase used in the image name and the image Alt Text.

Appeal to the blind audience

As well as appealing to search engines more effectively by using Alt Tags in your images, there are some pieces of software that read web pages to blind Internet users. By adding Alt Tags to your images, it provides this software with information about the images that can be ‘read’ to the blind user.

Not only will you be appealing to more users by adding Alt Tags to your images, you will also be complying with website design standards for disabled users of your site.

About The Author

David Bain is founder of the business articles resource http://www.BuildYourOwnBusiness.biz. Build Your Own Business features hundreds of different business articles on 28 different subjects including Strategy, eBusiness and Change Management. Latest additions to the website include a Top 5 Business Articles Podcast.

The 10 Biggest Search Engine Optimization Mistakes: #3: Wrong Meta Description

2007-04-24T21:45:00.000-07:00

by: David Bain

The web page description can be found in the Meta Tag section of the page header. This is a section that is commonly missed out or not used to its full potential.

This web page description is used by search engines to provide a description underneath the clickable page title link in their search results.

For example, if you search for ‘buildyourownbusiness’ on Google the you will see that the website BuildYourOwnBusiness.biz (the fist result) shows the description ‘Business Articles - Latest business news & management advice on how best to build your own business - Free, independent business articles on Strategy, ...’ underneath the clickable title. This description is taken from the Meta Tag Description.

As you can see by viewing the source code of that web page, the last part of the Meta Description is actually missed out by the search engine. It therefore must be remembered that website designers have no direct control over the format of what actually appears in search engine results.

The Meta Description should contain an enticing and informative snapshot of what the website its about. However, it must appeal to as many people as possible. And this means to as many search engines as possible.

While Google tends to ‘chop off’ a page description after approximately 150 characters, other search engines may allow as much as 225 characters. MSN on the other hand often take the initial 100 characters from the Meta Description, and use content that it deems to be more relevant to the search query from the web page in question to complete their description of the same web page.

For example, the description listed on MSN for the same page is as follows: ‘Business Articles - Latest business news & management advice on how best to build your own business ... Choose an RSS feed topic: ..... Latest ...’.

The best Meta Descriptions are therefore written with these variables in mind. The description should make sense, convey all the relevant information about the web page and entice the reader to reader to view the page no matter how much of the description is seen.

In addition, it is also worthwhile placing one pertinent keyword phrase within the Meta Description. This, among other things confirms to search engines that your web page is pertinent to a particular user’s search.

When you write your Meta Description, make it around 225 characters long (including spaces). Make sure that the first 100 characters contain your keyword phrase. Make sure that the first 100 characters act as a meaningful and enticing phrase on their own. Likewise, the first 150 characters as well as the full description should stand up effectively by themselves.

If you use your Meta Description to its full potential, not only will you be providing a decent description of your web page, you will also be improving your search engine rankings for your keyword phrases as well as getting a better ‘click through rate’ when people discover your site through a search engine search.

About The Author

Meta Tag Optimization Results In High Search Engine Ranking

2007-04-24T21:42:00.000-07:00

by: James Day

I was compelled to publish this article after noticing several SEO specialists writing in reference to meta tags being dead or obsolite. Meta tags are not dead. I will be the first to say, meta tags are utilized by all major search engines and are very much in use and extremely important to search engine ranking. If you need proof of how important meta tags are, try removing your meta tags and watch what happens to your search engine positioning. Your site will plummet to the depths of the unvisited web. Meta tags are frequently an overlooked factor which can improve the ranking of most any website.

This is an example of how vital meta tags are to your webpage and to your search engine ranking. Our website ranks #6 and #7 consistantly on MSN for the keyword submit site. To test the dead meta tag theory, our source code editor changed one word in the meta description tag and we dropped to #15 in the search results. Our rankings on Google and several other search engines suffered even more so. Needless to say we made changes accordingly. All major search engines definitely utilize meta tags for a description of the webpage and for indexing within the search results.

The title tag is one of the most important on page factors to consider. This is because search engine spiders read this tag first and place a high level of importance on the keywords found there. The title tag is also used for the title of your listing in the search results. The contents of your title tag will also appear in the top left corner of the browser bar. Correct title tag optimization is essiential and will result in a dramatic increase in your search engine ranking. Title tag should contain at least one or more keywords to be of any relevance to the webpage.

Search engine spiders read the description meta tag next. This tag is often used as a website description in the search results. The description tag should also contain a few keywords. The keyword meta tag is also vital to search engine ranking giving search engine spiders a sample of relevant text and content within a web page. Other meta tags include robots, resource, author, copyright etc. These tags are not as important as the title, description and keyword tag, however they should be included if possible. To achieve high search engine ranking optimize your meta data. Proper on page optimization will greatly improve your search engine placement.

About The Author

James Day

Article written by the CEO of: http://www.submit-site.org/

Skills Needed For Search Engine Optimization

2007-04-24T21:40:00.000-07:00

by: Michael Colucci

Since search engine optimization is still a relatively new concept, a lot of business establishments think it best to hire search engine optimization firms to handle the online marketing side of their businesses. But what if you can’t afford to hire the services of search engine optimization firms? What if you’re just starting the business and you don’t have enough money for additional advertising? If so, all you can rely on is yourself.

But there’s no need to worry just yet because search engine optimization is easier than what you – and many others – think. Granted, it takes practice before you can truly optimize search engine results for your website or business but it’s at least a very possible and achievable goal. First, however, we shall concentrate on the skills you need for search engine optimization.

Knowing Your Target Market

If you want search engine optimization for your website, you have to know your target market. Because the Internet is such a vast place to explore, knowing your target market would mean more readers for your target market because they can easily relate and understand what you’re talking about.

The Content of Your Ad

Let’s just say you do know your target market already and everything inside your website – from the first word till the very last punctuation used – is meant to convince the reader to purchase the product. But wait…how do they get to your website first? And that’s when search engine optimization comes in once more. With engine optimization, it’s a guarantee that your website would receive more clicks.

But what could put your website on top of MSN and Google searches? The answer: the content of your ad. Since most companies prefer to use text ads because they’re shorter, more cost efficient and less irritating, you have to maximize the content of your ad. Make sure that you’re able to convey your message in the shortest, clearest and most effective way possible.

The Use of Keywords

Keyword is one of the major factors affecting search engine optimization. If you want to optimize searches done by MSN, Google or Yahoo, you have to make sure that the keyword list you use under your company’s name should be the very keywords your target market would type in the search box.

When it comes to keywords, there are only two things that matters: spelling and relevance. Make sure that you include keywords in their correct and incorrect spellings if the keyword is the type to be commonly misspelled such as Czechoslovakia or die-cast (sometimes spelled as one word). And of course, lastly, it has to be relevant.

About The Author

Michael Colucci is a writer the site http://www.trafficgeek.net - A company that offers seo services, search engine submission and manual directory submission services.

The 10 Biggest Search Engine Optimization Mistakes: #5: No 'H1 Tags'

2007-04-24T21:37:00.000-07:00

by: David Bain

H1 Tags were originally introduced to aid the formatting of HTML documents. They literally mean ‘Heading Size 1’ which is generally the biggest sized font used online. However, because their presence indicate a page heading with larger text, many search engines have decided to count this as a significant part of the ranking that deems what the page content is about. It is therefore recommended to feature your main keyword phrase for that page in the heading.

Why text based image headings are bad

However, when web pages became more creative, many website owners started to dislike the look and feel of large, plain text. Instead they used text images. Although images are nearly guaranteed to display the same on ever computer while the display of text is dependent on an individual computer’s settings, text is a lot friendlier for search engines.

Apart from ‘Alt Tags’ and the image file name, images contain no definitive data about what they contain. File names and Alt Tags can be manipulated to indicate that the content they contain may be something other than that which is actually featured.

This means that search engines may always be wary of images as a method of displaying a page title. The ‘content’ of text can never be hidden. Some search engines have therefore deemed that text based headings are more likely to feature information on their pages that is relevant to a web search made. All things being equal, web pages that contain text-based headings are therefore more likely to appear higher in search engines compared with websites of a similar nature and popularity that rely on image based headings.

Don’t just use size attributes

Many page titles, although text-based still don’t maximize their appeal to search engines because they only use ‘size attributes’. As in the following example, the text will appear large and in bold – as if it were a page title, but it wouldn’t carry as much weight with search engines as pages that contain the heading attribute.

Example 1: Business Articles

In the second example that follows, the HTML will display the text in exactly the same look and size. This example however does contain the heading attribute, and all things being equal will be more popular with many search engines.

Example 2: Business Articles

So what can be learned from the above examples?

Websites shouldn’t be designed just for their look and feel. Equally they shouldn’t be designed just for search engines. In the two examples above, the different HTML code used in each example produces the same results.

About The Author

Search Engine Optimization Is Important For Your Website

2007-04-24T21:34:00.000-07:00

by: Dechen Lau

E-commerce is a cut throat business. You have to arm yourself with the proper know-how and the tools to make your site a cut above the rest. Each day, more and more sites are clambering to optimize their rankings in websites and if you lose your guard, you may just get trampled on and be left in the abyss filled with so many failed e-commerce sites.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a term widely used today by many e-commerce sites. For the past few years and the next ten years or so, search engines would be the most widely used internet tool to find the sites that they need to go to or the product or information they need.

Most people that use search engines use only the ten top search results in the first page. Making it to the first page, more so to the top three is a barometer of a sites success in search engine optimization. You will get a higher ratio of probability in being clicked on when you rank high. The more traffic for your site, the more business you rake in.

But, it is essential to grab a hold of that spot or make your ranking even better. As I aforementioned, each day is a new day for all e-commerce sites to make them selves rank higher using search engine optimization. It is imperative to make your site better and better everyday.

So just what is search engine optimization and do you have to use it? The answer to why you have to use it is an easy one. You need search engine optimization to be number one, or maybe at least make your site income generating.

With search engine optimization you can get the benefit of generating a high traffic volume. Let’s just say you get only a turn out of successful sales with 10 to 20 percent of your traffic. If you get a hundred hits or more a day, you get a good turn out of sales already. If you get only twenty to ten hits a day, you only get one or two if not any at all.

So once again, what is search engine optimization? Search engine optimization is utilizing tools and methods in making your site top ranking in the results of search engines. Getting yourself in the first page and better yet in the top half of the page will ensure that your site will generate public awareness of your site’s existence and subsequently generate more traffic, traffic that could lead to potential income and business.

Search engine optimization requires a lot of work to be fully realized. There are many aspects you have to change in your site or add as well to get search engine optimization. These will include getting lots of information about the keyword phrases that are popular in regards to your sites niche or theme.

You may also need to rewrite your sites contents so that you could get the right keyword phrases in your site without making it too commercial but light and informative. There are certain rules and guidelines to be followed with making your site’s content applicable and conducive to search engine optimization.

You will also need to collaborate with many other sites so that you could get link exchanges and page transfers. The more inbound and outbound traffics generated by sites among others are one of the components search engines uses to rank sites.

Try to search the internet for many useful help. Tips, guidelines and methods for search engine optimization are plenty to be found. Read many articles that can help you optimize your site in search engine results. The more knowledge and information you gather the better. This will all help you in getting those high rankings. This may require a little time and effort in your part but the benefits will be astounding.

If you can part with some money, there are many sites in the internet that can help you in search engine optimization. There are many sites that help in tracking keyword phrases that can help your site. There are also some content writers that have lots of experience in making good keyword laden content for your sites that have good quality.

Act now and see the benefits garner with search engine optimization. All of these will result to better traffic and more business for your site and company.

About The Author

Dechen Lau., is an Author, Speaker and Internet Marketing Consultant

http://www.ezinenewsletter.com

http://www.vipmembershiponline.com

Basic Search Engine Techniques Optimization

2007-04-24T21:24:00.000-07:00

by: Julie Jones

There are many techniques that webmasters can implement to create optimum search engine ranking. The following search engine optimization tips should assist webmasters in understanding the basics of creating human friendly web pages which can be easily understood by the most popular search engines.

Basic Search Engine Techniques

1. The title tag is located at the top of your web page within the HTML head tags. You should insert your keywords within the title tag because this will tell the search engine robots what your page is about. Be sure that the title tag contains text which a human can understand. (The title tag is what shows up in the search results) This will attract targeted traffic to your site.

2. Be sure that you also use the keywords from your title tag in the heading of your page. This not only helps the readers know that they have reached the proper page. It also shows the robots that there is a relationship between the title of your page and the heading. Your keywords should also be inserted several times throughout your page body as well as in the subheadings.

3. Use a different title tag on each page of your website. By using the same title tag on each page the search engines might determine that all of your pages are the same. If this happens they may not index them. If you use the headline of your page as the title tag it will help the search engines know what your page is about.

4. Avoid "spamming" meaningless keywords into your headline tag. Many webmasters do this trying to draw the attention of the search engines.

5. Search engines like to index human friendly pages which contain search relevant content. Doorway pages are designed for robots. You should not use doorway pages in your site.

6. The more keywords that you link to a specific page the better. This is true especially if your site contains many pages. Use the same keywords as anchor text to link to your home page from the other pages on your site.

7. By inserting the title tag within the HTML of your text link you can add weight to the link as well as the page where the link resides.

8. Only link your site to other search engine friendly sites which contain content similar to your own.

9. You can assist search engines that index images in locating your pages, by describing your images using the alt tag. This also helps readers who use text only web browsers.

10. You should submit your site to the search engines only once. If your site has a good human friendly link trail there will be no need to submit each page individually. Simply submit the main index page and your entire site should get indexed.

About The Author

Julie Jones is a successful internet marketer. http://getsuccessplanet.blogspot.com/ For additional tips on search engine optimization as well as internet marketing advice visit the authors website at http://getsuccessplanet.blogspot.com/

SEO Best Practices: How Blogs Can Break Or Make Your Search Engine Optimization Strategy

2007-04-24T21:14:00.000-07:00

by: Jon Rognerud

Blogs - Structure and Layout

I work in the field of Search Engine Optimization. It has a wide range of options, from the technical to the more strategic. Tons of discussions are found on off-page and on-page factors, latent semantic analysis, content scope, quality, HTML/CSS development, site navigational structure, spamdexing, 301 redirects, plagiarism, link strategies, directories, blogs, search engine news, email marketing tips & online (internet) marketing. Most all of the top 10 SEO firms out there agree that blogs are a "must" for driving traffic and get established in the Internet community.

There is a right way, and a wrong way. We'll discuss these below.

Be warned - too many folks out there are thinking about "how to outbeat the search engines" and use the latest-and-greatest (blogs) to elevate their rankings, essentially via content and blog spam. Blogs are a powerful way to get seen by the search bots. Blogger (Google's own) is an important key to the puzzle, but there are many.

THE UN-OFFICIAL TOP 7 BLOGGING BEST PRACTICES FOR SEO

Start here, begin a quick review of the world's top blogs:
http://www.technorati.com/pop/blogs (the gorilla blog listings - updated daily)
http://www.problogger.net (this guy makes 16,000 USD / monthly)
http://microsaw.stikipad.com (web 2.0 blogs and news)

Get an account - it's free. log in - and - don't start! What? No, you must first continue by scanning the list above and get a sense for what people are writing about. This could be more generic at first, but start looking to yourself. What do you know? What do people come to you for? Anything that you specialize in? (Hint: don't think "how can I sell this" - but "how can I share this?") You'll also learn how to use trackback functions to allow other people to be notified. Permalinks are great for SEO and should be used where appropriate. So, now you learned something big: be yourself!

Think about an interesting headline. You don't need to be copywriter, but you should think about your headline and the topic at hand. More importantly, is it something that you are passionate about, or can contribute something to? It's ok to spend some time here, writer's block can come up. Think about other sites, can you re-write their UVP (unique value proposition)? How would you write yours (thinking theme here). What I've found to work is simply sit back and start talking as if you were discussing a (hot) topic with a friend, and then breaking it out into sub-groups from there.

Writing tips: casual, friendly and interesting (meaning you have something to write and you don't copy others) works well in blogs. Make sure you stay on topic and that you are truthful. Would you lie to your mother? Of course not - then think about this when you are writing online (and she will not come after you). Yahoo's blogging policy is a good one: "Be respectful of your colleagues, get your facts straight, provide context to your argument, and engage in private feedback." Also, make sure to include images (flickr) and video (youtube, google video) where you can. Make the images rich and colorful, don't worry about sizing too much.

Committment, persistence and disciplin. Sound like an extract from Jim Rohn or Anthony Robbins? Well, they probably are - but it applies to most of the things you do in life. So be it with blogging. Carve out 1/2-1 hour every day to nurture to your blog business. Think of it as your morning ritual - right after you have attended to your family and other duties. Plus, often you are not going to be in writing mode - but rather, maintenance mode - reviewing and responding to other blogger's input.

Search engines start picking up your blog, and traffic increases. Be prepared and if it gets out of hand, be able to manage that too. I'm not simply talking about traffic, but as others join and comment, you may need to defend your stance, including admitting mistakes if / when you make them. Folks appreciate other folks who are big enough to admit mistakes if it gets there. For example, you may have folks who don't like you - even if you're Bill Gates. This guy created a Corporate Weblog Manifesto that I found interesting.

Run and host your own blog service. More expensive, but this could have a large impact on your ability to control not only the content, but custom HTML layouts, code and information architecture that are important to search engines. You can offer this as a service to others in your niche market. http://businesslogs.com/ is a great resource to use for starting this process, and more hands-on development companies like http://www.leveltendesign.com/ can be an option for you. Keep in mind that the market has developed niche-companies, from real-estate to healthcare, and you should research those specifically.

If you have writer's block - make sure to read the next section, content is important for Search Engine Optimization - be on top of it.

How To Be Creative RE: Blogs (and SEO)

Here are some tips about being creative with blogs. Funny, but poignant.
(Taken from http://www.gapingvoid.com/)

Ignore everybody.

The idea doesn't have to be big. It just has to change the world.

Put the hours in.

If your biz plan depends on you suddenly being "discovered" by some big shot, your plan will probably fail.

You are responsible for your own experience.

Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten.

Keep your day job.

Companies that squelch creativity can no longer compete with companies that champion creativity.

Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb.

The more talented somebody is, the less they need the props.

Don't try to stand out from the crowd; avoid crowds altogether.

If you accept the pain, it cannot hurt you.

Never compare your inside with somebody else's outside.

Dying young is overrated.

The most important thing a creative person can learn professionally is where to draw the red line that separates what you are willing to do, and what you are not.

The world is changing.

Merit can be bought. Passion can't.

Avoid the Watercooler Gang.

Sing in your own voice.

The choice of media is irrelevant.

Selling out is harder than it looks.

Nobody cares. Do it for yourself.

Worrying about "Commercial vs. Artistic" is a complete waste of time.

Don?t worry about finding inspiration. It comes eventually.

You have to find your own schtick.

Write from the heart.

The best way to get approval is not to need it.

Power is never given. Power is taken.

Whatever choice you make, The Devil gets his due eventually.

The hardest part of being creative is getting used to it.

Remain frugal.

Voila - that's it, there you have it. Watch how the search engines will start picking up your content. You can run tools to see how you are ranking, how often you are showing up in the search engines. We like www.UrlTrends.com as a simple beginner starting point. However, it's not 100% accurate, other SEO tools can provide more detail.

Keep your content fresh, updates daily is preferred - and definitely once a week and your search engine marketing (which includes search engine optimization) will become more visible than it was just last week. Then, use http://pingomatic.com/ to alert search engines that you have made updates. It's a free service, and will help your visibility.

About The Author

Jon Rognerud is a recognized authority on the subject of SEO, and has spent over 10 years developing websites and marketing solutions at companies like Overture and Yahoo. His Web 2.0 site, Los Angeles Search Marketing (http://www.microsaw.com), provides a wealth of informative articles, resources and complimentary email courses on everything you will ever need to know about SEO and Search Marketing. He lives with his family in Southern California.

Search Engine Optimization And Online Businesses

2007-04-24T21:01:00.000-07:00

by: Barbara Davis

Advertising online is one of the most efficient methods of advertising. SEO experts are vital for online advertising. There are a multitude of search engine firms, each promising success. It is important to choose most well known with the best reputation.

Search Engine Optimization firms are companies responsible for online advertisements. Their priority is to help businesses find success, using well-written captions and other methods to capture people’s attention.

Usually, once an SEO firm optimizes a Web site, the upsurge in traffic may vary from moderate to substantial. If the site is properly designed, most traffic may translate into sales.

There are additional effective techniques for marketing businesses, but SEO is unique in that it offers a continual return on investment long after the initial financing. It is notable that some sites get 80-90 percent of their traffic after using the SEO firms’ placement services.

SEO firms can also assist companies in understanding the technical aspects of site rankings.

They are also adept at writing proper meta tags, keyword-rich text and attaining link popularity and prominence.

These firms also provide the necessary tools and SEO services for your site to rank well with search engine spiders and robots.

SEO firms offer services to ensure a Web site’s inclusion on search engines, and to boost the site’s rankings.

SEO services include complimentary search engine ranking reports, keyword research, log file analysis, SEO copywriting, Web site analysis, web usability, creation of meta tags, link building, consultation, SEO onsite training, and project evaluation.

Search engine ranking reports are used to gauge the site’s popularity in the searches for the Web site’s main keywords. The report would serve as the starting point before optimization.

SEO firms utilize keyword research by identifying potential keywords and competition in respect to such keywords. The three key factors for keyword research are: popularity, competition, and convertibility.

Another method is log file analysis to determine where traffic is currently coming from and how much traffic was received. Such analysis is the foundation prior to optimization.

SEO copywriting is another of their services, writing keyword- and context-rich text.

Another service of these firms is the complete Web site analysis. They will analyze the basic visitors’ usability of the site.

An additional service of SEO firms is the web usability. The firms take care to ensure that the Web site is easy to use and navigate.

Also the firms create meta tags that create a relevant and eye-catching title for the site to attract traffic.

The last method is the link-building campaign which consists of finding appropriate, quality sites for link exchanges.

These SEO firms are a great help for businesses. Such services help an online business gain customers around the world. Don't underestimate how much you might benefit from their services.

About The Author

Barbara Davis frequently contributes to several online magazines, including http://cunid.com http://sowbelly.com and

Internet Forum Board Search Engine Optimization Tips

2007-04-24T20:59:00.000-07:00

by: Alessandro Golkar

A forum board is a great way in which you can create a community around your website, for recreational purposes or, even better, business. Learn how to optimize your forum board to obtain maximum results.

That is, having a targeted community on your website let you have a poll of users that came on your website because interested from the forum board, that are potential customers as well for your business.

However, a careful search engine optimization (SEO) on your forum must be made in order to have an optimal indexing from Google, thus achieving the goal of receiving free traffic from this search engine. Actually, there are several search engines on the web, but the only one effectively giving you traffic (when you’re in their SERPS of course) is Google itself.

For this reason, keep SEO in mind when installing your forum board. Whether you are using free scripts such as PhpBB or commercial scripts like vBulletin, make sure that for each page the correct meta tags and page title are displayed.

That is, the page title must reflect the content of your page, along with the description and keywords meta tags. Keep in mind that each page should rank for one or two keywords only, that should be the most frequent words in the page (anyway monitor the keyword density to avoid penalization during the indexing).

Having different page titles make you avoid the major problem of having all your forum board out of the SERPS due to the duplicate content filter, although the actual content is differing on its page: this happens when page titles are not properly setup. If you don’t know how to manage page titles and meta tags, you should look for a professional to do the work for you.

Moreover, make sure that your forum’s content is publicly viewable, otherwise the search engine crawlers won’t be able to index it thus you will lose potential future traffic.

As a last note, remember that search engines take a lot of time before putting your pages in the SERPS. So, keep in mind that you are playing on the long term, and don’t get discouraged if you don’t see results right now: if you have done a good work, traffic and popularity are natural consequences.

About The Author

Alessandro Golkar is the founder and CEO of ForumBoosting.com , whose company website is http://www.forumboosting.com , the forum promotion and enhancement firm that established its operations in November 2005. They are helping forum owners to kickstart their board and revive old ones, putting fresh content on them, and making a proper search engine optimization on their pages. Paid forum posting is the main business, along with forum seo services.

The Top 3 Easy Search Engine Optimization Secret Tips You Can Implement Today That Most People Overlook

2007-04-24T20:52:00.000-07:00

by: Kevin Smith

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the technical term for the process of improving your website visibility in the natural listing results in search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN etc…. What is meant by the natural listing is the results for example in Google that are in the middle of the page, not the sponsored listings on the right side.

Ranking high in any search engine is the goal of all website owners. In order to achieve that, the website needs to look professional, have appropriate content and size and easy to navigate. To achieve a high ranking status is not about having a website that has flashing graphics and visually appealing sections. The search engines do not place as high a priority on that as they do content-rich, relevant data to index. The website will climb the search engine results pages as time, content and relevancy increase.

Online search engines are one of the best ways to attract the targeted traffic you seek to sell your product or services. The ultimate goal in a high ranking website is an increased number of people finding your website and increased sales and lead generation. You may loose about 95% of your targeted visitors if your site does not appear somewhere in the first three pages of the results. Most buyers who search and shop via the Internet do not go beyond three pages to find the product or service in which they are looking.

There are many search engines available today but none are larger or more pertinent to your website success than the “Big 3”. They are Google (commands at least 50% of the market), Yahoo and MSN. It is recommended to start with Google to get high and relevant rankings. The only way you are going to achieve this is to get into the search engine indexes. If this is addressed properly, you could see your first listing anytime from 2 to 4 months for some pages and as long as 2 years for certain keyword phrases. You have to keep in mind that overnight success will not be realized. This is a work in progress with a focus on the long-term result.

To simplify this process and make it a little more practical, below are three main secret tips that most people overlook or even don’t think about when starting the process of optimizing their sites. You can start implementing these tips today.

Secret Tip #1 – Be knowledgeable of basic search engine results/action facts:

As stated before, search engine optimization is the process of improving your website visibility in the natural search results. Your goal is to have your web pages appear at the top of the search engines for target keyword requests. Ultimately, you want your website listed in the top natural search results because 4 out of 5 total clicks visit the natural search results as opposed to only 50% of search engine users visit the sponsored (paid) ads. Of those, only 20% of those actually click.

Secret Tip #2 – Know your competition

No matter what type of business you are in, you are likely to have some sort of competition. It is beneficial to be aware of what they are doing and what edge they may or may not have over you. Most people miss this most important step. You have to gauge your success against those that are in the same market.

Here is a little tool to help in your research of the competition:

Yahoo offers one of the most helpful tools for evaluating the competition. Yahoo has developed the View Bids Tool(http://uv.bidtool.overture.com/d/search/tools/bidtool/), which allows you to see the bid (price per click), and the position for all of the advertisers for a keyword. Using this tool will also allow you to see who your competition is for the specific keywords you use.

The Google AdWords Keyword Tool is very useful for evaluating the competition on Google. The tool can be found at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordTool.

Secret Tip #3 – Educate yourself to the search engines

Search engines have webmaster guidelines available for you to become familiar with. It is highly recommend you read these webmaster guidelines, especially those of Google, Yahoo and MSN. As you read through them, you will find them to be quite helpful.

Optimizing your site to be exposed in the natural listings should be your ultimate goal. It means more visitors and potential customers. These three secret tips are awesome tools to have in your toolbox. If you start implementing them today, you will position yourself to be well ahead of the curve to having your site well placed in the search engine results. Just remember, it’s not going to happen overnight but doing your due diligence with SEO can pay big dividends down the road.

About The Author

Kevin Smith has been helping people succeed online for over six years and has dedicated his life to Internet Marketing. Visit his website and learn:

"How You Can Be Mentored By A 'Guru' Who Did $3,224,842.32 Online in 27 Months!"

Click Details FREE==> http://www.EZWealthStrategy.com

(Article available for reprint)

Introduction to Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

2007-04-24T20:49:00.000-07:00

by: Jatupol Tanaruthai

The motive of Search Engine Optimization is to improve the ranking of the web sites, which are listed in the search engine lists. With the high rank of the web site in the search engine, there is a chance of more and more customers visiting your site. In today’s busy world the customers or internet users does not have much time to click through pages or the pages of search engine, so during their visit to the web site if the customer finds that the rank of the site is high he or she will ultimately move towards that site.

In the today’s web world, search engine optimizers (SEOs) are recognized as an industry of the professionals who bring the optimization scheme or projects on behalf of their customer’s sites. SEO ensure to the customer that the site they are looking for is reachable by the search engine. (It also improves the probability that the site, which a customer is looking for, will be found by the search engine. The motive of any search engine marketing agency is to know the techniques which give greater reliability to the search engine and what the search engines are looking for. So they modify a web site so that it is considered to be friendly to search engine.)

Different kinds of listing are displayed by the search engines in the search engine result pages (SERPs). The lists which are displayed by the search engines are pay per click advertisement, organic search results and paid inclusion listings. The strategies adopted by a search engine optimization company in Thailand are just same as required everywhere else in the world – they shall increase quality of customers and number of customers by improving the rankings of the SEO clients’ websites. Mainly SEO is concerned with achieving the aim of a web site by the improvement and progress of its organic search results.

Any newcomer, who wants to make his place in the web world and is launching his web site, should think about search engine optimization even already for the initial design of a site and development of the site, as they offer the stand alone service.

As a part of a large marketing effort, SEO plays a very important role for the initial design and development of the site. Pay per click advertising can play a substantial role for the competitive and high volume search term. The cost of pay per click advertising is little bit higher, so web site owners can think to optimize their sites for organic search. If your web site is having high ranking in the organic search results, this can bring the flow of traffic at a possible significant savings. Search engine optimization may not be having identical goal for all sites.

Some sites optimize to rank high for common search phrases, so these types of sites often look for any and all types of traffic. These common phrases are often much harder to rank for than the real “long tail” phrases that clients use to search for a product. It is important to note that you have to perform search engine optimization for every language that you cover – and if you have a Thai language part on your site targeting clients from Thailand, you sure want Thai search engine optimization experts to help you for the famous engines in Thailand like Google.co.th or Sanook.com.

In the Search Engine Optimization industry some of the search engines are frequent guests and sponsors at SEO seminars and conferences. With the arrival of paid inclusion, some of the search engines are now taking interest in the well being of the optimization community.

Copyright 2006 Globlet Co., Ltd.

About The Author

Jatupol Tanaruthai has been in the search engine marketing business for about 9 years. He is the owner and CEO of Globlet Co., Ltd. (http://www.globlet.com), a search engine marketing company based in Bangkok, Thailand.

Search Engine Optimization! (part II)

2007-04-24T20:33:00.001-07:00

by: Ankit Talwar

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a set of methods aimed at improving the ranking of a website in search engine listings, and could be considered a subset of search engine marketing. The term SEO also refers to "search engine optimizers," an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients' sites. Some commentators, and even some SEOs, break down methods used by practitioners into categories such as "white hat SEO" (methods generally approved by search engines, such as building content and improving site quality), or "black hat SEO" (tricks such as cloaking and spamdexing). White hatters say that black hat methods are an attempt to manipulate search rankings unfairly. Black hatters counter that all SEO is an attempt to manipulate rankings, and that the particular methods one uses to rank well are irrelevant. Other SEOs reject the black and white hat dichotomy as over-simplification.

Search engines display different kinds of listings in the search engine results pages (SERPs), including: pay per click advertisements, paid inclusion listings, and organic search results. SEO is primarily concerned with advancing the goals of a website by improving the number and position of its organic search results for a wide variety of relevant keywords. SEO strategies may increase both the number and quality of visitors. Search engine optimization is sometimes offered as a stand-alone service, or as a part of a larger marketing effort, and can often be very effective when incorporated into the initial development and design of a site.

For competitive, high-volume search terms, the cost of pay per click advertising can be substantial. Ranking well in the organic search results can provide the same targeted traffic at a potentially significant savings. Site owners may choose to optimize their sites for organic search, if the cost of optimization is less than the cost of advertising.

Not all sites have identical goals for search optimization. Some sites seek any and all traffic, and may be optimized to rank highly for common search phrases. A broad search optimization strategy can work for a site that has broad interest, such as a periodical, a directory, or site that displays advertising with a CPM revenue model. In contrast, many businesses try to optimize their sites for large numbers of highly specific keywords that indicate readiness to buy. Overly broad search optimization can hinder marketing strategy by generating a large volume of low-quality inquiries that cost money to handle, yet result in little business. Focusing on desirable traffic generates better quality sales leads, resulting in more sales. Search engine optimization can be very effective when used as part of a smart niche marketing strategy.

About The Author

Ankit Talwar is the owner of http://www.Dead-Yahoo.com. He is a Web Designer.

Internet Marketing: The Beginning Of The End Of Search Engine Optimization

2007-04-24T20:25:00.000-07:00

by: Wyatt Lee

One of the constants in life is change, and this is especially true in this Internet age. It is either you evolve, or you dissolve; nothing stays the same.

As far as Internet marketing is concerned, times have really changed. Before, online marketers were obsessed with learning any tips and tricks available in order to get favorable listings in the search engines. But now, the trend seems to veer towards unconventional Internet marketing strategies.

Instead of being trapped in the complicated mechanics of search engine optimization (SEO), the wave is now flowing towards the more accurate and humanized features of user-driven indexing systems.

Right now, you may be thinking: Huh? What do you mean 'humanized'? Worry not. Let us now analyze how Internet marketing has evolved.

Search engine optimization - the beginning of the end

Search engine optimization, or SEO, has dominated the Internet marketing industry for many years. It is widely accepted that more than 80% of your website traffic will come from the search engines. Although not many online marketers have come forward to back that claim, getting a good position in the search engines is still the way to go.

But search engines are not 100% perfect. They rely on robotic spiders to crawl through every single webpage on the Internet. These spiders will then index the pages according to the algorithms prescribed by the respective search engines.

There is nothing wrong with the process here. But the problem is that everything is automated. The robotic spiders cannot think like a human, therefore everything is either black or white to them; there is nothing in between. They might even list your web pages in the wrong category without your knowledge!

Humanized features of user-driven indexing system

User-driven indexing systems are totally different from the algorithms of SEO. Since the features are humanized, the users are able to classify websites under appropriate categories, or more commonly known as tags. This feature is so much more reliable than the approach of the spiders, because these websites are seen by actual human eyes.

Exit SEO, enter social bookmarking websites

Social bookmarking websites are the most popular kinds of user-driven indexing systems. There are a lot of these websites available on the Internet today, and they are very widely visited websites, if their Alexa rankings are anything to go by. Some of the more popular and hot Social bookmarking websites are Technorati, Furl and Feedmarker.

So what exactly are social bookmarking websites?

While surfing the net, when you see a website that catches your attention, you will add the URL of that site to your favorites under your 'My Favorites' folder on your web browser. With a click of your mouse, the URL is saved on your hard drive. This whole process is known as bookmarking.

Social bookmarking websites work pretty much the same way. But instead of saving a URL on your hard drive, you will be able to save it on a web server, under an appropriate tag. For example, if you come across an interesting dating website, you can save the website address under the tag 'dating'.

Another interesting feature of social bookmarking websites is that you can share your list of 'tagged' websites with other users. If some of them are looking for dating websites, you can do your bit to help them by sharing your list with them. How cool is that?

How can Social Bookmarking benefit Internet marketers?

This exciting new technique can benefit fellow Internet marketing professionals in the following ways:

1. It will soon replace the search engines

This is a frightening prospect. Some experts are predicting that social bookmarking will soon replace the search engines as the information finding process of choice by most Internet users. The best way to take advantage of this growing phenomenon is to start using its features as early as today. Google and Yahoo!, you have been warned.

2. It can easily be manipulated

Social bookmarking is so much easier to manipulate. You have all the freedom in the world to place all your favorite websites in any desired tags without going through the sickening algorithms of the search engines.

3. The potential of tags

Tags are widely considered as the 'keywords for the new Internet age'. They are now beginning to establish an interconnectivity that will soon cover many platforms and channels. If you want to dominate certain specific tags, then social bookmarking websites can be your launching platform.

Social bookmarking is destined to be the next big thing in Internet marketing. The current phenomenon that has taken the Internet by storm is blogging, and those who have taken early advantage are now reaping handsome rewards.

If you do not want to miss out on the next big thing, then now is the time for you to embark on the bookmarking adventure so that you are one step ahead of your competitors.

About The Author

Wyatt Lee is an expert author specializing on the subject of Internet marketing. Please visit his Internet marketing strategy blog at http://internetmarketing-strategy.blogspot.com for all the best tips and latest news on the world of Internet marketing.

Search Engine Optimization

2007-04-24T20:21:00.000-07:00

by: Robert McCulloch

The term SEO also refers to “search engine optimization”. We can break down methods used for SEO into two categories; “white hat” and “black hat”.

White hats say that black hat methods are an attempt to manipulate search rankings unfairly. Black hats counter that all SEO is an attempt to manipulate rankings, and that the particular methods one uses to rank well are irrelevant.

Search engines display different kinds of results on ’search engine results pages’ (SERPs), including: pay per click, paid inclusion, and organic search results. SEO is primarily concerned with advancing the goals of a website by improving the number and position of its organic search results for a wide variety of relevant keywords. SEO strategies strive to increase both the number and quality of visitors. Search engine optimization is sometimes offered as a stand-alone service, or as a part of a larger marketing effort and is often more effective when incorporated into the initial development and design of a website.

For competitive, high-volume search terms, the cost of pay per click advertising can be very high. Not only is the cost high, but the quality of traffic is not as good as the organic search engine traffic. The reason for this is that people that have been on the Internet for more than a short period of time know not to trust the pay per click websites as much as the organic websites. It does not take long for someone to realize the pay per click websites always have a sales pitch.

Ranking well in the organic search results can provide better targeted traffic with a significant savings. People just tend to trust the organic search engine results because they often have websites that are there to provide information and not always a sales pitch.

Not all sites have identical goals for search optimization. Some sites seek any and all traffic and may be optimized to rank highly for many common search engine keyword phrases. A broad search optimization strategy can work for a website that has broad general interest, such as a periodical or a directory of websites. Overly broad search optimization can hinder marketing strategy by generating a large volume of low-quality inquiries.

In contrast, many webmasters try to optimize their sites for highly specific keywords that would indicate readiness to buy or take some kind of desirable action. Focusing on desirable traffic generates better quality sales leads, resulting in more sales. This is called ‘highly targeted traffic’ and can be very effective when used as part of a smart niche marketing strategy.

About The Author

Robert McCulloch does SEO via Web 2.0, Social Bookmarking, Syndication and Automation. http://website-promotion-blog.info - email robertqaz@hotmail.com

Why Using Search Engine Optimization

2007-04-24T20:18:00.000-07:00

by: Kanicen Nichathavan

E-commerce is a cut throat business. You have to arm yourself with the proper know-how and the tools to make your site a cut above the rest. Each day, more and more sites are clambering to optimize their rankings in websites and if you lose your guard, you may just get trampled on and be left in the abyss filled with so many failed e-commerce sites.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a term widely used today by many e-commerce sites. For the past few years and the next ten years or so, search engines would be the most widely used internet tool to find the sites that they need to go to or the product or information they need.

Most people that use search engines use only the ten top search results in the first page. Making it to the first page, more so to the top three is a barometer of a sites success in search engine optimization. You will get a higher ratio of probability in being clicked on when you rank high. The more traffic for your site, the more business you rake in.

But, it is essential to grab a hold of that spot or make your ranking even better. As I aforementioned, each day is a new day for all e-commerce sites to make them selves rank higher using search engine optimization. It is imperative to make your site better and better everyday.

So just what is search engine optimization and do you have to use it? The answer to why you have to use it is an easy one. You need search engine optimization to be number one, or maybe at least make your site income generating.

With search engine optimization you can get the benefit of generating a high traffic volume. Lets just say you get only a turn out of successful sales with 10 to 20 percent of your traffic. If you get a hundred hits or more a day, you get a good turn out of sales already. If you get only twenty to ten hits a day, you only get one or two if not any at all.

So once again, what is search engine optimization? Search engine optimization is utilizing tools and methods in making your site top ranking in the results of search engines. Getting yourself in the first page and better yet in the top half of the page will ensure that your site will generate public awareness of your sites existence and subsequently generate more traffic, traffic that could lead to potential income and business.

Search engine optimization requires a lot of work to be fully realized. There are many aspects you have to change in your site or add as well to get search engine optimization. These will include getting lots of information about the keyword phrases that are popular in regards to your sites niche or theme.

You may also need to rewrite your sites contents so that you could get the right keyword phrases in your site without making it too commercial but light and informative. There are certain rules and guidelines to be followed with making your sites content applicable and conducive to search engine optimization.

You will also need to collaborate with many other sites so that you could get link exchanges and page transfers. The more inbound and outbound traffics generated by sites among others are one of the components search engines uses to rank sites.

Try to search the internet for many useful help. Tips, guidelines and methods for search engine optimization are plenty to be found. Read many articles that can help you optimize your site in search engine results. The more knowledge and information you gather the better. This will all help you in getting those high rankings. This may require a little time and effort in your part but the benefits will be astounding.

If you can part with some money, there are many sites in the internet that can help you in search engine optimization. There are many sites that help in tracking keyword phrases that can help your site. There are also some content writers that have lots of experience in making good keyword laden content for your sites that have good quality.

Act now and see the benefits garner with search engine optimization. All of these will result to better traffic and more business for your site and company.

About The Author

Kanicen Nichathavan is the founder of The Trafford Networks, The Trafford Networks welcome everyone who are having ranking and optimization problem. Web presence is almost a must for most businesses today. To stamp your web presence, an effective Internet marketing strategy must be developed. Find More Info at http://www.seo-website-optimizer.com.

Domain Names and Search Engine Optimization

2007-04-24T20:15:00.000-07:00

by: Halstatt Pires

There are a lot of factors involved if you are considering building out a site with search engine optimization in mind. Your domain name is just one, but an important one.

Domain Names and Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization is simply an effort to get pages on your site to rank high in the natural or organic listings on various search engines with Google, Yahoo and MSN being the most important. Taking this approach to online marketing requires a lot of planning, patience and work. Unfortunately, many people get off on the wrong foot when the pick their domain name.

Selecting a domain name is often viewed as a simple process. Most businesses will simply use their offline business name or something off the top of their head. Others will try to pick something that is catchy, so visitors will hopefully remember the name and come back to buy more. If you are planning on pursuing search engine optimization, the approaches will not kill you. That being said, there is a better way to pick your domain.

One of the interesting things about most search engines is they put a significant amount of value on the words in the root of a domain name. By root, I mean the words between www and the dot com, net or whatever you are using. Simply put, even a moderate optimization effort will usually lead to the site appearing high under the phrase in the domain name. Given this fact, it is important to think long and hard about the domain you use.

One approach used by many people doing search engine optimization is to match keyword phrases and domains. The idea is to research keyword phrases being used by people in your particular field and then buy domains matching those phrases. For a simple example, consider the fact that many people search for “puppy names”. If you want to build a site about puppies, you would ideally want to buy the domain puppynamesdotcom. Such a site could be optimized and obtain fairly high rankings with a moderate amount of effort.

Obviously, keyword phrases with tons of traffic have already been taken. This should not discourage you, however. Work your way down the phrases identified by whatever research tool you are using. You will be surprised to find that many of the phrases are available. Build a site on one of the domains and you should find your optimization efforts leading to successful results.

About The Author

Halstatt Pires is with http://www.marketingtitan.com - providing internet marketing services.

Practicing Good Search Engine Optimization Techniques

2007-04-24T20:14:00.000-07:00

by: Leonard Bartholomew

The last Google PR update was held on June 23, 2006. That means that we have approximately two to three weeks before the next one. The serious internet marketer has probably been very busy over the last three months. For those of you who do not know what these internet marketers have been doing, here is a look into consistant search engine optimization techniques.

Most of us took a vacation. It has been summer after all, and it is the slow period for internet recruiting. However, if you remember, Google changed it's algorithm drastically. This left many internet companies in a hole. If they were to survive and continue doing business on the internet, they had to dig themselves out in three months. That is not a lot of time. The next two to three weeks is going to be critical and the internet marketer should be re-doubling their efforts to make up the search engine placement that had been lost.

Marketers have been writing a lot of articles. Backlinks are what got their webpage in that prominent position in the first place. It will work again. Backlinks from articles do not lose any of their pr because there is no reciprocal link. Writing articles also provides a number of benefits to you in the form of fresh ideas. Remember, Google loves fresh content? It is a good idea to write and submit at least one article to the article directories weekly.

Articles may be a little difficult to post every day. Blogging every day has become the main-stay for the stay at home internet marketer. It is easy. The marketer can say anything he or she wants to. Common entries include reviews on something that has been read or a webpage that has been visited.

Forum posts also create one way backlinks. You can take the same article you have written, post it in the article directories, post it to your blog, and post it to a number of forums. You can really get your money's worth this way just from one article.

Many internet marketers have been Trying to get into Dmoz again. This article directory is the hardest to get into, but it is worth a try. Directory submission will increase your traffic as well as your link popularity.

Find other places to post your ads. Revise your ads with the new keywords that you may have found for your new niche markets. This has been a must since the last Google update. Landing pages have been hit hard. Ever notice how many info sites there are with zero pr? Internet marketers have been fixing their landing pages.

Tighten up your website search engine optimization. All of the search engines seem to have a different idea of what they are looking for in a well optimized website. Too many topics on one webpage may be an indication that you are not focusing enough on a few keywords. Too many and the webpage seems to loose its glister to the search engines. Internet marketers split the key areas of their website pages into smaller more effective pages, focusing on one theme instead of many.

Higher pr link partners are worth their weight in gold. Google thinks your website is important based on the authority level of your link partners. If you want your page to be a pr5 on the next round, guess what, you should be linking with pr 5 or better partners. You can also hope that your current link partners will get some pr this time around that will help your website pr.

It takes some time for all of these efforts to have an effect on your Google pr as well as your search engine placement. If your have been practicing these techniques consistantly and regularly, you should see an improvement in both. If your have not been practicing these techniques, well, there is always Christmas!

About The Author

Go to Leonard Bartholomew's website for information, tips, and tools about pay per click search engine advertising at: http://www.moxie-drive.com/google-adwords-made-easy/

Free Search Engine Optimization Ebook

2007-04-24T20:08:00.000-07:00

by: Raye Ng

Having a website or a blog is good provide people know where to look for it. It is really often useless to have a website or blog but no one knows it's existence. Sad isn't it?

So how do we go about letting people know it's existence?

PROMOTE IT!

One of the most effective ways is to have a good natural search engine ranking. Do you know that natural search engine is about 250% more effective than Pay Per Click Sponsored Campaign?

Using a Google tracking map, the inverted triangle pattern to the left is an eye-tracking map (covering the first 5-10 natural search engine results), showing where people look and click first when they do a search on Google. Studies have shown that most people actually follow a similar pattern on most of the sites they view. The area in the upper left corner is what gets seen and clicked the most. And how do websites get listed on the upper left triangle area?

Answer: Search Engine Optimization

Okay, you may ask, and how do we achieve search engine optimization? My gift to you, http://www.mindbookstore.com/SEO_MadeEasy_for_u.pdf, search engine optimization made easy ebook(just right click on the url, next click on save target as, and save the ebook under your desired location in your computer). This is from the courtesy of one of my mentors Mr Brad Callen. Trust me it is one of the best search engine optimization ebooks around and what is best is, it is free!

Please allow me to rename this ebook, The Ultimate Wealth Online Search Engine Optimization Ebook. Sweet.

Okay so much for the free download.

Natural Ultimate Wealth Online search engine optimization in a nutshell (you will learn all these in the ebook, step by step):

1. On page optimization

a) Have a good title (with your keywords included) under ,

b) Use "|" to separate keywords

c) Use only your main keywords

d) Fully utilize your Meta tags

e) Use , and , header tags

f) Bold, Italicize, and underline some keywords (do not overdo else you will considered spamming by some search engines)

g) Include your main keywords at the beginning and end of your webpage

h) Use image tags and include your keywords, plus the word image or graphic etc

2. Off page optimization (most important)

a) You must have links pointing to your website

b) These links must include your main keywords in the "anchor text"

c) It is best to have the same links extract from the top ranking website have their links from

d) Try to get link to different IP addresses

e) Trade links with other people

f) Buy text links (there are recommendations in the ebook)

g) Write articles and submit with your links included ( my recommendations Goarticle.com or articlecity.com)

Let me add another (my own) Ultimate Wealth Online search engine optimization recommendation, do a Press Release! This one alone can get you indexed in Google for as soon as 24 hours time (disclaimer: this is an estimate, results vary but it is a good gauge).

If you are trying your best to rank well in google do not submit via http://www.google.com/addurl.html . Well it takes days or weeks for your website to be indexed. It is all explained in the ebook and Brad also shows you how to get indexed by Google faster.

So why wait read the ebook or try the points I highlighted above. Experience and enjoy the results. Do share if you have better tips.

Oh if you have missed the ebook here is the url link again, http://www.mindbookstore.com/SEO_MadeEasy_for_u.pdf, Free Ebook, search engine optimization made easy.

Copyright (c) 2006, Ultimate Wealth Online, Raye Ng, All Rights Reserved

About The Author

Raye Ng, Owner of http://ultimate-wealth-online.blogspot.com

http://www.mindbookstore.com/SEO_MadeEasy_for_u.pdf

Web Site Checklist for Search Engine Optimization (Easy and Quick SEO)

2007-04-24T20:01:00.000-07:00

by: John Mehrmann

Print out this checklist and survey your web site. - How did you do?

- Does your home page answer the four principle questions?

- What are you offering me? Are you trying to sell me something or is it a free information resource?

- Why should I believe you? Credibility

- What's in it for me? Benefit

- Who are you? Contact Information and About You

- Is your home page greeting and message visible "above the fold", without scrolling down the page?

- Can visitors find information easily?

- Can Visitors get to important or common information in two clicks or less?

- Do you have a clear and consistent method of navigation throughout the web site?

- Can visitors bookmark individual pages?

- Can visitors easily find contact information, phone numbers or email addresses on every page?

- Does each page contain links to related topics, web sites, definitions, accessories, "buy now" or "contact now" (action option)?

- Have you run a spell check on every page, and then checked to make sure you used the write words two?

- Have you provided your visitors with a reason to remember you and come back later?

- Can you visualize specific community members who will benefit from your web site?

Slightly Technical Stuff

__ Does every page have a unique Title?

__ Does your Title contain the Keywords for the page, and vice versa?

__ Are your Keywords also used in the test on the page?

__ Are your page titles more than one word, and more than 30 characters?

__ Do you have Alternate Text Tags for your images?

__ Are your Metatags current?

__ Do you use Text Links to other pages? (Spider Bots can not follow Buttons or Images)

__ Have you submitted your pages to the Search Engines?

__ Do you share reciprocal links?

__ Have you optimized your HTML, and do your pages have 25% text or more (higher ratio is better)?

Cool Tools

SEO Lite Toolbar - Install the Toolbar and check the link popularity on any web site
http://www.download.com/SEO-ToolBar-Lite/3000-2379_4-10337328.html

IBP (Internet Business Pages) FREE DEMO - "Optimize My Web Site" and compare to your competitors
http://www.axandra-web-site-promotion-software-tool.com/download.htm

XML Sitemap Generator - Automatically Generate a Sitemap and Metatags
http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/

Google Keyword Tool - See the Current most popular Keywords used to Search the Web
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

______________________________________________________

Words of Wisdom

"I invented the Internet."
- Al Gore

"Words are of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind""
- Rudyard Kipling
http://www.rawpowerwriting.com

"When my father was a child, he played with other children in the neighborhood. When I was a child, we watched television shows about children around the world, interacting with other children and playing in their neighborhoods. Now I watch my son connect to the Internet and play with children around the world."
- John Mehrmann

About The Author

John Mehrmann is a freelance writer and President of Executive Blueprints Inc., an organization devoted to improving business practices and developing human capital. www.ExecutiveBlueprints.com provides resource materials for trainers, sample Case Studies, educational articles and references to local affiliates for consulting and executive coaching.

http://www.InstituteforAdvancedLeadership.com provides self-paced tutorials for personal development and tools for trainers. Presentation materials, reference guides and exercises are available for continuous development.

You may distribute this article freely, print it, sell it, or include it as part of a package as long as it is intact, unchanged and delivered in the original format with acknowledgement to Executive Blueprints Inc.

AdSense Used As A Web Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Detection Tool

2007-04-24T19:59:00.000-07:00

by: James Yaqins

Abstract : In addition to Google AdSense advertisements in the business environment has played a role,Sometimes, they can even as their web search engine optimization conditions (SEO) detection tool!If your website or the website of just doing a column optimization,but just joined the Google AdSense advertising code.AdSense refer to the content of the advertisements may be some food for thought from the information.

If your website joined the Google AdSense.look at the Google advertising on their website that there are some surprising discovery and enlightenment.For example, found a new competitor, or some of the new trends within counterparts.This is the Google AdSense advertising in the business environment has been playing the role of relevant articles.In addition,Google AdSense advertisements and sometimes even their own web search engine optimization can be used as a tool for measuring the conditions!

AdSense website as search engine optimization (SEO) tool.This is my columns on the front page of a web site observation and the analysis found.Google's AdSense discovered in the course of the trial, the front page columns online marketing a new observation.Although the text of a lot and seldom changesIt also believed that the body had been included and web pages related to the themes of the word.However, the website of AdSense advertisements are often not normal,the advertisement and bore little relation to the core content pages. In addition, visit the website,by Alexa toolbar shows and related sites are not directly related to the web page (Alexa website statistics and information that can be used as a reference tool).According to the information analysis, preliminary assessment is the theme of the website homepage.Meta labels or website content may exist some problems search engines can not make an accurate judgment of the core content of the website.According to !

this idea, words related to the website, so a lot of checks Meta found that the problem is the label "page description" content to a certain extent,Since the adoption of a common template, the website of the "page description" and the theme of the website,website content is not much correlation.Simple modification of this issue shortly after a big improvement on the aforementioned issues.

This is what I use AdSense advertising search engine optimization tool for measuring the website as an example.But this "search engine optimization tool for measuring" of a certain limitations, are not effective for all website,Moreover, a strong correlation between advertising pages there AdSense advertising or not.Another possible situation is thattheme and content of the website pages contain keywords corresponding advertisers do not put advertisementsor is not suitable for advertising in this area, of course, impossible for advertising,Google advertising alone can not determine the site of the phenomenon to a simple search engine optimization,only as a reference to a certain extent.

If your website or the website of just doing a column optimization,but just joined the Google AdSense advertising code.

AdSense refer to the content of the advertisements may be some food for thought from the information.

About The Author

James Yaqins own http://www.kersearch.com, this is a free articles search engine and directory for search engine marketing.See more articles on the search engine marketing,please click http://www.kersearch.com

FAQ About Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

2007-04-24T19:57:00.000-07:00

by: Roger Bauer

What is SEO anyway?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO for short) is a highly involved, somewhat lengthy, process designed to elevate an internet website’s major search engine ranking and/or positioning. The major search engines (Google, Microsoft Network (MSN), and Yahoo) make up greater than 70% of search traffic on the internet. This is a common way for people to find others, information, companies, potential business partners, etc. by entering a “keyword” or search term. Typically, the searcher will seek information on their keyword or search term and click on the top results. Thus the higher a site ranks for a given keyword or search term, the better its chances of attracting more visitors to its site.

Why Should I Care about SEO?

If you run a business and have a web presence, don’t you want the most people possible knowing about that business? Wouldn’t it benefit you if your website was able to bring you new leads or develop new customers every day, 24 hours per day? Research has shown that nearly 95% of all search engine users rarely read past the first page of search results. Because of that, it behooves you to have your website on the first page of search results for specific keywords and terms.

Can’t I just Pay for a High Ranking?

No! Organic (or “free”) search listing rankings cannot be purchased. These are “earned” over time via links, content, keyword relevance, page and site descriptions, titles of pages, etc. You can pay for clicks to your website based on specific terms or keywords however these are separate results from the free results people commonly click.

What is Pay-Per-Click?

Pay-per-click is a form of internet advertising where you pay a certain amount for each “click” or “hit” to your website as a result of a person searching for a certain keyword or phrase.

What is Click Fraud?

Click fraud occurs when a person or automated computer script imitates a legitimate search for a keyword or phrase yet clicks on the pay-per-click result for the sole purpose of generating revenue for the search engine or affiliate.

What is a Linking Partner?

A linking partner is a website which provides a link to your site. Some will require a link on your site to theirs in return (a reciprocal link) while others will want to have a link on a third party’s site in exchange for the link to yours. Reciprocal links aren’t as valuable as unique one way links but the more links you have pointing to your site (link popularity), the more “important” the search engines will consider your site.

What is Page Rank?

Page Rank is Google’s proprietary algorithm for determining a site’s importance. It’s expressed as a value from 1-10 with 10 being the most important and most desirable. The algorithm was designed by Larry Page, Google’s co-founder. Page Rank is affected by things such as the number of links pointing to your website, and the amount of unique and relevant content on your website.

What is a Keyword?

A keyword is a typical word or phrase you’d expect people to use when searching for your site. That’s about as simple as we can explain it.

What is Keyword Density?

The number of keywords you use on a particular page in relation to the number of total words on that page. The more keywords you have peppered throughout the page and site, the better your site may rank for that particular term. You must be careful not to load a page with too many keywords, however—that is considered keyword “stuffing” or spamming and is frowned upon by the search engines.

What is a Sitemap?

A sitemap is basically an inventory listing of all of the pages on your site. It tells the search engines how to get around your site and also how many pages there are on your site. It can be made visible to your visitors, but it doesn’t have to be. Uploading an XML file directly to the search engines is a generally accepted best practice for optimizing your search engine rankings.

What is a Spider?

Search engines utilize small programs to surf and inventory sites all over the internet. These are called spiders, and they follow links from site to site to gather their inventory to report back to the search engine. They are also referred to as crawlers or bots from time to time.

What is a Meta Tag?

A meta tag is an HTML piece of code which provides information about that particular page or document. These don’t provide formatting information or any actionable code—they are there for the search engines to catalog your site and the pages contained on your site.

What is a Blog?

A blog (short for weblog) is a news or journal type of site which is frequently used more for opinionated type of entries and is typically updated frequently. It is intended for general consumption but has become a valuable tool for all types of users to spread information and awareness of their websites.

Why Should I Write Articles for my Website?

Articles are a great way to increase the amount of unique content on your site as it pertains to the keywords you desire to rank well. There are numerous websites that publish articles, and it is common practice for the authors to include a link in their by-line back to their website. This creates an inbound link to the author’s website which in turn increases its popularity. It’s also a good way to increase awareness aside from the linking benefits.

What are Directories?

Directories are databases containing listings to websites based on categories and sub-categories. Many of the search engines access directories to crawl their links to learn of new sites. Directories are an invaluable resource for search engines and can often serve to improve a site’s ranking depending upon how important the search engine weighs the directory in question. Directories may provide a link to your site often without requiring a return or reciprocal link on your site.

There you have a faq based overview of search engine optimization, why you should care, and some of the key terms used. If you're considering implementing an optimization program for your website, please visit http://smbconsultinginc.com for more information on this topic.

About The Author

Roger Bauer is Founder and CEO of SMB Consulting, Inc., a Louisville, Kentucky based small business consulting firm specializing in strategic planning, web presence, internet marketing, SEO, technology, and business analysis. To learn more, point your browser to http://smbconsultinginc.com

Time and Search Engine Optimization

2007-04-24T19:55:00.000-07:00

by: Halstatt Pires

Listen to anyone who remotely knows anything about search engine optimization and you will hear all kinds of strategies and tips on getting high rankings. Time, however, is rarely mentioned.

Time and Search Engine Optimization

When it comes to search engine optimization [“seo”], there are many ways to achieve your goals. Different strategies work in different situations. Some people use articles such as this to build links like mad while others disavow the strategy. Others will opine to the high heavens about keyword density analysis, keyword phrase research and so on. I should know because I do it as well. Get a few beverages in me and I can put you to sleep in 10 minutes flat with my yammering. Guaranteed!

One factor that is not really discussed is time. When it comes to seo, time is an element that matters. What does time mean? It simply means the longer a site is up and indexed by the search engines, the better it will rank. This is particularly true for Google, which seems to give a lot more weight to the age of the site these days.

I decided to write this article because time is not a subject raised by many people in seo. Why not? Well, there isn’t much you can do about it. You can’t really speed it up. Since there isn’t any way to tweak the time element as a part of a strategy, it is never mentioned. It should be, however. For people that are just starting out, time is something you have to take into account.

When building a new site, most of us rush to get it indexed as quickly as possible to get the sandbox delay with Google kicked into gear. The sandbox is just an artificial mechanism Google uses to avoid ranking any new site for six to nine months. Most people understand this now, but nobody really talks about what happens when the hated sandbox period ends. Simply put, your site may shoot up to the top 10 for your keywords. Then again, it may not. Often, it will shoot up, but only to the 15th position or so. Does this mean you have done something wrong? Probably not. If you are pursuing a popular keyword phrase, it can take time for your listing to crawl up from the teens to the every valued top five ranking. As your site ages like fine wine, it will continue to move up.

A few years ago, I started doing the seo for a site in the travel industry. After waiting for the sandbox period to run, the listing appeared at the number 17 position in Google. I groaned. Over the next four months, it slowly moved up to the number 11 position. ARGGGG! I still have scars on my forehead from banging my head on the desk. Well, since I am telling you this, you can assume it continued moving up. It now sits at number 3 and the site is 3 years old. The seo strategy was never changed. The only thing that did change was time.

If you are pursuing seo for your own site, it is important to keep in mind that time is a factor in getting high rankings. This is particularly true if you are going for highly competitive keywords. If you don’t pop out of the sandbox at number one on Google, don’t panic. Just keep doing what you are doing. Time will often take care of the rest.

About The Author

Halstatt Pires is with http://www.marketingtitan.com - an internet marketing firm in San Diego.

Off Page SEO: The Importance Of Incoming Links And Search Engine Optimization

2007-04-24T19:53:00.000-07:00

by: Rob Ferrall

Off page SEO: The importance of incoming links and search engine optimization

Off page seo an integral part of getting your web site indexed in search engines. All of your on page, or onsite, Search Engine Optimization will be wasted if you don't have a method for getting search engine robots to your web site in the first place.

So, how do you go about getting these search engine robots to your web site? A simple way to do this is to get other web sites to link to yours. Getting a web site to link to your new site is not really that difficult, only it can take a bit of time. There are literally thousands of web sites out there that will give you a link to your web site simply for the asking. The internet is a beautiful thing!

I am going to focus on one group of web sites that will help you with your off page seo link building: online directories. These are collections of links to web sites grouped by related categories. The good thing about these directories is that with a little bit of effort you can find high ranking directories that will allow you to place your web site link in their directory without payment and without having to link back to them. Typically these directories can be found by doing a search for "Free non reciprocal directory" in your favorite search engine. The problem with this method is that it can be time consuming.

1) If you don't have a compiled list of these directories, it could literally take you an hour just to submit your web site to 5-10 directories.

2) If you by chance find a web site that has links to these types of directories but you don't have a good method of submitting your web site: It could take you up to 5 minutes or more just to submit 1 link!

Why would I even suggest this method if it is such a hassle? It's because there are web sites that will do the "dirty work" for you. Directory submission services can take the hassle and mind numbing effort out of your off page search engine optimization. Simply do a search for "Directory Submission Service" in your favorite search engine to find some of these time saving gems.

The reason you absolutely need incoming links is so that your web site can start to get crawled, then indexed, by search engines. As I stated above: It doesn't matter if you have the most search engine friendly web site in the world: If search engine robots cannot find your webster: you've wasted your time and money! Do not waste your time with "search engine submission" services: while these methods can work, they are very slow to get results. If you submit your web site to Google via their "Add Your Website" page, you can expect to wait 4-6 weeks or more for Google to even visit your web site! There's no guarantee they will return, either. With the directory submissions I've mentioned here your web site can be crawled and even indexed by search engines within 24 hours of getting your link placed on a high ranking web site.

The main point is this: in order to get your web site crawled and indexed by search engine robots quickly, you need to build incoming links to your web site. Do them yourself, or hire someone else to do them for you, it doesn't matter. Otherwise, your pretty new web site might never have a visitor other than yourself.

About The Author

Rob Ferrall has a SE Friendly Directory Submission Service that offers website submissions at an affordable rat. Visit http://www.directorysitesubmit.com for more details.

Website Traffic And Search Engine Optimization: The Domain Name

2007-04-24T19:51:00.000-07:00

by: Donovan Baldwin

Whether for business or personal use, before there can be a website, there must be a domain name, and one of the most important steps of a search engine optimization plan is to pick the right one.

So what IS a domain name? A domain name is that thing that people give you when you ask for their website. anything.com, for example, is a domain name.

Some things to consider in choosing a domain name are:

1. Keep it short and simple. If your website is for your business, a short domain name has its advantages. Whether you want to print it on business cards or display it on a billboard, making the domain too long or too complicated may make it too hard for potential customers to catch in one reading or recall later, if they did not have a chance to write it down. An exception to this is if you can get a phrase which will be remembered into the domain name (Example: buytwogetonefree.com) ...which leads us to point number two.

2. Make it easy to remember. Your customer won't always have a pen with them, or maybe they won't even think about your domain name or website until later. Short, simple, and easy to remember can be important, but you normally shouldn't just opt for something like qdipe.com, and we are about to tell you why.

3. Relate it to your business or organization. If you sell bicycle parts, try to put "bicycle parts" in the domain name. This is not only for the eyes of internet surfers, but for the search engines as well. They use various factors to rank the pages they visit, and sometimes the words used in the domain can increase the rank of the page. This brings up another point.

4. Think about keywords. Although we are not going to get into Meta tags in this article, keywords are important. Even if hardly any search engines look at the "keyword" Meta tag any more, they are still searching the content of your site for keywords found within the text of the body, "alt" tags on the images, and "title" tags on anchor text and other links. Taking number 3 and number 4 together, the best of both worlds is to have a business name that is a keyword or phrase relevant to the business and use that as the domain name.

5. Cute's nice, but...! Some people try to make their domain name memorable by using puns, jokes, wordplay, or number combinations. Just be careful. A few years ago I needed a domain name for a weight loss product. I went through all the "short" and "easy to remember" names I could think of, but they all were taken! I then came up with the domain name NoDiet4Me. It made perfect sense to me! I went to have a magnetic sign made for my car, and the lady read it this way..."No 'die' t 4 me" with a lot of stress on the word "die" and shook her head with a worried and confused look on her face! The site worked fine and got a lot of traffic and made me a lot of money, but now I wonder if I lost any traffic because of my domain name.

6. To dash or not to dash. There have been a lot of discussions about whether to put a hyphen in the domain name. I can't honestly answer based on my own experiences, as I use both, but the consensus seems to be from my research that it is easier for a search engine to categorize and rank a site that has a hyphen than one where the words are run together. Example: chickensoup vs. chicken-soup.

There is one danger to be recognized if you choose to use the hyphen. You must make sure it is clearly shown in any printed advertising or representations, and if giving the domain name verbally, go to great lengths to make sure that your listener understands the hyphens MUST be inserted. Many people are not that internet savvy and will hear "bobs dash bicycles" and still type in "bobsbicycles".

7. Alphabet soup. Ever wonder what's best? Should you get a .com or .net? Will it be okay to get a .biz or .us? What the heck do those things mean anyways and does it matter? Well, in today's world, most people entering the internet world are familiar with .com and .net. After that, they tend to get confused. I will not get into country specific top level domains at the moment, as this article is primarily directed at those either doing business in the U.S. or those doing business worldwide with a generic type product where a country-specific domain name would not matter. So, in most cases, .tv, .ws, or .org will not matter one way or another. By the way, .tv is the top level domain for the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu and .ws is the top level domain for Samoa.

Just to continue this discussion on extensions for a moment. When passing someone your domain name whether verbally or in writing, make sure they see or hear the extension. To use my earlier example, simply saying, "My website is bobsbicycles", will probably cause people just to type in the .com on the end as that is what they are most used to hearing.

8. Branding. In some cases, a domain name may be associated with an easily recognized, or branded, product. Wal-Mart and Ford do not have to worry THAT much about such niceties as keyword density or "easy to remember" names. However, if you are working with a product or company which has or is in the process of branding itself, some of the information given above about selecting domain names might not be relevant.

I am going to assume that most people who read this little article are probably trying to do some SEO (search engine optimization) themselves, and one of the best places to start is with the domain name itself.

About The Author

Donovan Baldwin is a Dallas area writer and network marketing professional. He is a graduate of the University of West Florida, a member of Mensa and is retired from the U. S. Army. Learn how to get your own domain name and create an internet business at http://donsdomains.ws.

Why Should One Use Search Engine Optimization

2007-04-24T19:49:00.000-07:00

by: Razvan Marian Jr

It’s morning and John wakes up, same as he does everyday. He starts the computer and begins checking his email and reviewing his website’s stats. “ $15 in Adsense and 1 sale .. good, good… but still I’d wish those were $500 and 10 sales “. He closes the stats and goes to work in order to get the payment that helps him live a good life.

Mark is also waking up, making a cup of coffee and then sitting comfortably at his laptop. He opens his website’s stats and his heart starts beating a bit faster while he reads on the screen “ $399 in Adsense and 5 sales last night… good, but I WANT IT BETTER” “. He closes the stats, eats a quick breakfast and then sits back again at his laptop and starts working on his websites in order to improve the stats. He doesn’t need to go to work as his websites bring enough income to help him live very well.

Now the question is simple: who would you prefer to be? John or Mark? Do you like to go and work for your boss and help him make money so you can earn your living ? Or do you want to be your own boss and have your own business? Because yes, these days, having a good site IS a business. If your answer is “John” then you’d better stop reading this article and get to more serious things. But if instead you would prefer to be Mark then it may be useful to continue reading. Ok, ok but what does “having a good site” mean? I have a great design, I have great online support, great products and offers, great site functionality… but still I don’t get the expected income? If you ask yourself this than take 2 minutes to think about: “Who am I receiving money from? The design? The functionality of the site? No, what really brings the money is, in fact, the traffic, the people who visit the site and order the services/products or who simply click on the Google ads.”

Now that we found out that the traffic is what makes the webmaster happy, we should ask ourselves how we can get this traffic to our sites. Well, there are several methods of doing this, but nowadays, search engine optimization (SEO) is the method that brings the best targeted traffic. If you want to build a strong business which could provide you more than a decent income, than you should use SEO.

To succeed with a SEO campaign, one must follow three major steps: keywords analysis, on page SEO and off page SEO. The keywords analysis part has to be done in order to assure that you have picked the best keywords ( the ones that will get you the highest number of visitors in the shortest time ).

On page SEO is the step where changes are done directly on your site by modifying it’s files. You have to sort out the titles, metatags, images, text, page structure, internal linking, proper tags and much more things related to your site. In all this process you will use the keywords you found during the keywords analysis part. This will ensure you’ll have a well optimized site focused on those keywords.

Last but not least, off page SEO – considered by all the great SEO specialists out there the most important part of a SEO campaign – related to the external links you can point toward your site. As each link toward your site is considered “a vote” the more votes you have the more “powerful” your site will become.

If you do all these correctly then your site will end up in the tops of the search engines and start getting the best-targeted organic traffic that exists at the moment. So what are you waiting for? Go out there and start doing SEO…. Because SEO it’s the future.

About The Author

Razvan Marian Jr is a SEO specialist with more years of experience in the field. He is also the leading manager of http://www.cheapsubmissions.eu, developing services such as cheap web site submissions and cheap articles submissions.

Affordable Search Engine Optimization Is The Key To Online Marketing

2007-04-24T19:47:00.000-07:00

by: Andy West

In this day and age, the Internet has quickly become the best and most efficient way to advertise your business's particular services. Affordable search engine optimization has quickly replaced standard advertising and is becoming more and more popular each and every day. The premise is actually quite simple. Almost everyone who uses search engines will automatically choose from the first few matches that they receive. Therefore, affordable search engine optimization is the perfect answer to increasing your online potential.

On any given topic, there could be upwards of thousands of websites. If your website doesn't even make the first ten listings in the search engines, then you will lose out on an incredible amount of business. Also, the average consumer will be more likely to trust a site that comes up among the first matches, rather than on the last page of the results. However, there are some companies that will charge you an arm and a leg for this type of service. Therefore, finding something in your price range is the answer.

There are many companies that offer this type of service but it is important to investigate their credentials before enlisting them to help your business. There are some companies that say that they are experts in the field of SEO but are in fact just looking to take some money out of your pocket, without ever increasing your standings on the search engines. A good way to avoid this is to find a company that seems credible and then ask them if you could get a reference from one of their past customers. This way, you will be able to find out first hand whether or not that company will be able to give you the proper SEO service that you deserve.

A professional SEO company will not only drive traffic to your website, but will work alongside of you to ensure that the traffic that comes to your site will be interested in your particular service. There is not much point to having people looking at your site if they have no use for your services. This is another reason to get a qualified professional to help. Proper SEO will drive qualified customers to your website. Customers that are specifically searching for your particular service and who are looking for it at this very moment.

Imagine the possibilities. Whenever anyone online is searching for your service, they are immediately matched up with your company's web site. Once they get to your site, they will realize that you have absolutely everything that they could possibly need. So why would they search any further? Affordable search engine optimization is the single most effective way to drive more qualified traffic to your site and works better than any other method. This is perhaps the only way to increase your businesses online potential and it doesn't even have to cost you a lot of money. Don't be fooled into thinking that companies that charge a higher rate will give you better SEO service. After careful research and investigating, it is very easy to find a company that will give you proper affordable search engine optimization that will benefit your business for years to come.

With the Internet becoming bigger and bigger each day, you cannot even afford to not take advantage of SEO. The amount of business that you will receive from this simple process will astound you and the profits will amaze you. Before attempting any other online marketing processes, keep in mind that affordable search engine optimization is your first and final answer.

About The Author

Andy West is a freelance writer for Vertical Measures. For more information on affordable search engine optimization services, please visit Vertical Measures at http://www.verticalmeasures.com.

Easy Search Engine Optimization Tips for Beginners

2007-04-24T03:43:00.000-07:00

by: Rasheed Ali

Search engine optimization is a great way to bring awareness of your web site to the online community. Search engine optimization is the process of making your web site more accessible to the major search engines that index and rank web sites each time someone performs a search for a specific word or phrase. If you want to be successful at optimizing your site, read this information and use the tips to successfully market your online business.

Title Tags

The title tag is located at the top of your browser window and is a great place to start optimizing your site. There are several things that you can do in the title tag to make your site more accessible. The first is to use a descriptive title with text that can be understood by people of all reading levels. Using a descriptive title will help people become more interested in your site. You should use the same words in your header that you use in the title page. This will show the search engines that the title is relevant to the contents of the page. Another trick to use with title tags is using a different title for each page on your web site. If you have the same title on every page, the search engines might not index them because they will appear to be the same.

Some savvy internet marketers use keyword phrases and separate them with a bar such as this example:

Home Based Business | Internet Home Based Business | Internet Business Opportunity

Header Tags

When you use header tags, (also known as H1 tags and H2 tags and so on) don't just type random words with no meaning or relevance to your site. Use keywords that are relevant to your business so that your site is indexed appropriately.

Applying these tags ise easy if you're using an HTML editor like NVU or Microsoft FrontPage.

Linking

Linking can be an important search engine optimization tool, but it's important to know how to use links to effectively market your web site. You should link only to search-engine optimized pages that have content that is linked closely with your content. If you want to put links to your site on other web sites, choose sites that are closely related to yours. You should also choose sites that do not have questionable content or purposes.

There are many schools of thought on linking and other unrelated websites do have their benefits as well however, a beginner should avoid linking to them for now.

Content

Use human-friendly content to help the search engines find your site and make it easier to read. Your content should be relevant to the topic of your web site and inform or entertain your audience. If you do a good job at providing interesting and relevant content, people will want to keep visiting your site for information and updates. Content can also help you get ranked higher in the search engine results for particular words and phrases. These search engine rankings are important and are the focus of optimizing your web site.

Submission

If you have a content-rich site that follows the rules of search engine optimization, and you have linked to relevant partners, then you should have no problem getting indexed by the search engines. Each search engine has specific rules and algorithms for determining how sites are indexed and ranked.

Now that you understand the importance of SEO and have the basic information you need, get out there and start optimizing your web site so you can start realizing better profits and build a more successful business.

About The Author

** Rasheed Ali is CEO and founder of the Internet Coaching Academy http://www.InternetCoachingAcademy.com where he and his team of internet business experts are helping people from all over the world start, build and profit from their own internet business. He also offers a FREE newsletter and FREE video course on building a profitable home based business on the internet. **

Creating Sitemaps, The Proper Path For Search Engine Optimization

2007-04-24T03:42:00.000-07:00

by: Razvan Marian Jr

In order to have a successful website, it is very important to possess all the different and important factors for web promotion, and a sitemap is one of them. If you decide to take your website to the next level it is imperative to include a sitemap in it.

By now you may be wondering, what is a sitemap? The answer is quite simple, a sitemap is an aid which is used for accomplishing an easier navigation of a given site. Inside it you will find the whole structure of a website and also the most important links and sections that it has, basically it will ensure that your visitors will know exactly where to go when looking for certain information within your site, otherwise they might get bored and try with the next similar website. But the main reason why a sitemap is so important for your website is because it will help you raise your ranking within search engines, and that means, more visitors, more exposure and overall, a higher Internet success.

There are different types of sitemaps: there is the Google sitemap, the simple .html sitemap, the .txt sitemaps, and others which are mainly used by search engines to locate your site and to help you visitors during their surfing.

First of all let us discuss the Google sitemap, if you have a Google sitemap your site will be benefited in many ways, first of all, the speed in which your website and its sections are added to the Google index will significantly increase. Also, Google will be quickly aware of any changes or updates that you do on your site. There is also the very convenient fact that your website will be listed in Google and many people will find it without any problem, but more importantly, with a Google sitemap you will be capable of providing your visitors with fresh new content and all the information they require within your site in a matter of minutes.

In order to create a Google sitemap you will need to code it in a programming language known as Extensible Markup Language, otherwise referred as XML; the process is tedious and it can be quite time-consuming, especially if your website contains hundreds of sections. The fact that sitemaps are so difficult to code is the reason why many people have opted for another option, using a sitemap generator. A sitemap generator is a simple program that will let you create your own personalized sitemap in a matter of minutes.

If you are ready to create a sitemap, possibly the easiest option for you is to start with a simple .html sitemap, these popular sitemaps which have been used for years will help your visitors find their way around your site. To create a simple .html sitemap is easy, just do a new page and put in it links to all the other pages of your site. Having a simple .html sitemap will not only help your visitors, but it is also extremely helpful for search engines’ spiders when trying to locate specific content within your site.

If you want to create a simple .txt sitemap just type a list of the different URLs available in your website, save them in a text file and you will be then capable of submitting the list to the search engines.

About The Author

Razvan Marian Jr is a SEO specialist with more years of experience in the field. He is also the leading manager of http://www.cheapsubmissions.eu , developing services such as cheap web site submissions and cheap articles submissions.

Selecting The Right Company For Search Engine Optimization

2007-04-24T03:39:00.000-07:00

by: Mikhail Tuknov

SEO, the de facto standard of online marketing, can be defined as a “set of legitimate practices undertaken to gain the highest possible search engine rankings, under a given key phrase, for a given URL. “The term SEO when expanded stands for “Search Engine Optimization”. It is the hottest marketing device to put your website on top of the chart in majors like Google, Yahoo & MSN. Studies have revealed that most search engine users do not click past the first three pages or more extensively first 30 ranks. Your own experience of using search engines probably verifies this. If your website does not enjoy eminent ranking, it might as well be invisible. In simple words, without SEO the very purpose of your commercial website is underutilized.

SEO has evolved as a main strategy of online marketing. This makes it equally important to choose the right SEO Company. And the right company is not just any firm that achieves exceptional results. It should have much more than that and here is what you should look at:

* Choose a company which has a good track record in terms of achieving top results in search engines. Obviously, your first choice goes in selecting a company that has brought results in your industry. And we agree to that! Our experience shows that there are companies that bring exceptional results in one industry segment, fair average in another. SEO involves vast amount of research. And that makes the difference. However, that’s not the sole criteria. You need to consider other factors also.

* SEO is a long term commitment, short term strategies don’t work here. Look out for the company’s client base and the age of the client-company relationship. That will give you a fair amount of idea about the company’s rapport with client and their handling of relationships. You can even directly ask for references with their contact numbers. This practical approach can go a long way in qualitative selection criteria.

* The rules of SEO keep on changing with changing algorithms of search engines. An ethical SEO company makes sure that it keeps itself tuned to these legitimate practices and does not put client’s website in danger of getting blacklisted by search engines. Verify that your chosen company follows them in strict accordance of search engines guidelines. These guidelines are available on respective search engines inside pages.

* Get a project schedule from the SEO Company during the contract period. It may be a part of the proposal. SEO is a continuous process, not a one-time effort. It involves website and competition analysis, keyword research, content overhauling, HTML coding, broken links checkup and above all, link exchanges. See that each process is properly worked on your website and corresponding reports presented to you within time lines.

* Content is now evolving as a key factor in website rankings in search engines. Will your vendor update the content on a periodic basis? Will he maintain the copyright or you are the owner of that content? Clear these before you sign up.

* Time scale may be essential to see visible results. MSN and Yahoo list faster than Google say in 12-16 weeks. Ask for a definite time schedule. Some companies link payment plans with these milestones.

* Search Engine Marketing Company should offer you an automated way of watching traffic reports to your site. This is called website statistics analysis or in short ‘Stats’. The most commonly used third-party software is ‘Awstats’. They give you a complete analysis of the traffic build-up hour-by-hour day-by-day. Stats also give you the country break of hits to the website. And when your site starts getting traffic from search engines, they provide you the list of traffic generating keywords. Such reports extensively help you to get the correct picture of how SEO is benefiting you and your organization.

There are a number of other points that can help to make your selection criteria a perfect one. However, above points can be excellent beginning in your quest to search a RIGHT SEO company.

Infatex is a San Diego based search engine marketing company, a provider of wide variety of services such as: search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO), paid advertisement (PPC), link development, search engines and directory submissions, web design and development, intranets and extranets.

About The Author

Mikhail Tuknov, search engine marketing specialist is founder of Infatex (Search Engine Marketing Company). With an extensive background in Internet marketing, Mikhail Tuknov offers SEO, PPC, SEM services.
http://www.infatex.com/

How Search Engine Optimization Can Help Your Organization

2007-04-24T03:37:00.000-07:00

by: Mikhail Tuknov

The world over organizations are employing low cost techniques in different business processes. Production work is getting outsourced to churn out low cost products. Consultancy is taken from a distant nation to bring in quality and reduce service cost. Educational tutorials are taken through e-learning system. Whats common to all these – INTERNET, which is helping them to connect easily and deliver in time. In this scenario, companies have shown keen interest in their website. They now take them as virtual offices that should look pretty good in design & content and should reach millions and billions of people worldwide. So International marketing has come to limelight and metamorphised into Internet Marketing.

Internet Marketing is done in a variety of ways, the most noticeable being Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). SEO has given a new life to websites. It is making their presence felt in a galaxy of websites scattered over the virtual world of Internet. SEO has more to do with rankings that get noticed than just listings at any page of a search engine result. Here is how SEO can benefit your organization:

Benefits, plentiful!

You can battle with your competitor on a level playing field no matter whether he belongs to Fortune-500 club or is a small entity. The natural (or organic) listings in Search Engines get much more clicks than the paid “Sponsored” links. Only SEO makes this difference. Even if bigger competitors pump in more money to get top listed through paid links, they cannot beat a well marketed SEOed website. It is a truth & it matters!

Rankings bring traffic. Higher rankings get significant traffic. A website that gets top ranks is known to get business enquiries in abundance particularly when the keyword is competitive. SEO gets you at top and maintains it there all the time. It assures you a constant flow of new prospects and new business. All that may be done at a salary of an average single employee. Isn’t it worth investing!

Opportunities are bagful on Internet. It is often seen that a brand’s associates / affiliates rank higher than the brand itself. This is all because they bagged the first opportunity and held to SEO bandwagon long before the Brand realized SEO’s importance. Result has been phenomenonal business through Internet. All thanks to Search Engine Optimization!

Businesses spend on email marketing, online banner advertising, paid search engine listings and others to reach exponentially growing Internet users. SEO outclasses all of them. It is estimated to be costing 5-6 times lower than banner advertisement ; has best ROI than paid links when worked for a longer period and highly effective than ‘spam’ labeled email marketing. No doubt, SEO is effectively better than the best.

Experts like Forrester Research put SEO one up than Email marketing. In one of their surveys, they state “search engines reach valuable, motivated, and ready customers. To capitalize on search as a marketing tool, marketers should shift acquisition email and ad dollars to search….” Google earns billions of dollars by selling ads through paid advertisement (sponsored links). And the earnings are increasing year-by-year. All these are clear indicators of the importance of search engine importance and the related marketing. Should we say more!

It has been found that search engines though being the top method to find sites on Internet, is allocated a marketing budget by only a small percentage of businesses This gap between recognition of the benefits of Search Engine Optimization and actually doing it is anybody’ opportunity. By grabbing it, you can give your business a competitive advantage.

About The Author

The Truth About Search Engine Optimization

2007-04-24T03:35:00.000-07:00

by: Julie Batten

Search engine optimization – or SEO – has been around for pretty much as long as search engines have. Over the years, it has gained both proponents and opponents – many for good reason. The prevalence of sneaky, underhanded tactics, increasing spam in the search engine indexes, and publicized cases of websites being banned from the listings have given SEO a bad rap.

"SEO is just about tricking the search engines," some claim.

In an effort to de-bunk this and other wayward SEO beliefs, we have developed a list of 'top 5 myths about SEO'.

#1 – SEO is all about tricking the search engines

In actuality, good, honest SEO is not about tricking, but analyzing search engine algorithms in an effort to develop websites in a way that consciously supports search engines in doing their job – that is providing the most relevant content to their users. "White hat" SEOers understand that what's good for users is also typically good for search engines, and they strive to not 'trick' search engines, but be forthright in giving them exactly what they want.

#2 – SEO is all about the meta-tags

In a previous life, webmasters would stuff the meta-keyword tag with their desired terms, and voila!, a top spot in the rankings. SEO was about the meta-tags and not much else. Whether this approach worked then or not, it most certainly does not today. In addition to the multitude of other 'on page' ranking factors that now seem to matter (such as keyword-rich copy, anchor text, and file names), sites now more than ever have to look 'off site' – most importantly, at the volume and quality of their inbound links.

#3 – You only have to do SEO once

A recipe for SEO failure: optimize your pages once, obtain great rankings, and let simmer forever. On the contrary, successful SEO requires on-going evaluation and tweaking of strategies in order maintain and enhance positioning. With search engine algorithms changing by the hour, searcher behaviour maturing, and the competitive environment constantly shifting, does it stand to reason that your rankings today will remain the same 6 months – or weeks – from now? Without an on-going commitment to SEO, probably not.

#4 – Anyone can do SEO right

You read an e-book on SEO. You attended an SES conference. You're now a seasoned SEO expert, right? Wrong. Although SEO is definitely NOT rocket science, it does take a level of knowledge, and most importantly, experience, to really succeed. The knowledge that comes from testing out various techniques and working with a wide variety of websites over time is invaluable. Knowing how and why to select the right keywords is crucial, and understanding the impact of the site's design and coding on SEO is just as important. The bottom line: Yes, anyone can 'do' SEO, but it's much more difficult to really do it right.

#5 – SEO is purely the webmaster's job

Your webmaster is responsible to make sure that the front and back end of the site performs as it should. They are typically a technical person; a programmer. They are definitely not marketers. They might implement the SEO changes to the site, but actually determining what should be changed should be in the hands of the content authors and marketing/comm people in your organization. Hoisting the full responsibility for SEO on the webmaster's shoulders can produce less than desirable results as these 'techies' struggle to imagine what a customer would type into a search engine, and then attempt to massage these words into your agency-perfected copy. Instead, make optimization a collective initiative – ideally with the guidance of an SEO expert - and give your webmaster a break.

About The Author

As the manager of the SEM Solutions Group at non-linear creations, Julie Batten manages the search engine marketing team to deliver exceptional client results by means of organic search engine optimization and pay-per-click search engine marketing campaigns. Julie has extensive experience in web marketing and has worked with key clients, including TD Canada Trust, TSX, and Mattamy Homes.
http://www.nonlinear.ca/

Basic Search Engine Optimization and 5 Critical Links

2007-04-24T03:32:00.000-07:00

by: Russell Portwood

Search Engine Optimization or "SEO" is the process of optimizing a website for high search engine rankings for a particular search term or set of search terms. OK, now that we have the dictionary definition, what does that really mean?

When you go to Google and do a search you expect to find something relevant to the "search term" you entered, right?

If you look for apples you want to find something about either those red shiny fruits or perhaps a computer. So how does Google know where to look? Its spiders (computer programs that scour the internet) look for pages that are relevant to the term you entered. Actually, this has been done beforehand so google can get your results likity-split.

These pages are "indexed". Your mission as an astute webmaster is to construct you pages so the search engines index you pages quickly and accurately. This way, the search engine is happy because they deliver a relevant page to its "customer", the searcher. the searcher is happy because they found what they were looking for. As a webmaster, you are happy because the search engine delivered a targeted searcher to your site. Win, win, win.

It boils down to one word. Relevance. You see, search engine optimization is no longer about "tricking" search engines into thinking that your site is relevant. If you are familiar with the changes at the various search engines you may have heard about the horror stories of sites that were ranked high one day and then not at all the next. These sites usually relied on underhanded methods to get indexed.

If your site is truly relevant and delivers what is "expected" you will most likely climb in the rankings.

Search Engine Optimization is more than just creating a few meta tags and submitting your URL to a few search engines.

in fact, SEO goes even beyond the definition we started with above. There are a number of strategies that currently work to provide a better chance at getting listed higher in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP). Besides having the page optimized with relevant words and terms, outside factors can actually play a large part. Sometimes these factors are the MOST important.

Among the other factors that play a vital part in your sites rankings are: incoming links and the rank of the sites that provide the links, listings by relevant directories, and of course the quality of the content of your own site.Let's face it: Search Engine Optimization is vital to a successful site. While it may not be simple, it doesn't have to be overly complicated either. There are plenty of resources on the internet that will help you optimize your site for optimization.

In keeping with our mission to point you toward the very best tools we have listed a few of those here.

http://www.seo2020.com
http://www.seochat.com
http://www.seotoday.com
http://www.seroundtable.com
http://www.searchengineforums.com

About The Author

Step-by-step internet marketing methods revealed. Russell Portwood provides the tools to make any site a blazing success.
http://www.interntmarketingtoolz.com

Search Engine Optimization Help Is A Boon For Your Online Business

2007-04-24T03:30:00.000-07:00

by: Steve Waganer

Are you planning to start a website? Is that you are worried about marketing your website on top search engine? Search engine optimization help is meant to solve all your problems. SEO is mainly concerned with popularizing your site on major search engines like Google, MSN or any other. In fact, it has become a necessity for online business. Search engine optimization help is meant to show the availability and accessibility of your website. SEO is the appropriate method of improving the visibility of a website in search engines. It gives you better chances of attracting various customers and increasing your online business.

The primary aim of search engine optimization help is to encourage the links of an online business, on the search engines. SEO involves designing best strategies to attract various customers through search engine links. Main advantage of the search engine optimization help is that, it can give an authoritative place to your website in the search engines. It is always mandatory that the SEO firm should have valid reasons for their search engine strategies. Even the support data offered by them has to be appropriate. One should always be careful about the methods used in the SEO business.

Search engine optimization help can prove beneficial for those firms that are willing to have a faster access to numerous visitors. No website is useful if it does not give necessary and desirable information. Words have the power of describing just about anything. While writing informative content for your site, you have to be extra cautious. You are required to take care that the content should explain about the products and services in a convincing manner. Mainly, content helps to enhance the popularity of your website. Another thing to be noticed in the matter of content is that, it should be saleable that can turn visitors into purchasers.

In the world of internet, search engine optimization has gained wide acclaim. Today, everything is changing with a fast pace. The concept of marketing and popularizing is entering every business line. Be it any business organization, website is considered as the most important source of explaining about products and services. Every other person has an excess to internet. In fact, this thing has made it slightly easier for online business companies. Still, access to your site won’t work much if the visitors are not convinced with information. Search engine optimization help can give you and your online business company a means to prove yourself in the business world.

One of the most important things in search engine optimization is relevant keyword research. Just imagine that if a visitor searches for a particular keywords and your site is not appearing among top ranking results, then what will happen. It is quite obvious that you will lose clients. You should take care that your site must support all the necessary and relevant keywords. Search engine optimization help will surely prove beneficial for you. You just have to look out for the right and reliable search engine optimization firm, which can provide you with essential help.

About The Author

Steve Waganer has specialization in Web Marketing. He is expert in Search engine optimization, Affiliated Marketing,Affordable search engine marketing and Organic search engine optimization.To get his expert search engine Optimization help for your website to get high rank and top position in major search engines visit http://www.cometsearchenginemarketing.com

Search Engine Optimization for Affiliate Marketers

2007-04-24T03:27:00.000-07:00

by: Ran Victor

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a compartment of search engine marketing, and deals with humanizing the number and/otherwise excellence of visitors to a web site from "natural" (aka "organic" otherwise "algorithmic" search engine) listings. To all intents and purposes, SEO is marketing by attractive to machine algorithms to enhance search engine relevance as well as eventually web traffic. This is equivalent to foot traffic in retail advertising. The name SEO can as well refer to "search engine optimizers", an industry of advisors who perform optimization projects on behalf of clients.

Search engines display different kinds of listings on a search engine results page (SERP), including paid advertising in the form of pay per click advertisements and paid inclusion listings, as well as unpaid organic search results as well as keywords specific listings, such as news stories, map locations, definitions, and images. SEO is worried with improving the number as well as positioning of a site's listings in the organic search results.

There is no wonder and now it is so transparent that how to rank high with the major search engines because we have a huge search engine optimizations. What is search engine optimization? Before learning about search engine optimization we have to be clear how search engines works.

Now the users are provided most relevant and up-to-date information’s for their key words by the search engines. They are refined pieces of technology which permit users to quickly discover relevant websites by searching for a word or a phrase. Search engine results are ineffective to users if the information doesn't relate to the search term by the search engines, otherwise if the results are old. People be expecting the most up-to-date and new information that is useful to them.

Keep on updating your website everyday as well as adding some materials will assist you gets become aware of by the search engines. So, if you are about to sell any type of product otherwise service online, you have to optimize your website intended for the search engines, in order to boost traffic as well as sales. It is because over 90% of your business will likely come straightforwardly from search engine results. And for that reason, it is completely important to optimize your site intended for search engines for you to have the maximum deals in the entire world.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the course of action by which webmasters otherwise online business owners make use of strategic copy to enlarge their website's status. It is certain that the internet has enhanced so fast over the years as well as the competition for the best search engine location has created a huge market. For that reason, better understanding the fundamental elements of Search Engine Optimization is very important for an online business' success.

Making use of successful search engine optimization techniques will get better the page rank of your website. There are several tricks that can be used to boost page rank; the most successful method is to provide high class content consistently. This seems like a simple conception but there are many websites that fails to supply content that visitors find interesting. Sites which offers content that are out of the ordinary, well-written and regularly updated create highly occupied visitors who are more to be expected to return to the website in the upcoming days. So, if you can set your website separately from those boring, dead sites then do it. You'll certainly have a step closer to accomplish high page rank all the way through search engine optimization.

The next important factor for a successful search engine optimization is to include keywords as well as phrases within your content. To make certain that you are properly targeting your market, you have to make certain that the keywords as well as phrases you have on your site are the keywords as well as phrases that your site is in fact optimized for. The more keywords you use in your content, the more likely it is that online visitors will find your site when they do some do research with those words. If you are unfailing with these techniques, then your on the whole search engine optimization will enhance, boosting your page rank.

You should also have to extend a linking strategy as an element of your search engine optimization. Not only does this endow with free advertising for your site, other than it makes the feeling that your site is very important because of its affiliated links. For each link that you have pointing back to you, that is an additional chance for your potential customer to find you. The more inbound links that you have spot to your site, the higher you will be ranked in the search engines.

One more is to develop a content stratagem. People who acquire to search from the internet are seemed for information. The more information you supply for them and the more helpful it is, the more probable you will make the sale. Scripting articles are the most effective way to build up content for your site. When scripting articles to post on your site, make certain that you develop a clear means of position their content. You can do this by simply adding up a new page to your site. This will consent to room for extra articles to be added as you write them, and will allow you to build up an archive of articles which will maintain to draw online visitors. Make certain also that you have integrated your archived articles in a directory that is next to the source web of your site so that the search engines will register your online articles.

Always bear in mind that search engine optimization techniques are important in developing your site's status. With that thing in mind, make certain that you write high-quality, keyword wealthy content as well as link your site to and from a premeditated family of other sites. These things will help get better your site's popularity and coerce increased business all the way through your online business.

About The Author

Ran Victor is a expert Copywriter of India Seo . He written many articles about search engine optimization and seo services india .

Do The Appearing Act with Search Engine Optimization

2007-04-24T03:26:00.000-07:00

by: Akhil Shahani

Have you ever wondered how some websites manage to appear on the first page of a Google or Yahoo search?

This is not a random coincidence. A technique called search engine optimization is what helps to get such remarkable results!

This is a methodology which will elevate the ranking of your website in a search engine listing. It also helps improve the number and position of search results for a wide variety of relevant keywords. Now this might seem difficult or confusing. But the truth is that all you need is to pick up some skill and Voila! …

Take down a few handy tips and watch the magic.

Avoid awkward designs – This is for all you people who love website frames, flash, JavaScript, image maps or dynamic URL’s. You have a problem here!

§ Search engines are poor at indexing framed sites. Try to do away with the frames for better listing. But should you necessarily need to use frames, then the best thing you can do is use the tag.

§ Dynamic URL, flash, image maps or JavaScript also come in the way of a higher listing.

Select relevant keywords - Your choice of keywords is very important as these will be used throughout the entire search engine optimization process. Choose the wrong keywords and bingo, you’re nowhere to be found in the listing. Using specific key phrases will help your website cater to a larger target audience.

Write a proper title tag - Take care with the way you write the title and meta tags. This is what search engines generally use as the heading of a website while listing it in the search results. The length of the title tag should be anywhere between 50 - 80 characters including spaces. Including the key word in the title enhances the search engine optimization process.

Optimize your site’s copy - 'Copy' here means the actual text that a visitor to your website would read. For best results, it is advisable that each page you submit has at least 200 words of copy on it. This text should include the most important keyword phrases, if possible multiple times, yet remain logical & readable.

Don’t ignore images - Each image on your web page offers the opportunity to include a keyword phrase in the title or description. While this does not work on all search engines, it certainly does not hurt, so we recommend you give it a shot wherever you can!

Do not spam! - While spamming can help you get listed higher on a search engine, never try to use this trick. Search engines can detect spam and your site might be blacklisted by them.

A couple of other tips which might aid the search engine optimization process are the following:

Wire the hyperlinks - Search engines act weird at times! They think that if you have a link going out from your page then it’s likely that the hyperlinked page is related to the content on your page. This is why they look for keywords in the hyperlinks and any text immediately surrounding them. Therefore try to include your most important keyword phrases in the hyperlink. Again, make sure the links and surrounding text are still readable and continue to make sense even after including a keyword phrase or two.

Tweak the headings - HTML heading tags can also help improve your website’s ranking. Since they are headings, search engines tend to think that they are closely related to the content on the page. Try to include your most important keyword phrases in heading tags.

About The Author

Hi, I am Akhil Shahani, a serial entrepreneur who wants to help you succeed. Over the years I have run many successful businesses & made many mistakes on the way. I have created http://www.aykya.com to help you benefit from all I've learned on my journey. Please visit us & download our special 'Freebie of the Month' as a thank you for your visit.

Social Bookmarking - Link Building And Search Engine Optimization

2007-04-24T03:24:00.000-07:00

by: Steve Szasz

Social Bookmarking could be the next big thing in web site marketing since the development of the personal blogs.

Social Bookmarking web sites like http://Del.icio.us, Digg, Stumble Upon and Furl allow their users to create a set of web site content bookmarks. Submitted book marks are organized by content tags, which are arbitrary phrases or words a user can assign to the content they wish to bookmark. This gives the user a way to classify, rank and organize web site content using tags.

The most popular Social Bookmarking web site is Digg. Digg is a relatively new social bookmarking web site and has in it's short time attracted millions of members who daily add bookmarks to all sorts of web site content. Over search engines and other bots, social bookmarking web sites have an intrinsic advantage. Users will choose what content they will bookmark, unlike relying on a program to categorize and qualify content. There is an implied quality in something that someone has taken the time to select.

Users of a social bookmarking web site will read other posters bookmarks and then add them to their own bookmarks if they liked them.. You can even view RSS feeds to see what others are tagging, which is a very cool feature and is a textbook example of a very powerful viral marketing technique.

My own experience and testing shows that 3.2% of all my web site traffic come from social bookmarking web sites, off those 50% come from http://Digg.com, 20% from http://Del.icio.us and the remaining 30% come from various bookmarking sites I am a member of. These sites include Furl and Stumble Upon.

As a search engine optimizer, social bookmarking is another tool I use to promote my web sites. An example would be, introducing a new developed web site. I could wait until Google, Yahoo and MSN found my web site naturally, but that would takes weeks if not months. I could join a link exchange network and exchange links with other web site and have the search engines find me that way. But, then again I would be relying on the indexabilty of the linking web site for the search engine to find me. Or I could add a couple of bookmarks on 3 of the most popular social bookmarking web sites. These large bookmarking web sites are indexed many times a day and the search bots are only looking for new content. Have a bookmark on a social bookmarking web site and could expect to be crawled by the big 3 within hours or at the most, within days.

To successful bookmarker, you need to supply good quality original content. Content that is going to be searched for and will solve a problem the searcher has. There is no point bookmarking content that no one wants. Spamming has become a major problem, but social bookmarking is controlled by it's users. If the content you plan to bookmark is plain spam, the users of the bookmarking web site will just ignore it and move on. Your content will wither away and eventually be dropped out of the social bookmarking web site index.

If you social bookmark properly and supply good quality content, you can expect to gain dozens of quality back links as other bookmarkers, bookmark your content. This technique is a popular tool for successful search engine optimization and the best feature of social bookmarking is that it is free to use. I have not come across any social bookmarking web site that charges the user to use their facility.

Social bookmarking web sites are growing in popularity everyday. Find the ones that best fit the theme of your web site and bookmark with them. But remember, you will only succeed with bookmarking if you have content that is worth bookmarking.

About The Author

Steve Szasz
Webseo+Plus offers visitors tried and tested techniques to gain profitable exposure in the search engines. If you want the latest and greatest information about bookmarking, subscribe to our information packed newsletter by clicking http://www.webseo.com.au

Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization: Any difference?

2007-04-24T03:21:00.000-07:00

by: Mikhail Tuknov

For many casual internet users, the terms SEM and SEO rarely enter their minds when they are busy jumping from one website to another. However, it is these terms that determine much of what comes out on the results page whenever we type in a word in the search tab of any accessible search engine. These terms are also responsible for all those advertisements and pop-ups that link us to even more websites, whether they may be connected to our original search or not. So just what are SEM and SEO?

In the simplest way possible, SEM and SEO are tools which website creators, especially those who are promoting and selling a certain service or product, use in order to gain a lot of exposure and better ranking for their website. Sounds easy enough, right? Well, the simplicity ends there.

To make it a tad bit complex, SEM and SEO are not the same. As suggested by the names, SEM, or Search Engine Marketing, deals more with how a website is marketed to gain exposure in the different search engines available on the internet, while SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, deals with how the web creators develop and re-develop the content, quality and structure of their entire websites so that whenever an internet user types in a particular word in the search tab, their websites have a better chance of appearing on the first few search engine results pages (SERPS).

Now, to make it even more complex, although the functions of SEM and SEO seem different, they are more effective when used together. Since the main function of SEM is to gain more exposure for a website, the more common means for attraction are online advertisements, blogs, internet articles, partner and sponsored websites, and anything that can catch the eye of the internet user. SEM also makes use of PPC (pay-per-click) and paid inclusion to further push a website’s visibility. Lastly, it is also an important process in SEM to submit the name and URL of a website to different search engines and web directories if only to inform them of the website’s existence. All this is carried out to ensure the popularity of a website.

So how does SEO come together with SEM? Well, despite having all the advertisements provided by SEM, it is truly the SEO that allows the internet user to easily and conveniently find what he is looking for. Since the function of SEO is to gain a better ranking in the SERPS, the web creator has to constantly optimize his website in order to cater to the needs of the internet user and to make it easier for spiders or web crawlers to judge whether the website’s content is relevant to the word/s being searched. Optimization is not a simple and easy task. It involves having to restructure the website regularly (by editing the html code and meta tags, changing content, reorganizing the site map, developing an easier navigational structure, etc.) so as to adapt to the rapidly changing demands of the internet user. Still, when done properly, not only does SEO help a website become more useful and therefore, more often visited by the internet user, it also helps gain more exposure since it increases the website’s chances of gaining a better rank in the SERPS.

Both SEM and SEO success rely heavily on the words or context which Internet users type in whenever they search for something on the internet. Take PPC under SEM, for example. PPC is an ad that is triggered by a particular word or context used by an internet user. Once a particular word or context is searched, a corresponding PPC ad for a website comes out. SEO works in the same way. The web creator inputs a particular Meta tag (or keyword) in his html that he believes many internet users will use when searching for information, information which the web creator’s website may contain.

Although all of these processes involving SEM and SEO are tedious and time-consuming, it all boils down to knowing and serving the target audience. A web creator must be discerning enough to know what the internet users need and want, and at the same time he must have the real passion to inform and provide the internet users with the right service and product.

About The Author

Mikhail Tuknov, search engine optimization specialist and a founder of Infatex (Search Engine Marketing Company). With an extensive background in Internet marketing, Mikhail Tuknov offers SEO, PPC, SEM services.

http://www.infatex.com/

Keys to Increasing Website Traffic

2007-04-24T03:18:00.000-07:00

by: Mark Taylor

The life and blood of any online business is one simple word “traffic”. It’s your life and blood. Let’s face it, it’s quite simple these days to build a website, even without any HTML knowledge. It’s easy to purchase a domain. It’s easy to set up a website. It’s even easy to build an online store. It’s easy to place content on a website. However, all this can be absolutely useless if you don’t have any traffic and qualified traffic. Whether you are a website selling products, services, or acting as an affiliate for a program, you will need traffic.

Your form of business may be selling products. Or it may be promoting products. Or even giving away free content and selling advertising space on your website. Either way, in order to cash in, you need traffic.

I have been doing extensive research over the years to find out what is it that brings in traffic. For starters, you have to realize it requires hard work and dedication. It’s not an easy fix. You will have to be dedicated. With that mind-set you are bound to succeed, as long as you do your research correctly.

The first question you need to ask yourself is what are you looking to achieve? If you are looking to sell products, such as digital products (Ebooks, Software) or actual physical products, such as consumer electronics or clothes, then PPC (Pay Per Click) traffic may be a good and easy option. You will have to set a budget and make sure you know what your ROI (Return on Investment) is. I highly recommend using Google Adword. This is the king of PPC engines. You will get the most qualified visitors. My second option would be to use Yahoo’s Overture as well. However, Google is the quickest. You can start receiving traffic within 15 minutes. Yahoo takes more time and is more difficult to get your ads approved. I would spend my time browsing the internet and searching forums on Google Adwords. There are quite a few with very good tips. Also a few free ebooks you can get on the subject. Get yourself familiar.

If you are not actually selling something, but are looking to get traffic because you are giving away free content and are selling advertising space, then perhaps PPC advertising is not going to be your best option. It may not be profitable for you. You will then want to get a high ranking in the Search Engines. The best way to achieve that is to submit to all the search engines, the top 40. You can easily do a search online. Obviously the top ones are your priority (Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.). However, bear in mind it may take several months to be listed on these search engines. You will have to be a bit patient.

Also you will want to have as many links to your website as possible. The best way to achieve this, is to contribute to forum discussions, you can place your link to the website on the signature section. However, make sure you don’t spam. Make a meaningful post that contributes to the discussion, otherwise don’t make a post.

You can also post free classified ads. This could be helpful. Also you can create blogs for your website. In fact, create a couple. Make sure you fill them with relevant content and link them to your website.

The key here is consistency. You have to be dedicated and be prepared to put in the work. Once you put in the work, you will be posed to succeed.

About The Author

Mark Taylor offers expert advice on debt management and financial advice. He is also a market researcher. You can visit his webiste at http://www.mydebt-management.com where you will find a great deal of free information on debt management and financial advice.

How Google Video Search Engine can Solve 2 Major Website Owner's Problems

2007-04-24T03:16:00.000-07:00

by: Jeff Davis

What is the solution to #1. Getting your site indexed in Google, and #2. Generating quality traffic to your website?

Answer: Use the awesome power of video.

When Google bought out YouTube for 1.67 Billion dollars, it was the shot heard round the world. Now I don't know if you realize it or not %70 of the USA has broad band access, and that is just the US, not to mention the rest of the world.

I have been researching this heavily, and burning alot of midnight oil, and what I found out, is that when Google bought YouTube, YouTube was forced to dump half of it's content, due to liscening issues. I was dumbfounded. They paid out 1.67 million for half the content. Why would they do this? Simple. They knew the speed at which it would automaticaly regenerate itself. The beautiful thing is, they don't have to lift a finger, the public will regenerate that content and more, now that it is a part of the mighty Google.

This is revolutionary, in the fact that video has morphed, or combined with social bookmarking sites, and YouTube and Google Video beta, get tremendous loads of traffic. The third site is Revver, which although not as famous as the other two, still is very poplular and recieves a large amount of traffic.

What does this mean for you, the aspiring marketer?

This means, that if YOU create your own infomercials, right now, and get them loaded to these high traffic sites, loaded with the right keywords in the title and description box, there is a good chance that you will be indexed very quickly.

Google is like a Content Dracula, they love quality, people generated content. Google Video, is a search engine that does nothing but search for videos, 24 hours a day.

This is a quantum leap forward for webprenuers that are just starting out.

Why? It solves two huge problems that we face everyday as business owners. #1. How do you get your site indexed in the major search engines? and #2. How do you drive targeted traffic to your website?

The great thing is, that you can create power point presentations, or screen capture videos, narrate them in your own voice, and viola! You've just made an infomercial, and you didn't even have to own a webcam.

This solves 2 other problems, Fear of video "freezeup" and lack of equipment, such as a video camera, or a Sony camera capable of mp4 video capture, or a webcam.

My favorite tool for this job is Camtasia. It has a feature that I just love, and that is when you use .swf as your medium, you can re-direct the viewer to your sales page, automaticaly. This is fantastic, because it empowers you to "steer" the viewer instantaneously to the sales page, while they are still in the "mindframe" to buy.

So, fellow marketers who are struggling to generate traffic, and get your site indexed, so you can make some money to support your family, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is give Google what they want, be sincere, be yourself, and simply recommend your site to the viewer.

About The Author

Jeff Davis has "expert status" at ezinearticles.com and is featured on articlecity.com.

Jeff Davis CEO http://www.how-to-make-money-with-your-web-site.com

Process on Optimizing your Site through Keyword

2007-04-24T03:14:00.000-07:00

by: Kristine Joy Francisco

There are a lot of things to analyze on your site before you start optimizing your site. Such things are your site overview, nature of business, home page, site dimension and number of pages, product/services categories, page rank and indexed pages for major search engines, link popularity, and a lot more. After that you will go to your onpage and offpage optimization.

Analyze your site and think of a generic word that best fits for your web site. Choosing the right keywords is a strategy for better search engine positioning http://www.searchengines.com/placement.html. Analyze your business carefully and think of all the words that relate to your company or product. Most techniques to improve your search engine rankings have one thing in common -- Keywords. Choosing appropriate keywords is very important. Keywords are what lead search engine users to your site.

That word will act as your major keyword for your site. Then find a keyword tool that will help you generate keywords for your site. There are lots of keyword tools like http://inventory.overture.com. Type in the major keyword that you had thought of and it’ll list all related keywords that you can use. On the tool you’ll see the number of counts your keyword has been searched. Person new on search engine optimization might use the keyword with a lot of counts (I, sure did that before) immediately but SEO experts says that Do NOT use it for a start as keyword searched as many times will just give you a lot of competition and give your site less probability in regards to your visitors. So it is best to start with keywords with a little rivalry. Get some traffic with those keywords and eventually focus on the major keywords.

Examine those sites ranked from 1-10 on the keywords you chose to use in optimizing your site. Check everything about the site that is ranked highly on the search engine. Its URL, see if it is the top level webpage or it is the index page of the site as if it is not you can have a great chance to improve your index page for the target keyword and have a better placement in the SERP’s. Sites page rank. Page rank is Google’s way of giving specific value to how popular your website is. It is based on the number of links you have pointing to your website. Then check their page source, see if their actually optimizing their site for some onpage optimization factors. Factors such as title tag, check if they use the keyword on their title tag which is one of the main reasons why a site is rank well on search engine. Header tags are used to separate topics and range from h1 being very large and bold and h6 which is very small and bold, it should contain your most important keyword or keyword phrases to assist you in ranking higher on Search Engines. Image alt tags are words that will be displayed in place of your image through an older browser or when your visitors have their image turned off, insert a readable keyword phrase within the alt tags of your image and it’ll help you on your rankings. And on the main content if they use the keyword on the beginning and at the end of the page, also whether or not they’ve bolded, underlined, or italicized the keywords on that page. By continuing this process on other keywords that you’ve chose you will have an improved ranking on SERPs.

About The Author

Kristine Joy Francisco, SEO for ProAdultOutsourcing, the best choice for your professional web design and other web development needs, for more information visit http://www.proadultoutsourcing.com/.

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