Holistic Search Engine Optimization

by: Biana Babinsky

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Search Engine and Online Marketing Optimization

by: Danny DeMichele

RESEARCH WHITE PAPERS - TIPS

Search Engine and Online Marketing Optimization

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Choosing and Including Keywords for Your Site

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

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

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

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

The Importance of Relevant Page Content

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

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

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

Submit Your Site to Business Directories

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

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

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

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

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

Search Engine-Friendly Web Design

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

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

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

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

SEO and Marketing Services Offered by VNA

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

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

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

Simple Search Engine Optimization

by: Pawel Reszka

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How To Stand A Chance In The Search Engine Optimization Maze

by: Ian Simpson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by: Enigma Valdez

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Search Engine Optimization Is the Key

by: Desmond Mantor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Web Site marketing and Search engine optimization

by: Eric Gurr

Marketing Your Web Site.

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

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

For those selling a service.

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

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

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

For those selling a product.

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

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