Assessing The Real Value Of An Expired Domain

Article By John Khu

Newbie expired domain traders often find it very difficult to assess the real value of their domains. In fact, judging the real quality of an expired domain that you are thinking of buying
could be a hard game. However, when you understand the basics and fundamentals of expired domain industry, how it operates and works, how you can sell a good domain to a prospective buyer and how you can extract maximum benefits from an domain expired, then it becomes possible to create a blueprint for generating a substantial amount of online income.

Knowing more about the expired domain that you wish to purchase will help you in the long run. There are several tools that come handy, while you search for a very good expired domain. Here are some of them:

Using Wayback Archive: This is an excellent utility that can help you know more about the quality of expired domain that you are planning to buy. With this tool, you can inspect how a domain looked in the past, what was the main activity, what were the products sold or what type of information provided there. Knowing about the antecedent of an expired domain will help you in designing a solid future strategy for your business.

Using Linkpop feature: This is a tool that finds out the total sum of links to other productive web sites. This is a utility that also helps you detect the number of links and incoming traffic to a domain.

Overture with and without extensions: Overture Keyword Selector Tool is an excellent tool that displays how many times a search was made in one of the major search engines for a specific period, say one month. Google Pagerank or PR: This is yet another tool that helps you find out a particular expired domain's commercial importance, by the total number of votes it received by links and sources from other web portals.

Alexa Ratings: This web site ranks a particular web domain by the total number of visitors to a particular web site. The user must use Alexa.com web site tool bar to conduct the search.

These wonderful tools come very useful and handy, when you want to assess and evaluate the quality of a particular expired domain. However, the most important factors that you must consider before buying an expired domain are:

a) Accuracy of Linkpop estimates

b) Most probable incoming traffic and links

c) Overture Keyword tool evaluation to test what advertisers are paying for targeted traffic.

d) Checking to see, if the expired domain in question provides a click through rates of about 5%. This is often the most difficult part of the exercise.

In the end, the choosiest domain is the one that provides you an excellent opportunity to extract and squeeze the best possible income. A good expired domain is also the one that provides you an excellent click through rate when you expose it to a lucrative domain parking or PPC campaign.

About the Author:

John Khu is an author and also a seasoned professional with vast experience in expired domain name business. He is also the owner of the path breaking web sites called http://www.expireddomainsecret.com and http://www.expireddomaingains.com which provides complete and up-to-date information on expired domains and their eternal secrets.

Exactly What Is Keyword Density?

By The Davinator

There are usually a lot of questions that arise when people hear about the term "keyword density." Many people are not sure of what the term is pertaining to, or are not sure of acceptable percentages of density. This little explanation of what the term keyword density refers to should clear up some of the confusion that arises.

Keyword density is an indicator of the number of times the selected keyword appears in the web page. But mind you, keywords shouldn't be over used, but should be just sufficient enough to appear at important places. At one time, before the search engine algorithms were set up to detect such spamming, people were tricking the search engines to get a higher placement by performing what was coined "keyword stuffing".

People were completely abusing the search engines, and over time, they smartened up and got wise to it.

If you repeat your keywords with every other word on every line, then your site will probably be rejected as an artificial site or spam site.

Keyword density is always expressed as a percentage of the total word content on a given web page.

Suppose you have 100 words on your web page (not including HMTL code used for writing the web page), and you use a certain keyword for five times in the content. The keyword density on that page is got by simply dividing the total number of keywords, by the total number of words that appear on your web page. So here it is 5 divided by 100 = .05. Because keyword density is a percentage of the total word count on the page, multiply the above by 100, that is 0.05 x 100 = 5%

The accepted standard for a keyword density is between 3% and 5%, to get recognized by the search engines and you should never exceed it.

Remember, that this rule applies to every page on your site. It also applies to not just to one keyword but also a set of keywords that relates to a different product or service. The keyword density should always be between 3% and 5%.

Simple steps to check the density:

- Copy and paste the content from an individual web page into a word-processing software program like Word or Word Perfect.

- Go to the 'Edit' menu and click 'Select All'. Now go to the 'Tools' menu and select 'Word Count'. Write down the total number of words in the page.

- Now select the 'Find' function on the 'Edit' menu. Go to the 'Replace' tab and type in the keyword you want to find. 'Replace' that word with the same word, so you don't change the text.

- When you complete the replace function, the system will provide a count of the words you replaced. That gives the number of times you have used the keyword in that page.

- Using the total word count for the page and the total number of keywords you can now calculate the keyword density.

The above way of checking your keyword density is a bit of an old fashioned way, but it still does work for the purposes of figuring out what you density actually is. These days, there are many different types of softwares on the market which makes this
job a whole lot easier.

About The Author:

Davin Ogden owns and operates several web sites on the internet. He mainly specializes in SEO and viral marketing. For more information on keyword density, SEO, and many other aspects of SEO please visit his site at http://www.davinatorbiz.com

Having The Proper Keyword Research Tools

By The Davinator

There are many different types of keyword research tools out on the market these days. Some are free, and of course, some are not.

When we are talking about keyword research tools or software, you really need to take this part of your marketing seriously. For if it wasn't for good keyword research, most people wouldn't have much success at all. This is the reason that it is so vitally important to have good tools to work with.

There are some online services that have been around a while. Some of these sites and tools are still regarded for their high quality, and rightly so. Word Tracker, is among one of the first and still remains to be one of the most effective sites around. It's been proven time and again, it is simply a great tool, that provides quality results.

SEO Book has been largely popular in the past couple of years as well. I've often used SEO Book's Keyword Research tool in many cases, and did cross references between a couple of the other alternatives around. It does provide great results as well. While I don't think it may be quite as accurate as Word Tracker, it is still a good tool to be utilizing in much of your research.

Overture's keyword suggestion tool is free and much quicker to use than Wordtracker. It works more like the Wordtracker but it will not tell you how many sites are competing for a certain keyword phrase. For example if you type 'golf clubs', the Overture search suggestion tool will tell you that during the last month the words 'golf clubs' was searched, say for example 340000 times at Overture.Com. Similarly 'golf balls' was searched 310987 times. Also, given one word it will tell you all relevant combinations of that word, which are based on actual searches done by people. If the word you keyed in is not a common highly searched term then you might not get any results. It means that hardly anybody has searched for that term in the last month.

There is a bit of a newer keyword research tool out there these days that can be obtained for free as well. The Groovytastic Keyword Dominator is such a tool, and it actually takes all of it's results from Word Tracker itself. So this is really good in terms of having a great source for it's information that it brings back. It returns all of the keyword results from Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Some people regard these three search engines as The Big Three, meaning that these are the search engines to be really concerned about.

There is a drawback of The Groovytastic Keyword Dominator though, and that is, the keyword research software only returns results for the top 100 related results. It won't dig down any further than one hundred deep in finding related keywords or keyword phrases. This really only means, that in some cases you may not find that real low hanging fruit, or combinations of long tail search terms.

The Groovytastic Keyword Dominator is still a very good and useful tool though. It performs good and accurate keyword research fast, and does give you the results that in many case will be enough that all important start on building and creating your site around your chosen set of keywords and keyword related phrases.

About The Author:

Davin Ogden owns and operates several websites on the internet. He specializes in viral marketing strategies and SEO. Check out his site containing information on keyword research, SEO software and more at http://www.davinatorbiz.com.

Internet Marketing - One Giant Leap for Mankind

By Paul White

Those Oldies amongst us who can actually remember Neil Armstrong walking on the Moon never think of it as just history. We were there. It was live, and we were all part of it.

Practically everyone on earth who could, was huddled around a TV set watching the shaky black and white pictures in awe.

It was something that united the whole world like nothing before. First stop the moon,then onwards to the stars! They talked about tourist trips to the moon within 5 years. Hotels on Mars within 10 years, and a passenger cruiser to Jupiter by 1999!

But harsh economic and scientific realities meant a rapid slow down in our race to the stars, the space program was downgraded, and dreams of space travel for everyone were pushed aside, and all but forgotten. But then something else came along, even bigger than the moon landing in the history of the World - The Internet.

Now there really was no limit to what man or womankind could achieve.

With the internet, you could make your own personal journey to the stars! Untold wealth for everyone we were told, just pick up your free site, and wait for the money to roll in. Not just to the stars, but to heaven itself!

At least that's what we were all led to believe just a couple of years ago, when Amazon introduced the first affiliate sites. But sadly, just like the little boy playing with his space toys,
excitement, and expectation have given way to frustration and disappointment, and a general feeling that it just isn't possible for normal people to go to 'infinity and beyond!'

So is it time to take off your play spacesuit and give up? Is it time to shrug your shoulders and resign yourself to the fact that yet another of your dreams has been jettisoned out of orbit?

NO! In fact the space race has only just begun!

Even though your experience with the internet may be a disappointment so far, just stop and think. Can you imagine what disasters would have happened in the early Apollo missions if the astronauts had not been such highly trained professionals with the best possible equipment and resources.

Why should the internet be any different?

The journey to the stars is not just for the elite few. It is for everyone who chooses to travel. But you must have the right resources. You must have the knowledge, expertise and equipment necessary to survive. Quite simply, your business will die without it, just like an astronaut without life support.

For example, did you know:-

*You must have your own Website. It should be professionally designed with links to several affiliate/associate sites. A free affiliate/associate site is not enough on it's own.

* You also need to have your own domain name, not a free site name with a really long URL that no one will want to click on.

* You need to read everything you possibly can to learn how other people have done it. I now have a collection of dozens and dozens of Free e-books which I give away on my site, which contain all of the knowledge you will need.

*You can get thousands of people to your website by offering freebies and other things. Just spend a few hours surfing all the freestuff sites for things you can give away on your own site.

* You must have a constant source of traffic going to your website. Only a tiny fraction of people visiting your site will buy anything, so you need to get thousands to visit. Once you understand and accept this, and know how to get them, then you are on your way!

*You will never make any money by only advertising on free sites, even with submission software. Let people place an ad free on your site. You will get far more response than placing your own ad on someone else's free site.

*Once you start to become successful, then you can become even more so, by writing your own articles and submitting them to some of the thousands of e-zines and getting free publicity.

* Definitely the best way of doing business is to have your own newsletter to communicate with your customers to build up a relationship with them. For this you need a listserver. This is software which enables you to communicate with thousands of people at once.

I used to be like one of those poor monkeys in the early space flights, being led blindly into oblivion by their masters. Believing all the hype about instant riches, and not being able to do anything about it. Luckily I realised before too late, that instant riches is just fantasy. But with an investment of time to learn what to do, and an investment of money to get the right tools, anyone can be in control of their own flight to the stars!

About the Author:

Paul White webmaster of:- http://www.profitmountain.com is a former teacher who now dedicates his time to helping ordinary men and women to recapture their dreams and make money online. Feel free to e-mail regarding any online questions you may have:- webmaster@... Subscribe to profit mountains money making newsletter, and get free advertising for a year, and tons of other things!

Blackhat SEO: Protect Yourself by Recognizing The Bad Guys

By Bill Platt

Over the years, webmasters have been told that they should want to avoid Blackhat SEO techniques in connection with their own websites. In general, I agree with this statement. But, by obtaining a deeper understanding of Blackhat search engine optimization, one could actually learn a bit about how to better his or her own positioning in the search engine results.

White Hat vs. Black Hat Search Optimization

Whitehat and Blackhat SEO is a comparison that is a take-off from the old cowboy westerns, where the good guys always wore white hats and the bad guys always wore black hats. So, in theory, we can assume that Whitehat practitioners are the good guys of SEO, and Blackhat practitioners are the bad guys of the industry.

But, the truth is a little bit more opaque than this. SEO is never a pure "white vs. black" issue. Just as in Mad Magazine's "Spy vs. Spy" series, sometimes the white spy whipped the black spy, and vice versa, sometimes the black spy was victorious.

In theory, Blackhat SEO is the type of search optimization that will eventually get your website banned in the search engines. And sometimes it will.

But, it is truly fascinating to me when I visit a website such as http://www.blackhatseo.com/ and discover the world-renowned SEO expert Aaron Wall owns the website. In case you were not aware of it, Aaron Wall is the owner of the SEO Blog at http://www.seobook.com/ and is recognized as one of the world's foremost leaders in SEO technique.

Blackhat SEO Is A Learning Opportunity

To me, the study of opposites offers a greater understanding to mankind.

* One cannot know "altruism", until one learns about "selfishness".

* One cannot truly appreciate "wealth", until they have experienced "poverty".

* One can never declare something "easy", until they have faced something truly "difficult".

* A "slow" driver will seldom be noticed, until which time the "fast" driver passes them by.

These are the philosophical ramblings of Bill. ;-)

I have always argued that in order to see the light, one must be able to recognize the darkness. And that is why when I am told to avoid something; I go right to it, so that I can see what it looks like, for the sake of being able to recognize it.

So, whenever I am in the mood to learn more about SEO, I search out Black Hat SEO forums and websites to learn how to recognize the dark, when I am in the light.

After all, if you cannot recognize the dark side, how do you expect that can you protect yourself from it?

There Are Always Two Sides To Every Story

Remember when your grandmother always told you that there were always two sides to every story? Well, my grandmother did, and I like to believe that everyone had a wise old grandma to help them find their way in life.

White Hatters teach us how to do things the right way. Black Hatters teach us the wrong way to do things. And as my grandmother used to be fond of saying, "the truth is somewhere in the middle."

For example, White Hat web programmers teach us how to install Captcha scripts on our websites to keep the spammers at bay. Then the Black Hat web programmers come along and teach the spammers how to break Captcha software (http://www.blackhat-seo.com/2008/how-to-break-captchas/). And as Grandma used to say, the truth is somewhere in the middle.

The White Hatters try to teach us good programming technique and to present us with safe protection from spammers. And the Black Hatters teach us how to break the coding. You and I are in the middle, and by seeing the world through two sets of eyes (white and black); we can find better ways to protect our websites. Our websites are only as safe as the intelligence level of the programmers who try to protect us. If the bad guys are smarter, we lose. If the good guys are smarter, we rest safe in our protection schemes.

Some Black Hatters even call what they do Grey Hat SEO. One that I really like is called http://www.SlightlyShadySEO.com They did a post about the little fun pill and the folks who push it. They referred to it as a keyword that will give a lot of insight into how Google is combating the spammers online: http://www.slightlyshadyseo.com/index.php/some-insights-from-the-buy-viagra-results/

The previously mentioned post spoke at great length about the people who spam forums. We all despise these guys who trash up our favorite forums, and Slightly Shady exposes why our forums are always on the spammer's target list.

As my grandmother said, "the truth is somewhere in the middle." The little pill Black Hatters play an expensive game with the Google results, but at $2 commission per little pill, no wonder.
But now that we understand what is going on, we know that we need to make sure that we keep our own forums clean of this trash, to protect our Trust Rank. We also know that one slam is not the end of the world for us, if we are quick to clean our own houses. But, if we cannot keep our houses clean, the Google will stop coming by to visit, for the exact same reasons why most girls
avoid visiting bachelor pads.

Light Sources Are Always Brighter When We Stand In The Dark

One of my favorite television personalities, Carl Sagan said, "The exploration of the cosmos is a voyage of self discovery."

This quote reflects the reason for my voyages into the light side and dark side of SEO. I study Whitehat SEO and practice the same. I also study Blackhat SEO to understand what is defined as the opposite of Whitehat SEO practices. By seeing what is dark, I can better see what is in the light.

I am comforted in knowing that I will never be pulled blindly into the dark side with Darth Vader. ;-) To quote from the Bible, "The blind will lead the blind into a ditch." Now that my eyes have been opened to Blackhat SEO, I will never stumble and fall as I fish for better rankings in Google and the other primary search engines.

About the Author:

Bill Platt has been providing article marketing to his clients since 2001 at: http://www.thephantomwriters.com/ He offers ghost writing and article distribution services. With lots of experience writing articles that attract publishers, readers, traffic and sales to his website, Bill wrote an ebook to share the secrets of his article writing success that can be found at: http://thephantomwriters.com/ebooks/article-marketing-traffic.html

Read his blog at: http://article-blog.thephantomwriters.com/

Get More Targeted Traffic To Your Site

By Casey Moher

There are dozens of good ways to send people to your website. These methods come with a wide variety of results and difficulty. As much as possible, I've worked with and tested many of them. Here's a run-down on one that I believe is highly effective.

Give Your Visitors A Free Gift:

Information that can truly be a help to your visitors is a great place to start. The right information can truly make someone's life better.

Overcoming an ever-present hurdle in the form of inherent mis-trust on the part of your visitor will always be with you. Overcoming this hurdle is vital to the success of your venture.

Your focus should be to find and share valuable information. An on-line approach is the most efficient way to find and distribute valuable information. It doesn't take much search time before you will be discovering subjects and information that folks want to know. Once you find the topics being sought-for, you will want to spend your time learning and writing about them.

One strategy you can employ is to share the information in the form of a multi-day mini-course that people can receive from you. You will find more success if you spend the time necessary to
make this a high-quality gift. Extra effort at this point will increase the value of your subscriber list. Very little cash takes you a long way in this project.

You will be offering to share this information in exchange for your visitor's name and e-mail address. The best way to perform this information capture function is to use a 'squeeze page'.
Establishing a squeeze page can readily be done starting with a simple website.

Some very professional design work is available at affordable prices these days. In a very short time, your own squeeze page can be activated and running.

You can have your own squeeze page up and running fast, just let me know. You can move things to auto-pilot function starting with these strategies.

With care, your subscriber list can be cultivated and a long-term relationship built with the members. Your efforts can become continually more rewarding all the time for all concerned as you move forward with this venture.

You can reach people around the entire world and provide them with value using your valuable products, services and information. You can be paid very well in the process.

Here's another way to utilize the power of free information to build good will and interest before a person ever visits your website There are a number of methods, strategies and delivery
formats available to you. Take the time and whatever the minimal expense is to do a professional job.

Remember that your internet visitor is there because of a desire and a need for some basic information. Put their needs first and realize they did not log on looking for an opportunity to send some cash your way. You have to overcome an always-present barrier of doubt in your visitor's mind. Provide valuable information at no cost and you will quickly erode the doubts. Valuable information can be found readily on the internet. You also likely have more information and knowledge of your own than you realize. A quick search of some key-word tools will reveal to you the topics of interest and need of large groups of people.

The whole key to making article writing and publishing work for you lies in NOT trying to sell something to the reader right away. If you write a self-serving article that is really a sales
promotion, it will be very transparent. You will have done more to alienate and push people away than to pull them close. After your article has presented the information, it's fine for you to include a resource box at the end. The resource box gives your name, website address and what the reader will benefit when they visit it.

Everything got much easier in the article-publishing process recently. There is some new software out there that makes the process push-button easy. This program keeps content unique and speeds things up tremendously. Science and industry now have the capacity to produce, publish and distribute articles to thousands of readers.

You will do well to include article publishing and distribution in your long-range strategy. Automation and professional publishing services can reach thousands of readers very quickly.
If you want more information on these useful tools (or anything else in this article), just contact me.

About the Author:

Casey Moher - Caseymoher@... (801) 941-3334

Mr. Moher is a Registered Pharmacist and Life-Long Marketing and Sales Professional. You Can Get His Free Five-Day Mini-Course on Building Targeted Website Traffic by visiting: http://www.newtrafficmaster.com

SEO ROI vs Other Marketing Mediums

By Toronto SEO Guru

Every type of business needs to showcase their product or service to their discerning customers in order to induce or motivate purchase. Purchase yields profit, and profit produce Return on Investment or ROI. The core objective of any business is to achieve the best return on their investment.

To obtain the best results, businesses should have a well-defined business plan supported by an appropriate budget. Having these tools put in place, the next question will be the venture to employ the available budget for optimal results. Do you choose SEO as your primary medium or would other more traditional mediums yield better results?

The purposes of marketing are diverse. These include revenue generation, increasing market share, influencing preference over other brands, building brand equity and building brand awareness among other things. Studying competition from all its angles including the marketing communication strategy adopted by them will guide you through the process of investing your marketing budget into the right medium.

Your prospective customers face a bombardment of advertisements through various media in their daily lives. They are naturally inclined to filter out most of it before arriving at the buying decision. To really stand out from the crowd, you need to be extremely different and of course have a huge advertising budget.

Why not make things easier on yourself and follow the logical step of placing your marketing message where the customer is already looking for it? This is the logic that racks up huge points for SEO versus traditional marketing mediums.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO scores over almost every other medium in terms of ROI. To understand the reason, it is essential to have an overview of how search engines work and how to get the best out of them.

When a customer decides to buy goods or services, he or she uses the Internet search engines to provide the customer with the information on the quality, pricing, warranty, after sales service etc, of the particular product. More often than not, the customer will be provided with a list of several thousand web sites with the information he or she needs.

In effect, most individuals will look at the first ten or 15 sites for the information they need. When they are finished with the 10-15 sites, their buying decision would have been finalized. Getting into the first 10 to 15 positions is what SEO is about and several tools are available to achieve this.

The global character of the Search Engines affords you the opportunity of your product/service being accessible to customers round the clock all through the year. The numbers that an SE optimized website can provide in terms of sales and profit will naturally be several times higher than any other media or perhaps all of them put together.

The limitations of time zones, language, overbearing influences (like positioning in a magazine) are absent in the case of search engines. You will no doubt have to spend a decent sum of money to get your marketing message optimized for search engines. This would not only be an investment for a very long time to come. Rather, it would also bring you the best Return on Investment at a fraction of the cost of traditional mediums.

About The Author:

Toronto SEO http://www.searchengineoptimizationtoronto.com/ SEO services provider in Toronto Ccanada

The Mythical Google Sandbox And How To Escape It

By Bill Platt

With an article title like this, it almost seems like I am playing the fool, by telling you something doesn't exist and then telling you that I will show you how to beat that thing I said does not exist. Maybe I am the fool, or maybe, I have something valuable to share with you today. You be the judge.

I Don't Believe In The Google Sandbox, Dragons or Unicorns...

I was browsing the Digital Point forums earlier, when I came across this quote:

"The Google Sandbox is something that people either believe or don't believe. It usually means that within the first 6 months - 1 year you won't get a lot of love from Google." -
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=8286280

I saw the quote shown above and I had a good laugh. Yes, many people believe in the existence of the Google Sandbox, and I am not one of those people. I place the "Google Sandbox" in the same category as the leprechaun... they both make a neat children's story, but I see no truth in either.

What Is Google Love?

Google love is the imaginary "feeling" that Google has for the websites in its index. The more Google loves a website, the higher that website will rank in the Google search results.

No matter how many search results Google shows for a particular search term, Google will only show a maximum of 1,000 website listing in its search engine result pages (SERPs). However, few people, except nuts like me know that as you go to each consecutive page in Google's SERPs, the actual number that Google is willing to show you gets smaller with each additional page visited.

For example, I just did a search on the keyword phrase "Google Love". My default Google settings are set to 100 results. When I first typed the search phrase, Google showed 68,300,000 results, and Google shows me that I can look at ten pages of results. But, when I get to the tenth page in Google's results, there are only three listings. Google only loves 903 web pages for the search term "Google Love".

Google has told us that they attribute value to a web page, based on the number of inbound links that page might have. Google Love primarily comes from link popularity, which is derived from inbound links.

The Suggested Lifespan Of The Google Sandbox

I see the "sandbox" as being a term that some person working in SEO derived to explain why so many of his client's new pages appeared in Google's search results for about one month, before the pages disappeared into the deep recesses of the Google index.

In absence of a better explanation, some SEO person coined the term "Google Sandbox" to explain to his or her customers why a page disappears from the Google index and stays missing for months or years.

According to those who preach the Google Sandbox theory, the lifespan of the Sandbox is six months to one year. That is a lifetime when you are running an online business.

The Life Curve Of A Web Page

Google's algorithms rely heavily on inbound links to determine the value of a web page. But a brand new web page has not had the opportunity to attract any inbound links, because after all, it is a brand new web page. So Google gives new web pages the benefit of a doubt.

News stories are a good example of web pages that may very well be important to the world-at-large, but its importance cannot be determined by the number of inbound links available to that page.

As a result, all brand new web pages on the Internet are given an intrinsic value by Google, as if the pages housed a news story. But what was important thirty days ago, will not necessarily be important today. So news stories are given early value and then their value fades with time.

Once the news cycle is completed, the web page will slide down to where it deserves to be according to the normal Google algorithms. This often means that a new web page will disappear
into Google oblivion (or the theoretical Google Sandbox), if after 30 days the page has not generated any link popularity of its own.

After The News Cycle, All Normal Rules Apply

We have all heard it before. The way to get a web page to rank in Google is to build link popularity for the web page.

And how do you build link popularity for a web page? Build inbound links to that web page, of course.

Once the news cycle is done, a new web page must compete with every other web page, based on Google's normal algorithm.

What If A Page Could Develop Link Popularity In 30 Days?

What if you were able to build inbound links and therefore link popularity for a web page, before the news cycle runs out? That would be a twist, wouldn't it?

Personally, I know for a fact that if you can build link popularity on a page, within the news cycle window, that this new page will not fall into the dreaded and mythical Google Sandbox. The page will not fall into the Google Sandbox at the end of the news cycle, because the page will have already accrued some link popularity within Google's primary algorithm.

You Are The Master Of Your Own Domain

As the master of your domain, you get to choose how long a page is sandboxed. Most people don't realize they have that kind of control, but with smart link building, one can prevent a web page from entering the sandbox. Or, if the web page does slip into the sandbox, the smart online marketer can bring a web page out of the mythical sandbox in days or weeks, instead of months or years. The beauty of this truth is that you define the time line for when a web page exits the sandbox, not Google.

I Boast That I Can Prove It To You

I built a new page 16 days ago (June 10th, 2008) that is holding page one results in Google against 200,000+ websites, with my Blackhat Fish SEO Contest entry.
(http://article-blog.thephantomwriters.com/whitehat-vs-blackhat-fish- for-links-or-die-trying/2008/06/10/)

Now, one could argue that I am still in the news cycle for this web page, so in another two weeks, my page could disappear from the Google results. But, I have built so many inbound links to this page that I fully expect that when the news cycle is done, my page will remain outside of Google's mythical sandbox.

I Challenge You To Test My Results

Test my proof by checking back here in a couple weeks, or even in four weeks or six. If I am right, you will be able to click this link to Google's search results for the keyword phrase Blackhat Fish (http://www.google.com/search?num=100&q=blackhat+fish), and you will be able to see my page title on page one or two of Google's search results: "Whitehat vs. Blackhat: Fish For Links or Die Trying".

I say page one or page two of Google's search results, because I would be surprised if I actually won the competition. However, if I am still in the top20 results for the search key term after July 10, 2008, then I will have proved to you that anyone can beat the sandbox, if only they exercised the right strategy for escaping the sandbox ahead of the end of the news cycle.

I have actually pulled this off with three web pages in the last 60 days. The above listed example is just one of many examples I could show you as proof of concept here. But for brevity's sake, I am only including the one example here.

In Conclusion...

You can accept my analysis as sound, or you can call me the fool. It does not matter to me which you choose. If you want to believe that the Google Sandbox really exists to thwart your online business, then more power to your fears.

For those of you who have found my words worthwhile, let's meet next Saint Patrick's' Day to share a green beer and a laugh.

About the Author:

Bill Platt has been providing article marketing to his clients since 2001 at: http://www.thephantomwriters.com/ He offers ghost writing and article distribution services. With lots of experience writing articles that attract publishers, readers, traffic and sales to his website, Bill wrote an ebook to share the secrets of his article marketing strategies at: http://thephantomwriters.com/ebooks/article-marketing-traffic.html

Read Bill's blog at: http://article-blog.thephantomwriters.com/

SEM Industry Standards: Nonsense or Necessary?

By Kalena Jordan

A storm in a tea cup has been brewing in the search industry over the past few days. It was prompted by Jill Whalen's recent blog post titled We Don't Need SEO Standards where she came to the conclusion that she didn't think the search industry needed standards or regulation, at least in relation to Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Here are Jill's top 4 reasons why she believes we don't need SEO standards:

1. There are too many ways of skinning the SEO cat.


2. We can't even agree on the definition of search engine optimization.


3. There are already laws to protect people from SEO scams.


4. There's no such thing as "cheating" in SEO.

The post got a few people fired up and they blogged fiery rebuttals pushing their case for standards. Their reasoning included:

• That the industry has a black eye and needs a regulating body.


• That industry-wide standards need to be put in place to protect the public from unethical SEM operators.


• That SEM practioners need to take responsibility for their own profession.


• That it's about time the industry adopted a set of agreed best practices.

Yadda yadda.

Passionate commentary ensued on Sphinn, proving that the industry is divided on the issue. But the truth is, we have been arguing about this very subject for years.

Personally, I agree with Jill's post.

As an educator, I can understand the frustration at the lack of industry standards. But do we "need" them? Are standards going to solve the problems people perceive as dogging the industry? I think not. Creating standards is not going to get rid of shoddy SEOs or make them switch hats. Creating standards is not going to prevent the general public from being ripped off by SEM cowboys. Industry veterans will understand this. Education and publicity has always been the solution but it just took some of us years to work that out.

This industry has unspoken standards and they've worked well for 10 or more years. We white-hat educators promote the unofficial standards and search engine guidelines already. The creation of official standards would, in my opinion, just spawn more problems.

It's interesting to see how personally some people are taking this issue. I too recall the days when I took SEO scamming quite personally and made it my own little agenda to hunt, expose and ridicule dodgy SEO firms in an effort to save the great unwashed masses from themselves and rid the industry of it's shoddy reputation in the media. Now I simply educate as many people as I can about what tactics to avoid rather than who to avoid. I think this is more of an issue of buyer beware than anything else. Standards are a nice idea, but they can't be discussed in isolation when we don't have a governing body to determine or implement them.

I used to get so annoyed at the black eye given to the industry thanks to dodgy operators and ignorant journalists, but the tide has turned so we must be addressing the problem. These days, the general public and the media (with the exception of American Express perhaps) *get* that most SEOs aren't out to rip them off.

As for best practices, these can't be created from the outside in, they have to be generated from inside out - and that means with involvement from the very top - from the search engines themselves and possibly an independent regulatory body. No search engine or government body has imposed formal regulations on the industry so right now we just have guidelines and ethics and semantics. We white hat advocates can all pat each other on the back for following Google's Webmaster Guidelines and not spamming, but we can't be too hard on the black and gray hats for breaking the rules when there are no clear rules to begin with!

So who should be entrusted with the creation and regulation of SEM industry standards or best practices? Some are suggesting an existing organization or SEM firm should be given the job.

Within the Sphinn commentary, Jill said: "...those that would create the standards all have their own agendas."

She's got a point. I for one would balk strongly at one of the existing search marketing organizations or firms being given the power to determine best practices for the entire industry. The conflict of interest rumpus that would create would be unbearable and accusations would taint the reputation of those involved, even if their intentions were honorable - remember the drama relating to ethics in SEMPOs first year? Until we have a completely independent board/panel consisting of government officials and nominated representatives, the argument for standards is circular.

Meanwhile, we have to rely on our interpretation of the search engine's guidelines, our own experience and our voices to educate webmasters about SEM best practices, as we see fit. As an industry, we're doing this already via the many channels we have access to: forums, blogs, articles, webinars, media, training, conferences and the like. Do we need standards in order to educate? Nah. I think we're doing a pretty good job without them.


About the Author:

Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

How Google Applies Science to Search

By Kalena Jordan

Dr. Craig Nevill-Manning is a New Zealander who joined Google in 2000 as a Senior Research Scientist to develop more precise search techniques. Previously, Craig was an assistant professor at the Computer Science Department of Rutgers University, where he conducted research in data compression, information retrieval and computational biology. Before that, he was a post-doctoral fellow in the Biochemistry Department of Stanford University, where he developed a software suite used by pharmaceutical research laboratories to identify the role of particular proteins within cells.

A scientist at heart, Craig is probably best known as the developer of Froogle (recently re-named Google Product Search) and the founder of Google's software engineering center in New York City. Google New York is responsible for developing products including Google Maps, Google Finance, Google Spreadsheets, and many important features in web search and advertising. This article is a summary of his presentation at Webstock 2008.

Google's Spelling Bee

Craig started his presentation by talking about one of his first challenges: Google's spelling correction tool. As the popularity of the search engine grew, Google needed to be able to spell-correct lots of obscure words. So his solution was to take a sampling of content from the entire web. Craig's team came up with a algorithmic model and ran it over the web. He discovered that there were several correct answers to the same question. For example, words like “kofee” could mean either the searcher is seeking a cup of java or information about Kofee/Kofi Anan.

To combat this, Craig came up with an interesting solution: the "Did you mean?" alternative spelling option, based on predictive examples of searcher spelling patterns. You can see this in action if you type in "kofee anan" in Google. Above the search results is a line that reads: "Did you mean: kofi annan" and links to the search results for this spelling variation too.

But the research went even further. Craig's team worked out how to take into account the context of the search query by studying the 2 or 3 other keywords surrounding the query, for example "kofee cup" or "kofee anan". The research used the science of bigrams and trigrams to better understand how people search. Bigrams are groups of two written letters, two syllables, or two words, very commonly used as the basis for simple statistical analysis of text. So Craig and his team applied this knowledge to Google's spelling correction system and now, Google's algorithm can determine the searcher's intent with much more accuracy, based on the context of the search query.

As an example of the spelling challenges that Google face, Craig showed the audience the huge number of ways "Britney Spears" is misspelled on the web. He said it's encouraging to see that the most popular spelling is also the most correct one. Scale is important!


Google Maps Lead to Apps

The Google team wrote the code for Google Maps many years ago but the code was actually built into your browser. When Google maps first launched, people took the dense data-script and worked out how to reverse engineer it for their own use. Google engineers decided to release an API key to make these mash-ups easier after seeing so many people reverse engineer Google Maps without Google's help. Now people can mash-up Google maps within minutes to create their own applications.

To show how easy this is, Craig took the audience through the steps to create an interactive application with Google Maps. In the space of about 2 minutes, he signed up for an API key, grabbed the HTML code and pasted it into his page. He then hacked the map to show Wellington Town Hall (our location) and made the point how easy it is to create really useful tools out of technology that is already available.

As an example, Craig showed the audience Seattle Bus Monster. This site used an API key for Google Maps to make Seattle bus data and tracking available 24/7. Anyone who needs to catch a bus can look online and instantly find their nearest bus location and run to the bus stop in time to catch it. It's these type of interactive applications that add value to both corporate and government sites. Craig referenced Rodney Brooks from MIT whose provocative paper "Fast, Cheap and Out of Control" offered new logic and a completely different view of machines. The idea is that there is no center of control among robots so you should make lots of them; don't treat them so precious. Craig said developers should use this logic to create lots of small apps that you can replicate and tweak, rather than one big expensive app that can go horribly wrong. Scale trumps smarts every time!


Experiments in Scale That Have Impacted Google's Operations

Precision vs. Recall

Back in the early 90's, information retrieval on the web was limited to things like Lexus/Nexus. So at that stage, Google would take queries and apply it to the broadest possible search. This was great recall at the cost of precision. But Larry and Sergey wanted something better so they decided to use Boolean search. At the time it was heresy because everything was focused on recall. But the Google founders knew that things had to be super relevant so they developed an algorithm - the core algorithm. It was very simple and relied on Boolean search to determine relevancy.


Genomic Sequencing

In the mid 90's a large project - the Human Genome Project - was underway. The race was on to sequence the genome. Scientists decided to feed this out to a bunch of different people. They chopped up the genome for researchers everywhere and allowed it to replicate. The researchers mapped each chunk with genetic markers and computed a tiling path of tiny fragments.

Sequencing was very expensive, so the data was computed based on a minute number of chunks - very labor intensive. The sequencing took forever and reassembling was a long way off. But then a company came along that said they could do it faster. Sequencing becomes cheaper by automating the job using machines rather than individual people so this company used a clever computer algorithm to conduct the sequencing. This reduced the cost and the researchers were therefore able to reassemble more fragments and achieve a rough draft of the genome in 2000. This sequencing approach was the shotgun approach, where accuracy is lower, but the larger scale allowed the impossible to become possible.


Web Definitions

Google used to do a terrible job of defining terms. Craig noticed people were searching for "definition of...", or "what is a...." etc so he wanted the search engine to provide better results for these searches. He found lots of web pages that contained glossaries and definitions, so he hacked up a Perl script to get the glossary formats.

The first recall results were only 50 percent accurate. He wanted to improve this rate, so he did some experiments with the data. But he could never reach an accuracy level he was happy with. It was later he realized that most of the questions people actually needed answers to could be answered with his crappy little Perl script. He concluded that 100 percent accuracy is not important, that scale is much more important.

Now Google allows you to use the "definition:" query and the question format to get definitions from around the web. Type in "what is a blog?" and you'll get lots of results from Craig's original script.


Protein Sequencing

In biology, Craig says, you're constantly producing proteins. The proteins fold up with particular sequencing. Within computing, you can use this knowledge to do amazing things. You can conduct computations with this type of data but it's time consuming. Somebody at Stanford University noticed that proteins spend a lot of time moving about before folding into an alpha helix. So it was suggested they start the computations with lots of configurations. In this way you can parallelize the data by scale and one will be magically close to a folded protein. So they worked out a way to reduce the problem to a simple process based on mass scale. This is why Google uses maximum scale to conduct algorithmic computations.


Chess vs. Go

You can now compute the value of any potential move in chess. Based on that information, you can compute your projected probability of wining the game from any move. Chess grand masters put a lot of time into this knowledge. But the opposite is true for the game Go, because there is more randomness to the game play.

The smart way (Chess)

- study lots of past games
- compute the probability for each position
- compute far into the future

The stupid way (Go)

- pick moves at random
- re-create the Monte Carlo simulation (a computational algorithm that relies on repeated random sampling for results)
- play like a human

Curiously, the stupid way works better for Go players because it's more logical to compute the data based on the game's inherent randomness.


How Google Applies the Lessons of Scale

So how does Google apply these lessons of scale? For starters, Google does not buy expensive hardware. PCs are unreliable, especially if you have thousands. However, they are cheap and fast. So what's Google's strategy? Craig says they exploit the processing power of off-the-shelf PC hardware and simply make the software more reliable.

Craig revealed that Google buys cheap hardware on a mass scale. The problem is that these cheap processors are notoriously unreliable because they are packed into datacenters by the thousands and they are running 24 hours a day so they get very hot. Commodity hardware therefore fails at an accelerated rate. Once you cope with that realization, you need to design recovery situations to deal with the problem. So Google's software understands that their data can fail at any moment and works harder to cope with that.

For every server at Google, there is another with exactly the same data on it, the same configuration, the same everything: a clone. Replication is needed for scalability so that if requested data isn't fetched instantly, the backup or clone computer is searched instead. The result is that failures don't hurt Google, they only reduce capacity. When hardware crashes or software hangs, there is a time out and a re-issue request. Google has a central control system in place to manage all this.

Cooling failures at Google can be exciting!. Craig recalls the time when the air conditioning failed entirely at one of the datacenters and the monitoring system recognized that the centre was heating up, so they were able to shut down remaining PCs at the datacenter within minutes. The fire brigade turned up and it was quite a big event internally. But the best thing was that nobody using Google even noticed! Because of Google's scalable solution, searchers were unaffected by the major hardware outage.

Craig says that once a week, a person at each data center has a list of all the failed hard disks and walks around the datacenter with a pile of hard drives, replacing them one at a time. Velcro is Google's secret weapon! All Google's hard disks are velcroed in. This allows super quick service and replacement time. So curiously, there is no downside to hardware failures at Google, because they are expected and managed via scale.


Google: The Startup

Craig showed the audience a photo of Google's original PC configuration put together by Larry and Sergey at google.stanford.edu. It consisted of three hard drives and a couple of monitors. Larry and Sergey used Lego to enclose the hard disks and when Lego became too expensive, they used cheap Lego knock-offs! He then showed a picture of Google's first office inside a residential garage and the hard drive racks that they built in a rented datacenter to save money. Larry and Sergey packed the racks together and used layers of cork between the motherboards so they wouldn't explode. Eventually they hired people who knew about safe wiring, but they still used floor fans in the datacenter to try to keep the PCs cool.


Google and the Brady Bunch

Google's Zeitgeist pulls together interesting search trends and patterns generated from the billions of searches conducted on Google. Craig is consistently fascinated by search trends and recalls a particular event that sticks in his mind. On the game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, the competitor got down to the final question for $1 million and it was: "On the TV show The Brady Bunch, what is Carol Brady's maiden name?" The competitor used his phone-a-friend lifeline and his friend was able to look it up live on Google and provide the competitor with the correct answer, earning him a million dollars.

The next day, out of interest, Google staff looked at the logs for "carol brady maiden name" and saw a huge spike in traffic when the show aired on the West Coast, then another spike when it aired on the East Coast and then a tiny spike when it aired a few hours later in Hawaii.

So Google Trends is a useful tool to study data patterns, but Google keep a bunch of statisticians on staff who check that random effects aren't making the data significant. Craig says that in the same vein, you should look at your site logs and react, but be careful about jumping to conclusions about what the trends say.

At the end of his presentation, I asked Craig whether he is concerned that Google's PageRank algorithm will gradually become less accurate due to the demands of scale. Craig acknowledged that as Google's indexed data grows, user input and search patterns will become increasingly important. He says PageRank will need to learn to become better at providing search results and scale up accordingly. But scale makes things interesting!


About the Author:

Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

Ambient Findability and the Future of Search

By Kalena Jordan

Peter Morville is widely recognized as a founding father of information architecture. He co-authored the best-selling book Information Architecture for the World Wide Web and has consulted with such organizations as Harvard, IBM, the International Monetary Fund, Microsoft, the National Cancer Institute and Yahoo! Peter is president of Semantic Studios, co-founder and past president of the Information Architecture Institute and a faculty member at the University of Michigan. Peter's latest book, Ambient Findability, was published in 2005.

In his presentation for Webstock 2008, Peter called himself a crazy librarian who fell in love with the web. Peter designs sites so that people can find what they're looking for. It's not just about findability, Peter says. The structural design of shared information environments is important. The vast majority of Internet architects don't even know the term Internet architects. Content authors, bloggers etc. have a responsibility for shared information. One lesson Peter says he constantly needs to give clients is that it's not enough to provide a single taxonomy. You can bring multiple ideas and formats to a single document to a wide audience with different needs. The Stanford University site is a good example of a usable site. When you design for the web, you should provide usable navigation and a site search facility at the very minimum.

The Consumer Reports site is another good example. It doesn't stop with global navigation but gives a couple of information sub-sets to tell the user what the site database consists of. One size does not fit all in taxonomy. The Mayo Clinic use a more user-friendly design by listing all diseases by their most common name rather than the formal medical terminology. The site was re-designed with users in mind and has positively flourished as a result. It demonstrates that you need to design site taxonomies for specific audiences and users.

The elements of the user experience are multilayered. Peter is sick of the word "usability" as it means different things to different people. Depending on who you talk to, usability could mean:

useful
usable
valuable
findable
credible
accessible
desirable

All these elements are important. Peter recommends asking these three questions when designing a site layout:

1) can users find your web site?
2) can users navigate your web site?
3) can users find your products and services despite your web site?

He also claims that not enough attention is paid to accessibility these days. Your web site needs to advance your business goals and inspire trust. Peter mentioned Google search as an example. People tend to trust results that are listed high in Google. Findability and credibility are therefore increasingly connected.

Peter has provided site usability services for the National Cancer Institute. When he began working with the site, 90 percent of traffic was from the general public who had been diagnosed with cancer and were seeking specific information. Peter helped re-design the site to make sure these people found the information they were seeking about specific cancer types. At the time Peter worked on the site, an amazing 70 percent of searches on the major search engines were for specific types of cancer so the Cancer Institute used this information to improve the findability of their specific cancer pages.

We can talk about findability at the level of the object and the system, says Peter. What are the ways the object/data can be found? How do we make it easier to be found? How does the environment support the navigation and retrieval of the object/data? What he calls ambient findability is the ability to find anyone or anything from anywhere at anytime. The destination is never quite reached because perfect findability is impossible.

We're now drowning in information and suffering from information anxiety in the information age. "A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention." says Herbert Simon (Nobel Laureate Economist) or the Dilbert version of this is: "Information is gushing toward your brain like a firehouse aimed at a teacup". We are creating alternate ways to receive information via our digital networks, Google Earth being a good example. Another example is the "kid tracker" which is a GPS wristwatch your kids wear so you can know the location of your kids 24/7. Soon, people will be able to track other people every second of every day. This raises privacy concerns.

Peter showed a couple of examples of findability technology available now. Within a wireless network area, you can now use the Cisco Wireless Location Appliance to add electronic tags to items so you can locate them at any time. Hospitals use the technology to tag wheelchairs so they can be found instantly and save staff time and money searching for them. It's claimed this saves one hospital $28K per month. Another example was the keen couple who had tagging devices embedded in their hands so they could open each other's apartment doors and access each other's computers. How romantic!

So in a world where the information haystacks are getting larger, how do we create information needles? How do we solve the findability question? We need to think about business intelligence, visualizing patterns etc. Back in the 1980's Peter wrote an article claiming that the Internet will turn everyone into a librarian and now it's happened. We can't stop talking about meta data, social media labels, bookmarks and Flickr tags! In 5-10 years, Peter thinks that many sites will become like Amazon in terms of findability.

Search is one of the most important ways we learn. "Search has become the new interface of commerce" says John Battelle. Search startups such as Endeca and Trexy are pioneering new ways to search. Everyzing is a search engine that allows you to search audio files by individual words within the transcript. Buzzillions is an example of a site using both structured meta data and tag search. Hybrid search solutions are launching all the time. Google is struggling with how to provide data the way people categorize it. Google Book Search is an example of a site with usability issues. Flickr solved this issue by using clusters to sort photo tags, with huge success.

Peter says that we need to focus on usability in the future. Everyone working on your site needs to have the same goals in mind. He completes his presentation with the story of the three stone cutters. There is a guy wandering in the wilderness and he comes upon a quarry and asks the workers there what they're doing. The first stone cutter is working at a slow pace and says "I'm making a living". The second guy is working really hard and fast. He says "I'm doing my very best". The third guy is working at a pace somewhere in the middle but with a smile on his face. He says "I'm building a cathedral".


About the Author:

Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

A Beginner's Guide to Pay Per Click Marketing

By Kalena Jordan

Pay Per Click (PPC) search engine marketing refers to a specific type of advertising where you pay a search engine every time a potential customer clicks on your ad. These ads appear on search engine results pages and sometimes on sites within a search engine's network of partners.

How do Pay Per Click Ads Work?

If you look at a search engine results page (SERP) carefully, you can generally distinguish between search results that are regular algorithmic or "organic" search listings and PPC search results which are actually paid advertisements. The latter are generally listed under the headings "sponsored results" or "featured listings" and consist of specially designed text, image or video ads that are triggered to display when your target keywords are used in a search query. The PPC ads generally appear on the right hand side and/or at the top of the search results pages.

To appear in the PPC results, advertisers sign up for the PPC program of their choice and create short text ads, image ads or videos describing the product or service available on their site in a way that will best entice searchers to visit it. During the program setup, an advertiser will decide which trigger keywords/phrases they wish to bid on and how much they are willing to pay when a visitor clicks on their ad. Generally, the higher the bid, the more likely their ad will show above their competitor's.

The Origins of Pay Per Click Marketing

The PPC industry was pioneered by GoTo.com (later re-branded as Overture before it was purchased by Yahoo! in July 2003). Despite their enormous success, GoTo's PPC model was met with a lot of skepticism in the industry following their IPO in 1999. Their eventual purchase by Yahoo put to rest any doubts that pay per click advertising was here to stay.

In October 2000, Google which was eventually to become the world's most popular search engine, launched their own keywords advertising model (Google AdWords), blending algorithmic search results with pay per impression ads.

In 2002, in an attempt to compete more successfully with Overture, Google expanded AdWords to include the pay per click pricing model we are familiar with today. This model provide both more popular and more successful and eventually replaced the pay-per-impression model as the default system.

By 2002, GoTo (by then rebranded as Overture), had distribution deals with an impressive range of search engines including Yahoo!, MSN, AltaVista, InfoSpace and a number of meta search engines including MetaCrawler and Ixquick. Overture's powerful distribution network guaranteed advertisers placement of their ads in front of a LOT of eyeballs and it became clear that many were willing to pay big bucks for the privilege. Other major search engines also formed successful distribution partnerships with PPC providers during this time, noticeably AOL, AskJeeves and MSN with Google AdWords. The pay per click industry had officially arrived.

Scores of PPC search engines began to spring up following Overture's lead, however the PPC industry continued to be dominated by the two big PPC players, Overture and Google AdWords, while Yahoo!, MSN, AOL and Google fought it out for dominance in the general search market.

In July 2003, in a move that shocked the industry, Yahoo! purchased Overture to enable them to better compete with market leader Google. In April 2005 they rebranded the PPC engine as Yahoo! Search Marketing and in 2006 they launched a revamped version of the service, code-named Panama.

Meanwhile, in October 2005, Microsoft quietly launched their own PPC service called MSN adCenter. An official launch in the US, together with a name change to Microsoft AdCenter occurred in May 2006. In May 2007, Microsoft revamped AdCenter with new features and rolled it out to advertisers worldwide.

Currently, Yahoo and Google continue to dominate the PPC landscape, although Microsoft AdCenter is beginning to make an impact. Second tier PPC engines such as MIVA (formerly Espotting and FindWhat) and Kanoodle are fast catching up to the majors.

There are now hundreds of PPC search engines worldwide, servicing global, regional and niche markets, but only a few that have achieved a significant market share of advertising revenue. A summary of the majors are listed below.

Yahoo! Sponsored Search

Yahoo! Sponsored Search is the current name for what was originally called Overture Precision Match. Yahoo! Sponsored Search prominently displays your site in search results on some of the top U.S. search properties that Yahoo! partners with. With Sponsored Search, you set the price you're willing to pay for each customer who clicks on your listing. Your ads appear at the top, bottom or right hand side of Yahoo search results pages under the heading "Sponsor Results". Your ads are triggered on search result pages when searchers enter the keyword combinations that you've bid on. Your ads can be targeted by language and country.

If you create a keyword campaign and you use the ContentMatch option, your bid also buys you top listings on Yahoo's partner sites AltaVista, InfoSpace, eBay, CitySearch, AllTheWeb and a range of news and content portals, such as USAToday, National Geographic, iVillage and NBC.

Google AdWords

Google AdWords gives web site owners the ability to promote their site when particular keyword or phrase searches are conducted at Google and partner sites. Your ads appear at the top or on the right side of search results pages in a "call out" box under the heading "Sponsored Links". Your AdWords text, image or video ads appear on search result pages for the keywords you buy, and can be targeted by language and country. With Google AdWords cost-per-click (CPC) pricing, you pay only when a customer clicks on your ad, regardless of how many times it's shown. Google adjusts your bids automatically to keep you ahead of your competition at the lowest possible price. Google AdWords results appear on Google search results pages, Google's distribution partner sites, Google Gmail, and numerous content sites which are syndicated through the Google AdSense program.

Microsoft AdCenter

Microsoft adCenter is the newest kid on the Pay Per Click block. It includes the ability to target your ads to MSN Live Search users who match your target regional and demographic criteria. Microsoft adCenter allows you to submit base bids for keywords or phrases you associate with your ads. This base bid is the maximum amount you are willing to pay if any Live Search user searches for one of your keywords and clicks your ad. You can also increase your bid in order to reach specific audience targets, which help increase the chance your ad will appear for a user who fits your buyer profile. Targeted bidding in the Campaigns tab allows you to add amounts to your base bid to increase the possibility that your ad will show to searchers who fit your optimum buyer profile. You can use your bid amounts to influence your ad's position in the Live Search results. In general, the more you bid, the higher the position your ad will have. You can use Microsoft's Intelligent Targeting feature to adjust your ads to match these variables:

• Geographical location


• Age and gender


• Day of the week


• Time of day (morning, afternoon, or night)

Interestingly, Microsoft pitch the ability to "build brand awareness" with their PPC program, due to the continued exposure of your ad and brand to a large market, regardless of whether that ad attracts clicks. This is an important feature of all major PPC programs but one that is rarely promoted by Google or Yahoo! Perhaps brand-building is adCenter's Unique Selling Proposition (USP) because Microsoft claim to reach more potential eyeballs than their competitors: over 99 million people per month have access to their Live Search tool across MSN and Windows Live.

The Advantages of Pay Per Click Advertising

The growth of the search industry worldwide has created a huge market for paid search advertising and most search engines and directories now have some type of Pay For Performance or Pay Per Click (PPC) element to them.

Pay Per Click advertising:

• Enables webmasters to target geographical and niche markets more precisely via specific search queries.


• Enables webmasters to have their page URL displayed at the top of the search engine results pages without having to figure out complex search engine algorithms or pay an SEO expert to tweak their site for higher rankings.


• Enables webmasters to receive new traffic instantly.


• Enables a website or offline store to be found by search engine users even if no site exists or the site is not search engine compatible.


• Enables small businesses to operate globally and compete on an equal footing with much larger competitors.


• Enables instant sales and more measurable ROI via conversion tracking.


• Enables more precise visitor pathways to be plotted (e.g. by leading visitors to specific landing pages).


• Enables campaigns to be switched on and off on-demand to meet specific needs, search trends or specific events (e.g. Christmas sale).

About the Author:

Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

Should You Change Your Copy When Rankings Fall?

Article By Karon Thackston

I've been on a seesaw for the last year. I have a client who, for almost 12 months, has been asking me to rewrite their home-page copy because they dropped from the top 10 to position #11 (the dreaded second page!). My question to her was always, "Is your copy still converting the way you want it to?" She answered yes every time, to which I advised, "Leave the copy alone."

"But what about my rankings?"

"Is business suffering?"

"No, we're swamped."

"Leave the copy alone."

"But it's over a year old. Don't you think it needs to be refreshed?"

"Is your copy still converting the way you want it to?"

"Yes."

"Leave the copy alone."

We'd have this same discussion every 3 or 4 months. Some people just get hung up on being in the top 10, and their tunnel vision can cause them to make decisions they otherwise would not make. Others think that, because they are tired of seeing their website copy, others are too. This is usually not true.

My suggestion was to enhance her linking campaign with some quality articles through an article distribution campaign, but to leave the copy alone since it was still doing its job. Search engine positioning isn't the whole ball of wax. Getting top 10 rankings shouldn't be your primary goal. Attracting and keeping more business is what it's all about. If that means using search engine optimization as one tool, so be it. But too many times, website owners bow to the SEO gods and sacrifice conversions and their best business sense all for the sake of saying they are #1. Not advisable, if you ask me.

I am happy to report that, after holding at #11 for many months, this company's site is now back in spot #5. While we can't say with any certainty that it has driven any more business to their site than being at #11, the managers are quite pleased.

Never Change Your Copy?

Is this my advice in every case where rankings drop? No. There are instances where you do need to change your copy if your rankings decrease. Ask yourself (or your client) these questions:

1) Are conversions suffering?

If you're experiencing a decline in conversions, by all means take a look at your copy. It might need some help. But keep in mind that decreasing conversions may also be due to a new and more complicated shopping cart, recent design changes that impaired usability for your visitors or a dozen other reasons.

2) Have products or services changed?

If you have products or services to add or remove, certainly you'll want to change your copy to reflect that.

3) Has business fallen off?

If, due to the decrease in search engine positioning, you've tracked a definite lag in business, then yes, you'll want to make an effort to gain the lost rankings back. But, changing the copy isn't the only way to do this. If you answer no to the other questions, I'd leave the copy as-is and opt for an article distribution campaign first.

4) Other than hoping to appease the SEO gods, is there any other reason that the copy mandates changing?

If the answer is no, don't change the copy.

With all of the above, if the answer to each question is no, leave the copy alone.

There are as many reasons for your positioning to change as there are days in the month. Guessing at and trying to adjust for mysterious shifts usually does little good. Plus, while you're chasing the golden ring, you may be losing sales.

About the Author:

Learn to write emotionally driven SEO copywriting with Karon's Step-by-Step Copywriting Course at http://www.copywritingcourse.com. Read Karon's copywriting blog at http://www.marketingwords.com/blog.

Thirty-Two Tips in Writing Articles for the WWW (Updated)

Article by Craig Lock

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to use the Internet and he won't bother you for months...or perhaps even years! (Sorry men... however, I presume this principle also applies to our women-folk!)."

Articles are an incredible source of traffic and free advertising for your online business, as they create LINKS (which are a vital criteria for the major search engines in their rankings of your web- site). Writing articles can provide you with enormous amount of exposure on the Web (sounds "rude, that). You are branding yourself on a shoestring budget - it hasn't cost you a cent, but a little time and effort.

People want quality content for their ezines and their web sites; however, the competition for content is fierce. Every Web site owner wants content and hundreds of writers want their content visible on the Web. It's FREE promotion through your signature file at the end of your article*.

If you can write an article about your business, you can increase your links in 24 hours! As the internet adress in your resource box at the end of your articles gets picked up by the main search engine spiders, like Google and Yahoo.

Writing a free content article is simple and follows a similar professional approach as an article for a standard, paying market. Here are some pointers in writing articles for the www:

Firstly,

1. Offer Something of Value, a Real Benefit to people. Articles that give good helpful information or explain how to accomplish something are usually best, and will be read most often.

2. Try to get into the publishers mind. See things from their point of view - why should they publish your article? In what way will it benefit their readers?

3. Accept that writing for the web is different to writing for the off-line world. People tend to skim and scan (note alliteration) when reading online. They read quickly scrolling down the page.

4. Identify your target audience.

5. Give your article a catchy title that will grab attention and make people want to read.

6. Keep your title reasonably short. Put some thought and effort into your heading - again to get your reader's immediate attention.

7. Be professional and take your article writing seriously. Write about something you know professionally. Don't be overly casual in your writing (ie. don't write exactly as you speak)

8. Keep your paragraphs short.

9. Be Clear and Concise. Get to the point quickly (enough waffle with maple syrup, Craig!).

10. Target your article to your audience with "focused information".

11. Be brief, if you are a "waffler", like this writer. People want immediate information online and have limited time usually - it's the "instant coffee, sorry generation.

12. Write briefly and concisely (redundant words, meaning the same thing, Craig!) Try to keep your article under 1,500 words. Most paying markets usually only accept between 500 and 2,000 words... and with a bit of luck they may even "pick up" your great article. Try to be concise in your wording. Brevity is the hall-mark of good writing...or so say many of the teachers of writing!

13.. Use the OCCASIONAL exclamation mark (!) to get your readers attention. Forget the ALL CAPITAL LETTERS and exclamation points!!!

14. Be credible (big word, eh?) at all times.I try to write my articles in a "conversational style with dashes of my funny humour".

15.. Use HUMOUR. People like to have a bit of fun with the occasional laugh, whilst being informed on a serious subject. At least I believe so!

16. Write from "your heart", so that you come across as a REAL person. Just write what comes naturally with INTEGRITY...and BE YOURSELF.

17. Be totally honest in your writing and don't "borrow" too much from others content. It's so easy to "steal" on the www - so do your own work and if you "borrow ideas or material, ACKNOWLEDGE. "Incidentally, I have borrowed some ideas in this article from some good writers and well-known internet marketers - thanks a lot, David, Michael, John, Meredith, Joe, Edward, Ken and Mark).

18. Be humble.and don't talk down to your readers.

19. Use bullets (not live, please, oops er sorry, bad taste) in your articles - it makes the points easy to follow.

20.. Don't forget your byline ...or your "business card". Make sure that you resource box at the end of the article provides enough information to identify yourself and provide contact information. It's FREE advertising.

21. Offer a free report with your article - this is an easy way to collect a list of adresses for marketing your product(s). An instant target market.

22. Check all the links in your article before submitting it.

23. Offer your articles by autoresponder

24. Conclude with a strong message. Your final point (and paragraph) should be a message that summarises your article or gets your reader to take further action, like "GET STARTED" (as I've done in this article).

25. Pay attention to feedback you get for your articles. Getting constructive feedback about your articles can help you to write better through encouragement. A very powerful motivator to write more articles..

26. Finally, make sure your layout is good (not one of my strong points!), as this greatly enhances your prospects of getting published Use plenty of white spaces, as this makes your piece more easily read.

27. Proof-read. Double check your articles for errors: spelling, grammar and punctuation. Use a spell-check. Go over your article carefully and be an editor yourself.

28. Make sure your article flows properly.

29. Re-read and re-read, until you get it "just right."

30. Keep a file of articles you've written or ones that lie unfinished. You may have many new ideas since then. Set aside time to work on them. You may even put them in the form of an ebook, as my "techno-friend", Stefan has done.

and finally...and most importantly

31. Remember the "kiss" principle: Write simply and keep your meaning (message) clear (As Ernest Hemingway advised). Never use a big word, when a dimunitive will do (get it)!

Self discipline is the key to writing success. "Aim for perfection, but settle for excellence" in your article writing... then just "give it a full go with all you've got".

and finally (and most importantly)

32. Don't treat writing articles for the www. as a loborious and necessary chore of internet marketing, but some FUN in your writing (as I have done in this article)

SUMMARY:

The internet is such an amazing medium for communication and SHARING information. I've just submitted this article and it's been published almost instaneously (big word!) in a few places. So YOU TOO can write articles on your chosen subject in your internet marketing efforts, as the more articles you write and submit, the more you will find web sites LINKING to yours (as many of the major search engines use the number of links as a factor in placing your web site in their rankings).

It's a "numbers game": MORE TRAFFIC = INCREASED SALES ("the more you tell, the more you sell")

Share YOUR unique knowledge and skills to help others "out there in cyberspace."

Writers and internet marketers - Grab this moment in history well. "Carpe diem" (seize the moment!).

Why not start writing articles for the www in your unique area of interest, knowledge and or expertise?

YOU CAN DO IT by writing articles for the www ... and so and "by giving, you receive" (far more).

"Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it." - Johan Wolfgang Von Goethe (German philosopher)

Happy writing

Craig Lock (Eagle Productions Books)

P.S: We hope that these tips help in your article writing. In my opinion it's the best internet marketing strategy. To your internet marketing dreams in 2008...and beyond.

As the ancient Chinese philosopher said so well, "A journey of a thousand miles starts with a ... broken fan belt and a flat tyre"... er sorry... a single step.

About the author:

Craig is a writer, who believes in sharing information with a 'dash' of humour, as well as encouraging people to believe in themselves and helping others to find their talents and gifts, to strive for and accomplish their goals and dreams in life - whatever they may be.
http://www.selfgrowth.com/experts/craig_lock.html
http://www.myspace.com/writercraig+ http://www.craiglockbooks.com

"Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it." - Johan Wolfgang Von Goethe (German philosopher).

Does the cutting edge of social media really pay?

Aritcle by Mark Silver

Does the cutting edge of social media really pay? So someone asks you: "What's your Twitter name?" And you look at them like they are a loony. Twitter? Huh?

And then the next person asks you, "You blog, right? What's the URL?"

Hold it. What happened? In the seeming blink of an eye, suddenly there's all this new so-called 'social media' on the web, and you know nothing about it.

What's worse, is that everyone else seems to be there already. It's like you went to the bathroom, and when you came out, the party moved on, leaving you in a dark room with empty glasses all around you.

Time to drop everything and catch up with the party... quickly! Quickly!

And let's say you catch up with the party...

You've got your blog, your Twitter name, and all of those things. And no matter how fast you run with it all, it doesn't seem to be making much of a difference.

The world IS moving, you can't safely ignore it. And yet chasing after it isn't working. What to do?

Innovation is a no-no.

There is a teaching in Sufism that speaks against innovation. Well, not all innovation, and only in certain circumstances.

This is sometimes where people get the idea that Islam is anti-science or anti-progress. Not true.

In the twelth century, during Europe's 'dark ages,' Islamic culture had some of the most advanced universities, scientists, and doctors in the world, at the very cutting edge of modern technology. The problem with innovation is that it can feed on itself.

Innovation is forbidden when it becomes a false idol.

We've come to think about technology as 'computers' or 'science.' But, the word 'technology comes from the Greek 'tekhnologia' meaning, an interest in an 'art or craft' (Oxford American Dictionaries).

The problem comes when someone studies technology for its own sake. For our personalities, our egos, the lure of 'newness' is strong. New sensations and learnings can encompass all of our attention, immerse us in the experience.

This can be a good, because immersion is a great way to learn. The problem is that with something like all the innovation happening in web technology, is that there is no defined 'end' point. There is no way to tell externally when you've done enough.

If you get caught in this loop, you can emerge months or years later, having totally lost track of the path you are on.

The irony is- people want connection. The irony of web-based social media like blogs and Twitter is that it's coming out of the deeper hunger to connect to community, to love, to Source. Yet all of this innovation in the internet can leave you exhausted and isolated- even if you're good at it and like it.

As you may already know, that connection you're yearning for is in your heart, not Twitter. It's in the hearts of other people, not in the technology. If you forget that, you'll be lost. By remembering your true intention, then technology can be useful to you.

So do I blog and Twitter, or not?

Well, I'll give you a definitive answer: it depends. :) It depends on your business, and the hearts of the people you are trying to reach.

If you work with younger adults or teens, or with engineers or gadget geeks, then yes, you're going to want to meet them where they are, which is usually on the cutting edge of the latest toys. If you don't, it may not be as critical. And, even if you suspect that a good portion of your audience is found in the 'blogosphere' as it's sometimes called, there's still no need to be so urgent about it.

How do you proceed? Well, take breath, connect to your heart, and let's take a look.

Keys to Technology

• Your current website and newsletter is not obsolete!

Don't panic and discard what you've got now. Just because all of this new stuff is out there doesn't mean what you already have isn't perfect for what you're doing. My bicycle is more than fifteen years old, and it gets me around just fine. And, if you haven't even gotten your website done yet, it's still more than worthwhile to finish.

• You don't need the latest, just adequate. Unless your business is about social media and cutting-edge web technology, in which case you probably aren't even reading this article (hiya!), then forget about Twitter, Pownce, Digg, Stumble-Upon, del.icio.us for right now. You don't need anything but entry-level basic. Just start reading some blogs, without being in a rush. Here's a few to start with:

Dawud Miracle

Michael Martine

Adam Kayce

• Set a 1-3 month 'safe zone' of learning.

As you begin to learn, tell yourself that you don't have to do anything about it for one to three months, that you are just going to learn. It will work even better if you find a friend or colleague who can give you an hour or three for a personal guided tour of this stuff.

This approach doesn't just apply to blogs, but it applies to most anything new you need to learn about your business. And, once you understand the basics, the more obscure pieces will come MUCH more quickly.

You might actually find yourself enjoying the technology. :)

With blogs and other social media, remember that technology is just a tool, and that the craft you are studying is not blogs. You are involved with the craft of connection, and you're just learning a new tool to do what you already know something about.

Don't let gurus rush you. Take a breath, and dip in. You may find that all of this innovation and technology can actually increase your connection to what you care about most.

About the Author:

Mark Silver is the author of Unveiling the Heart of Your Business: How Money, Marketing and Sales can Deepen Your Heart, Heal the World, and Still Add to Your Bottom Line. He has helped hundreds of small business owners around the globe succeed in business without losing their hearts. Get three free chapters of the book online: http://www.heartofbusiness.com

What To Do When Your Website Does Not Rank Well In Google

Article by Bill Platt

Online marketers frequently struggle with the question of how to compete when Google fails to look positively upon a particular website. In this article, I will focus on how to build rankings and drive traffic to your website, using Google and the other search engines.

What Motivates Google's Algorithm

Over the years, many have tried to claim, even in court, that Google was unfairly keeping their website out of the top of Google's search results. But, the truth is that Google is not beholden to the needs and desires of the webmasters who want to be on page one of Google's natural search results.

Instead, Google is beholden to its stockholders and its need to earn profits. Google has determined that the best way to keep profits high is to keep Internet users flocking to its websites. Google accomplishes that by giving its users the kind of information they are looking to find, and Google weights its search algorithm towards what Google believes its search audience wants to see in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

It is important for online marketers to understand that it is not always in Google's best interest for our websites to rank well in Google.

How Important Is Google In Search?

Worldwide, Google is currently providing 78% of all searches
(http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=4).

But in 2007, Google only provided 52% of my website's total search traffic. Yahoo, Windows Live, Ask, and MSN provided the next 42%. The remaining 6% of my website's search traffic came from another 55 smaller search engines.

On my website, only 48.8% of my 2007 traffic actually came from search engines. The remaining 51.2% of my website's quarter million visitors came directly from article placements on other websites, recommendations from other people, forum posts, and from people who have bookmarks for my website.

Tips For Ranking Well For Specific Keywords

It has been my experience that it is easier to rank in 1) MSN / Windows Live, 2) Yahoo, and then 3) Google, in that order. Quite frankly, I have always ignored the role of Ask in the search market. While MSN is the easiest search engine to rank in, it only delivered 4.6% of my total search traffic in 2007.

I read a question in a forum, where the poster was asking how he could get his website to rank well in Google for the search term, "software".

The truth is that it is nearly impossible in nearly every search engine to rank well in the natural results for such a singular keyword, such as "software". In a nutshell, if you want to rank well in Google, you need to build inbound links (IBLs) to your website with your targeted keywords in the links.

But, you don't want to put all of your links together with one keyword phrase. One of Google's red flags is when they notice a link to a particular website appearing more than 60% of the time with one specific keyword phrase.

Utilizing a variety of long-tail keywords will actually serve you better in the search-engine ranking puzzle, in more ways than one. After all, when I do a search for software, I don't type in the search word, "software". I type in search phrases like: "accounting software", "small business accounting software", "windows software accounting small business", "windows image
editing software", "windows software image editor", "window xp photo album manager", etc.

People searching the keyword "software" have yet to figure out that they are looking for specific kinds of software. Once they do an initial search, they are going to type in more specific search terms to find what they actually want. So, once you start targeting a variety of long-tail keyword phrases, then you will start seeing more success in your search marketing efforts.

How To Start Your Search Engine Optimization Journey

If you are wanting to get into the natural search results of Google and the other search engines, you must know before you dive into the project that getting good rankings in the search engines for your chosen keywords can take a really long time, before you begin seeing results.

While inbound links to your website, targeted to your chosen keywords, will help your website climb in the search results of your favorite search engines, it may be a frustrating journey.

Your competitors want to rank well for the same search terms you do. And since only ten of you can be on page one of the search results, you may have to work really hard to topple those guys already on page one of the results, and you will have to fight to keep your ranking once you get it.

There are some keyword phrases that are nearly impossible to rank for, even if you have really deep pockets. For example, most every keyword phrase for the financial industry will be extremely difficult to rank for in Google. Competition in this industry is fierce, so achieving top search rankings will be tough to say the least.

This is the reason why so many SEO experts encourage marketers to target "low-hanging fruit". It may be fairly easy to rank well for a four- or five-word search phrase, and extremely expensive to target a two- or three-word search phrase.

My personal approach has always been to rotate through a list of more than 100 target keyword phrases, over a longer period of time. In doing so, I capture a lot of low-hanging fruit quickly, and at the end of the loop, I am a bit closer to snagging the fruit in the upper branches of the tree. At the end of my list, I analyze my keywords again to see where I am strong and to see where I am still weak, and then I begin the process again. (According to SEOdigger.com, I have better than 950 keyword phrases in the top twenty results of Google.)

How To Get Links

The challenge most people face when they begin building links to a website is where to get those essential links.

Article marketing is my chosen method for getting inbound links.

Because of Google's news feed strategy, the initial placement of your article might appear immediately in the SERPs, but then it will disappear. During the news cycle phase of the Google algorithm, new materials are given an added boost in ranking. Once the news cycle is done, any new pages will sink back down to where they would be based on the general Google algorithm.

If you are honest with yourself, you know that every page on the Internet started life with a PageRank Zero, but given enough time, many pages will gain in PageRank, as they begin to be linked. For a more detailed look at the process of how reprint articles gain value for a website in Google's search index, see my article about "Fishing for Links in Google" at:
http://article-blog.thephantomwriters.com/whitehat-vs-blackhat-fish- for-links-or-die-trying/2008/06/10/

Utilizing article marketing as a link building method, I have put one website on the map in as little as eight weeks, with only three articles. This website has one #1, one #2, eight results on page one, and twelve results in the top twenty listings of Google. Most of those keywords also rank well in Yahoo and MSN.

On the other hand, on my main website, I started looking at the keyword phrase "article marketing" just eighteen months ago, when my website sat at #79. Today, my website sits at #12 in Google for that keyword phrase.

I believe that given enough time, investment and commitment, I can use article marketing to elevate any web page on the Internet to multiple page-one listings in Google. But, not everyone is willing to make the kind of investment and commitment one needs to get to the top of Google's search results...

What To Do When You Need Results Now

If you simply cannot wait as long as it takes to build top rankings naturally, then you need to look seriously at Pay-Per-Click advertising models, such those offered through Google Adwords (http://adwords.google.com) and Yahoo Search Marketing (http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com).

About the Author:

Bill Platt offers Article Distribution and Article Ghost Writing services through his website at: http://www.thephantomwriters.com He has written an ebook that has been designed to help people create more effective articles. One customer said of his ebook, "I've read almost every ebook out there on article writing and article marketing and this one tops it all." To learn more about Bill's ebook or to get your own copy, please click this link: http://thephantomwriters.com/ebooks/article-marketing-traffic.html

How To Get Massive Free Website Traffic

Article by Willie Crawford

There is only one real secret to getting a lot of visitors to your website. That is merely figuring out where lots of your ideal visitors are, and standing in front of them.

When you think of it in those terms, it's really simple.

There are also only three real ways to get in front of the traffic flow. You can buy traffic, borrow traffic, or create traffic.

You buy traffic using pay-per-click search engines. It's very dependable, and can give you a steady flow of consistent traffic.

The big drawback with using pay-per-clicks to generate traffic is that it can be very risky. Those who use pay-per-clicks to generate 100% of their traffic, and are considered the best of the best, will tell you that as many as 7 out of 10 campaigns that they set up will lose money. The professionals very quickly shut off the losers, and their winners more than make up for the losses, but it's really not a game for someone not properly trained.

You can also buy traffic using an affiliate program. Since you only pay for the traffic when a sale is made, it's a very low-risk method. Since your affiliates are sending you their best customers, you can also think of it as borrowing traffic.

I love the affiliate program model, and have numerous products sold via affiliate programs. I also sell a lot of others' affiliate products. It's win-win.

You can also create traffic by putting things on the Internet that people are attracted to. You can create content by writing articles or blogging for example. I love content creation and have written over 1100 different articles. My articles teach people how to solve pressing problems, and at the same time point them to me (my sites) as a great resource.

When you create content your big challenge is to get it noticed and indexed by the search engines, so that people can follow links from there to your site. It's actually fairly easy - but time and labor intensive.

If your content is "viral" it will be something that others will happily share. Examples include in-depth articles, essays that touch people on a deep emotional level, or humorous videos that you post on YouTube.

Of the three methods of getting traffic (buying, borrowing, and creating it) my favorite has to be borrowing it... with creating it second. I generally only buy traffic when I need a really quick surge to test my website's conversion process.

The key to generating an absolute flood of free traffic is getting noticed, getting backlinks, etc., from high traffic websites such as Google, Craig's List, Yahoo, YouTube, and the various bookmarking and social networking sites.

This can be as simple is searching through Yahoo Answers for questions on your area of expertise, and then posting a great answer - along with an appropriate link to your website or product.

It can be as simple as searching through YouTube for videos on your area of expertise, and then leaving a comment along with a link sharing that they can find more information on the topic at your site.

It can be as simple as using the search engines to locate dozens or even hundreds of blogs and forums in your niche, and then interacting with these communities.

There's only one problem with most of the methods that I just mentioned. They can be time consuming and labor intensive. Just locating active communities in your niche can literally take hours.

I do have a secret. I use automated software to monitor and notify me of active blogs, forums, and communities in my niche. I use automated software to notify me when they are discussing my area of expertise or there is a new video posted pertaining to my area of expertise.

When I discover a new resource, I then analyze it, and if appropriate, I interact with that high traffic site, and leave a link back to my site, which is a perfectly acceptable practice.

So there you have my secret for generating literally hundreds of thousands of free hits to even my newest sites. Of course, your site has to be about something that people are interested it. I do strongly advocate using software to automate many of the mundane processes such as just finding these sites.

Many webmasters really struggle with website traffic generation, and there is absolutely no need to. You merely find the huge pools of traffic interested in your topic, and then you stand underneath the waterfall, and enjoy the cool, refreshing flow of new visitors.

About the Author

Willie Crawford has been marketing goods and services online since 1996. With very busy websites in dozens of niches, he teaches that the secret is automating the flow of traffic, since without traffic you don't really have a web business. His favorite traffic generation software is at Stealth Traffic Tools: http://IncredibleWebsiteTraffic.com

Driving Traffic And Getting List Profits

Article by Casey Moher

A great number of tested ways for sending traffic to your site exist today. You can spend time, money and considerable effort getting variable results with many of them. Much of my time has been spent in trying many of these. This is an approach that works very well.

Give before you try to GET!!! Provide a free gift for your visitors.

There is a high perceived value on the part of your visitor if you can provide them with useful information. Information has a high perceived-value and can truly change lives.

It is important that you realize there is a huge credibility gap between you and the folks you would like to have as visitors to your site and, ultlimately, customers. This level of mis-trust MUST be overcome before you can succeed in your efforts.

Finding and sharing information is your initial step. An on-line approach is the most efficient way to find and distribute valuable information. Key-word searches give you the quickest feedback on the subjects that people want to know. These subjects are what people want to know and are the ones you want to include in what you give away to your visitors.

Rather than simply sending off an e-mail or two when you provide the information, it is much better to turn it into a study course lasting several days. You will find more success if you spend the time necessary to make this a high-quality gift. This will return to you many times over in the form of a valuable list of quality subscribers. Very little cash takes you a long way in this project.

You give the information if your visitor will simply provide their name and e-mail address. The best way to perform this information capture function is to use a 'squeeze page'. Getting a squeeze page set up can be done simply and without much cost.

It's quick and affordable to get professional, quality work done. In a very short time, your own squeeze page can be activated and running.

You can have your own squeeze page up and running fast, just let me know. Use this excellent starting point to build your own profit machine.

Profitable long-term relationships, based on trust, can be built with these strategies and techniques. These methods can build your long-term relationships and ongoing profits.

Seeking to help your customer base and striving to be of value to them will pay off in any business, on-line or off-line. As you move forward, you can be well-rewarded. The optimal time to provide valuable information is long before you ask any prospective visitors/customers to do anything. The list is long when it comes to the types of information you can provide free. When you focus on quality of information delivered in a professional manner you will be taking giant steps on the road you wish to travel.

Information need is the primary thought process going on in the mind of the internet user you wish to reach. If you have the best interests of your reader at heart, it will show through in what you say and do. This is important! You have to overcome an always-present barrier of doubt in your visitor's mind. Provide valuable information at no cost and you will quickly erode the doubts. Writing and submitting articles on topics of intertest to a wide number of folks is a great way to attract the interest of internet travelers. You can pick article topics based on your own interests as well as a review of what key words people are seeking on the internet.

Articles work best at driving traffic to your website if they are not self-serving or blatant efforts to sell something. Use your articles to tell, not sell! The biggest role your articles perform is to inform. After your article has presented the information, it's fine for you to include a resource box at the end. The resource box gives your name, website address and what the reader will benefit when they visit it.

The process of article writing and production has taken some forward strides lately with new software that automates everything. A lot of the grind and struggle of article-production has been made much easier now that the industry has taken this step forward. Everything has gotten much simpler lately with all this. Articles can be written, produced and distributed to thousands of people at very reasonable rates.

Recent advances in computers as well as in writing and publishing services help you make articles an integral and ongoing strategy. If you want more information on these useful tools (or anything else in this article), just contact me.

About the Author

Mr. Casey Moher is a Registered Pharmacist and Life-Long Marketing and Sales Professional. You Can Get His Free Five-Day Mini-Course on Building Targeted Website Traffic by visiting: http://www.newtrafficmaster.com

10 Reminders for Usability Web Design to Make Site Visitors Adore You

No matter how hard you try, there is always something wrong with your website. There is always a critic. I have a friend outside the USA who thankfully alerts me of my 404 error pages, which I appreciate, even though I told him over the weekend he was making me scream at my own inability to be perfect.

You don't want to be caught with your pants down when trying to present a professional site. Since my work permits me to see a great deal of websites and Internet applications, I can note common problems. This list is not about the common ones. This list is for repetitive web design practices that drive site visitors crazy because we keep driving them crazy.

Here's what we do:

1. There is not enough persuasive or value oriented information to convince visitors to stay on the page. I compare this to car shopping. Automobile's in a showroom have a sheet of paper taped to the window that lists every detail you could possibly imagine about that particular car. How often do you actually stand in one spot, directly in front of the window, squinting to read the tiny words on the page? Usually you are spotted by eagle-eyed car salespeople who leap to your side and begin telling you all the reasons why the car is cool. They ask what you had in mind too, and from there, start to narrow down matches that fit your requirements. Write as if you are a car salesperson for your homepage. Cut a deal. Introduce the manager. Offer a test drive.


2. Don't place 100 links to the inside pages from your homepage. It is not a playground where you run screaming out onto the area trying to beat the first person to the swing set. A homepage should be married to your site requirements and especially your visitors' top tasks. This could be price checking, searching for part numbers or clearance items, finding your contact information or finding the only baby items that are not pink or blue on the planet.


3. Quit talking about yourself so often. Nobody cares how great you are. What they do care about is what you have for them that's worth their time and money. If you're the All Powerful Oz, you can slip that in, but just remember that even OZ lied to Dorothy. If you need help with your ego, try the We We Monitor.

Feedback and email newsletter forms are some of the funniest things I've witnessed on the web. Why would you demand a phone number from someone who is just letting you know your links are broken? If you want general feedback or better yet, sales leads, your form should scream trust. Start by trusting that if site visitors want you to call them, they'll enter their phone number. Requiring one is something managers tell you to do. Ignore them. Consider your prospects that desire email contact only or impress them with customer service clues with a choice of either email or phone contact. Never require a phone number for free newsletter signups, but if you insist on this unheard of practice you invented, offer a sample of the newsletter that requires that phone number and by all means, tell us why you want to call us.

4. If your navigation only goes forward, you didn't learn to dance properly. The actual steps are:
   
   
   • Move forward
   • Move back if your partner doesn't like that move
   • Continue forward if your partner really liked where you landed and trusts where you want to go next.
   
   In other words, don't rely on the "Back" button to go backwards. Guide your visitor's steps backward, forward and side to side with breadcrumb navigation, embedded text links, buttons or links that continue a task's forward momentum. Design navigation to be fluid and effortless. Your visitors should be able to glide along the dance floor and not get lost or spun around into dizzying loops.


5. Application functionality. If you only knew what exists out there in web site land. For example, there was a travel site for camping that only lets you book hotel rooms because the campgrounds weren’t programmed into the options anywhere. There was the application with many parts in the process, however, no matter what link or button was pushed, it only landed on one of those parts. An application is only intuitive if you program its brains properly.


6. Mystery links confound visitors. Non-descriptive labels force us to guess where we will end up. While I love a good game of hide and seek as much as the next person, when I think I know where you're taking me and you take me somewhere totally different, I stop letting you drive.


7. Related to this are Absolute Shock Links. These are navigation links that take you to PDF files without any warning. Since it takes time for the computer to go pull Adobe out of the kitchen, rev it up, load the file and then I swear you have to resize the thing from 200% down to something that doesn't make you get the shakes reading, well, you can see how a little warning is appreciated. The other form of visitor link shock treatment is linking to a totally new domain, with new layout and brand new navigation and no way back because it opened up a new window and cut off all ties to where you were. At least, if you plan on dumping your visitors off somewhere new, work out a nice little warning system and arrange visitation time with the Mothership site.


8. If you want to capture someone's attention, do it above the page fold. Large monitors didn't signal the end of browser laziness. We still like an incentive to use the mouse to scroll, hover or click. If half the page is needed to describe how to use a contact or sales lead form, what is doing business with you like?


9. If you have a FAQ, there had better be a good reason for making your visitors go to a page that displays a long list of questions and answers. They want you to answer the question when they have the question. I remember when I used to show horses and entered jumping classes that required me to memorize the course I'd need to guide my horse around. I could never understand why they didn’t put directions inside the show ring itself that said "Turn left here", "Weave around these scary high jumps" and "Slow down, the judge usually stands about here." A FAQ is nice for backup if you have a complicated process, but user instructions during the actual task are far more considerate and easy to remember.

Finally, don't despair. Web site surfers are often the most incredibly patient and forgiving people, especially if you offer something they want. Just remember to show them where you put it.

About the Author:

Usability Consultant, Kimberly Krause Berg, is the owner of UsabilityEffect.com (www.usabilityeffect.com), Cre8pc.com (www.cre8pc.com), and Cre8asiteForums (www.cre8asiteforums.com/). Her background in organic search engine optimization, combined with web site usability consulting, offers unique insight into web site development. Copyright 2007 Cre8pc.com. All Rights Reserved. Reprint rights by Permission of the Author

Hand Visitors the Keys to Your Web Site

Recently, I wanted to use my car but couldn't find my car key. The last I'd seen it, I was handing it to my daughter, two days ago.

First, I 'texted' her in school, so she wouldn't get into trouble for having a cell phone with her. She typed back, "u hv." Then, I called my husband, who has amazing psychic abilities an hour away from home. He has no idea where my car key is. Fortunately, I had a spare key and of course, later in the evening, my daughter found the original key sitting by her computer, buried in the world's scariest Teenager's Room.

It took all day to solve the missing car key mystery. I stuck with the search because I like my car and like to drive it.

Do you ever hope your web site visitors feel the same way about your web site? Have you driven it around the countryside before offering them the keys to it?

I've Come to Drive Your Web Site

I recently visited a web site that was redesigned. It looked professional and attractive. It was ready for visitors, but perhaps not me. My goal was to find out where the products were and secondly, how to order them. However, the first big whammo! object on the page was a video of a person talking about a product.

This isn't a bad thing. But I'm new. I've just nestled myself into the homepage car seat. I want to look around, play with the radio, adjust the rear view mirror, figure out where they'll let me put my coffee mug and by golly, is that a sale item over there?

I don't want to watch a video yet and their's takes up a huge chunk of homepage real estate, above the page fold. I'm sure it's very nice and I'm sorry for scrolling past it. I came with a mission in mind. Did they build a site for me to carry out my task?

Farther down the page, I finally discover the Way To Our Products click path. I click the link, which takes me to another page with a search function and after a few tries at getting the right search criteria down, I finally arrive at a product I'm interested in. It's been 10 minutes, but YES! I've made it down their web site driveway.

It's a good thing I want to drive their web site because after 10 minutes of figuring out where they put everything, I'm thinking I want to drive a sports car.

Navigation for web sites, especially large sites, is never easy to map out. It takes planning and consideration for visitors’ goals. It has to help visitors complete a task. On this particular web site, which was very attractive, they didn't put a "How to Order" button or link on the product page.

I had no car key. I couldn't start their web site engine. All I was able to do was play "pretend driver" and imagine I was doing something on their web site, because that's about all they designed it to let me do.

The moral of this story?

The next time you design a web site, its okay to take it for a joy-ride. You've earned that right. But, make sure you throw the keys to other drivers and let them take it on the highway or down the street to Starbucks. These people are your user testing hero's.

Trust me when I say that many of them crave bumpy roads and purposely love to drive web sites like maniacs, just to see what that baby can do.

But, remember to get your keys back when they're finished.


About the Author:

Usability Consultant, Kimberly Krause Berg, is the owner of UsabilityEffect.com (www.usabilityeffect.com), Cre8pc.com (www.cre8pc.com), and Cre8asiteForums (www.cre8asiteforums.com/). Her background in organic search engine optimization, combined with web site usability consulting, offers unique insight into web site development. Copyright 2007 Cre8pc.com. All Rights Reserved. Reprint rights by Permission of the Author

Usability and SEO - Red Light, Green Light

By Kim Krause Berg

Another article has appeared on the topic of SEO and Usability and how these two different skill sets benefit each other. The latest, Usability and SEO. Which comes First?, written for Search Engine Watch by Eric Enge, caught my eye because he wrote:
"What I want to emphasize here is one key point: Usability comes first, and SEO comes second."
It's funny to hear that statement coming from a professional SEO.

In the late 1990's, when I offered search engine optimization services, I didn't get the call for help until the web site was launched and swimming for dear life in the search engine pool. In those days, there were lots of search engines. SEO came last, after the design and after people were intended to use it. If they ever found it, that is.

During the past ten years, acceptance by companies to work search engine marketing techniques into their web site pages has vastly improved. User centered, persuasive design, on the other hand, are still whispers in the wind. Will it take another ten years for usability and accessibility to be as justified as marketing a web site property?

What opened my eyes was working in user interface design and discovering that usability came last, AFTER SEO. It was always a pleasant surprise to hear someone on the design team inquire about image alt attributes or fuss over page title tags. Unfortunately, I realized they only knew these things mattered because some of my design team mates owned their own personal web site businesses on the side. It wasn't something the company demanded for itself. They were just lucky the web site designers had their acts together.

User centered design still gets shoved around. As it makes its way into the world of search engine marketing, the experience reminds me of the game "Red Light, Green Light". The caller yells, "Green light!" and everybody runs forward, willy nilly, confident, trying to get to the finish line first. Then, the caller shouts, "Red light!" and suddenly everyone stops. Frozen. They have to hold their position. They can't breathe or giggle, as they wait for their next instruction.

Corporate Blinders

I was recently part of a conversation whereby a man was describing his company's future plans. Presently, they sell products online locally and are now moving into a neighboring country. After this, they plan on going global.

As he describes it, they have no usability person in the entire company. They have search engine marketers. But, they have no idea how to sell online internationally. They don't understand what browsers are popular outside the USA. They don't know how to make forms usable for global customers. User behavior and habits vary by culture, even down to how web pages are read. They assume their present website will work everywhere. I see this constantly and wonder how some corporations survive with such tunnel vision.

Usability is misunderstood and therefore, not even considered a worthwhile investment until sales stop or worse, a lawsuit appears by someone unable to use the site.

It's Not Who Goes First

Whenever I see phrases like "Usability is first, SEO is second" or "SEO is first, usability is second", or "SEO doesn’t need usability", I don't agree with the competition this sets up.
Both disciplines are vital to the air your web site breathes. They are equal sides of the same lung.

Usability, accessibility and search engine marketing practices are united partners because they're focused on the web site visitor. We can all walk up to these customers and shake their hand together.

About the Author:

Usability Consultant, Kimberly Krause Berg, is the owner of UsabilityEffect.com (www.usabilityeffect.com), Cre8pc.com (www.cre8pc.com), and Cre8asiteForums (www.cre8asiteforums.com/). Her background in organic search engine optimization, combined with web site usability consulting, offers unique insight into web site development. Copyright 2007 Cre8pc.com. All Rights Reserved. Reprint rights by Permission of the Author

Web Site Feedback as Your Secret Online Marketing Tool

By Kim Krause Berg

There's a small trick I do with my online order form that helps to identify one of the first problems a web site may have. I purposely don't ask for a business address or phone number right away. I don't want to know what these are. As a web site usability consultant, when I visit a client's web site for the first time, learning how to contact them is my first official task. If I can't locate this information, or it's a pain in the neck to find, I've discovered their first customer service issue.

I wouldn't recommend that you do this with your online business, especially if you are selling products. Your responsibility is to gather accurate information for your transactions immediately so that you can conduct business in an efficient, courteous manner. I, too, have reasons to be more formal, depending on the project. Both you and I have a strong desire to conduct business or provide information in a positive, productive way.

If we do not, how do we know when we've failed? How do we know when we've succeeded? If we don't make the effort to include customers' needs and desires in our interaction with them, and our competitors do, what message does this send? Are you inviting user feedback?

Dear Google, Your Application is Groovy

Search marketers know that local searches are a new arena for promoting online businesses. One way to do this is by informing Google Maps that a business exists. When Google has this information, with data provided by a site owner or their Internet Marketing Consultant, it is more likely a search for your product or service, in your town, will display your business.

I decided to enter my business into the Google Maps application (http://maps.google.com/). There are several steps to the application, with helpful user instructions to guide you. When I reached the end, I had several options for how Google could verify that it was I submitting the data, rather than someone not associated with my business. This extra effort towards accuracy signals a desire to be customer service oriented.

Since I believe in positive reinforcement, I would have liked to have sent a "high five" to Google because I had a good experience using their application. However, on the last screen, there was no place to offer feedback of any kind. I couldn't rate it. I couldn't recommend it to someone. I couldn't send an email. I couldn't answer a one-question quick survey such as "Did you enjoy adding your business to Google Maps?" or "Did you have any problems entering your business and if so, please send us your experience."

I know Google is user centric. This is a missed opportunity for user feedback. It's a missed opportunity to get a pat on the back for a job well done. We all like to hear about when we've done something a site visitor appreciates.

Feedback as User Generated Content

Online customer feedback seems to be tucked somewhere on the last page of site requirements. Forcing visitors to navigate their way through a thick forest of page elements just to locate how to communicate with you creates frustration. Worse, it's a lost opportunity to obtain user generated content for your web site.

User generated content can be a great marketing arm if you understand how to invite feedback and apply it.

I have a book addiction, so to help support it, I buy from Amazon's used book dealers who sell at discounted prices. Shortly after a book arrives, inevitably Amazon follows up with an email invitation to answer a quick survey about the service provided by their third party vendor. The survey is simple, often one or two easy questions focused on a rating scale, and in less than a minute it's completed. The only reason I even bother to respond to them is because I know Amazon issues very fast surveys.

They've earned my trust because I know what to expect from them.

Products are purchased from Amazon as well. I bought a herbal product through them that my doctor recommended after knee surgery. Amazon responded with an email containing a link to a product survey. This one permits user feedback in an interesting way.

"We invite you to submit a review for the product you purchased or share an image that would benefit other customers. Your input will help customers choose the best products on Amazon.com."

The survey is two questions. The first asks if you are over 13. The second is a rating where you can assign 1 – 5 stars. This is followed by an opportunity to enter a title for your review, and a huge comment field to write your review. Alternatively, there is a radio button that allows you to submit a video review.

Consumers can link to the product page in their review. You can "tag" your review with keywords or a category label for the Amazon search engine. Accepted reviews appear on the site in 48 hours.

By getting customers involved, a web site opens the door to user generated content. This is also another outlet for creative online marketers looking to place content and promote products.

Reach Out in the Darkness

By appealing to feelings and emotions, you'll increase a customer's desire to contact you. One sure-fire way of grabbing their heart is to suggest you'll take something away that they care about.

You can ask for feedback by presenting questions such as "Should we remove [insert beloved gadget or site pleaser here]?" One popular topic is asking readers if they mind if you include a few ads. The point is that you need not be afraid to take the initiative. Let your visitors know what you may be considering and offer them a chance to respond. If you strike a nerve, their feedback may be unwelcome if they blog about it, or if you're lucky, they'll send praise. Take into consideration whether you want feedback to be public or private.

Sometimes you won’t have a choice.

In the early stages of Danny Sullivan's new Sphinn site for search marketers, I blogged publically about the lack of a place to post usability topics there. My blog post caught the attention of Sullivan and his loyal band of developers. He responded in my blog, and our dialog became a news story. They added a Usability category because the resulting user feedback justified the inclusion.

It didn't stop there. Sphinn readers are encouraged to ask questions, submit ideas for new features and propose solutions to known problems, in the forum-like space. Danny or his staff responds publically.

By enabling most user feedback to be out front, they're creating content. Behind this content is an enormous message from Third Door Media that customer service is a top priority.

Free Candy for Your Feedback

A food shopping chain in my area places customer service directly on the opposite side of the cash registers, where we get fast help. I once had a vegetable my cashier couldn't identify and he yelled across to the customer service desk for help to verify what I told him it was. It used to be that retail stores stuck customer service in the farthest corner away from the action. Do you do this too?

You can turn feedback into a promotion device or funnel it into site enhancements.

1. Be there when they need you. Place your Contact page in your global navigation so that it appears on every page. Increase the font size of your toll-free phone number.


2. Provide a feedback form, but make it short. Be sure to clearly indicate your form is "quick". Some visitors will balk at polls, surveys or forms that require a time investment. Make sure your drop-down menu has an "Other" category. Don't require registration first. Be very clear with visitors about what you intend to do with the feedback.


3. Watch labels. Amazon calls their customer service page "Help", but that word conjures up a FAQ page, not user feedback. If you provide a form, say so with "Feedback Form" or "Your Fast Feedback".


4. Don't make anyone feel insignificant. Amazon has an option to sign-in before offering feedback and in smaller text offers permission for non-members to contact them. However, another link for "Express" feedback is for members. Not all feedback is created equal? Get permission to use any user generated content on your site.


5. Invite product reviews, guest blog writers, paid product reviews, video, audio, snapshots. Turn your customers into your personal sales force by establishing trust. Let them edit or remove reviews later. Link back and pass "link juice".

Lastly provide incentives such as coupons, free shipping, fee discounts and free samples to those who were unhappy with a product. Many companies truly loathe dissatisfied customers and will bend over backwards to please them. Show you want their feedback by encouraging creative opportunities for them to do so.

About the Author:

Usability Consultant, Kimberly Krause Berg, is the owner of UsabilityEffect.com (www.usabilityeffect.com), Cre8pc.com (www.cre8pc.com), and Cre8asiteForums (www.cre8asiteforums.com/). Her background in organic search engine optimization, combined with web site usability consulting, offers unique insight into web site development.
Copyright 2007 - 2008 Cre8pc.com. All Rights Reserved. Reprint rights by Permission of the Author

Using Differentiators in Keyphrases: What Every Search Engine Optimization Company Needs to Know

As any good search engine optimization company knows, in search, more so than any other medium, you have a very short window of opportunity in which to engage your prospect. The only way to get a solid competitive advantage in this arena is to utilize various techniques in order to make sure that you are giving a prospect exactly what it is that he or she is looking for. Otherwise, your prospect will simply click the back button and visit one of your competitors – a process that only takes seconds.

One way to gain a competitive advantage, of course, is to work on the website itself. Any search engine optimization company worth its salt will also be involved in conversion testing on your website – in other words, making certain that the visitors who arrive on your site are likely to take a point of action that eventually leads to a sale. Split tests, modifications in content, different color schemes, and numerous other variable elements can all have a measurable impact.

There is also another way that a quality search engine optimization company will seek to maximize the value of the prospects that find your website through search engines. In this case, however, it is using your company differentiators in the keyphrases that they target to make sure that the traffic that comes to your site is of a very high quality.

Gaining a Competitive Advantage with Differentiators

As more and more companies turn to organic search to gain a competitive advantage while promoting their products and services, it can be increasingly difficult to achieve high rankings for the generic terms that everyone in your industry is pursuing. While any ranking is ultimately attainable, eventually a search engine optimization company has to decide whether the effort involved is worth it, especially when it recognizes that you can get overall better results from the campaign by making sure that a very high percentage of people that are typing keyphrases into search engines are looking for exactly what you offer.

This is why your search engine optimization company should be able to leverage differentiators in your keyphrases to give you the best competitive advantage available.

What Keyphrases Will Work Best for Your Business?

Suppose that you are in an industry where companies can have a wide array of prices, approaches, customer service levels, and so on. Instead of targeting, from the outset, the general keyphrase that defines the industry (for example "email marketing"), a good search engine optimization company will take the time to help you gain a competitive advantage by realizing what is different about your company in order to a.) attract very highly targeted prospects who know what they are seeking and b.) reduce the competitiveness of the keyphrases they are choosing.

Let's take a look at a high-end provider of email marketing that has advanced web-based functionality and focuses on the B2B market. This fictional business is seeking a competitive advantage by working with a search engine optimization company. We can safely assume that the percentage of people that type "email marketing" into a search engine who are looking for this exact type of company is anywhere from between 0 and 100%.

By looking into the popularity of other variations, however, we can see that it is nowhere near 100%. Phrases like "cheap email marketing" or "free email marketing" are very popular, demonstrating that many people seeking "email marketing" are not looking for exactly the service that the provider is offering.

Imagine that instead of targeting "email marketing", a daunting task (that, even if achieved, assures that a high percentage of visitors that come to the site are not looking for the provider's particular type of solution), the search engine optimization company takes advantage of the provider's differentiators. In this case, the search engine optimization company would instead target phrases such as "business to business email marketing" and "web-based email marketing". Suddenly the two objectives have been achieved - the provider knows that a much higher percentage of visitors that are typing these terms are actually looking for the right kind of company and the competitiveness of the phrases has also been reduced, leading to faster and higher rankings.

Using Modifiers to Give You the Edge

There are hundreds of modifiers that can give a competitive advantage by reflecting a company's differentiators, including words such as "free", "affordable", "high-end", "full service", "proven", "turnkey", etc. The point is that by making use of your unique differentiators in the search terms you target, your search engine optimization company is already setting the table for your prospect before he or she even clicks over to your website. When the message that is seen on your site then supports the keyphrase that was typed, you now have an engaged visitor. This can mean more leads, less site abandonment, and better overall website performance.

Conclusion

Remember, your company is better than the others out there. Ask yourself why, and then tell your search engine optimization company to take advantage of these differences in your keyphrases to give you a competitive advantage in your industry. The subtle addition of a few seemingly minor modifiers can have a huge impact on your bottom line.


About the Author

Scott Buresh is the CEO of Medium Blue, which was named the number one organic search engine optimization company in the world by PromotionWorld in 2006 and 2007. Scott has contributed content to many publications including The Complete Guide to Google Advertising (Brown, 2008), Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004), MarketingProfs, ZDNet, WebProNews, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. Medium Blue serves local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, DS Waters, and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. Visit MediumBlue.com to request a custom SEO guarantee based on your goals and your data.

How to Build a Successful Website - Recommendations from Google Guy

By Ciara Carruthers

In a post on the 'Webmaster World' Forum, an ex-employee of Google, also known as Google Guy, provided the golden rules of creating a high trafficked website. The post, "Successful Site in 12 Months with Google Alone" is truly priceless and I personally thank anyone who gives their time offering us all such treasured knowledge.

In this post, Google Guy covers 26 separate points which he feels to be important in the world of Google.Here, I shall pick out some of the points which I feel to be the most significant and easily applied:

1. Four of the 26 pointers by Google Guy speak of adding content.

Add, add, add. Google loves it, and your visitors will love it. Assure it is quality content though. You are looking for quality over quantity here.Sure, you can turn out 5 mediocre articles in the time it takes to write one excellent article. However, once that excellent article is on your site, people will bookmark your page and recommend you to friends and online contacts.

2. Your website should be clean and simple.

The simpler the HTML that you have on your website, the more the search engines will like you. Also, the more simply your visitors can navigate and read your site, the more THEY will like you.How simple is the layout of Google itself? Yes, very simple. How popular is it? Very.

3. Keep your pages small.

Aim for between 5K and 10K. Many of your visitors will still be using dial-up connections. Don't alienate these visitors by building pages that load slowly.

4. Keep your content pages to no more than 500 words, generally speaking.

If it gets longer, that's fine. Assure, however, that it is not rambling, that it NEEDS to be longer. If you can make it shorter, do so.

5. Use your keyword in the following ways:

Once in the title, once in the description tag, once in the heading, once in the url, once in bold, once in italic and once high on the page. Don't aim for misspelled keywords. The search engines are getting smarter and now often correct spelling mistakes as people search for them.

6. On each page, link to one or two highly ranked websites which relate to your industry.

Assure that the links are in context with the rest of the article. Use your keyword in the link.

7. Create links from one page to another within your website.

In this way, you even-out the entire PR of your website, as opposed to having one page which ranks very highly and other pages which don't. So, for example, if when writing one article, you mention a point which is covered in more detail in another article, link to that article. Use the keyword for the other article in the link.

8. Make your navigation system usable; both for visitors and search engine spiders.

For your visitors, assure that it is a simple and clean system. For the search engine spiders, assure that your links go no more than 3 links deep.This means that no page should be any more than one other page from the home page. Cross link from articles as much as possible.

9. Submit your website to as many directories as possible.

Here you will find an extensive list of available directories - "Strongest Links" Many are free. If you can afford it, pay the extra cash to have your site listed in Yahoo and Looksmart.

10. Request link swaps from related website.

Better yet, join a quality link exchange program. I use the "Link Exchange program" supplied for free by SiteSell.com, with whom I host my other website, "Barcelona Explore"

11. Write good, concise content.

Keep paragraphs short and to the point.

12. If you are using your website to promote your off-line business, don't just put up an online flyer.

Provide your visitors with information that they can use, not just information about you and your company. Unless they are specifically looking for information about you, they will click away from your site.

13. Study the information provided by your website statistics.

If your web host doesn't provide a good statistic program, use a free one like "StatCounter". Analyze the keywords that people have been using to find your site. If any surprising ones come up, use them in your site.

14. Partake in forums pertaining to your website.

Absorb all the information that is on there, and more importantly, become part of it. The networking with other people in your sector is invaluable and will prove it's worth by increasing backlinks, viral networking and recommendations.

These points are what I have taken as being the most important recommendations from Google Guy. The entire post is to be found here - "Webmaster World Forum - How to create a successful website".

Following all these points will speed up your success. Success at any speed, however, is a guarantee if you focus on offering your visitors value, by providing excellent content.


About the Author:

Ciara Carruthers is a successful website content writer. Employ her services or read her many website related articles by clicking here.

Environmentally Friendly Web Site Marketing: Recycle Your Content!

By Kalena Jordan

Do you ever hit a slump when you're trying to come up with new content for your web site? Do you get blogger’s block on a regular basis? It happens to the best of us.

Yet it seems like everyone around you is a marketing genius. Search engine marketers are churning out articles and blog posts day after day and what about those multi-level marketing gurus promoting seemingly endless products and e-books? Do you ever think “How do they find the time to come up with all these new ideas?".

The answer is simple: content recycling. Yes, the secret behind many of the Internet’s most successful marketers is the recycling of content in different ways to appeal to different audiences. Let me give you an example:

The original Search Engine Optimization 101 course that I created for Search Engine College was based on a brief training manual I wrote for web design staff of an ex-employer many years ago. When it came to writing a full course for the first time back in 2004, I took the original training manual content, checked it for accuracy, expanded on it to bring the content up to date and then divided it into logical lesson plans. Then I added case studies, examples, 3rd party references, diagrams and coding samples. Then I devised suitable assignments and quizzes for the lessons that would test a student's knowledge of the material. Voila! I had my finished course.

But my use of the material didn't stop there. I noticed that some of my lessons had sections that would make excellent stand-alone articles, so I pulled out the relevant sections and re-worked the content into suitable article context and added broader appeal for my target markets. These articles were then circulated using various article distribution channels and social media communities. The more popular ones became feature articles in our monthly newsletter and offline marketing magazines. Some became marketing tools for our Search Engine College affiliate network to help drive more sales.

When I receive comments and feedback on the articles, these in turn generate discussion and ideas for blog posts for my search engine advice column. But that's not all! Occasionally I am asked to give in-house training or presentations on search engine marketing. Depending on the subject matter, I often take my original SEO lesson notes and my articles and rework the content into MS PowerPoint slides and handouts.

The marketing and affiliate gurus are expert content recyclers and they make a LOT of money using this system. But guess what? You can apply the same principle to your own web site content. Here are some ideas:

Documentation such as training manuals and client case studies make great web page content.
Web page content such as product reviews and descriptions make great fodder for "how to" articles.

That silly staff Christmas video might make a terrific viral marketing tool.
A set of FAQs would make for an interesting webinar or video blog.
A group of case studies could be made into a free white paper or auto-responder email series.
A collection of articles or bookmarked tools could easily be converted to a downloadable e-book or give-away CD.

Get the picture?

The more ways you can re-package your information, the wider audience you will reach because not everyone responds to the same medium in the same way. Some people like to read articles, while others prefer a structured training program. Some people absorb material better if it's presented in-person and others like e-books and YouTube videos.

The more ways you make your content accessible, the better. The Internet's current love affair with social media offers even more opportunities to get your content and brand circulated. But there’s an even bigger incentive to recycling your material: Google’s Universal Search.

The Universal Search Model that Google rolled out in May this year incorporates web search results with related results from Google Images, Google News, Google Video, Google News and Blogger in the one search interface. The new search model boosts the importance of non-text content within web sites so that image and video content have become major marketing channels in their own right, rather than tools to attract visitors to text content.

It makes sense then that if you offer your site information in a range of formats such as video, audio, news releases, PDF and images as well as general text or HTML content, you provide more potential channels for it to appear in Google search results.

So re-package your knowledge into articles, e-books, webinars, training courses, podcasts, white papers, CDs, videos, blog posts and web pages and recycle that content!


About the Author:

Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

10 Search Engine Marketing Myths Debunked

By Kalena Jordan

In this article, I'm going to try and debunk a few myths floating around the Internet about what's required to get your site visible in search engines. Here goes:

Myth 1 - You need to buy a domain with keywords in it

I'm sure you've seen them, domains like: www.paris-hilton-pink-diamond-dog-collars.com. For some weird reason, webmasters seem to think that they need to have a keyword-stuffed domain to do well in the search engines, the more hyphens the better. Well it just isn't true.

In fact, Google spam evangelist Matt Cutts is known for warning against using over-stuffed keyword domains. If you have a look at one of the last sentences of this post of his he talks about possibly attracting Google's attention with keyword-filled domains and gives an (excessive) example. Could he be hinting that using ultra-keyworded domains may trip a filter of some kind? I think so.

Myth 2 - You need to submit your site to 1000 search engines and directories

Ok, I don't know who started this silly rumor but it's NEVER been true. Latest figures from Nielsen/NetRatings show that over 95% of the search market share is dominated by the top 5 search engines: Google, Yahoo, MSN/Live Search, AOL and Ask. As long as your site is found in these engines, you can rest assured you've covered the main bases. Despite this, I still get emails offering to submit my sites to the "most popular" 1000 search engines.

Myth 3 - You need to stuff keywords into as many areas of your site as possible

I like to think this rumor was started by the same idiot who started 1). It's correct that search engines actively seek to match your site content with search queries, but stuffing the same keywords over and over into your site code via visible or invisible text DOES NOT automatically make your site relevant for searches containing those keywords. It's more likely to trip spam filters and earn your site a ranking suppression. In fact, you might as well hold up a big red flag to Googlebot that says "COME AND GET ME"

Myth 4 - Your site has to be flat HTML

Wrong again. A few years ago, search engines had difficulty indexing sites that were built using dynamically-generated pages or pages with multiple parameters in their URLs. So the recommendation by SEO experts at the time was to use flat HTML pages or convert existing pages into HTML and/or use mod_rewrite to convert dynamic URLs into flat ones. However the search engines have all become better at indexing dynamic site content now and also provide a universal sitemap protocol to enable webmasters to ensure all their pages are submitted and indexed.

Myth 5 - You have to swap links with as many sites as possible

I'd like to strap whoever started this story to a couch and make them watch re-runs of The Golden Girls for a whole year. Because this is probably the most persistent and frustrating myth there is about search engine marketing and it's one of my pet peeves. I am bombarded daily with emails from webmasters who tell me it's "...extremely valuable to swap links to boost your Google PageRank" or who tell me I should form 3 way reciprocal link partnerships because it "...will help boost the link popularity of our sites in a way that is undetectable to Google". Excuse my French, but that's Bollocks!

Reciprocal links are pretty much worthless for search engine value these days. In-bound one way links from high quality sites are much more valuable from a search engine relevancy perspective. If you are going to seek out reciprocal links, for heaven's sake, swap links with sites that offer related or complementary content to yours! What's the point offering your site visitors a link if it doesn't relate to what they are seeking on your own site? Don't seek out links based on perceived search engine value. Swap links because they offer traffic to your site or valuable resources to visitors of your own site. If you base your linking strategy on search engines alone, you'll end up with a Free For All link farm that search engine staff will mock as they slap a ranking penalty on it.

Myth 6 - You have to buy an existing domain to be successful

This myth started shortly after Google began "sandboxing" new sites for a period of time before releasing them into the main index. The phenomenon became known as the aging delay. Webmasters were stumped when they couldn't find their pages listed for any keywords in Google for months at a time and when learning of the sandbox effect, some decided that purchasing an existing domain could help them avoid the sandbox altogether.

A similar rumor suggested that purchasing a domain with a high Google PageRank would automatically transfer the PageRank and traffic to any new site built on the existing domain. Neither of these assumptions is true. Hindsight has shown us that the sandbox does not actually exist, merely that Google has become a little more picky about which sites to feature in their main index versus the supplemental index and older, better linked sites have a better chance than brand new ones with no link reputation.

As for purchasing existing domains, this can actually backfire on webmasters because Google's latest algorithm looks closely at domain registration details and if a domain has changed hands too many times or has had dodgy content in the past, it could attract suppression filters until the newest version of the site has built up some trust-rank.

Myth 7 - You only need to optimize your META Tags

Back in 1996 when I first began optimizing web sites, nobody knew anything about SEO and so even slight changes to a web site meant you could outrank your competitors. Simply optimizing the title tag of a page could bring on a Top 5 position in the SERPS. Adding keyword-rich META Description and META Keywords tags too pretty much guaranteed you a top spot. Now it's a completely different story. Most search engines don't even support the META Keywords Tag anymore and Danny Sullivan recently determined that Google's never supported it.

You have to offer search engines more than optimized title and META tags if you want your pages ranked highly for related search queries. You need to optimize the copy on your pages, reduce code bloat, provide a logical navigation structure, have good link popularity, update your site regularly, have sticky content and make sure your site code validates, amongst other things. Despite this, many webmasters assume that if they add an optimized title and META tag to every page, their job is done. Not so! You've got to think bigger than that.

Myth 8 - Any traffic is good traffic

I received an email recently from an online ad agency that had developed what they thought was a knockout SEO tool that they wanted me to review. It was basically a membership site designed to generate traffic via a voting and points system where you earn points for visiting sites and receiving visitors from the same network. As I explained to them, the concept merely builds false traffic and fake link popularity, which goes against practically everything in Google's webmaster guidelines. It is also very open to manipulation and is, in my opinion, operating on flawed logic.

This mutual optimization idea has been tried before. It doesn't work because it only attracts the most aggressive clickers and the whole thing turns into a competition between 2 or 3 lazy webmasters who think traffic at any cost/quality is the way to run an online business. It's not. Unqualified traffic that's unlikely to convert to sales or sign-ups is only wasting valuable bandwidth and hosting resources. Visitors that disappear from your site a few seconds after they arrive skew your site metrics and send a message to search engines that your site is not worth visiting. You want traffic from qualified leads, loyal repeat visitors and new visitors via highly targeted search queries.

Myth 9 - If you're not found in Google, you're screwed

I said it recently and I'll say it again: Google is NOT the Internet. There are plenty of ways to market your web site online, so you shouldn't become discouraged if you can't seem to crack good results in Google. I know of plenty of sites that receive more referrals from Yahoo and MSN than Google and that's the way they like it. Bento Yum is proof that an e-commerce site doesn't need Google (or any of the 4 main search engines) to survive. Owner Jennifer Laycock has deliberately blocked search engine robots from the site to prove that an online business can thrive via word of mouth and social media buzz alone.

But even if you can't live without Google referrals, you need to have back-up traffic channels in place. Never rely too heavily on a single source for your traffic. What if something happened tomorrow that stopped all your Google traffic? Would your site survive? It should, if you're doing your job well. Keep adding good content to your site, update and submit your sitemaps regularly, seek out high quality back links and the traffic will come.

Myth 10 - Search Engine Marketing is expensive

Not so. You can market a web site on a shoe-string budget or no budget at all! You don't need to spend thousands on SEO services or PPC advertising. Simply invest at least an hour per day learning how to optimize your web site for better search engine rankings, submitting it to relevant search engines and directories, adding fresh content, building up backward links and marketing it via social media networks such as Digg, Facebook, Del.icio.us etc.

Not sure where to start? Visit webmaster forums, read search marketing related blogs and sign up for related newsletters and you will soon learn everything you need to know about marketing your web site successfully.


About the Author:

Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

Using Differentiators in Keyphrases: What Every Search Engine Optimization Company Needs to Know

By Scott Buresh

As any good search engine optimization company knows, in search, more so than any other medium, you have a very short window of opportunity in which to engage your prospect. The only way to get a solid competitive advantage in this arena is to utilize various techniques in order to make sure that you are giving a prospect exactly what it is that he or she is looking for. Otherwise, your prospect will simply click the back button and visit one of your competitors – a process that only takes seconds.

One way to gain a competitive advantage, of course, is to work on the website itself. Any search engine optimization company worth its salt will also be involved in conversion testing on your website – in other words, making certain that the visitors who arrive on your site are likely to take a point of action that eventually leads to a sale. Split tests, modifications in content, different color schemes, and numerous other variable elements can all have a measurable impact.

There is also another way that a quality search engine optimization company will seek to maximize the value of the prospects that find your website through search engines. In this case, however, it is using your company differentiators in the keyphrases that they target to make sure that the traffic that comes to your site is of a very high quality.

Gaining a Competitive Advantage with Differentiators

As more and more companies turn to organic search to gain a competitive advantage while promoting their products and services, it can be increasingly difficult to achieve high rankings for the generic terms that everyone in your industry is pursuing. While any ranking is ultimately attainable, eventually a search engine optimization company has to decide whether the effort involved is worth it, especially when it recognizes that you can get overall better results from the campaign by making sure that a very high percentage of people that are typing keyphrases into search engines are looking for exactly what you offer.

This is why your search engine optimization company should be able to leverage differentiators in your keyphrases to give you the best competitive advantage available.

What Keyphrases Will Work Best for Your Business?

Suppose that you are in an industry where companies can have a wide array of prices, approaches, customer service levels, and so on. Instead of targeting, from the outset, the general keyphrase that defines the industry (for example "email marketing"), a good search engine optimization company will take the time to help you gain a competitive advantage by realizing what is different about your company in order to a.) attract very highly targeted prospects who know what they are seeking and b.) reduce the competitiveness of the keyphrases they are choosing.

Let's take a look at a high-end provider of email marketing that has advanced web-based functionality and focuses on the B2B market. This fictional business is seeking a competitive advantage by working with a search engine optimization company. We can safely assume that the percentage of people that type "email marketing" into a search engine who are looking for this exact type of company is anywhere from between 0 and 100%.

By looking into the popularity of other variations, however, we can see that it is nowhere near 100%. Phrases like "cheap email marketing" or "free email marketing" are very popular, demonstrating that many people seeking "email marketing" are not looking for exactly the service that the provider is offering.

Imagine that instead of targeting "email marketing", a daunting task (that, even if achieved, assures that a high percentage of visitors that come to the site are not looking for the provider's particular type of solution), the search engine optimization company takes advantage of the provider's differentiators. In this case, the search engine optimization company would instead target phrases such as "business to business email marketing" and "web-based email marketing". Suddenly the two objectives have been achieved - the provider knows that a much higher percentage of visitors that are typing these terms are actually looking for the right kind of company and the competitiveness of the phrases has also been reduced, leading to faster and higher rankings.

Using Modifiers to Give You the Edge

There are hundreds of modifiers that can give a competitive advantage by reflecting a company's differentiators, including words such as "free", "affordable", "high-end", "full service", "proven", "turnkey", etc. The point is that by making use of your unique differentiators in the search terms you target, your search engine optimization company is already setting the table for your prospect before he or she even clicks over to your website. When the message that is seen on your site then supports the keyphrase that was typed, you now have an engaged visitor. This can mean more leads, less site abandonment, and better overall website performance.

Conclusion

Remember, your company is better than the others out there. Ask yourself why, and then tell your search engine optimization company to take advantage of these differences in your keyphrases to give you a competitive advantage in your industry. The subtle addition of a few seemingly minor modifiers can have a huge impact on your bottom line.

© Medium Blue 2008


About the Author

Scott Buresh is the CEO of Medium Blue, which was named the number one organic search engine optimization company in the world by PromotionWorld in 2006 and 2007. Scott has contributed content to many publications including The Complete Guide to Google Advertising (Brown, 2008), Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004), MarketingProfs, ZDNet, WebProNews, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. Medium Blue serves local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, DS Waters, and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. Visit MediumBlue.com to request a custom SEO guarantee based on your goals and your data.

All Search Engines Love Spiders: How Meta Commands Can Help You Love Them Too

By Scott Buresh

Nearly all search engines utilize spiders (which are also known by their original name, robots) to go out and scour the web looking for web pages. These search engine spiders then bring the data back to be indexed by the engine.

Since roughly 1996, individual meta commands have existed that can be used on individual web pages to modify how these search engine spiders behave. The most useful of these commands are fairly universal and respected by almost all search engines. What follows is a list of some of the more popular spider commands and instances in which you might want to use them. (Please note all <> have been replaced with [] for publishing purposes).

[meta name="robots" content="index"]

This meta command is one of the most common ones used – and it is also the least necessary. It tells search engine spiders to come on in and put the page in their indexes. However, all search engines do this by default anyway. Basically, if you want to put it in there for fun, be my guest, but this command is not giving you any special treatment. All search engines are going to index your page, unless you specifically tell them otherwise.

[meta name="robots" content="follow"]

The follow command is different from the index command. It basically requests that the search engine spiders follow the links that are on a particular page. Again, however, this piece of code is completely unnecessary because all search engines are going to follow the links on a page, unless otherwise directed.

[meta name="robots" content="noindex"]

The noindex command, the opposite of the index command, tells search engine spiders not to index the content of a page. It’s important to note, however, that search engine spiders will still follow the links on a page that uses only this command.

When not used for legitimate purposes, this tag can be dangerous because it can put you at risk for penalization by most, if not all search engines. This is because you can use a noindex tag to hide pages with multiple links that you don’t want visitors to see but that you do want all search engines to index.

There are, however, some legitimate uses for the noindex command. For example, if you have a dynamic site, and you’ve created static pages to replace some of your dynamic pages, which can make them easier for search engine spiders to access, you could put a noindex tag on the dynamic version.

As Google mentions in its Webmaster Help Center:

"Consider creating static copies of dynamic pages. Although the Google index includes dynamic pages."

About the Author:

Scott Buresh is the CEO of Medium Blue, which was recently named the number one search engine optimization company in the world by PromotionWorld. Scott has contributed content to many publications including Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004), MarketingProfs, ZDNet, Organic Rankings, WebProNews, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. Medium Blue serves local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, DS Waters, and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. Visit MediumBlue.com to request a custom SEO guarantee based on your goals and your data.

How To Beat The Google Sandbox And Make Some Cash At The Same Time

By Rob Sullivan

I stumbled across this quite by accident. I knew it was there because I'd seen it before but I forgot about it until today.

So I did some checking to see if it still does work and based on my limited test it appears that it does.

What I'm about to explain to you may not only help get sandboxed sites indexed and ranking quicker, it can even make the site owner a little money.

I've been blogging for a few years now. I started it as a hobby and the blog I had was actually a blog before there were blogs. In other words I was "blogging" with a regular website.

Then a friend turned me on to Movable Type. It is a software which allows me to automate the publishing of content on my website.

I was having problems getting my website/blog indexed by Google back then - this was about 3 years ago.

It was also around this time that I heard of a new program called Google Adsense (https://www.google.com/adsense) in which one could place code on their web pages that would display ads, and the website owner would earn money on every click.

I thought "what a cool idea" so I immediately applied for an account. 48 hours later I was placing ads on my blog.

Shortly after this while reviewing my server logs I noticed that I was getting Google referrals! That's right, within days of placing the ads on my site, it had been fully indexed by Google and it was actually ranking quite highly for terms related to the content I was posting.

I couldn't believe my luck. Here I thought all I was going to do was make a little money on the side yet I found that the Adsense may have actually helped get my site indexed.

Remember, this was before the Sandbox, but it was a time when link popularity ruled the web. But since it was only a hobby I wasn't worried about building links. Because I already had a few loyal readers, I wasn't trying to position this site.

Flash forward to December 2005 and a friend asks me to help him set up his own blog. Actually he wants two of them - each with their own topics, and both very different in nature.

I consult with him and on February 1, 2006 we register two new domains for him.

He proceeds to build out his blogs and as he's doing this I suggest placing ads on them. At the time I wasn't thinking that it would help with indexing, just another way to increase exposure of the ads to generate more revenue for me and him.

We agree to split the money and he places the ads on the two new sites.

I didn't think much of it until his visitor traffic started going up. He also placed Google Analytics code on the sites and gave me access to them so I could take a look to see where all this traffic is coming from.

Turns out, he's getting a few Google organic referrals.

Imagine that - two brand new sites, with no incoming links, but somehow they have managed to sneak out of the Google Sandbox in 3 weeks?

Imagine my surprise, considering I have another site that I started over a year ago, and have been dutifully building content and links, yet I can't get it out of the sandbox. In fact, the current Google cache is of pages that no longer exist, and haven't for months.

My explanation, however "out there" it seems to be is that somehow the Google Ads have allowed the site to bypass the sandbox and move into the index almost immediately.

The first Google organic referral came last week, just two short weeks after the site was tagged with the Google Adsense code. Since then, both sites have received a handful of Google organic referrals.

Based on this very small and somewhat limited test case, my gut is telling me that one way out of the sandbox and into the SERPs is to apply for and install Google AdSense onto your site.

At the very least you'll make some money - maybe not a lot, just a few dollars a month (Google only pays out in $100 increments mind you, so it may take a while to get that first Google check) and the best case is that you'll bypass the sandbox, get indexed quickly and even start driving organic referrals to your site.

Like I said, this isn't anything near a scientific study but it seems pretty clear to me that what has helped these two sites become indexed so quickly are the ads.

So if you're stuck in the sandbox, perhaps applying for AdSense is a good idea.

I know I'm going to be placing ads on my other site to see what effect (if any it has). My guess is that within a few days it too will start ranking.

About The Author:

Rob Sullivan is a SEO Consultant and Writer for http://www.textlinkbrokers.com. Textlinkbrokers is a link building company. Please provide a link directly to Textlinkbrokers when syndicating this article.

Improved Search Engine Ranks Strategies

By Paton Jackson

SEO is a new animal. Many ask me if SEO is a new science or mathematical discipline. Absolutely not, SEO is an art. That's why you have the same odds to be successful in SEO like me or like anyone else.

Yet, there are some improved search engine ranks strategies that you may use to get higher search engine ranks. I can not assure those strategies will always work but they may certainly help get into the big guys game. Let me describe a few of them:

1. "Links, links, links" - Even more important than the famous Donald Trumps' "Location, location, location".

You must set a network of as many quality links to your sites as you can get. What are those quality links, you ask?

Quality links are links to your website from other sites with a competitive key phrase in the hyper link text, linked to different pages in your web site from sites with high search
engine ranks. You can build links with many like strategies such as affiliate marketing, exchanging links, articles submitting and others.

2. BE natural - Search engines like natural behavior. The days of quick make money internet marketing cd are gone.

You will have to add pages and build links gradually and consistently. You must be patient to get higher search engine ranks.

3. Benchmark and audit - There is only one thing in common for all the SEO experts. They all learn from their mistakes. Each of them has his own techniques of auditing and benchmarking.

You could never stop researching and developing. Indeed, the internet market is almost endless. Yet, so is the number of potential competitors.

Personally, I have a set of auditing, researching and developing actions I do each month for each of my sites. Surprisingly, it works.

Finally, you may use some tools to make things easier for you - from meta tags optimization services to article submitting services. Yet, those services cost money. I suggest you start doing the hard work by your self and slowly outsource some of the work. Good luck.

About The Author:

Find more precious SEO info only on http://www.tigilet.com/c/Web%20content.php - Higher search engine ranks tools. Find more useful information on http://www.tigilet.com

Branding, Branding, Brand-Ing? :: MSN Fails To Keep It Straight

By Rob Sullivan

Sometimes you see promotions come along and you wonder - did they just do that? The current MSN promotion - msnsearchandwin is a prime example of this.

Not only do they use "black hat" or at least "questionable" tactics on the site, but the messaging is inconsistent.

In this article I look at the new MSN promotion and ask the question: Why bother?

By now you've probably heard about the new MSN promotion where you can win prizes simply by using MSN search.

They did do something right by registering a domain name that implies that message. If you go to http://www.msnsearchandwin.com/ you will see the familiar MSN search box.

Wait a minute...Why is this search box blue? Didn't MSN just rebrand with a nicer, cleaner silver grey look?

That, my friends, is mistake number one. It's as if the technical team and the marketing team didn't get together to discuss this program.

I mean, when you go through something as complex and massive as a rebranding, you should make sure the messaging is consistent across the various media. Especially when the promotion and the rebranding launch within days of each other.

This is eerily similar to the article I wrote about Superbowl Ads:
http://www.textlinkbrokers.com/blogs/comments/329_0_1_0_C/. In that article I talked about how advertisers spend millions on a 30 second or 1 minute TV commercial yet they fail to carry that messaging over onto their website effectively if at all.

And here we have MSN - probably one of the most recognized brands on the web and subsidiary to the company with one of the most effective and ruthless marketing arms in the world - and it can't seem to communicate it's message that MSN is rebranding.

I mean, how hard would it have been for someone in Tech to phone up someone in Marketing and say, "By the way, you know that search and win promotion you are doing? Be sure that the colors match the new look of MSN that's launching in a few days."

But wait, it gets better.

First spotted by http://www.kerrydean.com/blog/, if you view source of the msnsearchandwin home page what do you see?

That's right, about a million keywords stuffed into the keywords tag. (OK maybe not a million but there are 256 keywords in the meta keywords tag).

It gets worse. Immediately below the overstuffed keywords tag you will see a bunch of keywords stuffed into a comments tag. Again the same 256 words used in the meta keywords tag.

So tell me, is it OK for a search engine to spam itself?

Perhaps we could all learn a little something from MSN's marketing mistake: Keep it consistent!

About The Author:

Rob Sullivan is a SEO Consultant and Writer for http://www.textlinkbrokers.com. Textlinkbrokers is a link building company. Please provide a link directly to Textlinkbrokers when syndicating this article.

Google Sitemaps :: Are They Or Aren't They Lucrative SEO Tools?

By Rob Sullivan

Google has had a feature out for some time which allows webmasters to create a sitemap file to help Google's crawlers find and index content.

It sounds like a great idea. After all, it's much easier to feed the crawler the content then hope it finds it on it's own.

But is a Google sitemap worthwhile? Is it even necessary?

When the Google Sitemap program first started my thought was "That's kinda cool but what's the real benefit?"

So, I thought I'd try it out and submit sitemaps for a few sites that I own.

When Google Sitemaps first came out it was very difficult to figure out what all the entries meant as well as how to actually create the sitemap.

Sure, it was XML based, and I could plainly see what they expected but when you have a large site, how do you go about creating this?

Then Google came out with http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/sitemap-generator.html, a sitemap generator which is a program intended to help you create a sitemap for your site. This does help speed up the process but unless you are a developer it is a little difficult to implement.

Also, you need access to your server to run the script required to generate the sitemap. If you are unsure you should check with your web host to see if you have terminal access to execute Python scripts.

Personally, I've never tried the Google Sitemapper tool but I have used others. For example, on my personal blog which uses Moveable Type, I found a blog post which shows How to build a Movable Type Google sitemap template http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/archives/2005/06/google_sitemaps.html. And I've used Xenu and an Excel spreadsheet http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=199253 which works great as well.

Now that the sitemap creation is covered, let's get into the question at hand. Is a Google sitemap really worth the effort?

A few months ago I would have said no, but lately Google has been adding features that make me think otherwise.

For example, if you've gone through the verification process (which is really just placing a blank HTML file on the site and having Google find it) and ensured your 404 errors are properly configured you can get access to a wealth of additional intel.

One such feature is the "Top Search Queries." This tells you which queries were used when your pages appeared in the search results but may not have been clicked on.

In other words, these are actual searcher queries that were performed on Google where your site may have appeared but not had click-through's.

From a keyword research point of view, this is a huge advantage to you. By monitoring your sitemap stats you can easily see some of the terms people are using and perhaps determine what you need to do to rank higher for those terms so you too can get the clicks that your competitors are receiving.

If you don't have ready access to log analysis or other stats, the Google sitemap can also tell you what terms actually drove traffic to your site.

In other words, these were searches performed on Google that actually generated clicks for your site.

There's also a wealth of other information. For example, "Crawl Stats" shows you how Googlebot sees your site, errors generated by it, and even a PageRank distribution chart detailing how well PageRank is distributed.

So, if you are like me and wondering if a Google sitemap is worth it I'd say yes, it is. The information provided, while mostly technical, can help you troubleshoot problems as well as provide ideas to help you improve your positioning.

About The Author:

Rob Sullivan is a SEO Consultant and Writer for http://www.textlinkbrokers.com. Textlinkbrokers is a link building company. Please provide a link directly to Textlinkbrokers when syndicating this article.

Search Engine Optimization: Four Vital Steps For Optimizing Your Website

By Donald Nelson

There is a bit of confusion about search engine optimization. Some people think that SEO (the abbreviated form) is nothing more than tricking search engines into giving a high ranking for a particular site. Others think that search engine optimization is so complex that they could not possibly understand it. Neither of these views are correct. Search engine optimization is best defined as the art and science of building web pages that are both search engine friendly and
user friendly. Below are four basic steps that you should take when optimizing your web pages.

1. Your web design should emphasize text and not graphics.

"Search engine friendly" means that search engines should be able to find data on your site that they can put in their data bases. While a picture may be worth a thousand words, a search engine is trying to classify pages by text and not by images. If you have an opening page with a beautiful picture of the sea and only two words of text saying "enter here" then this page will not rank high in searches for Florida Vacations. Similarly if you have a headline with important text containing your site's keywords it should not be displayed as a gif or jpeg image. Pages that are all flash or all images are not search engine friendly, and often are not user friendly as well.

2. Links to your interior pages should be easily found by search engines

An important thing to remember is that you want not only your main page, but all of your interior pages to be included in the search engine index. While most people will probably enter your site through the main page, many will enter after doing searches which lead them to your inner pages. The best way to make sure that search engines will find and index your inner pages is to include text links to these pages. If you have navigation system which uses Java script or images, then it is best to add an additional text link navigation bar at the bottom of the site to ensure that the robot follows the links to your inner pages.

3. Your pages should be built around specific keywords or keyword phrases

Robotic search engines and human users have one thing in common: they are trying to figure out what your site or your particular web page is all about. It is not possible to get high rankings for thirty different search terms with only one web page. However it is possible to build separate web pages which explain and give importance to various aspects of your organization's activity. These sub pages can be optimized so that they perform well in searches for your various keywords.

4. Once your material is organized, then your keywords should appear in strategic portions of your web pages

If your site is about Florida Vacations, then these words should appear in the following places of your html pages:

a. In the file name or the url.

If your site is called www.floridavacations.com then this will give you a head start in any searches for this term. Similarly if your company is called XYZ Travels you may have a web page with this url: www.xyztravels.com/floridavacations.html

The url or file name is an important indicator to a search engine, so don't miss the opportunity to put your important term either in your main domain name or in your file names.

b. In the title tag

The text that is displayed in the blue line at the top of your browser is your title tag. The title tag is located in the section of the document. If your main phrase is "Florida Vacations" then the title tag in your html document should look something like this: Florida Vacations: Florida Vacation Information by XYZ travel

c. In the Description tag

The description tag is not seen on the web page but search engines often display it as the text which gives the searcher an idea of what your page is about. The description tag should be compelling, and make someone want to click and see your page, while also containing the keywords that are in your url and your title tag. A description tag for this site might look as follows:

d. In the headlines

Just as someone reading a newspaper looks at headlines to find out what is important, a search engine robot looks at the headlines of a web page in order to pick up the essential feature of that page. Put your main phrase in a headline and place it near the top of the page. Your headline text should be enclosed with special header tags such as , , . A headline tag for our hypothetical page could be written as follows: Florida Vacations: Plan Your Vacation Now And Save Money or Accommodations, Entertainment and Transport in Florida

If you don't like the look of the h1 tag, then use a smaller tag, h2 or h3, or adjust your site's style sheet so that the h1 tag is displayed in a small font which better matches your body text.

e. In the body text of your page

Your main keywords or key phrase should appear in the first paragraph of text and in a natural way throughout the text and also at the end of the page. In normal writing you would first introduce your subject, then explain what it is about and then summarize at the end. Follow this same procedure when you start writing your web page. Pages written in this style will automatically have correct keyword density and distribution.

f. In anchor text on your page

Anchor text is the clickable portion of links on your web page. Suppose you are describing your Florida Vacations and you want to direct your web visitors to an inside page with more information about this subject. Instead of making a link that says "click here," it would be better to have a link that says "Click here for more information about Florida Vacations" or even better, the link text will only be "Florida Vacations" and the "click here" will be rendered as normal text.

If you follow these search-engine-optimization steps when building your website you will end up with web pages that are easily understood by your visitors, and easily classified and indexed by search engines.

About The Author:

Donald Nelson is a web developer, editor and social worker. He is the proprietor of A1-Optimization http://www.a1-optimization.com and provides search engine optimization, copywriting, reciprocal linking and article marketing services. He recently launched a new reprint article directory located at http://www.a1-articledirectory.com

Web Analytics: Make A Plan. And Stick To It.

by Marc Travis

When it comes to analyzing your web site statistics, what's infinitely more important than the numbers themselves is the actual trend that they portray. If you're trying to build traffic to a web site (and who isn't these days?) then your first concern should be that the numbers are increasing on a regular basis.

To properly watch those numbers, and know when you need to make adjustments, you should not depend on analyzing statistics that have been logged over time. Instead, you should make a daily, weekly and monthly schedule to look over certain statistics.

For example, you may want to watch daily trends in traffic and page views so that any trend lasting more than a couple of days can be immediately addressed.

Once a week, you might want to look at how many hits you're getting via search engines.

And, perhaps, once per month you'll want to look at how many page views per visit are being generated by search-engines versus links, versus direct traffic.

If you're running pay-per-click advertising, it's even more important to track your clicks and where they come from on a regular basis. Small changes can easily lead to large disruptions in your income flow.

In the end, you'll need to decide for yourself which stats you should analyze daily, weekly and monthly according to your own site goals. Once you've decided which are the most important
statistics to track regularly, write down a daily, weekly and monthly to-do list.

Make that plan, stick to it, and you¹ll find yourself infinitely more in touch with your site. You'll think about creating solutions to your challenges more often. And, in all likelihood, you'll find yourself dealing with a more and more successful web site.

About The Author:

Visit Web Analytics Guide
http://www.analyticsguide.com for more valuable insights,
articles and FAQ on web site statistics and analysis.

How To Click With Online Advertising

By Mark Vandorone

How To Click With Online Advertising

For a small business competing in a niche market it is becoming ever harder to achieve high rankings in the free search engines. Pay-per-click ("PPC") advertising can be a great alternative.

Learn the secrets of PPC search engines and success on the internet could be yours. Be warned, however, a lack of understanding could put your business on the road to insolvency. I can't emphasize this strongly enough. An understanding of PPC can be a great advantage to your business.

If you've ever attended an auction to bid for a piece of furniture or artwork you'll have some idea of how to advertise on the PPC search engines. In this case you're bidding for high ranked spots on the keywords you've identified for your business. Visitors will arrive at your site by clicking on your search engine advert, and each time that happens you'll pay the search engine the value of your bid. A bid can be as low as 5 cents, but some highly competitive keywords can cost several dollars.

Now I'd like to discuss some advantages and disadvantages of advertising with PPC search engines. Advantages first :-

1. Only when someone clicks on your advert are you required to pay.

2. Can be an inexpensive method of attracting targeted traffic to your site.

3. Outbid the competition and that top advertising spot can be yours, no matter how small your business.

4. Some PPC search engines enable a campaign to be up and away in minutes. Not very long after you could be taking orders.

5. If your advert is not successful you can cancel or amend your listing with immediate effect.

6. You can test your advert, making amendments quickly and simply.

However, be aware of the disadvantages :-

1. Not everyone who clicks on your advert is a potential customer. You will have to pay for these junk clicks though.

2. The cost per click can escalate if you and and your competition become involved in a bidding war over that top spot.

3. Your advert may be subject to a strict review prior to approval. This can delay the start of the campaign considerably, and you may not like the final advert they approve.

4. A poorly worded or, even worse, misleading advert could generate traffic but not make sales. Unless you've placed a restriction on your advertising budget, your business could quickly be on the road to insolvency.

So how do you tip your toe in the water with PPC advertising? Before you do anything else research the keywords that your target market are searching on. You wouldn't want to bid for traffic on an irrelevant keyword would you? The methods for carrying out this research are a fully fledged topic in their own right, which I'll cover in a future article.

Another essential piece of knowledge you require before entering the bidding fray, is the monetary worth of a visitor to your website. By this I mean the average revenue generated by each visitor. This will be your guide to how far you can push it in the bidding process.

If you want to use PPC advertising to test your sales copy on a new site with no visitor knowledge, then monitor your costs versus sales closely. A daily budget is advisable at the outset. Limit your spending to something you can afford to lose if the worst occurs and you don't make any sales. Raise this as appropriate once you can see the sales conversion rate.

You're almost ready to get going. What I've provided here is an overview of PPC advertising. Use this as the first building block in your quest to master the PPC search engines.

Wishing you every success with your online advertising.

About The Author.

Mark Vandorone offers specialized online advertising campaigns at http://www.fivemarketing.com. Not happy with your results from the Pay-Per-Click search engines? Pay Mark a visit at: http://www.fivemarketing.com or contact him by e-mail at:
support@fivemarketing.com

Control The Success Of Your Internet Business With One Simple Step

By Larry Potter

Motivational speaker Anthony Robbins once said, "If you want to be successful, find someone who achieved the results you want and copy what they do, and you'll achieve the same results."

It's an idea I became familiar with many years ago.

When I was first getting started online, I made a lot of mistakes. Not because I wasn't trying to model successful businesses, but because there simply weren't businesses online to model. (In 1996, I was among the first handful of people to actually start selling products over the Internet.)

So I gathered as much information as I could from successful offline marketing experts like Jay Abraham; however, the challenge was adjusting their techniques to work in the online world. I'm sure it will come as no surprise to you that many of the techniques used to market and sell in the "real world" either.

a) Didn't work at all on the Internet.
Or
b) Needed to be seriously adjusted, tested, tweaked, and adjusted some more to really get results online.

The point that I'm trying to make here is that it literally took me years of testing and hundreds of thousands of dollars to discover the same techniques that you'll now see commonly used online today. Fortunately, there is no reason for things to be nearly this difficult for you. Today, modeling the Internet "successes" is relatively easy. (Though, be careful that you separate the phonies and fakes from the "true experts" -- look for those who honestly practice what they preach and who can prove it!)

The biggest investment that you'll need to make is your time.

If you're interested in long-term, life-changing success, then a few extra days of reading and researching shouldn't matter. It's the success of your business that we're talking about here, so don't make the fatal mistake of thinking that you're "wasting time." Remember that what you learn today could be the technique or strategy that saves you not only wasted time and effort, but thousands of dollars in "could have been" profits.

It's an extremely simple concept.

Guarantee Your Success By Modeling The Successful

1) What Should My Web Site Look Like?

Why spend thousands of dollars having a flashy site designed that's loaded with theme music and spinning graphics? Some of the most successful web sites online today have extremely sleek, simple designs.

Of course, before I tell you to model proven successful web sites, I want you to be aware of "the catch".

When researching web sites to model, the ones you should be paying closest attention to are your competitors' and sites that have a profit model similar to your own (i.e. look for sites that make money in a similar way).

For example, if you sell cotton balls on your web site, you shouldn't be modeling your site design after Amazon.com. First off, they sell books (among other things). You sell cotton balls. They offer a wide variety of titles and choices. You offer one product -- cotton balls. Finally, let's face it -- their advertising budget is out of this world! If you're a small or home-based business, you likely don't have the same kind of luxury to experiment and make expensive mistakes.

So think practical -- be realistic -- and start looking for other sites that are successfully selling their cotton balls online (or one, similar product), and model your site after theirs. Your site doesn't need to be the next Yahoo! or eBay for you to be earning a significant 6 figure income.

2) How Do I Write Sales Copy That Really Sells?

Writing sales copy that really sells takes practice -- and education! I have yet to meet someone who just has a "natural gift" for writing award-winning copy without any education whatsoever.

Sure, some people might get "lucky" and stumble onto bits and pieces of the proven approach -- but I can guarantee you that anyone who hasn't studied the "art & science of sales copy" is missing key elements that could increase their sales by 400% - 1,200%. I'm not kidding here.

So rather than playing a "hit or miss" guessing game with your copy, I highly recommend looking for sales copy that makes YOU want to buy and studying it. After you've read enough quality copy, you'll start to notice a distinct pattern that you can apply to your own writing.

3) How Do I Rank At The Top Of The Search Engines?

If you plan on ranking at the top of the search engines, then I can't stress enough the importance of educating yourself. The search engines are a highly competitive arena where only those who have taken the time to "learn the rules" claim a top 10 spot.

Very rarely these days will you hear of someone "getting lucky" and just magically sliding into a top ranking.

So if you want a top 10 listing under your best keywords and phrases (i.e. you want your site to appear in the top 10 listings when someone searches the key phrase "cotton balls" in MSN, Yahoo!, Google, etc.), then you need to do two things.

a) Examine the web sites that already rank in the top 10 under your best keywords and phrases -- and look for patterns.

b) Use the proven know-how of the search engine experts to learn the ropes. If you want a top ranking, then you'll want the experience and advice of someone who makes it their mission to keep up with the constantly changing rules of each search engine and directory.

In fact, before you spend a lot of time examining the sites of your competition for clues as to why they are listed among the top 10, I recommend seeking out these search engine gurus. With their advice, you'll be better prepared to critically examine your competitors' web sites for clues that explain why they're at the top of the ranks.

4) How Do I Drive Targeted Traffic To My Web Site?

If you want to increase the number of targeted potential customers who are arriving at your web site each day, then a listing in the search engines is a good start, but it's also exactly that -- a start.

Again, take some time to research your competition. How are they attracting their visitors? Do they have a lot of links on other sites? Do they have their own Affiliate Program? Do they participate heavily in newsgroups? Do they have an established viral marketing campaign?

Use the experience of your competition to your advantage by learning their secrets -- and then tweaking and improving on their approach to do them one better!

Work Smarter -- Not Harder -- And See Bigger Rewards And Profits

Even now, I still scour the Web to see how others are creating their own success. I analyze my competition. I read everything that I can get my hands on. and I remain open to new ideas and new approaches.

Today, it's relatively cheap and easy to get a solid education in what Internet marketing techniques work, which to avoid, and how to build guaranteed success the first time around! So why would you waste your valuable (and limited) time and money by stubbornly insisting on making mistakes that you could easily avoid with a little education?

Model the success of others and you'll not only guarantee your success, you'll achieve your goals in less time with less expense than you could on your own.

About The Author:

For More Great Tips, Vist: http://homebusiness.kim-lar.com And if you would like to compare your site with the top 10 in your area of interest and see what their keywords are, then download this free program at: http://www.Axandra.com/go.to/wallmann/4

Search Engine Optimization for the Rest of Us

By Nowshade Kabir

When you have launched your website, whether it is an eCommerce store or a corporate promotional site, you must have set certain goals regarding the quantity of traffic you are expecting to have on your site. If you did not pursue your goal with specific web promotional marketing strategies, chances are there you are not very happy with the results you have achieved so far. Although, there are numerous web promotional methods available to your
disposal, optimization of your webpages for search engines is the uncontested leader in this field. If you sell products or services through your website, it is even more so for you. Consider this. Out of various possibilities which include: going to a shop, calling a shop, etc. the prospective buyer decided to search for the product online. Then he or she used certain key-phrase to make a query on a search engine and then among other sites, he or she chose yours to click in. As a seller this is the kind of visitors you need for your site! Search engines have more than twice the e-commerce conversion rate of other traffic acquisition sources. You can get these results for your site with the help of search engine optimization.

What is Search Engine Optimization?

SEO is a set of actions carried out with a webpage to improve visibility of that webpage in search engines. The goal is to ensure top places in the search engine results for a specific query.

How important are the search engines? Data show 81 percent of Internet users find the sites they're looking for through search engines. Over 57% of Internet users search the Internet everyday. Up to 500 Million searches take place in a day. 55% of all Internet purchases originate at a search engine as oppose to 9 percent from banners. These statistics are pretty convincing, but surprisingly, according to StatMarket.com only 7 percent of websites are visible by search engines.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can really bring amazing results. Our page http://trade-leads.rusbiz.com recently started to show on the first page of Google for the search phrase "trade leads". Within the last month we have noticed almost 30 percent increase of traffic to this page which is pretty much inline with the available statistics. If your optimization efforts started to bear fruits and you ended up on the second or third page of Google search, you can expect a dramatic increase of almost 5 times more traffic than before and after two months it can be over 9 times! An upward move from 2nd and 3rd pages to the much coveted first page will bring an increase of around 30 percent. Along with the traffic the conversion rate - the quantity of actual purchases - also goes up significantly.

Your position within the first page also makes a lot of difference. The top positioned web page in the sponsored - paid advertisement - receives 50 percent of all clicks and first three top ranked web pages garner 60 percent of all clicks.

Once you have decided to go for search engine optimization, your next step is to figure out for which search engine you should work on optimizing your site. After all there are so many search engines out there!

If you look at the latest statistics available for the month of November, 2005 compiled by Nielsen/NetRatings it, probably, won't be any surprise to you that Google at present has the most search market share. There were 5.1 billion searches done in November. Out of 60 search engines monitored, Google had a share of 46.3 percent,Yahoo - 23.4 percent, MSN - 11.4 percent, AOL - 6.9 percent, Ask Jeeves with its other affiliations MyWay, Teoma, Iwon and search sites of Excite Network has a combined share of around 6 percent, etc. This clearly shows that Google is the undisputed leader among search engines at this moment. That's why in your quest of getting more traffic to your site, you have to emphasize on Google. Other key indicators which favor Google as well are:

. Google is most favored by business people - 82.9 percent of all business users make their queries through Google.

. The Google users are more educated. They are more likely to have a college degree.

. The Google users are from higher income groups.

As mentioned earlier search engine optimization is a set of actions that you have to take regarding your web pages. Here are the key steps of the process:

Select keywords for search engine ranking
1. Make a list of keywords that you think buyers might use to search for products and services you sell.
2. Use a Thesaurus to check synonyms of the words and phrases that you have chosen. You may come up with additional keywords.
3. Eliminate all single words from the list!
4. Go to several of your competitors' websites and check out what keywords they are focusing on by viewing the HTML source of the pages.
5. Now go to Yahoo! pay per click search marketing site Overture, which has an excellent keyword selection tool. Google also has a similar tool located at
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordSandbox.
6. Get the search phrases or terms that are popular enough and fall into your criteria from above mentioned lists.
7. Check where you stand with these keywords or key phrases in main search engines. Find the needed tool for this here. http://www.marketleap.com/verify/default.htm.
8. Now try to find whether you should use your keyword in singular or plural, or which one of the two similar search terms or phrases are more desirable by going to the following page:
http://www.onfocus.com/googlesmack/down.asp. Remember, studies show that conversion rate for plural words are in general higher than singular!
9. Now that you have a number of keywords, cluster two to three of them for one single page. Remember, every page of your site should be built surrounding one single theme and focused on
maximum two to three keywords.

Optimize the pages for keywords

Place keywords in Title tag, Meta description, Alt tags, Heading tags, Comment tags. Here is an example:

<title>Search Engine Optimization for the Rest of Us</title>
<meta name="description" content="Article about search engine ranking at ezine.rusbiz.com">
<meta name="keywords" content="search engine ranking, optimizing web pages for keywords, SEO steps">
<meta name="author" content="Nowshade Kabir">
<meta name="copyright" content="Nowshade Kabir">
<meta name="robots" content="index,follow">

Create content

Now develop informative content using these keywords. Use your key words in headlines and alt tag of the pictures. Make sure that you don't over do it! If you stuff keywords more than
necessary for a normal text, search engines can ban your site for keyword spamming. Here is a tool for checking density of keywords on a page: http://www.gorank.com/seotools/. Maximum
preferable density is 3-5 percent.

Submit to search tools

Effective promotion of a website starts with submission of the site to various search tools available on the Internet. There are two different types of search tools - search engines and
directories. Search engines index their listings based on the information retrieved by their spiders which crawl through the hyper links constantly looking for new websites. The directory
listings are compiled by human editors from the URLs submitted to the directory. If your website is listed in the directories you can be sure that the spiders of different search engines
sooner or later will index your site. That's why you should start submitting your website to the directories. The major directories are GMOZ, Yahoo!, LookSmart, etc.

Link popularity

The quantity of links in different websites pointing to your sites is called link popularity of your website. The more popular is your site the more links you get from other websites and vice
versa. Link popularity is one of the key factors that search engines consider in their search algorithm while indexing a website. What would be the rank of a website in a search result
depends on its link popularity in a very big way. Work on getting as many backward links as possible, preferably from the web pages with higher page ranking than yours.

Track ranking

Search engine optimization requires constant monitoring and updating. Don't forget that the competitors are working relentlessly on achieving high positions. The search algorithms are also constantly changing and improving. That's why every now and then you should check out how your site is doing.

Track traffic

If your work started to bring good results and you are getting more traffic, but the visitors are not taking expected actions, this means, you probably have selected wrong keywords. Start all
over again with keywords analysis.

Search Engine Optimization is the process of optimizing web pages for natural or organic - as they are also called - searches. Once you are certain that you have done everything possible to
achieve maximum results in this sphere, you should consider pay per click marketing with Google, Yahoo and MSN. Effective web promotion requires a combination of both of these two search engine marketing strategies.

About the author:

Nowshade Kabir is the CEO of Rusbiz.com, a global B2B Portal, which helps companies build web store, buy and sell products and services using eMarketplace, eCatalog and other features. Rusbiz also offers website development packages: http://www.rusbiz.com/design_package.html

How Keywords Affect Your Rankings

By James Mahony

This article explains a few things about SEO, and if you're interested, then this is worth reading, because you can never tell what you don't know.

We all want to know how keywords affect our rankings, but to find out we'll need to do a little work. Many say keywords are the key to good search engine rankings, although they aren't at
all the only factor.

If you need a tool to help you decide on your keywords, try Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool - it allows you to test your keyword rankings by showing you statistics on recent searches for them. It's a great tool when you have no clue which keyword you should choose, as it can give you a list of terms that were recently searched on.

Keyword Density.

Keyword density refers to the number of the keywords contained within your text relative to the amount of text there is. Preferred keyword density ratios vary between search engines, but you should generally try to keep them between two and eight percent (major search engines prefer the lower end). Keyword analysis tools can help to optimize a web page's keyword density. These tools are good if you're not sure of what you're doing, as they're very intuitive and explain things as you go.

Counting the Keywords.

Many SEO experts will tell you that the keyword density of your text isn't a very important factor, and that you should be careful not to overdo it. So is there a limit? How many times should you use your keywords? SEO experts won't be able to answer these questions for you, because no-one's really sure of the answer. The best answer is that it changes regularly, and you can never be sure - you have to experiment to see what works for you.

Location of Keywords.

When testing the effects of keyword location, we found that pages with the keywords at the top and bottom of the page ranked higher on Google than pages with the keywords in the middle.

I trust that what you've read so far has been informative. The following section should go a long way toward clearing up any uncertainty that may remain.

Many other search engines also give keywords more or less weight based on their location, but keep in mind that each search engine's algorithm is different. Here's a list of how most search engines prioritize keyword positions, from most to least:

1. Domain name.

2. Page title.

3. Headings (i.e. H1, H2, etc.).

4. Body text (the first 2 to 3 KB usually counts more).

5. Meta tags (especially description).

6. Links (including keywords in the URL or link text of links to you).

7. Alt text (the 'alt' descriptions for your pictures).

Really, though, keyword density is one of those areas where you'll have trouble on your hands if you try to second guess the search engines. Be cautious.

As your knowledge about SEO continues to grow, you will begin to see how SEO fits into the overall scheme of things. Knowing how something relates to the rest of the world is important
too.

About The Author:

James Mahony is the founder of http://www.searchmama.com - A site dedicated to Search Engine Optimization http://www.searchmama.com
http://www.thedomaintycoons.com
http://www.articlesforwebsitecontent.com

How To Use Web Directories To Boost Traffic To Your Site

By Robert Burko

You just got your website online. Everything is setup and you're ready to go. Excitement is high and the time has come to open your virtual doors to the millions and millions of Internet users around the globe. You put out the cyber welcome mat and declare your site ready for action. But, instead of sitting and watching the users trample over one another to get to your site, you see little to no traffic.

Don't worry! This is something every webmaster goes through and is to be expected. (Well, webmasters in the late 90's expected to launch their site and be millionaires the next morning, but times have changed since those wonderful days!)

But there are some quick and easy things you can do to begin building your 'link network,' which will ultimately help drive traffic to your site. Since the Internet's conception, the notion has been that sites link to one another, while web surfers click from place to place. Thus, the challenge begins: Get your site linked to as many others as possible.

You can start contacting other websites offering to trade links (but be prepared to invest a lot of time); you can buy links (but be prepared to fork out some cash); you can join link-trading programs (but be prepared to get a lot of irrelevant sites linking to you); or you can start submitting your website to web directories.

What Is A Web Directory?
A web directory is a compilation of sites organized by category or topic. Most web directories have multiple levels of categories, progressing from general to highly specific. In addition, a web directory editor will likely have to approve your site, lending it at a certain degree of credibility. Being listed in a directory ensures that if a web surfer finds their way into a specific category, they don't just see your competitors, they see you! And, if they can see your link, they can click it, producing traffic to your site.

A Web Directory Listing Helps with SEO
If you have a website, you undoubtedly know the importance of ranking well in Google and other major search engines. These search engines count links from other sites as votes for your
site, which helps determine your ranking, or position in the search results. There are a lot of other parts of the algorithm and this brief explanation doesn't do it justice. However, it serves the point that links improve your ranking, and that's something every website owner needs to know.

A link in a directory that is spidered by Google (and a lot are) will count as a vote for your site. This improves your ranking, and yet again helps drive traffic to your site. It's important to note that not all directories help with SEO. Sometimes, a web directory will link to your site through a special URL that is often a programming CGI script. If the URL is not a direct link to your site, then the search engines don't count it as a vote. Therefore, it's best to pick directories that offer a direct one-way link to your site. (This way, you get more bang for your buck: traffic from the directory and improved search engine ranking.)

Relevancy Matters
If you trade links with random sites, then you are theoretically building your 'link network,' but you are sacrificing the quality of that network. Web searchers who are looking for information on a particular topic often use resources that link to a variety of sites related to what they seek. This makes web directories the perfect destination.

Since directories are categorized by topics, a person can arrive in the directory and have one-click access to a variety of resources. You definitely want to be one of those resources! Plus, when the other search engines pick up your link, it will count for more since it is surrounded by relevant content, which is most likely filled with your important keywords.

As you build your link network, you'll continue to see increased traffic. And if you use web directories as your vehicle, you are essentially paving more paths to your site. Several good submissions in popular directories will help get you rolling. The best part is that many directories are free, so this jump start won't even hurt your bottom line.

Good luck and happy submitting!

About The Author:

Robert Burko is president and founder of Eliteweb.cc (http://www.eliteweb.cc), an Internet portal featuring a best-of-the-web search engine and a comprehensive search-engine-friendly web directory (http://www.eliteweb.cc/directory/).

Five Common Myths About Search Engine Submission

By Donald Nelson

Search engine submission is a matter that often mystifies those who are new to the Internet. It is natural to scratch your head and wonder how you will get your website listed on the major
search engines. If you ask someone how to go about getting your site listed you are likely to hear many misconceptions about search engine submission. You may even be taken for a ride and end up needlessly parting with some hard earned cash. So, before this happens to you let's examine some of the most common myths surrounding search engine submission.

1. Search engine submission is a very important matter

It would indeed seem that you submitting your site to the search engines is of utmost importance. After all, if your site is not in the search engines then how will anybody find you?
Sure, you have to be included in the search engines but that doesn't necessarily mean that you will have to actively "submit" your site. This is because search engines use their "spiders", or robotic search programs to scour the Internet looking for new pages. If another site, that is already included in the search engines, links to yours, then when a search engine spider visits that site, it will follow the link to your site and gather your information.

So, if you are building a new site make sure that you get some links to your sites from already established sites. Ask your webmaster, your friends, other organizations and complementary
sites for links. This will be enough to get you listed in the major search engines. You may still want to submit your site to make sure, but consider the other points before you go ahead

2. There are thousands of search engines that you should be listed in

"Get listed in 300,000 search engines" read the headlines for some submission advertisements. If you look at the traffic logs of most websites you will see that the lion's share of traffic comes from a handful of search locations, such as Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask Jeeves. There just aren't thousands of search sites on the Internet. So, don't pay money to be listed on these sites. Oftentimes, the sites referred to in these advertisements are seldom-visited free-for-all links pages. If you get listed on such a page you will not get much traffic, but you will get a lot of spam.

Concentrate on the major search engines and don't worry about the non-existent phantoms referred to in the advertisements.

3. Monthly submission to search engines is a must

In the early days of the Internet, the companies that handled search engine submission warned the public that sites can be easily lost from search engine indexes and that to prevent this from happening it is important to resubmit your site every months. They also said that this was a good way to let search engines know about new additions to your pages.

It is not very likely that your site will disappear from a search engine for no reason at all. If your site is "down" for a considerable amount of time then it might be possible for your site to be dropped from the listings, but otherwise this rarely happens.

Also, you don't have to resubmit your site to notify search engines about changes to your page or pages. The spiders of search engines regularly revisit pages that are already in the index. You can in fact create a "robots" meta tag and give instructions such as "revisit every 15 days" and this will accomplish the job better than a resubmission.

4. Automatic submissions are useless and you must submit manually

There is often a hot debate about whether manual submissions are better than automatic submissions. For Yahoo, MSN and Google it is now better to do it with a manual submission because all of these engines require you to fill in a code word that is displayed on the screen. These search engines instituted this procedure to block out automated spam submissions. So, for the giants of search, manual submission is the way to go.

What about the secondary sites? There are smaller search engines and directories. Some of them can be useful to you, especially if they represent a particular geographic area or business niche that you are aiming for. If the list of these secondary engines and directories becomes too large, then you may want to consider automated submission. There are some programs that do this or you can find submission services that are free or inexpensive, which brings us to the last myth.

5. You should be prepared to spend a lot of money to get proper submission

If you look at the first point you will see that you probably don't have to do any submission at all to get your site listed in Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask Jeeves. These are the search engines that will provide you with 90% of your visitors. So, do you really want to spend a good amount of money to reach the last 5 or 10 per cent of your possible visitors? Look around for a free or inexpensive service to take care of the secondary search engines, and if there are smaller search engines that are very important to your business, then visit them yourself and submit your listing. Save your money for other important tasks.

About The Author:

Donald Nelson is a web developer, editor and social worker. He is the director of A1 Optimization http://www.a1-optimization.com a firm providing low cost search engine optimization, submission and web promotion services. He is the principal editor at the A1-Article Directory, http://www.a1-articledirectory.com

Optimising Your Framed Site For Search Engines

By Craig Broadbent

One method that web designers can use to design and structure a website is to use frames. However, if your web site utilises frames then you could have major problems getting indexed in the search engines. Although site design using frames has become less prominent with the rise in popularity of CSS, there are still sites out there utilising framesets. But there are ways to sidestep the problem.

In the past, frames were considered a great way for site designers to quickly and easily display content whilst maintaining a structure throughout the site (e.g. by having a title, or navigation bar). They allow more than one HTML document to be shown on a page by displaying each one within its own "frame", which are defined by the "frameset" HTML tag. This tag defines which pages to show and the size and position of the frame it should appear in. Although this sounds great in theory, it creates problems with both navigation (and therefore search engine indexing) and usability.

As web usability expert Jakob Nielsen has documented on his site, http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9612.html, there are several usability issues associated with frames:

They can be disorientating to users - if they click within one frame and this affects another frame it can make navigation confusing.

The address bar doesn't change as the user navigates between pages, because the pages load inside the frameset. Again, this can confuse and disorient users.

The loading time increases because there is more than one page to load. If the site takes too long to load then visitors are going to go elsewhere instead.

If a user bookmarks a page within the site, they will be sent to the default frameset when they revisit rather than the bookmarked page.

On top of this, there are also issues with search engines finding and indexing all of a framed site's pages. The most fundamental problem is that search engines find and index pages by following HTML links in a document, and because framesets reference a page rather than linking to it, the pages within the framed site cannot be reached. Ultimately, this means that
no matter how large a site is there's a possibility that only the frameset page will be indexed.

There is a way round this problem. You can place a "noframes" tag in the body of your frameset page to provide alternative content that will be displayed if the browser is not frames compatible. Fortunately, search engines can also read this tag, so if you include normal links within this tag the search engines can spider them like a normal site. Visit
http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_noframes.asp for more information on the noframes tag.

So now the search engines can find your pages, but what happens when your visitors find them?

Because the frameset dictates which pages should be loaded, if an internal page is accessed directly through a search engine then it will be loaded outside the context of the frameset. This means that the page will be viewed on its own without any of the intended accompanying pages specified by the frameset, such as a navigation bar. This type of page is known as an "orphan" page. They are confusing for visitors because once they find the page they may not be able to navigate the site, meaning you may end up losing the visitor, or worse, a customer.

Again, there is a way around this issue. You can use JavaScript to force the page into its framed context, and although this causes problems with JavaScript incompatible browsers it does neatly avoid the orphaned page issue. There is a great tutorial available at
http://www.webreference.com/js/column36/forcing.html showing how this is done.

There are alternatives to frames that allow for similar functionality, the most popular would be to position elements on a page using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), or if you are designing a dynamic site then utilising Server Side Includes (SSI) would be a good option. Although the above shows how to avoid the complications caused by frames, for the various stated reasons it would be better to avoid them altogether.

About The Author:

Craig Broadbent is Search Engine Optimisation Executive for UK-based internet marketing company, WebEvents Ltd. WebEvents offers a range of ROI focussed internet marketing solutions http://www.webeventseurope.com.

How is Yahoo using your RSS feed?

By Robert Fuess

The format for the site submission has changed in the free Yahoo web submissions http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request . At first it allowed you to submit your site to it using the free submission form. This was normally the home page, and you would hope that their spider would crawl the rest of your website from there. Some webmasters have found this inadequate and have submitted other pages that Yahoo failed to notice otherwise.

More recently Yahoo allowed you to put in a text document with a list of URL's to simplify the submission process.

A few weeks ago I noticed that Yahoo also allows RSS feeds of your website, Atom feeds, or a text listing of urls in this submission form. What does this mean? What will Yahoo do with the links in the RSS feed?

The text list of URL's was obviously an effort to simplify the process for Yahoo to find all the pages in a website, as their documentation describes. But the RSS? Will they just add this to their database of RSS feeds for RSS searches, or will they follow the links with their spider to evaluate all the pages listed?

I have been working with Google Sitemaps since they came out. (Google uses their XML-formatted Google Sitemaps to help discover all the pages in a website, as well as to evaluate what pages have changed recently.) I am wondering if this is Yahoo's response to the Google Site Maps. Does anyone know? http://www.spiderweblogic.com/GoogleSitemap.aspx

If I was them, then I would use RSS feeds to evaluate changes in the website. This has more information than the list of URL's, since it also has descriptions and date changed. They have all the right information. If this is the case, it would be advisable for webmasters to have a RSS feed for their whole site to submit. That way Yahoo could just check the feed and know what pages to re-crawl, or what pages have been added.

It could be just as possible that this is just a field for us to submit RSS feeds, in addition to the other pages in your website. If this is the case, then we may need to submit both the feed and the home page of the website.

For myself, unless I find out differently, I am going to submit both. I intend on having a Google Sitemap and a RSS feed on all my future websites. I think it is safest to help out the search engines in any way possible. If they want information on what files have changed, I want to be proactive in giving it to them.

In addition, for those who have the coding experties, it is advisable to automate pinging Yahoo when your RSS feed changes. This is a standard blogging technique.

If you use movable type, the following article will help you configure your Yahoo to be automatically notified of a change in your RSS feed: http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/001490.html .

There is an alternate way, for those who don't have movable type or standard blogs. Lets say you want Yahoo to know about the RSS feed you built for http://www.yourdomainurl.com and have the RSS file, myRss.xml. You could automate (or even have a web shortcut for) the following HTTP request:
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping?u=http://www.yourdomainurl.com/myRss.xml

For more information, see the official Yahoo documention on RSS here: http://publisher.yahoo.com/rssguide

About the Author:

Robert Fuess is a veteran website designer who specializes
in making dynamic search engine optimized websites.
http://www.SpiderwebLogic.com http://www.SchoolAndTeacher.com

What Is Pay-Per-Click? When To Use It - And When Not To

By Robert Fuess

The only way to really guarantee top placement is to use pay-per-click advertising. (This is an advertising mechanism in which you pay for every click of a potential customer.) Most search engines offer this on a bidding basis, and if it generates more money than you spend on it, it can be sound business advise. In most cases, you would DO THIS LAST - after you optimize your web site and implement other promotional techniques. If you do an effective job with your website optimization and promotion, you may already come up top naturally and not have to use pay-per- click for several keywords. (This is expecially true for MSN or Yahoo.) Or if you choose to make a big (temporary) advertising campaign while you are optimizing (and have the money for this), then you may consider this.

Some keywords will cost more than others, depending on competition. Some will generate more paying customers than others. Do the math as you go along. Figure out the return on investment. This is seldom a one shot deal and often takes a few months of tweaking to get the optimum pay-per-click bid amount for the different keywords.

YOU WILL FIND SEO COMPANIES THAT GUARANTEE YOU TOP PLACEMENT FOR
YOUR FAVORITE KEYWORDS. THIS IS HOW THEY DO IT. They use pay-per-click as part of the package and point to the pay-per-click listing, showing you your top placement. The natural links are normally much cheaper in the long run, since once you achieved a top ranking without pay-per-click you will have a steady stream of customers without having this kind of per-click fee.

Google is, of course, an exception. For the first year you will not likely rank for most of your desired keywords despite any valiant efforts on your part. During this period, I would encourage using Google's pay-per-click (AdWords). Although Google is the slowest to recognize your natural ranking - it will give the greatest return in the long run. While you do this - use the information they give you while you manage your pay-per-click keywords. See what is used most often - and what gives you the most sales (conversions). They have tools to help you with that.

ANY SEO FIRM that promises or guarantees top placement for competitive keywords is either selling you pay-per-click or is being boastful. Be wary with your money. You don't need an SEO expert to sign up for pay-per-click. You may use one to help you find the right keywords or perhaps to handle optimization techniques. If they are selling you a package, pay-per-click is often a justifiable part of it. However, don't let such a promise be a decision factor in selecting an SEO expert.

About the Author:

Robert Fuess is a veteran website designer who specializes in making dynamic search engine optimized websites. http://www.SpiderwebLogic.com http://www.SchoolAndTeacher.com

Getting The Right Domain Name

By Adrian Lawrence

Once you are comfortable with working online, you should buy a domain name for your site or sites. Domain name registration, if you do it right, is one of the key components of having your site rate high in the search engines. The right domain name is memorable, and can get your site to rank higher than other names. The wrong domain name won't do you any good at all.

The Basics of Domain Name Registration

The first thing you have to do is come up with a good domain name for registration. Don't even think about a one-word domain name; they're all gone at this point. Instead, come up with dual-word combos. If you're putting together a professional site, try your name before anything else.

Don't get fancy with spelling when selecting your domain name registration, or use 2s and 8s to represent their sounds. You can try the number 1; that sometimes works. You can also try the names of products you offer, or a description of your site content offerings: Romanceforgirls, popcornpalace, fluffykittens. Memorable is always better; short and memorable is best, but very difficult to accomplish.

Come up with a couple of dozen names that will do for your site, and test them on a registry. Don't buy a domain name for which the .com extension is gone, but you have access to the .net or .info. These domain names are not by any means as valuable as the .com. If you pick up the .com, though, and you expect the site to be lucrative or have a lot of competition, it's not a bad idea to pick up the other extensions as well. Domain name registration is NOT expensive, and if you register in bulk you can get an even better price.

The .UK Extension

This doesn't mean you should avoid anything but .com. If you have a business in the United Kingdom, you have access to the uk domain name set, which UK customers are likely to look at before anything else for UK-specific businesses.

If you anticipate most of your business will come from British customers who are aware your business is in Britain, the .uk extension may be a better choice than the .com; and if your customers are unhappy with Internic's control of Internet domain registration or they are very pro-Britain, the .uk extension is certainly a better choice.

If you're fortunate enough to find both extensions for your domain open, and if you run a British company, it doesn't cost much to buy them both, and you definitely should.

It also gives your online presence an immediate "identity" geographically which can be crucial in building online relationships- where trust is a key component. By being a .UK domain, you are very likely to gain UK clients.

The .UK domains market is one of the fastest growing and lucrative registration areas on the internet.

Tips for Domain Name Registration

Have a website ready to plunk into your domain as soon as you buy it, and submit it immediately to the search engines. The search engines take time to index new sites and your domain name registration is only as valuable as the search engines make it.

You can also have more than one domain name pointing at a single site. If you've bought multiple extensions for your domain name (as in the previously-suggested .com/.uk combination), you can set up your site under one domain name and then direct traffic from the others to the main site. This is called web traffic forwarding and has been around for years. It may be as simple as parking your domain name on a server and putting a line of code on the page, or as complex as going through another website to use their online web forwarding services.

When you do register a domain and start building traffic to it, go out and renew for multiple years before your renewal is due. It is surprisingly easy to forget to register your domain name on time, and if someone else sneaks in and registers it, you've just lost a ton of work on that domain.

By making your domain name memorable, you will help other webmasters remember your site easily when building anchor texts in their links- a crucial component of SEO.

Final tip: don't just think about price when looking for a domain registration company- also think about quality of service. While you shouldn't be paying over the odds, it really is better to be safe than sorry and go with the more established registrars. Then you can have peace of mind that should any problems arise, you will be well looked after.

About The Author:

Adrian Lawrence is the webmaster for http://www.discountdomainsuk.com a leading Domain Registration service Please feel free to republish this article together with working hyperlinks.

Niche Marketing Is Your Key To Avoiding A Common Business Blunder

By Cliff Posey Jr

Niche marketing occurs when you intentionally focus your marketing efforts on a targeted portion of the Internet or another similar market. These targeted portions, known as niche markets, provide a product or service for a defined group of customers who have very specific needs. Niche marketers address the need and market accordingly.

For example, many people sell clocks. But, how many of them sell clocks that are shaped like animals? Selling animal-shaped clocks is niche marketing. Of course, clocks are only one example. Once, you get thinking about the kind of products and services you want to offer, you will realize that the possibilities for niche markets and niche marketers are virtually endless. As long as there is a need for a product, there is demand and potential in the demand.

One of the biggest mistakes that new Internet entrepreneurs make is ignoring the concept of niche marketing completely and focusing on big markets that appear to be big moneymakers.
Though this may seem like a good idea at first, it is usually not the best option. The problem with this tendency is the level of competition that is often encountered. Those who are already established in the market are experts at what they do, which makes it almost impossible to compete with them when you are still learning the ropes of running an online business.

With niche markets, you can significantly increase your chances of success. Because there is less competition, people will actually be able to find your website, and in turn, buy your product. Instead of being at the bottom of a search engine index, your site can be right at the top. This will increase your chances of getting new customers, and more importantly, new sales.

Niche marketing can also help you get traffic to your site in other ways. For example, when using pay per click campaigns, niche marketers can choose to use keywords that have less
competition and in turn, provide consumers with more opportunities to click on the niche marketer's site. By targeting a specific group of people, you can actually increase your odds of getting a sale.

Niche marketing can also lessen an online business' advertising expenses. Instead of promoting your products and skills to a wide customer base, you are focusing on a specific group of people. This means that you can advertise and market your goods in places that these targeted consumers frequent. So, instead of wasting money on ads that none or only a few of your potential customers will see, you can pay money for an ad that will be as effective as an ad can be.

If you want to avoid one of the most common business blunders made by new marketers, consider niche marketing. Niche markets are everywhere, providing you with the ability to monetize your website in ways you never imagined. All you have to do is find your niche and act on it.

About The Author:

Cliff Posey, owner of CRP Marketing, owns and operates http://webbusinesstoolsonline.com. Cliff Posey has also operated several other successful web businesses including Love Song Cards and Radio Career Consultants. The content in this article was developed from his experience in these businesses.

Title Tags: The Forgotten Secret To Search Engine Success

By Tom Trush

You'd be hard-pressed to find someone who isn't looking for a quick fix to place their website atop the search engine rankings. In fact, many people are spending big bucks just for a shot at securing prime placements on sites such as Google, Yahoo!, MSN and AOL.

But while most of that financial focus is concentrated on creating keyword-rich content and building incoming links, one forgotten element of a search engine-friendly website often receives little attention: title tags.

So what are title tags? They are the descriptive text that displays at the top of your browser on every website you visit.

Not only are title tags important for telling visitors what's on each page of your website, they're essential to high search engine placement. A simple adjustment to your title tags will often result in a rise in your rankings.

Why?

All major search engines, including Google, examine title tags because they offer information about your web page. In a way, your title tags - because of their position at the top of each
page - serve as an introduction to your website. If the description on your title tags doesn't match the content on your web page, you run the risk of receiving a low ranking ... or, worse yet, no ranking at all.

However, when you incorporate keyword phrases that match your web page content and correspond with the terms your prospects search, you'll take a significant step closer to your desired position in the search engines.

To test this concept, I encourage you do a Google search. Type in any term or key phrase you want. Then, once the search is complete, open whatever website is in the #1 position (not one of the Sponsored Links). Once it's displayed, take a look at the browser bar at the top of the page. Do you see your keywords?

When creating the content for my new website at www.writewaysolutions.com, I focused on the key phrase "Phoenix copywriting." As a result, that is one of the terms I used on my home page title tag. Today, if you search Google for "Phoenix copywriting," you'll see my website in the #1 position. And on Yahoo! it's #2.

Frequently, many companies only display their names on the home page title tags. The problem is that, unless you're a well-known brand, your prospects aren't likely to search by your company name. Instead, they will use terms that describe the product or service they need.

To choose the most effective key terms or phrases for your title tags, begin by selecting words relating to what's described on your page. The trick is determining the phrases your prospects are searching, while avoiding broad terms with a lot of competition. You can use a free service such as Digital Point's Keyword Suggestion Tool at http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/ to help select your keywords

One additional tip is to include your geographic area as part of your title tag phrases. By adding your city and/or state, you'll narrow down the number of websites competing for your desired search engine placement.

By now, I'm sure you're wondering what's in your website's title tags. So go ahead, take a look and start incorporating these suggestions. In no time at all, you could soon see your website soaring to the top of the search engine rankings.

About The Author:

Tom Trush is a commercial copywriter based in Phoenix, Arizona. His eBook, "Do-It-Yourself Mortgage Marketing Made Easy: How to Profitably Promote Your Mortgage Services Using Simple Writing ... Even on a Limited Budget!," is available by visiting http://www.diymortgagemarketing.com.

20 MORE Must-Have Search Engine Marketing Tools

By Kalena Jordan

My recent article 20 Must-Have Search Engine Marketing Tools listed 20 of the most popular time-saving tools you can use to help you with your search engine marketing efforts.

The article proved quite popular with both search engine marketers and webmasters, some of whom decided to send me their favorites that weren't included in the list. I also discovered a few more of my own since I wrote the original article, so I decided to add to the list by reviewing another 20 tools.

So here is a list of 20 MORE must-have search engine marketing tools:

1) SEO Toolbox

The SEO Toolbox is a collection of 11 free SEO tools developed by the team at SEOmoz, including a backlink checker, URL inclusion checker, an outbound link checker, domain age detection and a PageRank checker.

Price: Free

2) EditPlus

EditPlus is a 32-bit text editor, HTML editor and programmers editor for Windows. While it can serve as a good replacement for Notepad, it also offers many powerful features for Web page authors and programmers.

Price: Shareware (Registration fee encouraged)

3) WordPress

Like Blogger, WordPress offers hosted blogging and blog templates. Unlike Blogger WordPress also offers a stand-alone publishing platform to enable you to host and fully manage your own blogs.

Price: Free

4) Marketing Experiments

MarketingExperiments is an online laboratory engaged in research publishing and education. Their mission is to test and document every conceivable marketing method on the Internet.

Price: Free

5) Web Page Analyzer

Web Page Analyzer is a free web page analysis tool and web page speed tester to help your improve web site's performance. Enter a URL and the tool will calculate page size, composition, and download time.

Price: Free

6) Web Accessibility Toolbar

The Web Accessibility Toolbar has been developed by the Web Accessibility Tools Consortium to aid manual examination of web pages for a variety of aspects of accessibility. It's particularly helpful for site usability testing and there are versions for both Opera and Internet Explorer users.

Price: Free

7) Search Engine Friendly Layouts

SearchEngineFriendlyLayouts offers CSS-based layouts that are known to be search engine friendly (easier for search engine robots to index). All of the XHTML, CSS and Javascript code used in the layouts are provided for use free of charge.

Price: Free

8) The Interactive HTML Tutorial

Dave's Interactive HTML Tutorial is a tutorial is for anyone who is serious about learning HTML code or who just wants to brush up on some of the basics. It includes code descriptions and integration examples.

Price: Free

9) Indextools

Indextools is another popular web site analytics program that also offers built-in PPC bid management tools.

Price: From USD 49.95 per month

10) WordTracker

WordTracker was one of the very first keyword research tools available on the Internet. It helps you pinpoint the most popular keywords for your product and services, generate thousands of relevant keywords to improve your organic and PPC search campaigns, research your online markets and find niche opportunities to exploit.

Price: From USD 30.00 per week

11) CSS Layout Techniques

CSS Layout Techniques catalogs search engine friendly web site templates based on Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). All code is made freely available for download. The site also includes links to various online CSS resources and tutorials, appropriate for both the novice and the seasoned CSS veteran.

Price: Free

12) RSS Feeds Submit

RSS Feeds Submit is automatic RSS and blog submission software that submits your feed to over 80 search engines and directories automatically. The creators claim it's the quickest way to submit your feeds to the most popular RSS directories and blog search engines. You can also choose to submit your site manually to directories that require more detailed information about your feed.

Price: USD 29.95

13) iBusinessPromoter (IBP)

iBusiness Promoter (IBP) is a suite of professional web promotion tools created by Axandra.com that helps you with all aspects of website promotion and search engine optimization. It includes tools for optimizing your pages and links, researching keywords, submitting your site to search engines and directories and search position querying to determine how your site pages are ranking for particular keywords.
Disclaimer: Some of the functions performed by this tool (e.g. automatic submissions and search rank querying) are discouraged by Google in their Webmaster Guidelines.

Price: From USD 249.95

14) Bid Rank

BidRank is a desktop application that you run on your PC to help you manage your PPC campaigns and automate the keyword bidding process. There are two versions of the product available: BidRank for Yahoo! which is a Yahoo! approved third party bid management tool to help you manage Yahoo! Search Marketing campaigns. Then there's BidRank Plus which works with multiple pay-per-click search engines, including Google AdWords, to help you manage multiple PPC keyword accounts.

Price: From USD 14.90 per month

15) Hot Banana Web CMS

Hot Banana is an easy-to-use Web Content Management System (Web CMS) that helps marketers build and manage SEO-friendly Web sites that can be automated and optimized for maximum lead generation and conversion performance. Content Management Systems are notorious for being SEO unfriendly but this one is purpose built to avoid such problems.
Price: From USD 329.00 per month

16) WebPosition

WebPosition is a powerful suite of tools aimed at improving your web site's search engine positioning and monitoring performance. WebPosition allows you to check your search engine rankings, target your keywords, optimize pages using built-in expertise, submit URLs to search engines and analyze conversions using WebTrends site metrics.

Disclaimer: Some of the functions performed by this tool (e.g. automatic submissions and search rank querying) are discouraged by Google in their Webmaster Guidelines.

Price: From USD 149.00

17) Competitive Intelligence

Trellian's Competitive Intelligence provides the means to monitor your competitor's web sites to identify their major traffic sources. You can find out which sites are responsible for sending traffic to their pages, including search engines and the search keywords used.

Price: From USD 99.95 per month

18) HTML Toolbox

The HTML Toolbox from NetMechanic is an online tool that helps you discover HTML errors and syntax that prevents browsers from processing your HTML and prevents visitors (both humans and spiders) from reading your site. HTML Toolbox automatically fixes html problems upon request with one quick click. The Toolbox includes several tools in one, including a HTML Check and Repair, a Spell Checker, HTML Validator, Browser Compatibility Check and a Load Time Checker.

Price: Free for up to 5 pages

19) Web CEO

Web CEO claims to be the most complete SEO software package on the planet. The latest version of this SEO/SEM software provides the ability to research keywords and keyphrases that will bring most targeted visitors to your site; optimize your Web pages for better search engine visibility; submit your site to search engines; research, analyze and build links; manage pay-per-click campaigns; track your positions in search engines; review site traffic statistics; get rid of errors on your sites; find bad links before your visitors do; edit your Web pages; upload any file or folder to your site and monitor the availability of your web site.

Disclaimer: Some of the functions performed by this tool (e.g. automatic submissions and search rank querying) are discouraged by Google in their Webmaster Guidelines.

Price: From USD 199

20) AdWatcher

AdWatcher is a suite of tools designed to help you receive the maximum ROI for every advertising dollar you spend from online marketing campaigns, be it Google AdWords, banners, text links, or email marketing. It detects and combats click fraud and allows you to manage all of your ad campaigns from one easy-to-use interface. Essentially, it provides click fraud monitoring and ad tracking.

Price: From USD 29.95 per month

So there you have ANOTHER 20 time-saving tools to help you with your search engine marketing efforts. Now there's no excuse for avoiding SEM. Happy site marketing!


About the Author:

Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running her own SEO business, Kalena is Director of Studies at Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

20 Must-Have Search Engine Marketing Tools

By Kalena Jordan

Anyone working in Search Engine Marketing knows that this industry travels at warp speed. If you're trying to market your web site or the web sites of your clients via search engines, chances are your time is limited - severely limited.

To squeeze as much into my schedule as possible without resorting to self-cloning, my daily routine involves the use of a range of time-saving tools and software. I use such tools on a daily basis and I truly don't know how I'd function without them. I'm not the only one. I've talked to other SEM experts and they also rely on various tools to help them through their hectic schedules.

Here is a list of 20 must-have tools used by busy SEM professionals:

1) Freshbooks Invoicing and Timesheets

Freshbooks is an online estimating, invoicing, project management and time tracking service that gives your business a professional image, no matter how small. I use it to invoice all my clients online and it can even be set up to automatically bill and debit the credit cards of recurring clients every month. It also has built in staff timesheets and project management tools for online collaboration.

Price: Free for 3 clients or less

2) XML Sitemaps Generator

The XML Sitemap Generator trawls through all levels of your site to generate an XML sitemap. It also gives you a running count of pages, provides a text-based URL list and a HTML sitemap you can import straight into your site. The online version of the generator is free for sites of less than 500 pages, but there's also a low-cost script-based version for larger sites that can be set up to automatically index your site, upload an updated XML file to your server and ping Google and Yahoo when done.

Price: Free for sites of 500 pages or less

3) Proposal Kit

ProposalKit takes the chore out of creating and tailoring client estimates and proposal contracts. With over 200 pre-designed self-guiding templates ready to fill in the blanks with your company, project/product/service and client information, ProposalKit has already half completed your proposal for you.

Price: From USD 47.00

4) ClickTracks

As far as site analytics goes, the depth and accuracy of data provided by ClickTracks just can't be beaten, in my opinion. The visual analysis ClickTracks provides is probably its best known feature, with statistical data overlaying actual screenshots of your web site pages. The ability to flag individual visitors or groups of visitors based on unique identifiers (such as all persons who visited page x or all persons who bought product d) provides a level of analysis that other analytical packages can't compete with.

Price: From USD 79.00 per month

5) AWeber

AWeber is a multiple auto responder and mailing list management service rolled into one. Members can send an unlimited number of campaigns, follow up messages, and newsletters to an unlimited number of approved opt-in lists. For newsletter purposes, a wide range of templates are provided, as are free training guides and videos to help you create campaigns.

Price: From USD 19.95 per month

6) JROX

JROX Affiliate Manager software (JAM) is a super powerful affiliate program that includes follow up email tools, mass email broadcasting, custom URLs and the ability to create up to 10 affiliate downlink levels. It offers affiliates groovy 3d Flash-based graphs and charts displaying their referrals and commissions and an organized marketing tools area for storage of banners, links and promotional materials.

Price: Free for 50 affiliates or less

7) Keyword Discovery

Keyword Discovery is an advanced keyword research and search term suggestion tool produced by Trellian.

Price: From USD 69.95 per month

8) Google Analytics

Google Analytics is free web-based site metrics/analytics software hosted by Google. After you insert tracking code on all desired pages of your site, Google collects data regarding visitor activity and then you are able to log into an Analytics interface and view site activity and produce reports.

Price: Free

9) Backlinkwatch.com

Type your URL into Backlink Watch and get complete detailed information about the quality and quantity of backward links pointing to your website. It will show you anchor text, Google Toolbar PageRank, total outbound links on that page and nofollow flag for each of your inbound links available.

Price: Free

10) Jim Boykin's tools

A collection of 17 free SEO tools developed by Jim Boykin and his staff, including a cache analyzer, Backlink checker, keyword density tool and multiple inbound and outbound link checking tools.

Price: Free

11) Google Webmaster Central

Google Webmaster Central is Google's one-stop shop for webmaster resources. It contains answers to common questions about Google crawling and indexing and guidelines for webmasters to follow when publishing their content. It also provides statistics, diagnostics and management of Google's indexing of your website, including Sitemap submission and reporting.

Price: Free

12) Yahoo! Site Explorer

Yahoo! Site Explorer is Yahoo's version of Google Webmaster Tools. It allows you to explore all the web pages indexed by Yahoo! Search, view the most popular pages from any site, view a comprehensive site map and find pages that link to that site or any page.

Price: Free

13) Ranks.nl

Ranks.nl is a keyword density and page prominence indicator. Type in a URL and target keywords to determine the page density and prominence for certain keywords within the page text and/or HTML tags.

Price: Free

14) Rex Swain's Tools

Rex Swain is an independent software developer who has uploaded a range of his custom server tools and demos to his web site. Tools include an RGB color sampler, HTTP Cookie Demo, a HTML sampler and an email form demo.

Price: Free

15) SearchStatus for Firefox

SearchStatus is a toolbar extension for Firefox and Mozilla that allows you to see how any and every website in the world is performing in the search engines.

Price: Free

16) Microsoft Excel

Microsoft Excel is probably the world's most popular spreadsheet application. Apart from it's powerful formulas for financial reporting, Excel charts and spreadsheets are great for site analytics analysis and sharing, sitemap creation, SEO/PPC campaign reporting and tracking link building campaigns.

Price: Bundled with MS Office from USD 180.00

17) Google Reader

Google Reader is a RSS and XML feed reader that constantly checks your favorite news sites and blogs for new content and presents them to you in one interface. It also allows you to share sites/pages of interest with others.

Price: Free

18) Blogger

Blogger is a popular online blog hosting and templating service owned by Google, where you can quickly set up a blog of your own to post thoughts, interact with people, and more.

Price: Free

19) The Lynx Viewer

The Lynx Viewer developed by YellowPipe allows webmasters to see what their pages will look like when viewed with Lynx, a text-mode web browser. This view is very similar to how search engine robots see your site.

Price: Free

20) Basecamp

Basecamp is an online collaboration and project management service designed for staff and clients to manage internal and client projects from multiple locations.

Price: Free for 1 project

So there you have it. 20 of the most popular time-saving tools to help you with your search engine marketing efforts.


About the Author:

Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running her own SEO business, Kalena is Director of Studies at Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

What Do Busy SEM Professionals Keep in Their Toolkit?

By Kalena Jordan

As a busy professional in the hectic Search Engine Marketing industry, my time is limited. Severely limited. Sometimes I feel like I need to travel at warp speed just to keep up with the demands of this industry!

To squeeze as much into my schedule as possible without resorting to self-cloning, my daily routine involves the use of a range of time-saving tools and software. Here are a few of my favorites:

Freshbooks Invoicing and Timesheets

This little gem is an online estimating, invoicing, project management and time tracking service that gives your business a professional image, no matter how small. I use it to invoice all my clients online and it can even be set up to automatically bill and debit the credit cards of recurring clients every month. It also has built in staff timesheets and project management tools for online collaboration.

Staff can use the stop-watch to time the various tasks they do for certain clients and then press a button to bill those clients automatically, based on the hours logged in the timesheet. Freshbooks offers plug-ins for a wide range of third-party tools such as BaseCamp, PayPal and 2Checkout and provides the option of email or ground-mail invoicing. I've raved about this product so much that they put my testimonial on their home page!
Price: Free for 3 clients or less

Link: http://www.freshbooks.com/

XML Sitemaps Generator

For fast and easy XML sitemap creation, the free generator from XML-Sitemaps.com can't be beaten. It not only trawls through all levels of your site, but it gives you a running count of pages, provides a text-based URL list and a HTML sitemap you can import straight into your site, plus it generates the XML file for you in both compressed and un-compressed versions.

The online generator is free for sites of less than 500 pages, but there's also a low-cost script-based version for larger sites. It can be set up to automatically index your site, upload an updated XML file to your server and ping Google and Yahoo when done. The XML Sitemaps Generator also gets endorsement from Google by being included in their List of 3rd Party Plugins for Google Sitemaps.
Price: Free for sites of 500 pages or less

Link: http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/

Proposal Kit

I discovered ProposalKit when I was searching for a sample contract for my SEO business. Basically, ProposalKit takes the chore out of creating and tailoring client estimates and proposal contracts. With over 200 pre-designed self-guiding templates ready to fill in the blanks with your company, project/product/service and client information, ProposalKit has already half completed your proposal for you.

You simply flesh out the templates with your own data and contact details. Templates are particularly suited to online businesses and include documents for the initial sales pitch, the planning stage, estimating, contracting, project timelines, analysis and even invoicing. For SEO consultants, ProposalKit's Contract Kit even includes a Search Engine Optimization Services contract.

Creating a proposal from scratch can be a real pain. ProposalKit provide the structure, layout, design, instructions and examples to get you well on your way before you even get started. What I like best about this tool is the range of ProposalPack templates and ready-made contracts you can buy as add-ons to suit certain industries, such as Web Design, SEO, Hosting and the like. The smartly designed, colorful templates also give your proposals a slick and professional edge, regardless of your business size.

Price: From USD 47.00

Link: http://www.proposalkit.com/kits/pkhelp.htm

ClickTracks

I use ClickTracks Optimizer exclusively to track the visitor metrics of my sites and those of my clients. Many in this industry claim that Google Analytics is just as good as ClickTracks, but I disagree. While it's good that Google Analytics is free and the depth of data is impressive, I personally find the interface clunky to use and not very intuitive. The reports and graphs also seem to take a long time to load, even on broadband.

While ClickTracks Optimizer is a bit on the expensive side, the depth and accuracy of data just can't be beaten, in my opinion. The ability to flag individual visitors or groups of visitors based on unique identifiers (such as all persons who visited page x or all persons who bought product d) provides a level of analysis that other analytical packages can't compete with.

The visual analysis ClickTracks provides is probably its best known feature, with statistical data overlaying actual screenshots of your web site pages. While many of my clients find web site statistics a bore, this visual display can impress even the most skeptical. The depth of referrer data is superb, with the ability to drill down to IP address and the precise keyword search that triggered the referral. The WYSIWYG interface is simple to use and gives you true "at a glance" stats. The ability to export reports into Word, PDF or Excel is another plus.

Every time I use ClickTracks, I shake my head in wonder at how I ever managed with the far inferior analytics packages I used before.

Price: From USD 76.00 per month

Link: http://www.clicktracks.com/

AWeber

This is a recent discover of mine. I was tired of using two different tools to manage my autoresponders and newsletter subscriptions lists when a friend pointed out the fact that I could use AWeber to manage both.

The beauty of AWeber is that they manage ALL your mailing lists on your behalf and make it simple to send campaigns and emails to each list individually, or broadcast to all your lists at once. Members can send an unlimited number of campaigns, follow up messages, and newsletters to an unlimited number of approved opt-in lists. For newsletter purposes, a wide range of templates are provided, as are free training guides and videos to help you create campaigns. Various types of subscription web forms are created at the press of a button and you have a central control panel to access statistics so you know at a glance which sign-up forms are more effective. They even offer split testing for this specific purpose.

AWeber also have a very diligent verification and opt-in process, which weeds out drive-bys from genuine subscribers and ensures your subscribers know exactly why they are receiving correspondence from you. AWeber claim to have 99.34% email deliverability rates and I can understand why. All messages have personalization features and can be run through CAN-SPAM compliance testing prior to sending to ensure higher deliverability.

Probably the biggest advantage of AWeber is that their service is very affordable with free unlimited customer support.

Price: From USD 19.95 per month

Link: http://www.aweber.com/

JROX

After months of searching for the perfect affiliate software that did everything we wanted it to for our Search Engine College affiliate program, we finally chose JROX Affiliate Manager software (JAM) for the job. We first heard good things about it via webmaster forums and then read user reviews on Tucows. After a couple of days integrating it into our site, testing, tweaking and testing some more, it pretty much runs itself.

JAM is a super powerful affiliate program that includes follow up email tools, mass email broadcasting, custom URLs and the ability to create up to 10 affiliate downline levels. It offers affiliates groovy 3d Flash-based graphs and charts displaying their referrals and commissions and an organized marketing tools area for storage of banners, links and promotional materials. What's particularly useful is that it integrates with both PayPal and our 3rd party payment gateway 2Checkout, meaning that whenever a course sale is made via one of our affiliate links, the commission is automatically calculated and communicated from the payment gateway to JAM. Overall, the features of JAM are very impressive compared to similar products on the market.

Price: Free for 50 affiliates or less

Link: http://jam.jrox.com/


I use all of these tools on a daily basis and I truly don't know how I'd function without them. Which got me to thinking, what 'must have' tools do other busy SEM professionals keep in their toolkit?

To find out, I surveyed a few of the busiest industry rock stars that I know and asked them to share their favorite tools. I sent my request to:

1) Andy Beal, Owner of Marketing Pilgrim
2) Jennifer Laycock, Editor of Search Engine Guide
3) Jill Whalen, Owner of HighRankings.com
4) Karon Thackston, Owner of Marketing Words
5) Kim Krause-Berg, Founder of Cre8asite Forums
6) Rand Fishkin, CEO & Co-Founder of SEOMoz

Here's what they came back with:

Andy Beal

Owner, Marketing Pilgrim - http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/


Andy likes:

1) KeywordDiscovery - http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/

2) Google Analytics - http://www.google-analytics.com/

3) Backlinkwatch.com - http://www.backlinkwatch.com/

4) All of Jim Boykin's tools - http://www.webuildpages.com/tools

5) QuickBooks for accounting - http://quickbooks.intuit.com/

6) Ranks.nl for density checking - http://www.ranks.nl/tools/spider.html

7) Rex Swain for checking server stuff - http://www.rexswain.com/

8) FireFox plugin - http://www.quirk.biz/searchstatus/

"This is not all, but just some quick picks…"


Jennifer Laycock

Editor, Search Engine Guide - http://www.searchengineguide.com/


Jennifer likes:

1) ClickTracks - http://www.clicktracks.com/

2) KeywordDiscovery - http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/

3) EditPlus - http://www.editplus.com/

4) Microsoft Excel - http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx

5) GoogleReader - http://www.google.com/reader/view/


"Then of course Blogger, WordPress and Movable Type since those are the three blog platforms I use…"

Jill Whalen

Owner, HighRankings.com - http://www.highrankings.com/


Jill likes:

1) KeywordDiscovery - http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/

2) Basecamp for project management - http://www.basecamphq.com/

"Plus a bunch of Firefox extensions that come in really handy…"


Karon Thackston

Owner, Marketing Words, Inc. - http://www.marketingwords.com/


Karon likes:

1) Marketing Experiments – http://www.marketingexperiments.com/

"All the rest of my favorites are books..."


Kim Krause-Berg

Owner and Founder, Cre8asite Forums - http://www.cre8asiteforums.com/


Kim likes:

1) BaseCamp for project management - http://www.basecamphq.com/

For accessibility testing:

2) Web Page Analyzer - http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/

3) Colorblind Web Page Filter - http://colorfilter.wickline.org/

4) Web Accessibility Toolbar - http://www.wat-c.org/tools/

5) Opera Mini for mobile web browsing - http://www.operamini.com/

6) Sizer for resolution testing - http://www.brianapps.net/sizer.html

"My tools are a bit different because I no longer do SEO and for my own sites…"


Rand Fishkin

CEO & Co-Founder, SEOmoz http://www.seomoz.org/


Rand likes:

1) Indextools for analytics - http://www.indextools.com/

2) Wordtracker for keyword research - http://www.wordtracker.com/

3) Keyword Discovery for keyword research - http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/

4) Google Webmaster Central for all sorts of yummy data - http://www.google.com/webmasters/

5) Yahoo! Site Explorer - possibly my number one tool; I love the link & URL information they provide - http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/

"In terms of tools, at SEOmoz we almost exclusively use our own stuff…"


So there you have it; a few old favorites and a few new time-saving tools to try. Warp speed, here we come!


About the Author:

Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running her own SEO business, Kalena is Director of Studies at Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

SEM Industry Training - What Are The Options?

By Kalena Jordan


The State of SEM Training

Search Engine Marketing is the hottest new career to sweep the employment sector. There are literally more jobs available than there are marketers to fill them, hence the high salaries. Traditionally, SEO/SEM has had a long, steep learning curve, so there is currently a large supply/demand gap.

The growth of the industry has underscored the need for faster, more flexible training options. The demand for trained SEO/SEM staff has accelerated the launch of online training programs in the past three years. The spread of misinformation and the growth of dodgy SEO practices have also highlighted a need for best-practice industry certification.


Advantages of a Career in SEM

Here are the major advantages of having a career in search engine marketing:

The search industry is hot, hot, HOT!
SEO considered one of four jobs on the cutting edge
The pay is (usually) fantastic
You can learn it all online
You can be your own boss
Search marketing has the WOW factor
The demand is strong and growing
The industry is hip and groovy
The skills are portable and global
Job satisfaction is high


SEM Training Options

If you decide to start that career in search engine marketing, you have numerous training options open to you:

Do It Yourself (DIY)
E-books and online manuals
Books and offline manuals
Conferences and seminars
In-person training
Online courses

Let's go through these training options one by one.


Do It Yourself (DIY)

You could try to learn search engine marketing on your own, by conducting your own research, reading widely in webmaster forums and honing your skills on your own sites via trial and error.
The advantages of learning SEM on your own are:

You can set your own timeframe
It's generally inexpensive
You have the satisfaction of acquiring skills on your own

The disadvantages of learning SEM on your own are:

There is a very long lead time
You will be faced with conflicting and unreliable information sources
There is only a limited ability to network with peers
Research is time-consuming
You won't know what works and what doesn't until you trial it
You'll have no record or proof of skills acquired


E-books and Online Manuals

There are plenty of e-books and manuals about search engine marketing available online.

The advantages of learning SEM via e-books and manuals are:

They are generally inexpensive
They are readily available

The disadvantages of learning SEM via e-books and manuals are:

They are generally considered lower quality than training
There is no interaction with your peers
You'll have no record or proof of skills acquired

Examples of SEM e-books and manuals include:

The SEO Book by Aaron Wall
The Nitty Gritty of Writing for the Search Engines by Jill Whalen
SEM: The Essential Best Practice Guide by Mike Grehan


Books and Offline Manuals

As with online versions, there are just as many physical books, CDs and offline training manuals available to persons wanting to learn search engine marketing.

The advantages of learning SEM via books and offline manuals are:

They are usually inexpensive
They are readily available

The advantages of learning SEM via books and offline manuals are:

The information dates quickly
There is no interaction with your peers
You’ll have no proof of skills acquired

Examples of SEM books and offline manuals include:

Search Engine Visibility by Shari Thurow
SitePoint’s SEM Kit by Dan Thies
Building Your Business with Google For Dummies by Brad Hill


Conferences and Seminars

As search engine marketing has grown as an industry, so too have the number of conferences and events dedicated to it.

The advantages of learning SEM via conferences and seminars are:

They offer cutting edge information
They often provide access to search engine staff
They give you the ability to network with peers

The disadvantages of learning SEM via conferences and seminars are:

You must travel to the venue
They generally provide no training material
They can be more expensive than other options
You’ll have no record or proof of skills acquired

Examples of SEM conferences and seminars include:

Search Engine Watch's Search Engine Strategies
Webmaster World's PubCon
Search Engine Land's Search Marketing Expo
Australia's Search Summit


In-person Training

Just as the number of conferences relating to search engine marketing has grown, so too has the demand for in-house training in SEO and SEM subjects.

The advantages of learning SEM via in-person training are:

It generally includes step-by-step instructions
Training material is usually provided
Verification of subjects studied is provided
You have the ability to network with your peers
Some form of certification is generally given
University credits are sometimes available
Certification may be recognized by potential employers

The disadvantages of learning SEM via in-person training are:

You must travel to the venue
The information can date quickly
It can be more expensive than other options

Examples of SEM in-person training include:

Bruce Clay's SEOToolSet
Jill Whalen's SEM Seminars
Robin Noble's Search Engine Workshops
Search Engine Bootcamp
Elite Retreat


Online Training Courses

It’s not always viable or affordable for webmasters to attend conferences or training sessions at a venue other than their home or workplace. For these reasons, the demand for online training in search engine marketing subjects has skyrocketed.

The advantages of learning SEM via online training courses are:

Courses are available 24/7 from any location worldwide
Training materials are provided
They are usually cheaper than venue-based options
They generally include step-by-step instructions
Courses are self-paced and interactive
Certification is provided
A knowledge benchmark is required to qualify for certification
Verification of subjects studied is provided
The lesson materials are updated regularly
University credits are sometimes available
Certification is usually recognized by potential employers
Training institutions can assist graduates with employment

The disadvantages of learning SEM via online training courses are:

They can be more expensive than other options
There is only a limited ability to network with peers

Providers of online training courses in search engine marketing include:

SEMPO Institute
Search Engine College


Benefits of Industry Certification

When it comes to industry certification, there are various schools of thought in the SEM industry. Some suggest certification is simply not necessary, others state that SEO/SEM has no official industry standards, so any certification is meaningless, still others insist that certification is becoming increasingly important to potential employers and persons seeking careers in SEO and SEM.

If you’re skeptical about the value of industry certification, ask yourself these questions: Will you be looking to hire search marketing staff over the next 12 months? Would you prefer to hire search marketing staff that hold industry certification? Will you be seeking a job in the search industry over the next 12 months? Do you think holding industry certification would give you an edge over applicants applying for the same jobs?

Here are some advantages to having industry certification in search engine marketing:

For Staff:

Proof of subjects studied and skills acquired
Ability to promote certification on web site / CV
An edge over other applicants when applying for SEO/SEM jobs.

For Employers:

Ability to hire based on a proven skill set (e.g. ability to set up a Yahoo! SEM campaign quickly). Ability to impress clients with certified status of staff.
Reassurance that search engine-approved methods are used.
Less on-the-job training is required.


To Sum Up

Everyone has a different learning style, so don’t assume one method will work for you. Don’t rely on a single source of training for your search engine marketing needs. Attend conferences, purchase books, take a course, network in forums and DIY when you can to acquire a broader knowledge base.

Finally, remember that training should always be supported by hands-on SEO/SEM experience so get those hands dirty!


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About the Author:

Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running her own SEO business, Kalena is Director of Studies at Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.


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Do You Need A Google Specialist?

By Ben Norman

If you are putting your business out there, how are you ensuring that people look at what you have to offer. Having an excellent website is just part of working with internet marketing; the other half is getting the right people there to see it! When you are thinking about the best ways to promote your site, take a look at what a Google specialist can do for you.

There are over 30,000 search engines currently in use on the internet, but 90% of all searches go through the top three Google, Yahoo and MSN. Google is at the very top of that list, and you'll find that having a website that pops up at the top of a list of natural search results is one of the best ways to get traffic to your site. One of the reasons that Google is so popular however, is because it has mechanisms in place for making sure that the search results it produces are relevant to what the searcher is looking for. The Google search engine will take things like keyword density and context into account. With all of this in mind, it is easy to see why a Google specialist might be employed to get your site to the top of the rankings!

A Google specialist help you make your site a great deal more accessible; many new sites have found that there is something about their text or their layout that makes them unattractive to search engines. When you think about the fact that 50 percent of purchases made online are preceded by a search engine query, you can see that this is a valuable source of traffic that you cannot afford to lose.

When you are looking for a Google specialist, there are few things that you should keep in mind. First take a look around for any testimonials that you find or any examples of his work. Take a look at some of his credentials; Google offers certification for competence in the use of their AdWords program, and this can tell you if your specialist is serious about what he does. Similarly, when you speak to him or her, make sure that you feel comfortable with them; this is a person who will be affecting the way that you present to the world and that is the best reason to make sure that you can trust them.

Finding a good Google specialist can help you change your company's fortune. Today, people use search engines to find everything from good toy shops to local restaurants, so make sure that when they search, they can find you!

About The Author:

Ben Norman is a UK based Google SEO Specialist (http://www.ben-norman.co.uk), published author and specialist in organic search engine optimisation. Ben works with a wide range of businesses helping them to make more money from utilising the search engines natural listings.

Do You Do Online Marketing?

By Ben Norman

When you are looking for a way to get more information about yourself and your services out to an audience, one method of communication that you simply cannot overlook is the internet.
Today, every company that wants to make an impact on its client base has an internet marketing strategy and if you don't, you can easily find yourself left behind! While the ideal marketing plan combines the two, there are many advantages that internet marketing can offer you over conventional marketing.

Without a doubt, the most prevalent and popular forms of internet marketing involve search engines. Though experts estimate that there are over 30,000 search engines online, the top ten search engines account for about 90 percent of all traffic! When you take into account the fact that the majority of online purchases are preceded by search engine use, it is very easy to see why many companies put a lot of time and effort into getting to the top of the search engine results page. When you learn about things like keyword optimisation and natural search results, you'll be putting yourself in an excellent position to draw in business.

One of the best reasons to develop an internet marketing strategy is to take advantage of the low costs. Programs like pay per click advertising only demand that you pay whenever someone actually uses your link to go to your site and you'll find that the setup fee that allows you to take advantages of programs like Google AdWords is very reasonable. Compare this to the cost of putting an advertisement in the newspaper. You'll also find that internet marketing has a high degree of saturation; you can put your ads in many places that will be seen and noticed by a wide variety of people.

You'll also find that geography is no longer a problem when you are thinking about where you want to advertise. You don't have to be concerned that any particular ad is geographically relevant; instead, you can be assured that your advertising will reach any place that you are able to ship to! With the advent of internet marketing, you'll find that there are plenty of people who are interested in your service, and that with internet marketing on your side, you'll be able to reach them!

If you are a business, large or small, that is looking to compete in today's world, and online presence is of the utmost importance, as is a dedicated internet marketing campaign!

About The Author:

Ben Norman is the MD of UK search marketing company Impact Media Ltd (http://www.impactmedialtd.co.uk), specialists in managed online marketing. Impact Media work with a wide range of businesses helping them to make more money from utilising the search engines natural and paid search results.

Search Wars Continue - Is Social Search The Holy Grail?

By Jon Rognerud

Abstract:

The latest frontier in search engine technology is social search. Born out of the social networking boom, social search will attempt to humanize search results thereby providing users with consumer driven answers to their queries. Considering that 50% of queries go unanswered, social search could be the biggest breakthrough since page ranking.

Overview:

As search giants, Google, Yahoo and MSN continue their fierce battle to become king of the search engines, internet marketers are faced with increasing challenges to dominate in the rankings. As algorithms and methodologies change, savvy entrepreneurs and Madison Avenue continue their heated battle for a coveted Top 10 spot in search engine rankings.

Social search is not officially here but the debut is not far off. Yahoo, MSN and Google are all purportedly working on methodologies to converge search and user generated content all
while walking the tightrope known as "privacy." Yahoo has been beta-testing Yahoo Answers since December 2005 and has hired powerhouse, Raghu Ramakrishnan, the co-author of Database Management Systems and co-founder of QUIQ. Mircosoft is in talks with Eurekster.com, a company specializing in social search and Google is experimenting with Google Base Beta.

Why are these internet behemoths investing so much in social search? Social networks such as MySpace and Friendster are threatening the domination of established search giants.

Social networks are pulling in a significant and increasing share of web traffic.

Social network sites are actively working to improve their internal search capabilities and provide an even richer experience for their members. Search giants such as Google, Yahoo and MSN must accelerate their social search efforts or they may be left out of the search game that they now dominate. Search giants must step it up or they will get left behind.

Why now, what drives this apparent sudden change?

It is hard to believe that in the early days of the net, there was an underlying assumption that technology would replace or hinder human interaction. There were those that believed users
would prefer getting their information from a computer rather than a person. Social networking is really something old made new by bringing it online. It turns out we humans still rely on other humans and technology simply allows us to expand the boundaries of our social networks. Studies have proven what we already knew intuitively, we pay attention to recommendations from real people.

Social search, viral marketing and social networking are not at all new concepts. Social search is really the technology derivative of asking friends and colleagues for recommendations. In the long ago, dark ages before we "googled", if you needed a mechanic you asked your neighbor, your colleagues and your friends for a recommendation. We now google for mechanics and visit websites to gain information that will help us in our decision.

Social search will enable users to combine the two for a robust result that combines user driven content or the human element with the power of technology. Pretty heady stuff, when you contemplate the impact of this new era of search.

What does all of this mean to the internet marketer?

The internet marketer's goals remain the same - drive traffic and convert that traffic to profitable sales.

Social search will not change the foundation of marketing but it will change the way in which you present your information to generate leads. In other words, you will still need to apply good old fashioned Public Relations and Marketing tactics to the new fangled Social Search Medium, fondly dubbed SMM by some.

Drive traffic to your site from social search and search engine optimization.

To take advantage of social search, the first step is to develop a plan, and finding your niche. Contrary to popular belief, the world is not your customer. Often the focus is on pure traffic results, but none of that matters if you're not hitting your sales goals. Answer these:

- Who is your ideal customer, what does he look like?
- Do you merely want 200,000 hits per day or do you want 200,000 hits from people that have a problem your product or service can solve?
- What complementary products or services do they buy?
- How often do they make purchases, when?

Take the time to identify your target market before you launch a marketing plan. Make sure to also include complimentary offerings through popular email courses, as in:
http://www.microsaw.com/myform.htm to educate your audience first. Then, sample them via a survey, to find out more about them. And, because you gave them something for free, they'll be more willing to fill out the survey.

Now that you have identified your niche, you'll have a much easier time capturing them using SMM. Marketing whether online or off is all about relevancy, visibility, and credibility. As an internet marketer you want to dominate your niche market by establishing yourself as the expert in your area, delivering content to your potential customer that is relevant to their needs and preferences and have greater visibility than your competitors.

Steps that you can take to achieve expertness with SMM:

1. Become an expert source of information. Use the bookmarks and article submission features of sites such as Digg to establish yourself as a credible and recognizable source of information.
2. Hitchhike on a blog. Post relevant and informative content on high profile blogs in your industry. Contributing to a blog on relevant subject matter will increase your visibility and credibility with your target market.
3. Share, share, share. Create a Squidoo lens, write and publish articles to online article banks (i.e. ezinearticles.com), contribute to wikipedia. Issue quarterly press releases through PR Web. Providing content will establish familiarity with your name (the "haven't I heard of you?" effect) and enable you to cement your expertise with your audience. You will then drive pre-qualified users to your site, who has already established interest in what you have to sell.
4. Create your own friendly network. Link sharing with complementary products and services is still a great way to expand your social network, and hence your visibility.
5. Build on your existing foundation. The technical aspect of search will not be eliminated with the dawn of social search. Rather social search will augment technical search. Thus, it is important to continue utilizing the tools and resources that drive technical search including optimization techniques and paid inclusion.
6. Apply innovation directly to your site. Here's an example: http://microsaw-swicki.eurekster.com/ that we are using, and it's a free service.

Summary:

Social search will not entirely replace the traditional technical driven search but does open up yet another avenue for internet marketers. One of the more exciting aspects is that smaller businesses are better positioned to make the most gains from the social frontier. We have seen the power of the "regular Joe" community in driving site popularity and outpacing Madison Avenue marketing efforts.

YouTube, MySpace and Facebook owe their growth to the power of viral marketing. Big Business has not yet mastered the art of getting up close and personal with its users providing savvy entrepreneurs with the opportunity of a lifetime. By using the simple techniques outlined in this article you will be well poised to take advantage of that opportunity.

Social Marketing Resources:

Digg, Wikipedia, Wikihow, Flickr, StumbleUpon, Newsvine, LinkedIn, Del.icio.us, MySpace, Ma.gnolia, Yahoo Answers, Reddit, Technorati, Squidoo, Shoutwire, 43 Things, YourElevatorPitch, Ning, Yahoo 360, BlinkList, Shadows, Wetpaint, Jotspot

Article Banks:

Ezinearticles, GoArticles, SubmitYourArticles (fee required), Buzzle, Articlealley, iSnare

About The Author:

Jon Rognerud is a recognized authority on the subject of search marketing, and has spent over 10 years developing websites and marketing solutions at companies like Overture and Yahoo. His website, http://www.microsaw.com, provides a wealth of informative articles, tips and tools.

Link Building - How To Get More Inbound Links For Your Website

By Trevor John

Link building is maybe one of the least glamorous yet most important things you can do for your website. Without links pointing to your site, it's unlikely that anyone will ever find you.

So how do you get inbound links?

Most of the time, by asking for them!

Who you ask and how you ask them will make all the difference. You can't just send out hundreds or thousands of emails asking for a link. Apart from these emails being classed as spam, the chances of an email out of the blue being acted on by another webmaster is close to zero.

One way to get inbound links is to search out the small directories that are lurking everywhere on the internet. They classify websites and give a comment or description of the site. Many of these directory sites will list you for free (or a small fee), although the largest of them, such as Yahoo, will charge quite a lot of money. But then if your site is good enough to be listed in Yahoo, that will be recognized by the search engine spiders and you'll likely get a boost in your page rankings.

Another way to get inbound links is by writing articles and submitting them to places like Ezine Articles. You'll get a link back to your website once your article is accepted and as other sites start using the articles you've submitted, you'll get links back from them. You don't need to have got a top grade in English at school. You just need to be able to talk clearly about your subject - much as if you were explaining it to a friend over a coffee.

You can also get links back to your site when you post in forums. Make your posts good quality and people will be happy to click the link in your signature if it's relevant to the forums topic.

About The Author:

Get your free link building report for lots more ideas and ways of getting inbound links to your website: http://replymagic.com/link-building.html

Dallas SEO: Example Of Successful Local Sem

By Moe Tamani

SEO or search engine optimization is an integral part of Internet promotions today. Businesses have started to look more and more at the local market like businesses in Dallas are looking at focusing on Dallas SEO.

With competition and cutting edge technology, it is important for businesses to promote themselves and create a high visibility in their local area. This recent development can also been seen in Dallas as a research indicates that 95% of traffic are directed by the top 10 search engines. Hence Dallas SEO as a keyword and strategy is necessary.

It doesn't really matter whether your business is targeting a global audience or local audience. Even if you are promoting your services or product to a worldwide audience, you can still reach out to Dallas customers. At the end of the day, this will help in achieving two objectives:

1. A good brand positioning in the local and International market


2. Local market capture

According to search engine experts, 70% consumers in the last couple of months have searched the Internet for local service providers or businesses selling products. So it is important to make sure that your business gets the required amount of visibility through Dallas SEO, but the question is how?

Some of the top search engines like Google, MSN and Yahoo display local businesses on the main results page as well as in the local results page. But then there are local search engines, which are basically Internet Yellow Pages (IYP's), review sites and business data aggregators.

Some of the best Dallas search engines include dalseek.com, hitsphere.com, metroplexdirectory.com, dallasweb.com etc. These are IYP's as well as highly effective Dallas search engines that can take care of your Internet advertising needs. These local search engine directories can help businesses to advertise on the Internet for a monthly fee, quarterly or annual fee.

Let's take an example. dallasweb.com has different types of local listings like superpages.com, where you can list your Dallas SEO advertisement for free. In the Business/Yellow page listings, you can add your email address and url for free while some other yellow pages will list Dallas SEO advertisement for a cost that can be anywhere between $110 to $300 depending on how much space you are looking to advertise in, the placement of the advertisement and the Dallas SEO content.

Most people search the yellow pages while searching for products or services available locally. So if you provide Dallas SEO information regarding your business, service or products, then the chances of getting the right traffic to your website will increase multifold.

Most of the users who are looking for local information will visit a local search engines first (IYP's) and then a global search engine like Google or Yahoo. It is more of a habit than anything else and this habit can do wonders for your business while a Dallas SEO company can do justice to your advertisement, or business profile.

But we are not just talking about SEO advertisements; we are also talking about SEO website. So before you put your website on the Internet, you need to choose a Dallas SEO company to work on your website contain and make it optimized for local and global search engines.

If you use keywords like Dallas products, Dallas services, Dallas business, then there is a high probability that your business will feature among the top ten on the global search engines and anyone looking for a product or service in Dallas will get to see your website. Some users search for local information with subject matter keyword coupled with the locality.

A user looking for car spares in Dallas will search the internet or local pages using Dallas car spares, car spares in Dallas, Dallas car repair etc. Some users who are already aware of your area code may search as: Car spares, Dallas 75212. The local search engines will pull out all the car spare companies in the 75212 zip code including your company.

This is a type of Dallas SEO information that will enhance the search option and help a user to find your website or business information with ease. So, you will need to specify locality parameters within the website content. You can even have your full address displayed on your website to enhance search engine optimization and drive traffic.

About The Author:

Moe Tamani is an senior SEO expert for SEO 1 Services (http://www.seo-1-marketing-services.com) based in dallas,TX. Expertize includes Local Dallas SEO Services.

Internet Marketing Services That Deliver Site Traffic

By Moe Tamani

Internet marketing in itself is a wide domain supported by multiple theories and tactics but not all of them are effective enough to drive sales. The core idea behind any Internet marketing strategy is to create a web presence by using various Internet marketing services to drive revenue and achieve maximum ROI. The question is what are the key components of Internet marketing services and how can they drive ROI?

To understand it better, we need to first identify what a successful online strategy must be like. A fundamentally strong online strategy should be able to achieve the following:

1. It should be able to drive targeted traffic to your website and persuade visitors to take a decision. This basically means that if a person is visiting your site for a particular product then the availability of the product on your website and the customer experience should end with a sale. You can use web metrics to analyze as well as measure the behavior of the user.
2. It is not an easy task to drive targeted traffic to your website especially in the age of rising competition. You need to use certain elements of Internet marketing services to drive targeted traffic. Some of the elements include search engine marketing (SEM) campaign. An SEM strategy further includes pay-per-click or PPC advertising and search engine optimization or SEO strategy.
3. Application of the SEO strategy is quite common but the distinguishing factor lies in the type of keyword you choose. It's important to identify the right keywords that can be used as a part of your PPC and SEO campaigns.
4. Your internet marketing strategy should also include the use of tools like Wordtrackers, which can generate a random list of all possible keywords and phrases perfect for your business. Using a tool like this, you will be able to determine the frequency of search for each of the phrases. Based on the result, you can evaluate the options and identify the strength of competition. You can select the phrases and keywords and test them by using them for search engine optimization and PPC campaigns.

One of the key objectives of using Internet marketing services is to be able to effectively persuade a website visitor to take a desired action. You can buy a list of newsletter subscribers or offer a free download of a software demo package on your website. These are just minor elements that will draw a visitor to your website and help your to achieve the desired result.

Some of the other attributes that play an important role in making the marketing strategies effective include the total design and website architecture. Website architecture will include elements like navigation, design, content & copy and usability. All these elements need to be in sync to help drive traffic to your website.

Let us take a closer look at some of the Internet marketing services tools that are an integral part of any website or online business promotion:

PPC or Pay per click: PPC campaigns have become extremely popular platform of driving traffic. In PPC, you won't have to pay for advertising space or the advertisement itself but you will be charged every time a visitor clicks on your advertisement. It is also known as the cost per click (CPC) mode of advertising.

Search Engine Marketing: Also known as SEM, it is an online advertising strategy through which your online business can be optimized. This is an integral part of the Search Engine Marketing Services and this strategy will use your business/product/service oriented keywords to create a potential link with various other businesses. This will enhance your website relevancy and get your website listed among the top 20 or 30 search engine result page (SERP). A good SERP will increase the number of visitors to your page and will also help in converting them to customers.

Banner Advertising: A couple of years back, this was one of the top Internet marketing services but since the advent of SEM, it is not as critical but still is considered as a key factor. In banner advertising, you have to pay for the banner space. You can also display your banner in another website through banner exchange.

Email Marketing: Email marketing includes mostly newsletters, mailers etc, which can be sent to a group of subscribers or customers and is used to inform them about the launch of a new service or product.

About The Author:

Moe Tamani is search engine optimization specialist for SEO 1 Services
(http://www.seo-1-marketing-services.com)and contributor on http://www.seo-services-expert.com

Five Quick Tips For Getting Your Blog On The First Page Of Google

By Kevin Sinclair

It is so easy to make money with a blog. Whether the purpose of your blog is to get traffic to your sales page or to sell affiliate products or to get Adsense clicks, getting your blog onto the first page of Google can be done quickly and easily.

Using the following quick tips you could get listed on the first page of Google for some keywords within a month or two, depending on how competitive your niche is. A video game site that followed these tips got on the first page of Google, in the fifth spot, for a popular search term when the site was less than one month old.

Here are the five quick tips for getting to the first page of Google:

1. Put some original content on your blog. Post at least once a day but not more than every two to three hours. It doesn't look good if you are posting every few minutes. Continue adding new content regularly. Some of the content can be duplicate content (from an article directory or private label rights articles) but the more original content the better.
2. When you have at least five posts with original content then submit your blog to Google's sitemap. It's not hard, and it only takes a few minutes. As long as you have a blog that looks authentic and is not filled with scraped content, this is a good start to getting noticed by Google.
3. Write some original articles and submit them to article directories such as EzineArticles, GoArticles, ArticleAlley, and SearchWarp. Do not submit more than one a day since it is better to not inundate the article directories or they might think you are spamming them. It is very important to have a good resource box with links back to your site.
4. Submit your RSS feed to at least fifty sites. This can be done in less than a couple of minutes using RSS Submit (RSSFeedsSubmit), a great piece of software that automatically submits your feed to more than fifty sites. The price is very reasonable (less than $50) but if you don't want to spend any money and would rather do it by hand, Robin Good sells a list of 55 RSS submission sites for a very small fee.
5. Get your URL link listed in as many places as possible. Submit your site to directories like DMOZ. Answer questions at answers.yahoo and include your URL with your signature.
   Leave comments on blogs that are in a related niche to yours, again including your URL in the signature. Do a search with the phrase "keyword add url" and add your URL at sites that allow you to do it for free. "Keyword" would be replaced by one of your keywords for your niche. Submit your blog to Technorati. Submit your original posts to social bookmarking sites like Digg, Netscape, Redit, Plugim, and so on. Be sure to tell friends to vote for your submissions at the social bookmarking sites.

These five quick tips will give your blog a powerful boost and get your blog on the first page of Google in a very short time. Within days you should be getting traffic from Google as you rise in the search engines. And you did it with spending little or no money.

About the Author:

Kevin Sinclair is the publisher and editor of Be Successful News, a site that provides information and articles on how to succeed in your own home or small business. http://besuccessfulnews.com/

4 Keys To Get Website Traffic For Your MLM Business

By Jon Roussel

If you have been marketing your MLM business online for any while, you must probably realize the importance of linking your website to others of similar content to get quality website traffic.

This strategy for generating website traffic can help the search engines, particularly Google to determine the importance of your website and therefore assign the proper page rank to you. The higher the page rank, the more website traffic you will get.

It used to be that the more links, the better, leading to higher website traffic.

When Google changed their algorithms a few years ago, however, the sheer number of links because less important for website traffic than the quality and relevance.

Many network marketers have one or more replicated affiliate sites they market. Getting quality website traffic that will convert to sign ups and sales is a common challenge in this case.

There are many tools available for automatically building links to your website. Link exchange directories are a good tool to get more website traffic.

Here are four methods to drive website traffic to your affiliate site:

Post Articles

Publishing and posting articles is one of the most effective ways to create organic website traffic. This gives you an advantage as it gets incoming links to your website. Well written articles bring more website traffic for a long time because they stay on the internet for a long time.

Optimize Your Website

Search engines will examine both the internal and external profile of your website to designate a rank to a web page. Internal profile of a website includes usage of meta tags, heading tags, keywords, targeted content, and internal linking of website. External profile of your website defines the websites that are linking to your website.

Replicated MLM websites are typically optimized for the most frequently searched keyword phrases specific to a certain target market.

Anchor Text

Anchor Text refers to the clickable text of a hyperlink. Anchor Text can have a big impact on target website traffic as well as the search engine rankings.

Anchor Text lets the search engines know the content of the web page it links to. The right Anchor Text improves your website's search engine ranking.

A good way to set up anchor text for an affiliate site is to purchase a redirect url and then put the anchor text using the correct keyword in that url.

Tools

Website tools can make your website user friendly, getting you more website traffic. New scripts and innovative schemes for the visitor help you get more inward links. This in turn builds more website traffic. You can offer free e-books, or introduce new exciting sections relevant to your website. This will make your website enticing for the visitors.

Getting more website traffic for your MLM business is a critical activity that can make or break your online marketing. Learning and consistently using a few simple but powerful methods will drive that website traffic that will convert to sign ups and sales.

About The Author:

Jon Roussel is a successful internet marketer in Beverly, MA He helps people succeed with a home based business that will generate a long term reliable leveraged residual income. Learn more at http://www.networkmarketing6cs.com

Google And Relevance Of Links

By David Andrew Smith

All the literature, articles, experts and e-zines devoted to Search Engine Optimisation inform us that links to websites are graded as to importance by the page rank of the linking site and the relevance of its content to the content on the other site. Reciprocal links are of no importance especially with regard to Google although they are not penalised. The higher the page rank of the linking site the better. So we are constantly berated to seek out these high ranking sites to get them to provide a backlink to our own sites. Often they also intimate how you can go about this but when reading on you are never given a definitive plan of for example how to convince the BBC to link to your own site.

I cannot give any ideas as to how to achieve this either. Even if you did manage to get a backlink from the BBC site to your own website, would the link be considered relevant unless the website also had some connection with news, tv, radio or sport? As apparently Google looks at the overall content and not just the small part where the link is situated. So I personally have stopped trying to achieve such links.

Running a website with a page rank of 4, I am personally inundated with requests from other webmasters to provide them with a reciprocal link. They always use the same standard argument ...'you will appreciate the importance of links to search engine positioning'... . Where have these people been the last two years? I always reply to them positively by refusing the reciprocal link but suggest that I will place a link to them if they can give me a good reasoned argument as to why I should. To date I have had not a single reply. Webmasters would be better off by simply asking for a backlink and not offering a worthless reciprocal link. I am quite happy to accommodate someone who asks nicely with a reasoned argument. So webmasters out there take note.

Returning to the idea of relevant backlinks. The majority of my own backlinks are achieved by writing articles which provide quite reasonable page rank and absolute relevance because I am writing about the content of my website. The only downside to article writing and having the articles widely distributed is the penalty of duplicate content. Google will only take one of the sources and count it as a relevant backlink whilst the majority of the other search engines will often count all the places where the article has been published. Despite this article writing is still the best and easiest way of getting good backlinks. It might however take anything up to six months before Google will recognise this as a backlink.

About the Author:

David Smith is the owner of a contract cleaning company Sparkle Cleaning Services UK Ltd to be found at http://www.wesparkle.co.uk . He has built and runs this site as well as organising the cleaning contracts generated from the website.

The Origin Of The Species Of Search Engines, Part 2

By Gabriel Adams

As the internet grew in popularity, then exploded into a huge amount of data, search engines faced increasing challenges. As thousands of pages are added every day, and many of those are
changed on a daily basis, search engines have to constantly update their information regarding those sites. Part of the search engine race has been attempts to make the crawling more efficient and faster, so that the search engines can document new web sites when they come up. Some search engines download entire sites and keep the entire thing in its own hard drives.

When one thinks of modern search engines, the thing that most likely comes to mind is Google. It definitely wasn't one of the pioneers, since it only started to gain popularity around 2001. However, it grew insanely fast, and now has the majority market share by far of any search engine, with 74% of all searches in the world made by Google. Its popularity can be attributed to
the fact that it brought about many new and revolutionary techniques for listing pages. It considered factors such as popularity, original content, choices of past searches, how many
other sites link to the one in question, and more than 100 other factors. These brought the best results to the top of the page.

The success of Google not only affected the everyday user's habits, but also the development of almost all other search engines on the market. Search engines today spend their capital developing intricate algorithms to decide which sites belong at the top of the rankings. Other top search engines include Yahoo! Search, AltaVista, and Windows Live Search. Since there are so many choices working so efficiently to index the latest web sites and information, you can surely benefit from using them. You can use search engines to track people down, find out new information, and determine important marketing factors.

About The Author:

For more free-reprint articles by Gabriel Adams please visit: http://www.isnare.com/s=author&a=Gabriel+Adams

Getting Indexed, A Little Patience?

By Erich Sweaney

Newbie's and Expert Internet Marketers all have one thing in common: Trying to get their websites indexed through the top three major search engines quickly. For larger websites the task is even more daunting, and there are a few small but effective techniques that can assist in the indexing process. Patience is a virtue and in today's internet marketing world patience and planning is a key.

Smaller one or two page websites, also known as sales pages, are the easiest and quickest to get indexed in the three major search engines almost anyone can generally succeed by just manually submitting through each search engines submission process. Websites with a considerable number of pages will often only immediately get their first page indexed which therefore requires small effective planning strategies and a little bit of patience to become completely indexed.

Effective Key Planning Strategies:

(1) Prior to submitting your websites to the search engines or establishing link partners which will cause the search engines to start indexing in your website. Start planning out the basic website structure so that search engines robots can easily flow through your website and index each page.

(a) Have an sitemap linked from you main index page that thinks through out your website.

(b) If possible, ensure that each page is linked together, not just back to the main index page. This is not possible depending on what type of website you have, the number of pages, or your website design and structure. But this has been a successful technique in the past.

(c) Build and submit a Google Sitemap.

(2) Test your websites design and structure using Google Sitemap Software such as SOFTplus GSiteCrawler (Freeware) that will try and index your entire website. If your unsuccessful building a index of your entire website, then further planning and design changes maybe in order to index your entire website. If the software can not index your entire website, how will the search engine robots index your entire website?

(3) Instead of manually submitting your websites, submit your website through directories and establish link partnerships. This will improve how often your website is crawled by the search engines and how fast your website is indexed. Also, when establishing link partnership and directories higher the Google Page Rank, the quicker your website will be indexed and how often your website is crawled.

(4) Lastly, Patience. The process the search engine will go through while indexing your website is: First, the search engine will have to find your website (Hence, establishing partnerships with high Google Page Rank), then crawling through your website and absorbing all the information contained, then ranking each individual page and finally your website will appear in the search engine result pages (SERPs).

About The Author:

Erich Sweaney has specialized in Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization for over 4 years, and maintains several at http://directory.ezweb-tools.com - SEO Friendly Directories and http://www.es-solution.com -Internet Marketing Online Resource Center.

Get The Rankings You Want

By Ayat Shukairy

Where do you rank on the World Wide Web? It's not enough to have a website; you have to get ranked on the first page to get noticed. Otherwise, holding your position at number 28,432 on Google isn't going to do you much good. Check out some easy ways to improve your page rank and get yourself noticed.

Search engine optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) ensures that your website copy is written and structured in a way that improves chances that your website will be found when someone performs a search. For example, if your company sells insurance, you'd use words or phrases such as life insurance, insurance quote, insurance agent, or home insurance.

Content

Write articles that grab the interest of readers right now. Include case studies and whitepapers on your site that will give your visitors are reason to always come back. Or even check out what's going on in the news and be there first to report changes that impact your industry. For example, if you sell mortgages, be the first one to report the drop in mortgage rates. You'll generate a lot of traffic and increase your ranking. Remember, time is of the essence. If you find out something new and hot, you should write about before your competition does!

Search engine spiders are looking for sites that are periodically updated with rich content. Do not offer content that isn't useful. Some people try to place content that is rich in keywords but doesn't offer the oncoming traffic anything beneficial. Low traffic will equal lower rankings with top search engines. The idea behind rich content with specific keywords is that because you keep posting content, soon you will be ranked within the search engines for specific words. So, when I post articles about the different insurance rates and options, etc.; when an on-line visitor is searching for this info they will land on your site and may become potential clients.

Content must be used to provide new and interesting information that your reader wants to know about, offer helpful tips, or solve a problem. This content will get you link-backs which are excellent for driving traffic. You can also post articles through authentic submission sites, and that will also generate a lot of traffic. Many companies publish with different online magazines etc., not only to prove their expertise but also to gain more traffic linking to their sites.

Offer resources

Offer resources that will help your reader. For instance, if you are an insurance agent, and you want to attract new clients, offer a comparison chart of all the insurance agencies in the area so your user can make an objective decision. At first, it seems like the insurance company is driving business away that way. Not so. If you offer your users resources that benefit them, they will come back for more when they are searching again.

Link it up

Linking to other websites is a great way to increase your page ranking. Linking to other websites raises credibility in the eyes of the search engines. Who should you link to? Provide links to websites that offer a similar product or service as you do, or websites that are industry related. A spa can link to its beauty suppliers, for example. Ask them if they will provide a link to your website, and remember to offer to link to theirs in return. You can also submit articles to directories or credible article submission websites to gain links. Good articles and resources will get you bookmarked and potentially linked to by other users.

Include a site map

Generate a site map that links to every page in your site. Search engines like pages that can be accessed easily, so make sure your important pages remain in the first or second level.

Make changes

Every month or two go back and update or make changes to your website. If you let it become stale, the search engines will toss you out like yesterdays news. Update it to generate new interest. Another great way is to add a daily blog. This will ensure that your content is updated daily and stays fresh.

Live bookmarks

Updates happen all the time. A live bookmark keeps track of updates and lets you know that information has changed, rather than you checking to see if websites have made additions. By providing live bookmarks, you are increasing your traffic and ranking because people will come back to you sooner, and more often.

RSS Feeds

Create an RSS Feed. RSS or Rich Site Syndication is a file format used by publishers to make their content available to others in a format that is universal. RSS is a way to publish content and update it in real time. This gives the user the opportunity access information through an RSS reader.

Targeted headlines

A clear, targeted headline will nudge your ranking a little higher. Use large text and words that relate to your website. For example, if you are a content developer, you could write a headline like: "Ten Quick Tips For Killer Copy."

About The Author:

Ayat Shukairy is the creative director at INVESP consulting. Ayat leads enterprise implementations to help clients http://invesp.com/tb increase site traffic, http://invesp.com/cs improve site conversion rates, optimize landing pages and establish customer loyalty.

SEO - Wearing The White Hat Part # 1

By Scott Lindsay

If you have heard the term "Black Hat SEO" then you know the term is applied negatively to websites that use methods of optimizing their website that are frowned on by search engines. In fact, these search engines will ban these sites from their rankings when they are discovered (and they almost always are).

There is another term used for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) referred to as "White Hat", and just like the movie westerns of yesteryear you get the picture that there is a struggle between good and bad between these optimization approaches.

Newsweek reported in a December 19th, 2005 article, "[Search engines] are increasingly tolerant of ethical or "white hat" [SEOs], who primarily help their clients knock down the virtual walls that prevent search engines from fully indexing their site."

To be clear, search engines view "Black Hat" SEO as spam while "White Hat" SEO is not only accepted, it is encouraged. Matt Cutts from Google has said, "To Google, SEO only becomes spam when it goes against our quality guidelines and moves into things like hidden text, hidden links, cloaking, or sneaky redirects...Truthfully, much of the best SEO is common-sense: making sure that a site's architecture is crawlable, coming up with useful content or services that has the words that people search for, and looking for smart marketing angles so that people find out about your site."

Now imagine a business owner looking for ways to pay the least amount on their income tax. They have every right to do so, but there comes a point when numbers are incorrectly manipulated to reduce the individual tax burden. Chances are pretty good that sometime in the future this individual is going to get caught.

"White Hat" SEO practitioners understand there is acceptable rules and they will frame their strategies within those rules because to `get caught' using unethical SEO practices could mean saying goodbye to your ability to let the most people know about your existence on the web.

"Black Hat" SEO is often a sign of desperation. Because proper SEO techniques can take a while to be recognized and applied to search engine rankings many businesses who may feel their chance at business success is slipping away may resort to "Black Hat" techniques and end up banned from search engines in the process.

I can't fault people for wanting business success sooner, but the moderate use of PPC advertising can help offset that `in-between' time when you are waiting for "White Hat" SEO strategies to kick in.

In our next article we'll answer the question, "What are some SEO strategies that are considered `White Hat'?"

About The Author:

Scott Lindsay is a web developer and entrepreneur. He is the founder of HighPowerSites and many other web projects. Get your own website online in just 5 minutes with HighPowerSites at: http://www.highpowersites.com. Start your own ebook business with BooksWealth at: http://www.bookswealth.com

Seo Techniques ~ Increasing Page Rank Through Web Directories

By David Bain

When a typical individual surfs the internet, he or she will more than likely use a search engine like Google or Yahoo!Search to proceed with the search for specific information. After a result is returned by the search engine, this typical individual is likely going to click the link at the top of the page or at least a link found on the first page. The awareness of this leads many web masters to hire search engine optimization professionals to increase their page rank. A higher page rank means more web traffic for a web site.

--- Page rank and search engine algorithms ---

A high page rank is attained if the search engine finds the web site relevant to the specific keyword query made by a web surfer, and search engines have certain criteria for ranking the millions of web sites in their indexes. To be on top of the results page or to have a high page rank therefore, a web site must fulfill the criteria set out by the search engines. Search engine optimization professionals make a study of the search engine's search algorithms and try to incorporate these algorithms into a web site's pages.

--- Link popularity as a criterion for search engine ranking ---

One important criterion that search engines use to rank the pages in their indexes is link popularity. The logic lies in the supposition that the more other relevant sites link back to a web site, the more significant its content would be to the individual initiating the query. Thus, the higher the link popularity of a web site is, the higher the web site's page rank deserves to be.

Link popularity is measured by the volume and quality of one-way links to a web site. A web site attains link popularity when it has many links from other web sites that are related to it. If a web master wishes to increase web site's link popularity, he or she should solicit one-way links from other web sites, and it is better if the web master solicits these links from web sites that are directly related to his or her web site content. Thus, a web master of a travel web site is well advised if he or she seeks one-way links from other travel web sites or other sites that offer travel information. Another means to increase link popularity would be one-way links from web directories.

--- Web directories ---

Web directories are usually industry specific. They are an organized collection of links to web sites that belong in the same field. There are web directories for adult dating sites, there are web directories for travel-related sites and so on and so forth. Web directories also usually have sub directories. The links are typically classified into specific fields within a comprehensive industry; and more often than not, there are sub-categories for states, cities, and/or zip codes.

Web directories are a popular means of obtaining one-way links, and links that come from web directories carry much weight in link popularity, and thus, page ranking.

--- Submitting to web directories ---

To maximize the impact of web directory listings to page rank, the web master must choose the web directory carefully. The bigger and the more reputable the web directory is, the higher is the impact of a listing on page rank. It is also important to ensure that the link is submitted under the most appropriate heading or category of the web directory. Search engines look at the company your link keeps, so the more relevant the links around you in the directory are, the higher your page rank becomes.

About The Author:

David Bain is the founder of the free report "Top 10 Search Engine Optimization Mistakes". Visit http://www.Top10SEOMistakes.com to download the report today.

Google Adsense With A Search Box

By Seth Willis Jr.

Visitors to your Website are not only browsing information and articles, pictures, or videos, but they will find an assortment of AdSense links to click through. Your AdSense revenue will depend on how valuable these links are, and how strategically they are placed on your site. Even when visitors to your site are just browsing, adding the convenience of a search engine
directly on the site can help them stay longer and find more information. Your visitors can find a significant amount of information by clicking on your advertiser links; by adding a complete search engine right on the site, you can improve and increase your traffic simply. Your Google AdSense account can help you take part in the Google Co-Op program in just a few easy steps.

Boosting your AdSense revenue is easy and profitable with the help of a Google search engine. When visitors on your site use your own unique search engine to find more information, any click-throughs from the results can mean revenue directly to you. All you have to do is log in to your AdSense account and copy the code for a search engine box. It's