About search engines

Top 5 Work At Home Programs

noreply@blogger.com (Valizi) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 17:48:00 +0000

Below you will find the "The Top 5" rankings for work at home opportunities from BBBreviews.org based on actual results from each of the programs listed, the people who have used them and the results they have received.

These are 100% legitimate "Work At Home" programs.

Please keep in mind that with any work at home opportunity, there is work involved and you must take the time to apply the program. While some of the wording used to describe these programs may seem a bit much, the fact still remains that the programs do actually work.

The programs listed below must first pass certain qualifying criteria to be reviewed by our organization, and then they are put to the test to see if actual results can be accomplished according to their claims. The opportunities listed below have passed our review process and ranked well above the many other programs we have reviewed along with them.

The top 5 programs that produce results, as reviewed and ranked by BBBreviews.org

#1 Google Ambush

Ranking: 10.0
Includes Support Help
Able To Work From Home
No Experience Required
Video Instructions
60 Day Guarantee
Has No Hidden Fees
Can Start Immediately
Opportunity Offered By:
Andrew X & Steven Lee Jones

Program Price: $99.00

To visit the original website
Click Here! Ranking: 10.0

Proven Results
Easy For Beginners
Includes Support
Video Training
Received Immediately

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#2 Maverick Money Makers

Affordable Program Cost
Includes Support Help
Able To Work From Home
No Experience Required
Video Instructions
60 Day Guarantee
Has No Hidden Fees
Can Start Immediately
Opportunity Offered By:
Mack Michaels

Program Price: $97.00

To visit the original website
Click Here! Ranking: 9.5

Proven Results
Easy For Beginners
Includes Support
Video Training
Received Immediately

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#3 Commission Blueprint

Affordable Program Cost
Includes Support Help
Able To Work From Home
Video Instructions
Step By Step Instructions
60 Day Guarantee
Has No Hidden Fees
Can Start Immediately
Opportunity Offered By:
Steven Clayton & Tim Godfrey

Program Price: $97.00

To visit the original website
Click Here! Ranking: 9.5

Proven Results
Includes Support
Received Immediately
Video Training
Received Immediately

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#4 Profit Miracle

Affordable Program Cost
Includes Support Help
Able To Work From Home
No Experience Required
60 Day Guarantee
Only A Few Hours A Week
Has No Hidden Fees
Can Start Immediately
Opportunity Offered By:
Jamie Lewis

Program Price: $77.00

To visit the original website
Click Here! Ranking: 8.5

Proven Results
Includes Support
Received Immediately
Video Training
Received Immediately

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#5 Copy n Profit

Affordable Program Cost
Includes Support Help
Able To Work From Home
No Experience Required
Step By Step Instructions
60 Day Guarantee
Has No Hidden Fees
Can Start Immediately
Opportunity Offered By:
Jamie Lewis

Program Price: $77.00

To visit the original website
Click Here! Ranking: 8.0

Proven Results
Includes Support
Received Immediately
Video Training
Received Immediately

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Writing Articles to Increase Traffic to Your Website

noreply@blogger.com (Valizi) — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 14:33:00 +0000

The most inexpensive way to get traffic to your website is by writing keyword rich articles and submitting them to article directories. Keep in mind that keyword rich does not mean low quality. You need to be sure that your article not only has the keywords that you want but also has quality content. The reason this is an inexpensive way to get traffic is because the only cost involved in writing articles is the time that you put into it, unless of course you pay someone to write the articles for you.

The first place people go to look for information is the internet. People search for information on the internet every day. When a keyword is typed in the search box of a search engine, the search engine will display a list of websites containing that keyword. Writing articles will put you in the search engines more quickly. These articles, therefore, will help to increase the traffic to your website.

Keep in mind that "content is king." If your article does not have the quality content that the person is searching for, they will keep searching and will not go to your website. The more pertinent information you put into your articles, the more likely that person will be to visit your site and ultimately make a purchase.

By writing high quality content articles, you are letting people know that you have knowledge about the product you are selling and want to help them by sharing that knowledge. People are more inclined to buy from the person who makes them feel the most confident, and knowledge builds confidence. Just remember that "content is king" and so make your articles as informative and full of quality content as possible and you will earn their confidence.

The likelihood of your website being crawled by the search engines increases by the number of articles that you submit to the article directories. Be sure to submit your articles to two or more article directories. At the end of your article you will want to insert a resource box that includes your byline and a link to your website. Always post your articles on your website along with one or two articles that you have not submitted to the article directories. This will provide unique information for the search engines to crawl and will help your search engine position.

The websites that use your articles will be providing one way backlinks to your site from the URL you listed in your resource box. You will also obtain one way backlinks to your website from the article directories when they post your article on their site. Your website will obtain traffic from these backlinks.

Just remember, the higher in quality content your articles are, the more the search engines will like your site when they are crawled. The more the search engines like your site, the higher your site will rank in the search engines. The higher you rank in the search engines, the more traffic will come to your site. This will all lead to more sales and profit for you.

Everything on the Internet is Content!

noreply@blogger.com (Valizi) — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 18:00:00 +0000

Before you start to think that this is another SEO technique that may or may not work depending on the current algorithms of the search engines, think about it...

EVERYTHING on the internet is CONTENT.

The internet is a veritable treasure trove of information. Good, bad, valuable or not, the internet is all about providing information to people. That is why smart internet marketers know that people want information from their websites - not just SEO enriched pages of advertising.

The loopholes that search engine optimizers have been trying to use for high ranking in the search engine has created a plethora of sites that boast high keyword ratios, thousands of irrelevant hyperlinks and sometimes even redirection. These redirected websites try to create an optimized web page that the search engines will rank high but actually redirect the viewer to a less search engine friendly site.

Well, the search engines caught on. The websites that were getting the highest placements weren't always providing quality information or useful content. In fact, they not only lowered the ranking of these sites - they even removed them from the listings completely.

This sent a shock wave through the internet community and smart marketers realized that there is only one sure way to convince the search engines that they were meant to be at the top: Quality Content.

Not only do the search engines love content, but visitors do too. By providing visitors with useful information and relevant links to other sites, they come back again and again! And that's not the only benefit.

Because website owners are now hungry for content, there is a huge market for informative articles that other website owners can use on their sites. By offering information to these sites in exchange for a hyperlink to your website, you get even more exposure, both to search engines AND customers.

Writing content for the major article directories and including a signature or "about the author" at the end of the article with a link back to your website is one of the best ways of generating free website traffic. If the article is well written and about a strong niche topic, the article will get picked up by many websites for their own sites, which can provide you with a wonderful set of viral links to your site. The more frequently your article gets picked up, the more opportunity there is for another webmaster to see it and pick it up, too

What A Search Engine Marketer Can Do

noreply@blogger.com (Valizi) — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 17:29:00 +0000

In all my years of experience on the web, I have found that web engine marketers are very good at guessing and praying that their site will be top ten on the search engines. Seriously though, given then impossibility of knowing what the Googles of the world will do next and the ever-growing competition in all markets of the Internet, the life of a Search Engine Optimization professional has become very hard. Some have resorted to illegal or immoral methods in order to trick the search engines into ranking them high. Although this might work in the short term in the long term it will spell disaster every time. Some of the things that people do is cloaking where In terms of search engine marketing, this is the act of getting a search engine to record content for a URL that is different than what a searcher will ultimately see. It can be done in many technical ways. Several search engines have explicit rules against unapproved cloaking. Those violating these guidelines might find their pages penalized or banned from a search engine's index. Remember that the path to the Dark Side is one of Doom. Darth Sidious is a prime example of that.

While the search engine marketing person can't guarantee you a position, what they can do is to apply years of experience to tell you what has worked in the past, and to help you make it work today. In many ways, search engine optimization is really a matter of editing web pages or whole sites to make them the most search engine friendly they can be. Making sure that a given page has just the right combination of keywords, title, links, and so on, is really at its base simply a matter of making that page the best web page it can possibly be. The page that will rank the best in the search engines is also the page that will make the most sense to the human visitor.

Rather than relying on tricks to try to make the page rank high, it is a matter of just making the page the most focused and on-message that it can be. The bad news is that this doesn't guarantee which position in the search engine rankings that page will occupy on a given day. The good news is that the page will always rank well but even more important than that the visitors that will find your page will be more likely to buy because they will not feel tricked by your tactics but rather impressed with the quality of your sites content.

How to Begin Search Engine Opmization in 15 Minutes

noreply@blogger.com (Valizi) — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 21:59:00 +0000

Are you ready to hear something unbelievable? It's not that hard to get website traffic from search engines. All you need to do is follow a certain guidelines from major search engines like Google and follow some of my tips here.

Here are some of my search engine optimization tips for you:

1) Don't pay a company to submit your website to search engines using an automated procedure because this technique often fails; search engines often ignore these submissions. In fact: Website Submission does not work anymore. You should submit your site to these search engines and directories yourself, or pay someone to manually submit your site. You can also look into search engine advertising (using advertising programs like Google AdWord). Yes it costs money but it ensures placement of your business name and website link in a visible position on the search engine page.

2) To optimize your search engine ranking (you want to be in the top 10 and preferably the top five), you must understand how your customers think and want. What does he/she know about your product or service? What keywords will he/she be most likely to type into a search engine? Get to know your current and potential customers so you can answer these questions.

3) Learn more about search engine optimization, even if you plan to work with a web designer. You can find free resources online or buy a book so you can dig into the methodology, find many useful tips about keyword searches and design your keyword references and tags to satisfy the most common words people use to search for your products.

4) Don't think your work is done after you manually submitted your site to search engines. The fact is, you have just begun! Website success takes time and effort. Even if you are recognized by a search engine, and your ranking is high one day or during a given week, it may slip the following week because of new sites or because your competition changes its site to get a better ranking. You must continually monitor your rankings. That's one of the keys to better search engine rankings

5) When you are looking at your website and deciding where to use keywords, keep in mind that you can use keywords in graphics ALT tag, but they must be in captions or in the file title, and not embedded under a graphic as a false lead. Of course, don't bother creating a picture or graphic that contains a word (animated or static). The search engines can't index words that appear inside pictures.

That's it! Here are some of my tips to better search engine optimization. Read this article again, apply them and you will see your website rocket through the roof!

Search Engine Tactics for Massive Traffic

noreply@blogger.com (Valizi) — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 17:07:00 +0000

In order to create a business from your website, you have to treat it like a business. That means focusing on how you can get customers

Let's face it, there tens of millions of websites on the Internet and chances are high that you're not the only one offering the products and services that you do. The competition will bury you if you don't do anything to promote your site and let people know that you are out there.

One of the most important ways you can do this is to use the organic search engines. Getting a good ranking for keywords related to your products and services can mean the difference between a profitable business - and one that fails miserably.

Here are some of the mistakes webmasters often make when it comes to the search engines:

- Assuming it's going to be easy. Nothing in life worth having ever comes easily. This is certainly true of search engine rankings! Don't fall for the latest and greatest software or techniques. What you need is good old-fashioned hard work if you want to see sustainable results.

- Not choosing the best keywords. It's easy to rank well for keywords that no one searches for. But that won't bring you traffic. Instead take the time to actually research what searchers are keying into the search engines and then work on optimizing your site for the most relevant ones.

- Using "black hat" techniques. The search engines want to display only the most relevant results. In order to do this they've implemented a lot of rules into their algorithms that prevent people from simply repeating the same keyword over and over again and getting a good ranking for their page. Avoid doing anything that the search engines deem as "black hat" or you'll be banned before you know it.

- Underestimating the power of links. Having links from other sites shows the search engines that other people find your site valuable enough to link to it. No matter how great your site is, without links you'll never be able to rank well. Take the time to find link partners, publish articles and submit your site to directories.

- Not having enough unique content. Since searchers demand content, the search engines consider it one of the most important aspects when deciding which sites will be ranked well. Spending time on writing content is time well spent.

- Not understanding that all search engines are different. None of the major search engines operate the same. So take the time to learn what each one wants and give it to them!

UP and Down, Up and Down

noreply@blogger.com (Valizi) — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 21:43:00 +0000

Having a website is a lot like following your favorite sports team. In a course of a season they can go from first to third to last, and then be in the middle of the pack or completely off the radar screen. Then the next season they start the process all over again if the franchise has survived. I've seen my websites go from 100 pages or a search result to the number one position within a week. They have stayed in that first spot for months and then drop back down out of site. Whether my site sits at number one or number 1 million, my strategy doesn't change. I constantly tweak things in order to stay on top of the game. How do I do this, easy by reading and researching and yes even sometimes take a few gamble but calculated ones.

It's a fact that websites rise and fall in the rankings all the time. The only real constant is that the sites of TRUE value, the ones that offer something relevant and important to the searcher, are generally always near the top - even after the latest algorithm shift has sent the corner cutters into a frenzy of activity as they attempt to reformulate their search engine optimization strategy.

Then they think hey, I've optimized my website for the search engines and I'm seeing plenty of traffic -- but why isn't it staying very long? Could it be that you've forgotten what your visitors need? It's essential that you keep in mind when building your website what your potential customers need to make sure it will be a friendly place for your visitors to spend some time. After you've accomplished that important task, you need a good search engine friendly optimization plan that will allow your sites to be seen in the vast Internet world.

While it may take a little extra effort, I like to think of the relationship with search engines as a "partnership" in a real sense. We use optimization methods that apply the attributes search engines have deemed to be valuable to a website, which improves both the website and the website's search engine rankings. The search engines, in turn, send highly targeted visitors who have shown an interest in your industry, products, or services. Sure, it may seem that we get more out of the deal then the search engines have, but the engines don't complain. They haven't even acknowledged our partnership.

I Like To Call It An Art

noreply@blogger.com (Valizi) — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 21:28:00 +0000

Search engine optimization, (also known in the industry as SEO) is the art of using search engines to bring or draw traffic to your or somebody else's web site. Here's the dictionary definition of SEO: "The term used to describe the marketing technique of preparing a website to enhance its chances of being ranked in the top results of a search engine once a relevant search is undertaken. A number of factors are important when optimizing a website, including the content and structure of the web site's copy and page layout, the HTML meta-tags and the submission process."

Many professionals, who like to use fancy words, refer to SEO as search engine marketing. The goal of SEO is to attain a higher ranking in search engines and directories then your competition. One does this via changes to site coding to make it more relevant and therefore more search engine compatible.

Here's an amazing statistic. Did you know that 81% of Internet users rely on search engines and directories to find the information they need? Wow! Do you think that ranking highly in search engines and directories should be critical to your Internet marketing strategy...I do

This great study shows how Internet Consumers Find Web Sites*:
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Search engines: 81%
Link from another site: 59%
Viral marketing (word of mouth): 56%
TV: 48%
Guessed URL: 41%
Online advertising: 20%
Radio: 19%
Direct mail: 10%
-------------------------------------------
* Source: Forrester Research Inc.

Unfortunately or fortunately (if it's your competition not doing this) many online businesses fail to address the importance of search engines, building their site without any regard to search engine compatibility at all. That's quite unbelievable actually given all the great SEO programs out there today.

One of the big problems is that too many people assume that submitting their web site to lots of search engines will automatically increase traffic to their site. This isn't the case. Actually it's quite the contrary. If someone conducts a search on a search engine for a keyword related to your site's products or services, does your page appear in the top 20 matches - or does your competitor's? If it's the later then this means your site is not ranked high enough.... Time to do some SEO work. You may be listed in the engine, but big deal you are probably in the "back pages" of results. This is equivalent to being that needle in the haystack. To fix this problem, your site may need assistance from an SEO.

You Can't Control Search Engines.

noreply@blogger.com (Valizi) — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 21:20:00 +0000

There are things in life that we can't control. For instance we can't control the weather, the loyalty of a fine dog etc etc... To me search engines are one of those things that we can't control. Search engines live and die by the quality of their searches so they are not about to try to please you because you have nice eyes if this affects the quality of their results. If their search results are no good then this will affect their bottom line and ultimately their long term survival so search engines are pretty much like little Gods out there on the Net.

The bottom line is this: search engine marketing professionals do not own the search engines. They can tell you that you will achieve #1 ranking on a given search engine and actually they all do but they could also say that you will win a gold medal in the Jamaican Bobsleigh league. The fact of the matte is there is no way they can make either of those happen. If you go to a newspaper and they are asking for 500 dollars for an add for the back page, the only way you can guarantee that position is to pay the 500 dollars or you win the spot in your Friday night poker game against the editor.

If you tell your search engine-marketing people you want to be #1 in Yahoooooo, they cannot guarantee you that result. They can recommend changes to your site that will increase the likelihood of your ranking higher, but that is a long way from a guarantee. If you don't control the medium, you can't guarantee the result. Since your search engine consultant doesn't control the search engine, there is no way they can guarantee your position. Having said all this, I will admit to you that some people do actually learn to control the search engines through trickery and cheating. This will ultimately be caught by the search engines and will get you banned for life from them meaning that it's back to the 9 to 5 forty year plan of life.

The ranking algorithms of the search engines are a closely guarded secret. If they wouldn't be there would be no point in having them right? The search engine wants to give top ranking to the site that is the best match to an individual visitor's search query, not to the site that was able to "beat" the system. That is where the value of real search engine marketing comes in but most of all what good quality Content will bring you.

Serendipity Is The Best Open Source Blog Engine

noreply@blogger.com (Valizi) — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 21:20:00 +0000

Who am I to determine that Serendipity is absolutely best blog software on the planet? Well, I'll admit I've only been using blog software for 6 months. I've only tried Serendipity, Word Press and Nucleus. However, I have created over 20 full web sites using software from all areas. I've used Mambo, Joomla, Nucleus, Word Press, Serendipity, Java Servlets and JSPs', plain HTML pages and Serendipity is my favorite.

I have worked as a professional programmer for 15 years and with Java (as a software engineer) for the last 10 years. I've spent most of that time dealing intimately with various web technologies. Certainly I am no blog expert, but I have a bit of experience with software. Serendipity is good software.

Serendipity is a blog engine. A blog is simply a series of postings to a web site, sometimes organized and sometimes random. They are meant to quickly collect ones thoughts, but more recently entire web sites are being created out of sophisticated blog engines. I believe the blog engine and full fledged CMS solutions are converging. If what you need is a simple menuing system and a way to get content up on the net, then perhaps a blog engine, specifically Serendipity, is what you want.

Installation of Serendipity was a breeze, both on GoDaddy and HostGator. The default install went well, with the exception of course that GoDaddy does not put your MySQL database on "localhost", but on another server. Once you know the name of that server it's all good.

Once installed, changing styles is also easy. Serendipity comes with a number of built in themes/templates which are a snap to install. Basically you just go to Manage Styles in the administration menu and choose your new theme. It couldn't be easier.

Modifying templates is also quite simple. Most users simply want to change colors or graphics and this can all be done withing the style.css file for your template. I chose to make a copy of the "competition" template and modify my copy. All I had to change was the info.txt file and style.css, add my images to the img directory and I was good to go. Of course, it is not necessary to do this, just if you want a more unique look to your site.

Adding content is where Serendipity shines. I found the interface easy and intuitive, especially for media management. Imagine that you are adding an item and you want to add an image. Just click on media, put in the URL of the item you want to add and serendipity goes out and pulls it down and puts it in it's own directory. Then you can choose how you want it to appear in the text (left, right, on it's own) and whether or not you want the full image or thumbnail. Excellent!

Defining and using categories is equally easy and you can nest categories if you'd like. Each category can have a description and image. The description displays when the user put's their cursor over the category, I am not sure when/if the image gets displayed.

Serendipity has options to use search engine friendly URLs, but for some reason I wasn't able to get these working properly on GoDaddy. I'm sure there is an easy fix, I could ask at the Serendipity forum, but haven't yet. Adding a trailing slash to the rewritten addresses seems to bring up the page, but my ".htaccess" knowledge is not good enough to fix it myself. The URL rewriting works just fine on HostGator. Remember, using the non friendly URLs doesn't mean you won't get indexed, just that it may take a little longer. Also, the SEO friendly URLs tend to boost your ranking a little because they have the subject matter right in the URL.

What about integrating Ads in Serendipity? Serendipity has a solution for that too. There is a plug in (comes with Serendipity) called HTML Nugget. It allows you to add arbitrary HTML to one of the sidebar columns, perfect for those tower Google Ads or links to affiliate programs. It takes me all of 5 minutes to set up the ads on one of my sites. Nucleus took me quite a bit longer, I had to manually edit some of their files. Not very friendly.

All in all, I like Serendipity, it is right up there with Joomla as my favorite piece of open source software. The development team has done a fantastic job and I look forward to more great releases from them.

Search Engines Need a Steady Flow of Content

noreply@blogger.com (Valizi) — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 19:29:00 +0000

The Internet is full of Saturday Morning Bloggers. These bloggers ignore their blogs all week, then they post a few dozen articles in their blog and then spend a few hours adding comments to other blogs. This is a great way to spend a Saturday, but it provides very little SEO marketing benefits.

Search engines need a steady flow of comments. Most blogs that appear in a web search have a post that has been published within the last few hours. Dozens of blog search engines operate for the sole purpose of alerting the big five search engines of new content. The posts that you publish on Saturday are already out of the lists by Sunday afternoon. That is why it is important to provide the search engines with fresh content daily.

A steady stream of content is so important that some blog software programs have a delayed publishing plug-in. This lets the blogger upload multiple articles at one time, but it waits until a pre-determined time to publish each one. This is a great idea, but it is only half the solution.

The blog search engines must be pinged shortly after the blog is posted. There are several good pinging services on the web. Most of them ping a few dozen blog search engines, telling them that your blog has new content.

This confuses most bloggers. They believe that tagging an article with a blog search engine like Technorati or Del.icio.us is all they need to do. Tagging is a method of introducing a list of your articles to potential readers. Tagging has nothing to do with building in-bound links or a web pages rank. Tagging is for peoples benefits. Pinging is for the benefit of search engines.

Publishing one blog a day and then pinging the blog search engines will ensure that the big five search engines never forget your blog. www.weblogs.com gives a visual of how blog pinging works. Each of the blog posts that appear on the page have pinged the blog search engines.

An overly simplified method of explaining pinging is by comparing it to crawling a webpage. Instead of waiting for a robot to crawl the blog, ping the search engine while the news is still fresh.

Another excellent strategy is to invite your reader to leave a comment. Comments are picked up by search engines as new content. The only problem with allowing comments it the potential from comment spam.

Five SEO Tips To Improve Your Search Engine Ranking

noreply@blogger.com (Valizi) — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 19:27:00 +0000

By David Leonhardt

"Dear David: I just created a website on baby toy safety. What should I do to make sure gazillions of people find me through the search engines?"

I can't promise you gazillions, but there are a few things you should do to make it easy for search engines to find you. I assume you have already decided to submit your site to the major search engines and directories. I assume that you will develop some sort of linking strategy (hopefully a better strategy than most websites use today). I also assume you will have picked key search terms for all the pages on your website.

Beyond that, here are my top five tips for making your website easy for those "gazillions" to find it.

http://www.seo-writer.com/reprint/five-seo-tips.html

1. A picture might be worth a thousand words, but search engines don't read pictures. Make sure your key search terms are written out in text, not part of a graphic title you hire somebody to prepare for you. That also means you should not just show pictures of toys, but also write out the names, and possibly a keyword description with the title.

2. Have several pages of articles related to your website's topic. Use a different keyword search term for each article. For instance, one article might use frequently the term "safe toys for babies", while another might use the term "baby safety".

3. What's the URL of your website? Your name won't help you there. Your key search term will. In this instance, I might pick www.baby-toy-safety.com, for example (if that is one of your top keyword phrases). Hire somebody who knows what he is doing to develop the right keyword strategy for you BEFORE you choose your domain name.

4. What's the title of your page? I don't know how many times I see titles such as "Article" or "Contact us". Don't expect the search engine robots to get all excited about that term. And don't expect anybody to search for that term, either. Much better to title your page "Free article on safe toys for babies" or "Contact the *Baby Toy Expert* today". By the way, this is the single most important place to include your keyword phrases.

5. What about that navigation menu that appears on every single page of your website? Does it say "Contact the baby toy expert?" Or "about the baby toy expert". Or links about baby toys?" Need I say more?

If your website is about life insurance, you have little hope of hitting the front pages of any search engine. "Life insurance" is such a competitive search engine marketplace. Unless, of course, people are searching for a very specific and rare niche. Even then, I suspect you will need much more than these five tips.

In fact, there are dozens, if not hundreds of things you can do to win the search engine race. These top five search engine optimization tips are a great start, whatever your website is about.

SEO Case Stusy

noreply@blogger.com (Valizi) — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 19:26:00 +0000

Your Search Engine Ranking By David Leonhardt

There is a raging debate over the relative importance of on-page search engine optimization and off-page optimization. This case study that offers presents some intriguing findings.

When I began working for the client, Dotcom-Monitor Web Site Monitoring, its site was bouncing between #8 and #10 at Google for "web site monitoring", the most competitive search term in the sector. They wanted to get closer to the top. As I write, the site sits comfortably in the #3 spot. And the #4 spot, too!

But the client decided then to hire me for a second job. To get them equally high in Google rankings for "website monitoring". Note the distinction between the two terms.

All pages on the site were optimized for the term "web site monitoring". Nowhere on the site did the word "website" appear. So I was really just going through the motions to see where the site ranked for "website monitoring". Much to my surprise, it already ranked #231.

The off-page SEO crowd will say that it is because there are links pointing to the site with the term "website monitoring" in the anchor text. As far as I know, there were none. Links all used either the company name, the URL or "web site monitoring".

So there was no text on the page and no link text off-page. The only possibility was that there were inbound links from pages that had the term "website monitoring" somewhere else on the page. This clearly states the case for arranging relevant links.

The first step I took was to alter the home page. I slipped in the term "website monitoring" into a few places, including internal links and headings. I did nothing else to the site, nor anything else off-page. Within a few days, #231 was #34 ... just from a very light on-page optimization.

The next step was to build a few links. I watched the site climb to #30 a few days later. With fewer than ten links optimized for "website monitoring", we hit #16 on Google.

Adding directory listings brought the term up to #10, #9, #8... No link exchanges, no articles, just directory listings.

Three things you should NEVER do

noreply@blogger.com (Valizi) — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 18:49:00 +0000

Three things you should NEVER do
(even if some slick-talking "expert"
tells you it will cost you only $499
and will guarantee you gaggles of customers)

A webmistress asked me recently how much I would charge to optimize her site for the search engines. I took a glance at her site, and the first thing I found was a hidden link to an association she was part of.

I asked her why the link was there. She told me it was "for the search engines." It never ceases to amaze me how much really bad - I mean absolutely horrible - advice is floating around the Internet.

She never did hire me, but she did walk away with one free piece of advice that I now share with you: "Remove that link ASAP." Hidden links and hidden text are big trouble and something you should never do.

A hidden link is simply a link the search engine robots would follow, but is not visible to the naked eye. It could be a one pixel by one pixel graphic the same color as the background. Hidden text could be keyword written in the same color as the background.

If a search engine detects text in the same color as the background, it might penalize or even ban your site. In fact, one search engine expert has even suggested that if your background is, say, white, and you have a black table with white text on your page, that search engines would read that as hidden text (white background, white text) even though the text is clearly visible in the black table. Hmm. I will have to revisit my own site's colors.

Why are hidden links and hidden text bad? Because they try to cheat the rules. Cheating is bad, and search engines do not like playing with cheaters.

Duplicate pages are also a no-no. Search engines like original content made for human visitors. Five pages with the same article are seen as spamming, even if you did change "bicycle repair" to "fix your bike" in the second version and to "bike repair" in the third.

I was asked to exchange links with four websites this one person owned. The sites are very wholesome and I believe the webmaster is too. But the link pages on each website are identical: same introductory text and same links in the same order with identical wording each. All it would take is one complain to get all four sites banned, or at very least, severely demoted at Google and other search engines.

Needless to say, I turned down the offer, so that my site would not be associated with a "bad neighborhood".

Why are duplicate pages bad? Because they try to cheat the rules. Cheating is bad, and search engines do not like playing with cheaters.

Doorway pages are also bad. A doorway page is a page carefully designed to do well on search engine results, but is never meant to be used by humans. Often there is then a link to a website or there is some form of redirect.

Why not just optimize your site for the keywords you want, rather than try to trick the search engines? It probably will cost you less to hire a good search engine optimizer, and your website will not get banned.

I was approached by someone offering a combination of doorway pages and link farming (another no-no!). He did not call them by those names, even insisting they were not doorway pages. He wanted a few hundred dollars a month. There's nothing like your friendly neighborhood mortician coming to call when business is slow and bearing his own special brew for you to sample.

Why are doorway pages bad? Because they try to cheat the rules. Cheating is bad, and search engines do not like playing with cheaters.

By the way, "doorway pages" should not be confused with "entry pages". I get lots of my traffic entering through one or another of my articles. But these are real articles with real content, designed for human eyes and optimized for the search engines. This is a good tactic, because it adds content (which is what search engines are looking for).

Hidden links and text, duplicate pages and doorway pages are just a few of the "clever" tactics that can land you in the "Search Engine Slammer". If you spend much time on the Internet, you'll be approached about many others sooner or later.

Here is a simple question to ask yourself: "Would this be helping the search engines deliver the best results, or would it be trying to cheat their rules?" If it feels a little funny, don't try it. Or ask someone who knows.

Search engines are your friends. Be nice to them, and they'll be nice to you. You might just land yourself a berth atop Mount Google.

The Fatal Attraction of Online Marketers

noreply@blogger.com (Valizi) — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 18:47:00 +0000

Suppose you were offered 263 links coming into your website from 263 other websites all in one fell swoop. Everybody knows that the more inbound links you have, the higher you will rise in the search engine rankings.

Suppose further that these were real links from real websites that actually sold real products and services - no cheap FFAs throwing come-ons on a street corner on the bad side of town.

Suppose further that this offer included the reciprocal linking code for all 263 sites that just had to be cut and pasted into your website. Piece of cake.

Does it get any sexier than this? Are you drooling yet? Does the sweet perfume of "ka-ching!" float around your head? Is this love at first site?

Well, no, it's actually a fatal attraction, one you had best resist. One that could infect your website with deadly communicable diseases.

I resisted this very offer not long ago, and you should resist anything similar. Here's why:

1. The link pages on these sites are essentially link farms. The more links on a page, the less value they have in a search engine's eyes, especially when you start approaching or even passing 100 links. And don't expect any direct traffic from this kind of link, either.

2. There is a technical term for identical pages within a site or on multiple sites. It is called "duplicate content", and it is strictly verboten by the search engines. Here is what Google says about them: "Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content."

3. Do some quick math. You have 289 outgoing links, 263 of them are labeled "bad neighborhood websites" by the search engines ... so bad that they might even have been banned. What do you think will happen to your rankings?

Sadly, many webmasters fall for such tantalizing come-ons without thinking carefully about what the repercussions might be.

There is a lot of truly bad advice floating around the Internet on how to trick the search engines or find a short-cut to high rankings. This is one example of how following poor advice and hopping into bed with the wrong partner could kill your business.

Here is a good rule of thumb. Two's company. Three's a crowd. Four or more will get you arrested. OK, so I just made that up, and it's not very elegant. But it will keep you from falling for that inevitable offer with the come-hither eyes and the deadly communicable disease.

How Search Engines Connect

noreply@blogger.com (Valizi) — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 18:44:00 +0000

Maggie knows how to find what she wants. She lets her fingers do the walking - not in the Yellow Pages, but at Google.com. She wants to learn about bread baking, and you have just written Bread Baking Made Simple, and you sell some great baking tools. The good news is the Google and other search engines exist for one simple reason: to help Maggie find your website.

Google will show Maggie 534,000 resources on "bread baking". Unless she fails to find what she wants on the first page, or top 10 results, she will never find your website listed 124th in the results. (Actually, if she does not find what she wants in the top twenty or thirty results, she is likely to refine her search to "easy bread baking" or "home bread baking").

How do you get into the top 10 results so Maggie can find your website? You might have heard a lot about "search engine optimization" and "ranking analysis" and "algorithms". It all sounds very complex, but it really works on a simple 1 - 2 - 3 principle.

1. A search engine will show Maggie only resources (websites) it has on record. So make sure to submit your site to the key search engines and directories. You do not need to hire somebody who will charge you big dollars to do this. Nor should you fall for any of the auto-submit software or services. This should be done by hand, and anybody can do it. You can do it yourself.

2. The search engine will rank highest those websites it feels are most "important". This means you have to show that your website is most important. There are a few simple things you can do. First, make sure you have content. Text content equals importance on the Internet. Links, both coming in and going out, are key. Connectivity equals importance on the Internet. Get listed in the major directories (DMOZ.com, Yahoo.com, Zeal.com, JoeAnt.com, etc.), as this also is a measure of importance.

3. The search engine will show Maggie the most "relevant" high-ranking resources. Google might rank http://TheHappyGuy.com relatively very high, but it is totally irrelevant to a search for bread baking. How does a search engine know which websites are most relevant for Maggie's search? By the number of times "bread baking" shows up in text on your web page. By the variety of ways it shows up on your page. By number web pages you link to and that link to you with the words "bread baking" included.

Are you ready to roll? Possibly. Some of this you can easily do yourself. But there are three places that are worth spending money to help all the Maggies out there find your website and your book.

The first is choosing the right keywords. It might look simple, but "bread baking" might not even be the best keyword phrase to focus on. It might be "easy bread baking" or "home bread baking". The most searched terms might not be the best, nor the term with the least competition.

The second is to prepare a link strategy. The "link exchange" pages that are getting more popular each day are also becoming less effective each day. Here are just a few of the linking factors that will affect whether Maggie discovers your book:

* The total number of incoming and outgoing links
* The importance of the sites you link to and from
* The relevancy of the sites you link to and from
* Which pages on their sites and on yours are being linked
* What you include in the incoming and outgoing links
* Where on the page the links are placed
* How many links are on those pages
* How many pages are linked to or have outgoing links
* The ratio of links to content on the pages involved

You can implement the strategy yourself, but it is worth hiring somebody to put it together for you. Ask the person what factors she would consider when building a strategy for you. If she does not mention several of the above, your money is better spent elsewhere.

The third place to invest is to have somebody knowledgeable review your html code. Chances are that you have missed numerous opportunities to let the search engines know your website is relevant, and possibly some opportunities to show it is important.

SEO: Google's Next Big Move

noreply@blogger.com (Valizi) — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 18:18:00 +0000

By David Leonhardt

(Will your website be ready, or will you be playing catch-up six months too late?

November 2003 might go down in history as the month that Google shook a lot of smug webmasters and search engine optimization (SEO) specialists from the apple tree. But more than likely, it was just a precursor of the BIG shakeup to come.

Google touts highly its secret PageRank algorithm. Although PageRank is just one factor in choosing what sites appear on a specific search, it is the main way that Google determines the "importance" of a website.

In recent months, SEO specialists have become expert at manipulating PageRank, particularly through link exchanges.

There is nothing wrong with links. They make the Web a web rather than a series of isolated islands. However, PageRank relies on the naturally "democratic" nature of the web, whereby webmasters link to sites they feel are important for their visitors. Google rightly sees link exchanges designed to boost PageRank as stuffing the ballot box.

I was not surprised to see Google try to counter all the SEO efforts. In fact, I have been arguing the case with many non-believing SEO specialists over the past couple months. But I was surprised to see the clumsy way in which Google chose to do it.

Google targeted specific search terms, including many of the most competitive and commercial terms. Many websites lost top positions in five or six terms, but maintain their positions in several others. This had never happened before. Give credit to Barry Lloyd of SearchEngineGuide.com for cleverly uncovering the process.

For Google, this shakeup is just a temporary fix. It will have to make much bigger changes if it is serious about harnessing the "democratic" nature of the Web and neutralizing the artificial results of so many link exchanges.

Here are a few techniques Google might use (remember to think like a search engine):

1. Google might start valuing inbound links within paragraphs much higher than links that stand on their own. (For all we know, Google is already doing this.) Such links are much less likely to be the product of a link exchange, and therefore more likely to be genuine "democratic" votes.

2. Google might look at the concentration of inbound links across a website. If most inbound links point to the home page, that is another possible indicator of a link exchange, or at least that the site's content is not important enough to draw inbound links (and it is content that Google wants to deliver to its searchers).

3. Google might take a sample of inbound links to a domain, and check to see how many are reciprocated back to the linking domains. If a high percentage are reciprocated, Google might reduce the site's PageRank accordingly. Or it might set a cut-point, dropping from its index any website with too many of its inbound links reciprocated.

4. Google might start valuing outbound links more highly. Two pages with 100 inbound links are, in theory, valued equally, even if one has 20 outbound links and the other has none. But why should Google send its searchers down a dead-end street, when the information highway is paved just as smoothly on a major thoroughfare?

5. Google might weigh a website's outbound link concentration. A website with most outbound links concentrated on just a few pages is more likely to be a "link-exchanger" than a site with links spread out across its pages.

Google might use a combination of these techniques and ones not mentioned here. We cannot predict the exact algorithm, nor can we assume that it will remain constant. What we can do is to prepare our websites to look and act like a website would on a "democratic" Web as Google would see it.

For Google to hold its own against upstart search engines, it must deliver on its PageRank promise. Its results reflect the "democratic" nature of the Web. Its algorithm must prod webmasters to give links on their own merit. That won't be easy or even completely possible. And people will always find ways to turn Google's algorithm to their advantage. But the techniques above can send the Internet a long way back to where Google promises it will be.

The 52 Top SEO Tips - Here Are 10 of Them

noreply@blogger.com (Valizi) — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 18:12:00 +0000

From the obvious to the "Hey-I-never-thought-of-that-great-idea-before", here are 10 of the top 52 tips on how to optimize your website for its turbo-charge rocket ride up the search engine rankings.

Be bold. Use the tags around some of your keywords on each page. Do NOT use them everywhere the keyword appears. Once or twice is plenty.

Deep linking. Make sure you have links coming in to as many pages as possible. What does it tell a search engine when other web sites are linking to different pages on your site? That you obviously have lots of worthwhile content. What does it tell a search engine that all your links are coming in to the home page? That you have a shallow site of little value, or that your links were generated by automation rather than by the value of your site. Here is an example of deep linking, in this case to my personal happiness workbook.

Become a foreigner. Canada and the UK have many directories for websites of companies based in those countries. Can you get a business address in one of those countries?

Newsletters. Offer articles to ezine publishers that archive their ezines. The links stay live often for many years in their archives.

First come, first served. If you must have image links in your navigation bar, include also text links. However, make sure the text links show up first in the source code, because search engine robots will follow the first link they find to any particular page. They won't follow additional links to the same page. You can see this in action at the link to the home page on this web site monitoring page

Multiple domains. If you have several topics that could each support their own website, it might be worth having multiple domains. Why? First, search engines usually list only one page per domain for any given search, and you might warrant two. Second, directories usually accept only home pages, so you can get more directory listings this way. Why not a site dedicated to gumbo pudding pops?

Article exchanges. You've heard of link exchanges, useless as they generally are. Article exchanges are like link exchanges, only much more useful. You publish someone else's article on the history of pudding pops with a link back to their site. They publish your article on the top ten pudding pop flavors in Viet Nam, with a link back to your site. You both have content. You both get high quality links. (More on high quality links in other tips.)

Titles for links. Links can get titles, too. Not only does this help visually impaired surfers know where you are sending them, but some search engines figure this into their relevancy for a page.

Not anchor text. Don't overdo the anchor text. You don't want all your inbound links looking the same, because that looks like automation - something Google frowns upon. Use your URL sometimes, your company name other times, "Gumbo Pudding Pop" occasionally, "Get gumbo pudding pops" as well, "Gumbo-flavored pudding pops" some other times, etc.

Site map. A big site needs a site map, which should be linked to from every page on the site. This will help the search engine robots find every page with just two clicks. A small site needs a site map, too. It's called the navigation bar. See how the second navigation bar at the bottom of Last Minute Florida Villas is like a mini-site map?

There you have it: 10 of the 52 Top SEO Tips, a free tip sheet that comes with Don't Get Banned By the Search Engines:

There is a lot more to search engine optimization, and there are always more details when looking at an individual site. But these tips should help any website significantly improve its rankings.