All Search Engine Optimization

An SEO Strategy Your Competitors May Not Want You To Know

2005-01-31T09:35:00.000-05:00

by Danny Shepherd

The Internet has dramatically changed society and the manner in which business and individuals communicate. Innovations such as search engines, computer networking, the Web, e-mail, and blogs have transformed business as we know it.

Search engines have become an integral part of daily life andhave influenced marketing and technology across the globe.Take a step into the future: What if live search engine results could be placed directly on any Web site?

Did you know that it is now possible to place MSN search engine result pages directly on any Web site, blog, or forum using oneof the newest Internet innovations, RSS (Really Simple Syndication)?

RSS is used for distributing Web content and is a format based on XML.The benefit of RSS technology is that it enables Web sites to add content that is constantly changed or updated by the RSS feed generator. In this case, MSN Search Engine (beta) is the feed generator, and they are providing Web sites a direct connection to their search engines results pages.

Now Web sites can display live MSN search engine results directly on their Web pages exactly as the results appear on MSN.com. A spokesman for MSN stated that their RSS technology it is still under development and is subject to further experimentation and change.

Yahoo News also recently developed a tool that uses a similar technique to allow users to gain access to Yahoo's news database using RSS. Although users can currently do an RSS search query only on the news section of Yahoo's search engine, this capability is certainly a good start.

Up until this point, no search engine has offered their results in such an open formatted manner.

Web sites now have the power ofthese two search engines at their disposal. Properly integrating these search engine results into a Web site can yield powerful results for both companies and individuals.

How does a Web site gain access to these feeds? It is actually not overly complicated.

For example, if you wanted to generate anRSS feed for the term, "Big Screen TV" you would add"& format=rss" to the end of the URL in your MSN search engine query, so the URL would look like this:http://beta.search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=Big+Screen+TV&format=rss

Now let's take a look at Yahoo News. It is slightly more complicated than MSN's method but still involves the sameattributes. To add an RSS feed for the keyword "Big Screen TV,"you would enter the following code at the end of your Yahoo News search URL:rss?p=Big+Screen+TV&ei=UTF-8&fl=0&x=wrtThe URL with the code would look like this:http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/rss?p=Big+Screen+TV&ei=UTF-8&fl=0&x=wrt

After entering these parameters into your browser, MSN and Yahoowill automatically generate an RSS feed for Web site use. Once the Web site has the feed code, it is inserted into the Website's RSS reader.

If you don't already have an RSS reader andyou want to use one at no charge, some popular free RSS readers include NetNewsWire, Radio Userland, and AmphetaDesk.

So what about Google? Once this knowledge becomes public, it will only be a matter of time before they implement a similar tool.

MSN may take a lot of heat for their highly competitive and aggressive market tactics, but when it breads innovation like this, everybody wins. Companies often use search engine marketing firms to help promoteWeb sites on the Internet. It will be interesting to see how search engine marketing companies will use this new innovation to help promote online marketing and advertising.

Will RSS feed be one of MSN's new mediums for supplying pay-per-click advertisements across the Web? Market penetration from RSS feeds could easily out do Google's popular Adsense advertising medium. MSN, Google, and Yahoo had better buckle their seatbelts, because the competition is going to get fierce.

So in a nutshell, why is all of this important to you?RSS feeds provide fresh content to a Web page. The search engines love fresh content, and they'll spider a Web site much faster if they're fed fresh content. Use the power of this discovery to your advantage before your competitors get the jump on you!

* Danny Shepherd represents Titan SEO, Inc. an Escondido,California, based Search Engine Optimization (http://www.titan-seo.com) company. To subscribe to their e-mail newsletter, visit http://www.Titan-SEO.com/index-4.html. Titan SEO's search engine marketing technicians are certified by Search Engine Workshops(http://www.searchengineworkshops.com).

Deep Linking Stategy For Content Sites

2005-01-28T07:42:00.000-05:00

By Jack Humphrey
Author of Power Linking 2: Evolution

Here's the bad news: HOW It Works Has Changed!The good thing is you are going to pick up a linking tip today that will put you light years ahead of most webmasters who think a reciprocal link directory is all you need to gain link popularity in Google and traffic from other sites.

Link directories are still ok, but the key is moderation. Directories with thousands of links are a dark ages website promotion tactic. Today there are many people focusing on content again, thank god. And that means you have a lot more real estate than just a home page and a link directory to work with.

People have written to me to completely disagree with me on what I am about to show you, but believe the expert, it works! Say you have 500 pages of article and resource content on your site. If you are publishing articles on several categories you could have many more pages than that. But even if you only have a 30 page site right now, it should be growing all the time and will be large eventually. (If not, forget about Google staying excited about your site if it never changes.)

Each of those articles and resource pages is a link to your site waiting to happen.There are two ways to get links to your site here:1) Ask for a link to your main page in exchange for a link on one of your relevant article pages to the site you are requesting an exchange with.2) Deep Linking: Ask for a link right back to the specific page on your site you are going to link to them on.

Again, find relevant pages of content to the sites you are going after. People respond well to this, especially if you say you are limiting your outgoing links to "further resources" to 5 per page. (The number is up to you.) What does this do for your site?

1) It gets webmasters WAY more excited about linking with you because you are putting them ON your site, not in some cobweb-ridden part of your site that no one ever visits.

2) It lets other site owners know you have ACTUALLY taken the time to review their site enough to know where they would best fit on your site according to the topic of the page you want to link to them on.

Again - this is a way different message to them than the "Let's swap links" letter we all trash these days.

3) You start building link popularity and traffic direct to pages within your site other than your index. (If you choose to direct swap with them.)

4) It gives you leverage to ask for a better link from other sites than just being thrown in their link dump (link directory) where, again, far fewer people ever visit. You command the power to ask for a similar link of importance from the pages their visitors actually see. Win-Win

5) You increase the value of your links page because you are not loading it down with any and every person who will link with you.

You can go back to old school linking to sites that you HONESTLY do recommend and that list can be far smaller and really fit on 1-2 pages. All the sudden you have traffic to your links page again and can truly reward webmasters who are on it with some traffic.

6) The links you get this way are going to be some of the first links you have probably ever gotten that actually send you significant traffic. The same goes for your link partners."

But Jack, I don't want to send traffic away from my site!" Yes you do, in fact. Because you are asking your link partners to do the same. Links like this are just as profitable in the long run as Google Adsense ads because you are finally engaging in a real traffic exchange and leveraging your eproperty for what it's really worth. Trust me - this works. Send some traffic out and see what happens to your referrer stats.

Never give more than you get. Many people won't understand this form of linking for another year or so. They will try to shove your link in a dark hole on their site. Don't let them do it!If someone doesn't understand the power of deep linking from their content pages, send them this article as a last ditch effort and tell them Jack said so.

Otherwise, move on, take their link down, and find someone smart enough to see where linking is headed.

Overall, you are going to find it is much easier to get links this way, even from sites bigger than yours. Telling people "I want to link to you as a recommended resource on (name of article) page..." tells them that you are a pro and not some schmuck who has a linking program that spits out cookie cutter emails.

Too much work? Hire someone and pay them per link they secure in your name. Write the letter and have them fill in the blanks for specific sites. Teach them how to go through your site, learn the content, and go out and find RELEVANT recommended resources for each page.You'd be surprised to find out how cheaply you can get good work done these days on Elance.com and other "for hire" sites.

Sit back and watch your incoming QUALITY links soar from month to month!

Jack Humphrey is the author of Power Linking 2: Evolution.

Active vs.Passive Website Traffic Generation

2005-01-28T07:31:00.000-05:00

By Jack Humphrey
Author of Power Linking 2: Evolution

Things that fall into the category of Passive are:

1) Search engine optimization

2) Writing and Growing Website Content (The pages on your site whether they be articles, reports, your weblog, or a forum)

Many more website promotion tactics fall into the Active Category:1) Syndicating your content (like this article for example) 2) Paid advertising (Banner and test ads, pay-per-click advertising, ezine advertising, etc.)

3) Linking strategies (Reciprocal and non reciprocal linking)

4) Being active in your "community" (Posting to forums that your customers and associates frequent, for example.)

5) Doing teleseminars

6) Offline networking

7) Joint ventures with businesses who have the attention of your target market.

8) Free classified advertising (Some people still see benefits from this type of advertising to this day online.)

9) Offline media advertising (Radio, TV, Newspaper, Trade Magazines and other publications, etc.)

10) Reports, software and other viral free tools that point back to your paid services or products.

The two types of promotion are also referred to as "push/pull" website promotion. Passive website promotion "pulls" traffic TO your site while active promotion goes out on the web and "pushes" traffic to your site.

Looking at the two lists above, where do you think, if you HAD to choose between them, your time would be best spent?

Now I will never knock search engine marketing. That is a great source of sometimes massive free traffic. Sometimes. Unless you are in a niche that is very competitive.

You see, if you are in a competitive niche you will always be out-spent and out-worked by companies with endless budgets and staff for the top positions.

Most mom and pop sites in competitive niches are not going to do well in the search engines if they don't spend exorbitant sums of time, training, and money on getting their sites perfected just for search engines.

You should do what you can do with optimization. Do what you can afford in time and money. Realize that search engine marketing is an ongoing battle to get and keep good rankings. It is a long term, ongoing traffic solution.

But also realize there is a lot of active promotion you can do today to get people to your site who are interested in your product/service whether your site is in the engines or not.

Most people still think you have to wait a long time to make ANYTHING happen for your traffic stats to start improving. That's not true. You could get a boost in traffic in as little as a couple of hours using active website promotion strategies.

The simplest way would be to go to Google and start an adwords campaign. Simple meaning it is easy to start with an account and create your first ad.

But then more complicated in that you need to actively watch your stats and improve conversion rates to get the most return for the money you spend to get that traffic.It's a good strategy though, especially if you master the science of PPC advertising. I have a bonus in my Power Linking Course at http://power-linking-profits.com/ that was created by Jonathan Mizel and Adwords guru Perry Marshall that breaks down exactly what it takes to win the PPC game.

But there are other techniques listed in the active section above that are free and easy to implement which can result in traffic immediately. Each one of the things in both lists above can be broken out into much more detailed "plans" for your website marketing campaign. It depends on your goals, your product or service, and the amount of time you have to promote your site, which tactics you use and how much time you allocate to each.

I'll give you a hint on one of the more powerful traffic and branding tools. You are reading one right now. I would sell a fraction of the number of my courses if people weren't able to quickly and easily find several of my articles on hundreds of sites in the search engines.Writing articles and reports and syndicating them is a short and long-term traffic and branding solution. I will caution you on this though: Don't just write a slew of "words" and submit a cruddy article all over the net. You will be branded alright. Branded as a hack or a NON-expert in your field.

You have to care about the reader experience enough to give them something of value in each article you write. This is the only way you should proceed with becoming a writer and syndicating your content. The more you give your readers, the more you get from them in sales and word-of-mouth advertising.

After awhile, if you are good, people start seeking out your articles on your site or elsewhere on the web. This is the "sweet spot" of writing for the web. Writer's Mecca. Publisher's Valhalla, if you will. Hate to write? Hire a ghost writer. At http://webfoxmedia.com/ you can get 10 keyword optimized 500+ word articles written for you at a very good price. And you own the copyrights and can use the articles as content for your site (passively) as well as syndicate them globally (active promotion).

The best advice I can give you though is to become more active in the things that work. Just get going and set aside a real plan for your day-to-day promotion of your website. Don't get into "quick-fixes" or let yourself fall for the latest traffic scheme.

If you read about a traffic gimmick that leaves you wondering in the least about its real efficacy in driving targeted traffic to your site, just move on to the things above and don't waste your time on such things.

If website promotion was truly easy and effortless, every site on the net would have a tons of traffic and you wouldn't be reading this article on how to get more of it!

Jack Humphrey is the author of Power Linking 2: Evolution.

You Don't Have TIME To Sit and Wonder When The Traffic Will Come!

2005-01-28T07:15:00.000-05:00

By Jack Humphrey
Author of Power Linking 2: Evolution

It's work, but by now I am hoping you know that the successful people, including me, have worked VERY hard to get where we are today.Online doesn't mean automatic and there is no software that will promote your business hands-off. Lots of tools that help, but there's no way around having to work to succeed in any online business. That said, let's get to work.

Links Man!You could spend all 30 hours and much more this next month just getting reciprocal and, more importantly, NON-reciprocal links to your site. I see so many people just spinning their wheels wondering where to start with their promotion. You don't have TIME to sit and wonder! I am telling you right now that the only promotion tactic that will never EVER change on the internet, no matter what, is getting traffic through links.

There are tens of thousands of places on the web to get good, traffic-driving links. Go to forums in your niche and get involved. In a year's time you are going to have so many links from just being moderately involved with people in your industry through forums that you will wonder why you didn't sign up as a member of several forums sooner!

You will find so many free resources around the net just by surfing around the sites that your BEST customers are most likely to visit. You don't have TIME to sit and wonder! Get surfing and find out where your customers are and GET YOUR LINK THERE!I have said a thousand times by now in forums, books, teleseminars, and conferences:

If you are going to outlast and outwit your competition and really SUCCEED online, you must show up everywhere your best customers surf. You HAVE to, and that's it.

Given that fact, you have a LOT you can do, really, to get in front of your audience.Articles: I don't care if you hate writing and have a hard time spelling your name. You have to write informative articles (like this one) to get yourself in front of tens of thousands of people every week or every month, depending on your niche.

If you absolutely refuse to write, hire a ghost writer. You can get an article "ten pack" here: http://webfoxmedia.com/Just don't let this treasure trove of traffic go to someone else when you simply have NOTHING holding you back in this promotion technique. It is one of the most important tools in the small online business owner's arsenal - USE IT!Get free writing tools and article syndication tools and software here: http://equipmint.com/

BloggingProfessional blog software, like Expression Engine, comes with the ability to "ping" the blog search engines. (Getting into those engines is a whole new way to brand your site and products/services and most people are totally clueless to this fact.)

After the presidential race got started, bloggers became very famous. If you don't know what a blog is or how to set one up, or even why it is beneficial to HAVE a weblog, check out this resource: http://expressionengine.com/

See my blog here as example (and for way more traffic tools and resources than I can outline here): http://www.webmastertraffictools.com/weblog/index.php

RSS: Want to learn how to get Yahoo to run your website content via RSS? (RSS is a relatively new trend picking up a huge amount of steam among lay-marketers as a killer tool to increase traffic through syndication of their content.) Check out this report on how to turn content into RSS and having Yahoo run it for free!http://webmastertraffictools.com/rssreport/yahoorss.pdf

Forums: Find your forum. Every interest online has one by now, unless you are really into something no one has ever heard about. Sign up today and start participating. Make sure you set up your signature file with your site link. So many people skip the easy stuff because they think since it's easy it can't be effective. Don't be one of those fools. Take the time to do this right now, today.

There are 10,000 other reasons to get involved in your market arena than just getting a link back to your site by participating, but that set of reasons you will have to discover yourself. Like today! I mean it!Participate in Blog Discussions.

Most blogs have comment areas with lively debates and discussions going on. Another source of branding and "getting to know" people who could turn out to be joint venture partners. Joint Venture PartnersGetting joint ventures with key people in related industries who have a large reach to YOUR perfect audience is about the easiest traffic in the world to get. If you know how.

Here is a free guide to joint ventures you should sign up for:http://www.jvAlert.com/jvcourse.aspx?id=13

Key-In On What Top Marketers Are Doing NOW. One of the best series of teleseminars which runs weekly is the Perpetual Learning Series by JVAlert. The people they attract to speak to members are nothing less than the best of the best in internet marketing. Learning from them is easy with recorded calls or live events they have for you to choose from with nothing but marketing tactics!You can even find me there for one of the teleseminars on linking!http://www.jvAlert.com/LearningSeries.aspx?id=13

Finally...Get yourself pumped up and STAY pumped up for 30 days. In one month you could be seeing a huge turnaround in your marketing and the results of your efforts. I am pointing you in the right direction. YOU have to take this advice and either do something with it or not. That I cannot help you with.

But as of now, you have no excuse to sit around feeling bad about your marketing and lack of traffic.

There are zillions of ways to get noticed.Hopefully the above wets your appetite. Come back to my blog for more every week!http://www.webmastertraffictools.com/weblog/index.php

Jack Humphrey is the author of Power Linking 2: Evolution.

Are You Down With OPP? Get High Rankings With Other People's Popularity

2005-01-28T07:08:00.000-05:00

By Jack Humphrey
Author of Power Linking 2: Evolution

Now before you run off thinking you've read about the following tactic before, hang on!This article assumes you have come cross one of my other articles on articles. And that you know what syndication is and why it is important at it's most basic level for high rankings. But now I want to show you a trick to get high rankings for search terms that you currently struggle with on your own site by optimizing SOMEONE ELSE's site for that term. Here we go!

There are other sites that have the traffic and rankings you WISH you had, right? Well, syndicating content can put YOU on those sites and if you are smart about it, you can optimize those popular sites pages with your search terms to get high rankings for that particular page.

Why on earth would you do that?

Well, for one, it is faster to get ranked higher on a site that already has a high ranking in the search engines. Your article could focus on a term like I am doing in this one. Have you seen a repetitious, but hopefully not obnoxious, term in this article? I am using "high rankings" on purpose. I don't have a high ranking for that term on any of my sites and I want to use OPP to get a higher ranking for my link - which LINKS BACK TO MY SITE at the bottom of this article!

Confused? Don't be. Basically, all I am doing is using the popularity of very large sites that house my articles every time I write to get attention of surfers looking for content based on less competitive but desirable keywords. It's a known fact that Google spiders more frequently on sites that are large, established, and that change frequently. I can have an article showing up on a Google search in the top ten for a key phrase in as little as 1 day at times.

On a new site the same article would take weeks sometimes to get into Google and even then, if my pagerank isn't very high yet, I will STILL rank lower than the same page on an established site.

Higher rankings can be achieved in so MANY ways and this is just another angle for writers who have little patience for waiting on the engines to find THEM.

Syndicating keyword optimized articles is how I go out and find the search engines wherever they are spidering right now. This is also how I submit all my sites to the search engines. I just syndicate my articles.

This is basically like casting into a different, more active part of the pond you are fishing in. If the fish ain't bitin' where you're fishing (your own site) then go fish another part of the lake with OPP!

Jack Humphrey is the the author of Power Linking 2: Evolution and CEO of http://webfoxmedia.com/, a marketing consulting firm dedicated to small and large businesses looking for higher rankings and more traffic and exposure. We also write keyword optimized articles for you!

Search Engine Optimization For Beginners

2005-01-27T10:24:00.000-05:00

By Jack Humphrey

Author of Power Linking 2: Evolution

Depending on how long you have had, or considered having, a website online, you have heard terms thrown around like the above or even worse, acronyms! SEO comes to mind.

Really there is not that much to fear even if you have no idea right now what is really meant by having a search engine friendly site. Here is what search engines like to have in their results when people type in keywords:

1. A site with lots of content.

2. A site with UNIQUE content (Original - meaning you wrote it or you paid someone to write it for you.)

3. Sites that are well organized link-wise (meaning simple navigation from the main page of your site to every other page of your site.)

4. Sites that have links pointing to them from other popular, relevant sites. (sites that are similar in content to yours but that are not in direct competition with yours in content)

5. Sites that change regularly (not static but always growing with new content on a regular basis)

6. Sites they can read. (search engine robots cannot read javascript for instance and therefore you get no credit for whatever content is in that application on your site)

7. Tightly themed sites. It is easier for an engine to rank your site properly (where you want it to be) if you are not all over the map in content.Exception: Portal sites or directories. But this is an item for another article all together.

What About The Complicated Stuff? There really isn't anything complicated about what the search engines want. But if you have stumbled into a search engine forum you were likely blown away with comments and tips that were completely over your head. There is a difference between basic, standard optimization and the stuff they talk about in those forums.

While visting SEO forums is good to keep up on new things as you go along, many people get confused and the forums are the breeding grounds for confusion when you are a beginner. Try to learn advanced SEO from noted experts in the field rather than taking anything in chats or forums as gospel. A lot more people THINK they know what they are doing than actually do.

Remember that anything someone is willing to give away for free which, if it works, could be worth tens of thousands of dollars in high rankings resulting in high sales, is probably something that is old hat and not effective anymore.

But for now, you have a lot of work to do on the basics. The advanced stuff can come later. Relative to the advanced SEO, getting the basics right is the most powerful move you can make because you are going from zero to moving up in rankings by, many times, tens of thousands of spaces in a relatively short time.

Advanced SEO focuses on moving your site from high rankings slightly higher rankings. Keywords Your content is the most important thing about a website. It must be friendly to the search engines meaning no special java script or other stuff. Just good old fashioned HTML.

You will do fine with PHP, SHTML, and other things, but for the purpose of this article, HTML is the way most people construct their sites.

You should use a good density of your main keyword phrase for each page of your site within the content. If you are going after a high ranking for the phrase "dog leashes" you need to have that phrase in the title of the page and throughout the content.

Programs that are great for analyzing your site and giving feedback on how to improve your rankings don't come any more highly recommended that Internet Business Promoter from Axandra. More Info: http://www.Axandra.com/go.to/jdh358

Nice thing about the software above is that it teaches you search engine optimization while it works on your site. So having it is like having a course on optimization while your site is altered for the best placement in the search engines at the same time.

The main recommendation I have for people starting to deal with optimizing their sites for the engines is to take things one at a time and get the basics down before you start messing with advanced strategies.

And when you start down that road, information you pay for is usually more accurate and more valuable than hanging around in forums. High rankings are worth a LOT of money and people don't work hard to become experts just to give that information away.

Good luck and get to work!

Jack Humphrey is the author of Power Linking 2: Evolution.

Check Your Google Search Ranking

2005-01-27T10:19:00.000-05:00

Check your website ranking in Google.™ A free search engine optimization tool.

http://googlerankings.com/index.php

Check Your Yahoo Search Ranking

2005-01-27T10:12:00.000-05:00

Free online SEO tool to check the position of your
website in the Yahoo™ directory.

http://www.yahoosearchrankings.com/

What Is Power Linking?

2005-01-27T09:51:00.000-05:00

The Definition of Power Linking: Case Study-
by Jack Humphrey
Author of Power Linking 2: Evolution

Many people who read about Power Linking all over the web think "That's great, but what IS Power Linking?"Today you get to SEE what Power Linking is, in action!

1) Go to Google and type "jack humphrey marketing" in the search box. THAT'S Power Linking.

The first TWO pages of Google search results showing the many different ways I get links. Articles, reviews, blogs, affiliates, forum posts, reciprocal links, press releases, it goes on forever.The point is not to show I am ranked for the term "jack humphrey marketing" - that's no big deal. It is to show you what a Power Linking campaign does for a website and business.

Any one of those results and many many more can and do show up for competitive keywords that ARE fantastic rankings to have in the search engines.

2) Go to Alexa.com and type in "webmaster traffic tools" and check the Alexa ranking. Now Alexa is a search engine for webmasters. This wouldn't be a significant number for a pet food site. But my market is webmasters and it DOES matter what my Alexa ranking is.

Now type in "Power Linking" in Alexa. I think you get the picture!You basically need to be interviewed on CNN to get the kind of traffic I get if you don't Power Link.

3) How about inbound links to Webmaster Traffic Tools (my free membership site for webmasters) and Power Linking Profits? Over 3200! THAT is Power Linking!

4) How about Top Google listings for good keywords? Try these:getting links #1targeted traffic tools #1traffic tools #2targeted traffic #3getting traffic # 4There are many others, but you get the picture. THIS is Power Linking!

5) Linking via word of mouth? Yep - building a reputation online is work, but that work pays off in ways you cannot imagine. Power Linking teaches webmasters to take their businesses way more seriously.I cannot tell you the number of referrals I have gotten from past customers. Sales I could never have made to cautious people who have been burned before are suddenly slam dunks when one of their friends says "It's OK - you can trust this guy!"

From providing a killer product or service, to top-notch customer service, webmasters get way more professional when a lot of people are looking and buying.

After all, it is embarrassing to get all that traffic and have people landing on a dud page with crud products and ugly, broken links. Power Linking creates internet marketing professionals. THAT'S Power Linking.Notice I didn't mention one thing about a link directory? While that is an important part of a Power Linking campaign, it is merely a default part of a whole system and NOT the entire focus of a true, professional marketing campaign.

Power Linking is Internet Marketing. It is how professionals market online.So, the next time someone asks you how Power Linking compares to "Product X" you can tell them there is no comparison. There are no competitors. There can be only one #1.

If making your website the center of attention in your market niche is the most important thing to you, you will want to follow the webmasters and small online business owners who have come before you and learned from someone who obviously knows how to market online.

Leave the amateurs and hobbyists behind and step into the world of a professional online marketer.

Jack Humphrey is a full-time professional internet marketing consultant and author of Power Linking 2: Evolution and can be found at: %20and%20

Is Your Website Content Worth Reading Or Obvious Search Engine Bait?

2005-01-27T09:43:00.000-05:00

By Jack Humphrey
Author of Power Linking 2: Evolution

But problems arise with this reality as well. While it is good to be motivated to get as much traffic as possible, it is tempting to try and cut corners and use tactics that are temporary rather than permanent solutions.

And there are myriad tactics that can take your entire business down the tubes as well. The trick is not to be tempted with short-term gain over long-term income from your web business. Many webmasters are aware that "content is king" and that you have to brand your site to make sales and build credibility.

But most people only take these facts at face value and only as they pertain to the search engines. Big mistake.Your content is your lifeblood for more reasons than search engine placement. This is your "face" on the net.

So if you're using new strategies to bring in more targeted traffic, make sure you don't use something that could kill your business just to get some short term traffic.Many people are putting article directories on their sites these days. Having a set of articles on your site is great for building credibility and making more sales, if you do it right.

But as is always the case, I see people taking that to the extreme and missing the point entirely. Now I see some webmasters completely emptying out the big article directories like GoArticles.com to put hundreds or even thousands of articles on their sites.With no editorial review they just take the whole category their site fits in best and grab up any and all articles in it.

Remember, anyone can get into an article directory whether they can write or not. Whether they are an expert or not. Want those guys on your site representing you? I have a smaller article directory than most people at http://webmastertraffictools.com/articledirectory/

Why so small? Because I review each and every article that is submitted there. There is a very good reason for this.To get someone to first visit your site takes money and time. Once you have them there it is easier to get them back if you impress them.Whatever methods of temporary website promotion you use, you have to keep in mind that you want something that will work for you for years, not months.

Therefore, if all you ever do is troll for temporary traffic you will ALWAYS be promoting as hard as you are today. Wasn't part of the reason you started working online to work less and make more? Me, I want to have a network of sites that eventually promote themselves so I can spend the rest of my life on vacation.

If you don't start laying down the foundation of that kind of system, you are never going to be able to retire with your site(s) supporting you. Putting up content for content's sake is redundant. Other people's content is already on hundreds of other pages.You don't stand out in the crowd that way alone. It is temporary at best if it works at all for you, and once people get to your site and realize you have harvested all your content from a directory they have already read through, you've made an enemy, not a customer out of them.

AND if you were unscrupulous enough to even reprint articles from people who spammed that directory with ads, poor english, poor advice, and everything else, I guarantee your visitors are leaving your site with no respect for you, whatever you sell, and with a deep hatred of "sites like yours" on the net.

That is not a long-term plan for a web business. See what I mean by temporary? No repeat traffic is no business at all.

So while my article directories are smaller, they have timely, relevant content from expert authors who can spell and who really spent time on their pieces. Therefore I get repeat traffic, more clicks on ads, more sales of products, and a real income from that directory that will last as long as I own the site.

Points to Ponder:

1. Content is not king. GOOD content is king.

2. Repeat business is cheaper than new business.

3. Your name and brand are the only thing of singular value and importance to you on the web.

4. And short-term solutions to getting in the engines are always just that: short-term.Someday, if you are one of the webmasters I talked about above who only see the short-term picture, you are going to get tired of all the work you have to constantly do to keep traffic coming in.

And the worst part is, since you will have no foundation to rely on when you need a break, you won't be able to take one. If your focus on website promotion is always on short campaigns and tricking search engines temporarily into thinking your site is of actual value, once you stop what you're doing (probably from sheer burnout) your income also stops.

But if you have the foresight to build a base for your internet business, and you pay attention to and have standards for the kind of content you put up, you will be able to walk away from your business from time to time and the traffic and interest will still be there.

For me it is unthinkable to base my entire business on temporary solutions for getting traffic and sales when, if you have seen what you can make in the short term,why not get set up to reap those rewards for life?But that's just me. I profit greatly from people doing it the other way.

Simply because when someone comes to my site and sees content of value, they feel as though they have found an oasis in a desert of trash. A place they will visit more than twice and gladly bookmark.You can figure out the value of that kind of response for yourself, as it pertains to your business in particular.

Between the two choices, I'll take repeat and recommended traffic over fly-by-night, angry, resentful traffic any day of the week!

Jack Humphrey is the author of Power Linking 2 Evolution and the CEO of Web Fox Media, LLC at http://webfoxmedia.com

Linking For Traffic: The Shift From Link Directories To Hyper-Targeted Linking

2005-01-27T09:08:00.000-05:00

By Jack Humphrey
Author of Power Linking 2: Evolution

Website owners are clamoring for "holy grail" hyper targeted (relevant) links from sites with a lot of traffic and high pagerank. More than ever, we are all looking for fewer links to our sites, but much more powerful links.

Another trend to watch and certainly implement on your site is getting the links out of your link directory and onto the content pages of your site. The trick here is to go through you link directory and clear it of dead wood. Certainly all links who are not reciprocating must go. Then get rid of low-traffic sites with no or very little pagerank. They are doing you no good.

Once you have whittled your directory down to a lean, mean group of links from sites that matter, contact those partners and tell them you are moving their link to a higher traffic spot on your site.They will of course be glad to hear this.

Also look out for deals you can make with each of them to do the same for your site."But Jack, won't this send traffic away from my site?" With all the excitement I can muster in response to that, the #1 question I get, YES!But it will also work for you as you seek the same kind of link from other sites.

Look, you are sending people away from your site anyway. People who are just not going to take action despite your efforts at top-notch content and offers.Why not reward your partners with traffic like that, where the person might just take action on a partner site?

If you have a similar link on THEIR site, you are going to benefit from traffic in the same exact way. It's all about how you want people to leave your site. Most are going to do it without doing much more than sign up for your list. Good. You can get them back later. But if they are closing their browser or leaving through a link that has no benefit to you, what have you got in the end? Squat.

But when you are one of your link partners big traffic producers, they are going to be willing to put you higher and higher in their site. You have a foothold because you are a great link partner!

Let loose of your old-fashioned and outdated theories on losing traffic through links on your content pages. The system of link directories hidden in deep corners of your site where no humans ever visit is dying an ugly death. Getting hip to the changing winds on the net will reap huge rewards for the webmaster who brings their links out from the dark corners of their site and puts them where people can use them.

Seek partners who will do the same for you, and you will actually get an increase in all that's good: traffic, sales, customers, rankings, and profits.

Jack Humphrey is the author of Power Linking 2: Evolution

Why Some Experts Are Completely Wrong About Linking

2005-01-27T08:57:00.000-05:00

By Jack Humphrey
Author of Power Linking 2: Evolution

If you have read some information about reciprocal linking and other linking tactics in order to better promote your website, you have probably found some seriously differing opinions as to what the purpose of linking is. There are a wide range of articles and books about linking that come from polar opposite views as to why and how you should conduct a linking promotion campaign.

Most people, to this day, think that linking is solely for search engine results and link popularity as it is defined by Google. In fact, that is the sole reason thousands and thousands of webmasters exchange links. They think it is for "pagerank" and link popularity as a boost to search engine rankings.

One of the biggest misconceptions about my own courses, Power Linking and Power Linking 2: Evolution, is that what I teach is for the purpose of manipulating search engines. Not at all! I have said many times over the years that search engine positioning and traffic come as an added benefit to a solid linking campaign.

Although I teach what you can expect from a good linking campaign with regard to the search engines, there is no reason to go out of your way to get good rankings - they are automatic if your site is basically optimized and has good content.

What isn't automatic is the spread of your URL across the web on thousands and thousands of real websites. (Not FFA pages or junk "neighborhoods") Hard working webmasters and business owners are missing the boat due in large part to the misinformation and misguidance of hobby experts who think they know what the real power of advanced linking tactics are all about.

Someone wrote to me today and said "If you are the linking expert, why don't you have a lot more backlinks? I just checked Google and they only show..." This is the problem with so many people expecting that the world revolves around that search engine. I love Google and the traffic I get from them. I think they are the best search engine hands down right now.

But judging my success through them and what they deem as important is a big mistake. Here's why. Google only counts links that have a certain pagerank. Everything else, even if it is MORE relevant and sends me MORE traffic than the links Google chooses to show you when you check backlinks is left out.

Well, that's because Google wants to show stats that way. It's their search engine and they can do what they want. But from a Power Linking perspective, the stats you get when checking backlinks at Google are totally irrelevant. I never use them to check how many people are REALLY linking to me because I am not playing the "linking for ranking" game the majority of other website promoters are. I am interested in links from sites where my target market surfs and will likely SEE my link and visit.

This was the original intent of linking since the beginning of the internet. And it will be no matter what any search engine deems important or not important in the future. I try not to link with sites that hide their partner directories.

You can see my explanation of this at one of my new partner directories here: http://www.jackhumphrey.com/marketing-resources/index.html

Linking is the only constant in website promotion. It was the first form of promotion and it will always and forever be the core of any successful website promotion campaign. I have a piece of software I use to find ALL the links to my sites regardless of their pagerank. For one of my sites Google shows only 243 links - this software shows all 3900. It shows ALL the people who are linking to me, which is so incredibly more important than just the links with a pagerank of 4!

You can download the software for free here and see for yourself with your own site: http://jackhumphrey.com/linkcheckersoftware/LPC.exe

The software above will not only tell you exactly how many links you really have pointing to your site(s), but it has very valuable and useful SEO and linking resources. Chances are you never knew just how many people were already linking to you, even if your site has been only marginally visible on the web for 6 months or more.

Now you can clearly see why there is a glaring lapse in logic in the argument that a site is not important if only so many backlinks show up in Google. My stats are showing me that, on my Power Linking site, I got traffic from over 3000 referrers last month. Google was ONE of them.

If Google goes down, a LOT of people are going to be out of business until they come back up. Not me. Not ever. People who practice Power Linking using way more than just reciprocal linking directories never have to be slaves to the search engines or be fearful of changing algorithms and search engine updates.

I don't pretend to be a search engine expert by any stretch. I dabble in SEO tactics. I have business associates I trust who know way more than I would ever care to about search engines. My principle purpose in promoting my site is to get visitors (and send visitors) to and from my linking partners and from non-reciprocal links I place all over the net every month.

In many peoples' search for the "holy grail" they have completely skipped over the basics of website promotion and usually they end up nowhere. You cannot grasp the higher end stuff if you have no concept of the basics. Linking, even in advanced tactics, is far safer, more stable, yet far easier for the layman to understand and implement.

And it takes you less time to learn than trying to constantly reverse engineer search engines trying to "break in" to the top ten. Lots of people found out what a waste of time that was when the Florida update came around. All the work thousands of sites put into their rankings vanished in the blink of an eye.

Because they didn't have any backup source of traffic. Because they only did search engine marketing and optimization.My site, surprisingly, stayed right where it was through the whole thing. It didn't move up, but it didn't go down in rankings either. (Not that it would have mattered terribly much since most of my traffic comes from other sites anyway!) I don't pretend to understand why my sites all pulled through that big update and I don't much care.

A visit to a few of the top SEO forums had me more confused than ever. No one ever seems to agree what's going on, nor can they accurately predict what will happen with the search engines. Many of them carry titles of "SEO Expert" yet the experts are all fighting each other over how to get high rankings. I just leave them to their arguments and keep Power Linking.

Links are and always will be the lifeblood of any website. Sticking to a well-planned and constantly implemented linking campaign grounded in proven results, time and again, will always get your business through the massive changes that seem to come and go with the search engines.

Search engine companies have a job to do which is provide results people are looking for. That is not our job. Ours is to provide visitors with good content and products and get as many "avenues" of traffic coming in from as many different static, relevant sources around the net as possible. If you do your job properly, the search engines will reward you with traffic by default.

If, in fact, your site is one of the most relevant to a particular search phrase, you WILL show up.

You don't have to understand intimately all the workings of the algorithms and programs that make it happen. That's not your job. You just have to know that your site should have good content, be basically optimized, and have as many links as you can find pointing to it, and all the other great things will follow.

Only working on the parts of linking that affect the search engines is leaving out a free traffic bonanza and putting you in a position of depending solely on the search engines for traffic.

Lots of people take that risk. I have sites I risk with just engine traffic too. But I knew the risks going in and for those sites, if I lose my rankings because of a new shift in policy in a big engine, I am able to take the loss because they are not part of my core business.

Plus all of the sites I have that fall into that category are being developed to be power linked so that they evolve into solid sites that don't continue to rely just on search engine traffic. Many search engine experts are more comfortable in the lopsided focus on search engines marketing.

But they are experts and know what to do to roll with the punches. Most people are not experts and should focus on a well-rounded promotion campaign so that you are never at the whim of a single or just a few traffic sources. It seems like common sense when you look at it that way, but it is so easy to get caught up in the allure of search engine marketing and leave your other responsibilities on the sidelines while you focus all your attention on understanding and playing the search engine game.

That is not something, especially if you have a board of directors, that would be approved of in most businesses. You owe your business more than that. Being responsible and covering all the website promotion bases is what gives your business stability and provides growth in the long term.

For further insight you can navigate to my marketing web log and check out a telling statistical study I did on one of my sites to see where my traffic comes from. You might be surprised at the results! See the report here: http://snipurl.com/8omn

Jack Humphrey is the author of Power Linking 2: Evolution.

Link To Get Traffic - Not Search Engine Rankings!

2005-01-27T08:45:00.000-05:00

By Jack Humphrey
Author of Power Linking 2: Evolution

In fact, the people best able to withstand major changes and shifts in the search engines that affect their rankings are the people who have a broad, multi-faceted marketing campaign.In order to weather any drops from single-sources of traffic to your site, you must have a lot of irons in the fire (links).

People you have targeted as your best prospects should be able to find your site virtually everywhere they surf.

Web site owners who rely solely on search engine ranking are leaving 90% of the marketing pie on the plate! For long-term stability and steady, predictable traffic, you simply must broaden your reach and utilize a host of different publicity tactics in order to keep sales up.

One of the most effective tactics I talk about is article publishing. It is also one of the most misunderstood and abused tactics I teach. If you don't get it, don't do it. Below is my explanation of why we write articles and other short publications in the first place.

Publishing and Syndication of Your Articles: A lot of people miss the boat on this one. And it's too bad that many people see that articles and other published works are important, but they don't produce quality work, therefore their work doesn't get picked up by big web sites and newsletter owners. You see, most people focus on article publishing as a way to get a link published to their site. (Solely for search engines to find)

Problem is, once they have syndicated their article to tons of free content sites, all they have at the end of the day is a link pointing to their site. No one is READING the articles! Why? Because, honestly, they are terrible. Or they are just short of being blatant ads. People pick up on an amateur article within the first sentence or two and move on. Didn't you write your article to get traffic?Produce shoddy work and there is no click on the link. There is no traffic produced.

The webmasters who focus totally on getting links as a tool to increase their pagerank in Google are missing the point entirely. The point of Power Linking and all the tactics in the system was never to get high search engine rankings. Getting ranked well in the search engines was and still is a BY-PRODUCT of a properly executed Power Linking campaign.

When I talk to my clients about getting links, what I am talking about is getting links placed in places where human beings will see them and click on them. Not just link directories which are created solely for boosting link popularity with Google.

So when you publish an article, take the time to think about what people in your market need or want to know and give it to them. And write a GOOD article!Linking is not just something that looks like this: http://www.power-linking-profits.com.

Real linking is networking and making connections with future customers on an emotional level through your publicity pieces.Linking is about respect. You gain respect by being published and being seen as the expert in your field.

And it goes without saying that your published work needs to stand up to basic quality expectations of savvy readers in your target market. Come off looking like a hack who is only interested in getting a link published at the end of their cruddy article, and you lose all respect.

So even if someone does click on your link, they have reservations about you right off the bat before they even get to your site. This is no way to sell products and services. If you remember nothing else, please remember this: No matter what linking method you work on this week, keep in mind that the most important links of all are the links intended for real people to see and click on!

Get linked in content directories and on web pages that get hit by as many of your target prospects as possible. And link to get traffic, not search engine rankings!People focus too much on search engine marketing. If you do your job as a marketer, you will naturally rank high in the search engines. There is no need whatsoever to focus your marketing campaign on search engines entirely.

Focus your marketing efforts on people, your customers, and you will have what I call "Natural Search Engine Rankings." You see, Google wants the most relevant results. That's where their bread is buttered.

Well, what I have been trying teach thousands of customers all this time is that you need to focus your marketing campaign on your customers so that you are the MOST relevant site on the net in your market. Don't worry about Google. They WANT you to be #1 if you deserve to be. How to be #1?

By marketing to your customers directly on sites they surf the most and being the natural relevant result in their search. Good search engine rankings will follow a great marketing campaign.

By the time you get your #1 position on Yahoo though, you should have so much traffic and sales because of a properly implemented marketing campaign that you hardly notice you finally made it! That's the REAL power of linking.

Jack Humphrey is the author of Power Linking 2: Evolution

What Is Search Engine Optimization?

2005-01-27T08:21:00.000-05:00

By Jill Whalen

What is it about the phrase "search engine optimization" that makes people go crazy? Is it because the phrase itself doesn't really make sense?

As Bob Massa from SearchKing is fond of saying, we don't optimize search engines, we optimize Web pages. So perhaps that's part of the reason why people have a hard time agreeing on what SEO actually is.

More likely it's because there are as many ways to optimize a site for high rankings as there are optimizers. Yes, that's right -- SEO is like a snowflake -- no two optimizations are alike! In fact, I've sometimes looked at a page I optimized a month ago and thought that the client must have changed it because "I would never have done it that way." But when I go back and look at the file on my hard drive, there it is, just the way it appeared online. (Dontcha hate when that happens?)

I know some optimizers who can get high rankings simply through the power of links. Doesn't even matter what it says on their pages -- with the right links and link text they can do amazing things. Is this search engine optimization? Sure, if it gets high rankings for the site. Others work their magic through trusted XML feeds. They know the exact information to place on their spreadsheets, and they know how to push it to the engines. I even hear that some have figured out how to do something similar for Google (although I believe it's something Google would not be pleased with).

Is this search engine optimization? Of course it is -- it gets high rankings for the site. If you've previously read anything I've written, you probably know that my particular method for optimizing pages involves rewriting or editing the visible copy that people read when they browse the site. That's not *all* there is to my method, but it's true that it's the main component. I do it this way because it works for me. After nine years of practice, it's pretty much second nature these days. Is it search engine optimization? You bet -- it gets high rankings!

This is not to say that my method doesn't have its limitations. All SEO methods have limitations. I generally know the limits of what I can and can't do through my optimizations, and I don't claim to be able to optimize any site for any keyword or phrase. The fact remains that it is definitely possible to get high rankings through the methods I discuss here and in my forum. It's not only possible, it's highly probable if you go about it the right way.

In fact, thousands of you reading this now know it works because you've done it for your own sites and your clients' sites. I receive hundreds of emails every week that confirm to me that this method works.

So why would some people insist that this type of work isn't search engine optimization? Beats the heck out of me!
Entire Article: http://www.searchengineguide.com/whalen/2004/0517_jw1.html

The Hungry Little Spider

2005-01-27T08:09:00.000-05:00

An SEO Bedtime Story
By Scottie Claiborne© 2004

Once upon a time, in a land called WWWebdom, there lived a little spider. It was a hungry little spider and it liked to munch up web pages and then keep track of which ones it liked best, so it could tell other people just how good they were.

The little spider never ran out of pages to munch because each page told the spider where to find other yummy pages (links). When lots of pages pointed him to one page, he usually found that page to be very tasty. Also, the more links he found to a specific page, the easier it was to remember it to tell others about.

*Incoming links are important to get your site found and ranked well.

Sometimes people tried to tell the spider which pages they wanted him to try and every so often, he'd check out some of the invitations he received. Usually, those pages weren't attached to any other pages, so the spider would be bored and forget they were there.

*Submitting your site to the search engines doesn't do much good without incoming links.

The spider enjoyed munching all types of pages, but some pages just tasted better than others.

When he encountered pages that tried to make him eat a cookie and he refused those. He was on a diet and only ate yummy text.

Sometimes the pages seemed to recreate themselves over and over and they all tasted the same. Blech. Before he knew it, the spider would realize he was full of these repeating pages, so he would just stop and go home. The spider avoided the pages that had session ids all over them and never came back.

*Technical issues like forced cookies and session ID's will prevent your site from being indexed.

Some pages the spider munched on were very sparse. They were filled with fatty images and other things he couldn't eat, like Flash desserts. With only a little text on them, they didn't satify his hunger and he wasn't really sure if they tasted good or not. He didn't return to those pages very often.

The little spider loved big meaty pages with lots and lots of words. He really liked the ones that were well spiced with keyword phrases- it was easy to remember those pages and recommend them to his friends when they asked for a specific phrase.

*Get some real text on your pages and slim down on images. Use your targeted keyword phrases naturally throughout the copy.

Some pages were TOO spicy and the spider didn't like that at all. Especially when he hit a whole pocket of spice that he hadn't expected to be there. He also didn't like ordering one page, but being served another. Whenever he found out that was happening, he never returned to that page.

*Using tricks like keyword stuffing and cloaking can get your site banned by the search engines.

He loved the pages that were always changing a little- they were his favorite. He'd stop by to snack on those pages often. He liked the pages that stayed the same too- he just didn't stop by as often. He preferred to spend his time sampling new or different pages.

*Search engines like fresh, new content. If your content hasn't changed, there's no reason for the spider to index the page again.

While he didn't mind the extra side dishes of table code, CSS, and javascript, he never ate them. He just pushed it all to one side and left it there. He really appreciated the pages that kept the side dishes in separate files so that he didn't have to deal with them.

*Move your CSS and Javascripts to external files.

If he was really stuffed, sometimes he'd just order up the page titles and see what was available, making notes about the flavor of each page and whether he'd like to come back later when he was hungry and eat the whole thing.

*Partial indexing is typically nothing to worry about. Eventually, the page will be indexed, if there are no technical issues.

The spider had several spider friends who all liked the same thing and over time, there were more and more. They hoped one day, to eat every single page in WWWebdom and worked hard to make it come true. The End. ;-)

* Scottie Claiborne is the Web Marketing Strategist for The Karcher Group and the facilitator of the Successful Sites Newsletter. She is a speaker at the Search Engine Strategies conferences and the High Rankings Seminars as well as the administrator of the High Rankings Forum