Web Design And SEO

Web Optimization - Four Common Problems That Stop Your Success

2009-07-02T20:15:00.000-07:00

Anyone interested in online marketing knows that web optimization is critical to a successful business. Web optimization comprises a number of different ideas, including search engine optimization, website analytics, and design factors, among many others.

However, optimization is more than just a standard set of practices. As every good interactive marketing agency knows, it is different for each business, and within each industry.

Those differences are one of the primary aspects that make 'do-it-yourself' optimization without an interactive marketing agency such a risky prospect. An interactive marketing agency keeps abreast of the ever-changing landscape in order to implement best practices to achieve good positioning and visibility for a website -- they are also able to conduct in-depth research to understand what your competition is doing as well.

If you are learning from scratch and implementing as you go, you can be put at a disadvantage compared to competitors who hire professionals.

In this article, we'll walk through some of the most common misconceptions about optimization. We'll also look at what your company can do to see real optimization success.

Problem 1: Seeing Optimization as a Project With An "End Date"

Optimization, and online marketing in general, isn't a destination. Rather, it's a road, one that must be constantly traveled for optimal levels of success. There is no time when your optimization is "complete", in fact, even once your initial online marketing plan sees success, there will be other ways that you can improve your online presence. The process can always be improved.

Problem 2: Not Planning For Optimization In The Long Run

Because online marketing is a process, wise companies will plan for optimization in the long run. Don't think of it as a short-term investment, and don't divert resources you are only comfortable diverting for a few weeks. Think about it more broadly, and give your optimization plan the time and support it needs to be successful. Like any company initiative, if the program is understaffed or underfunded, it won't be able to thrive as it ought to.

Problem 3: Not Monitoring Progress

In the old days, it was next to impossible to know if your agency's plan was doing the job. But now, tracking online marketing results are easy. Think of it like cooking: you have to test the food every so often to see how it's going. If you need to make a change, you learn about it early on, and if the food is great, you know more about how to make it the next time around.

Web optimization is exactly the same way. Keeping track of what policies bring success and which don't will help you in the short term and in the long term. You will have more to work with when you start additional campaigns, and you'll have real results that you can point to. So much depends on customer preference, and only when you start to get a feel for that preference will you see the best outcomes.

Problem 4: Working Alone

It is the rare person who can successfully design and implement an online marketing optimization strategy without the help of an interactive marketing agency. Optimization is a very particular process, with a number of techniques and strategies to learn. Articles like this one can help, but it takes years of experience to become a real optimization expert.

Does it really make sense for you to spend your time learning, rather than hiring the expertise of an interactive marketing agency? In almost every case, focusing on what you do best - running your business - is the best idea.

Putting it All Together

Now you know some of the most common pitfalls that make optimization programs fail. Do any of them sound familiar? If so, then you're now equipped with the knowledge to change the problem. You can start fresh, and get the optimization results you're looking for. You might not see them overnight, but with time the effect will be noticeable.

Search Engine Optimization At a Glance

2009-02-12T10:21:00.000-08:00

There is one important factor to remember whenever you are involved in improving the organic rankings of a website, and that factor is time. One of the most common questions in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is How long till I start to see results? This article is dedicated to anyone who has ever asked that question.

It doesn't matter what industry you are involved in, or what techniques you follow, in all cases you will be a prisoner of time. In the vast majority of cases search engine rankings don't come over night.

Regardless of the scope of the SEO campaign you are undertaking, you will have to wait for results. It doesn't matter if you are undertaking a massive link building & social media campaign combined with extreme content development - you will still have to wait for those results. Just how long you need to wait however, will depend on a large number of factors.

In this article I will discuss some of these factors and give a few scenarios to help you gauge how long you may need to wait to start seeing results.

Factors to Consider
How long it will take for rankings starts with a few key factors:

How optimized is your site before SEO?
If your established site has no optimization in place at all, and has navigation that is blocking search engine spiders, sometimes opening the site up can result in a rather quick turn-around for results.

How many inbound links does your site have?
If you have an old site with no links, this will add to the time you need to wait. If you have a number of links already, Google will probably be in to check out things within a week or so of updating.

How new is your website?
A brand new site with no links has to wait. Google may find you, but probably not. If you do nothing, your site may not ever be indexed - you must get a few links, and an XML sitemap if you want to stand a chance with a new site. Go here for info on how to install and set up an XML site map.

How flexible is your site?
If your site utilizes a content management system, how flexible is this system for customization? If your current back end will not allow for SEO based changes, this will drastically slow down your ranking progress.

How competitive is your target phrase?
This is huge. The more competitive a target phrase is, the longer you will likely have to wait, and the more links, pages, and fresh content you will probably need. Picking a target phrase that has searches, but modest competition is your best bet to get started. As long as your "dream phrase" is relevant, you can go after the bigger fish once your site has some links, content, and has started to find its place on the map.

Is your site positioned to be able to compete?
Take a look at the top 10 sites for your target phrase. If on average the ranking sites have 10,000 inbound links and 1,000 plus pages, and your site has 7 links and 12 pages, you're likely doomed. You don't need to match the numbers of the top 10, but you do need to be in the ball park. If the top 10 is littered with all the big guys like Amazon, eBay, and the dreaded Wikipedia, you might just want to consider reevaluating your goals. If your site is not in a comparable position with the rest of the top 10, then you need to either step up your efforts in order to compete, or plan on waiting a very long time.

Get Google to Visit Your Site

How long it takes to start seeing results starts with Google. Once Google spiders your site you will still have to wait for the updated cache to appear in Google's index, and in most cases, you will have to wait longer still to see any impact in the search rankings.

In most cases getting Google to your site is relatively easy, but it can sometimes take a month or longer. Even a site with some inbound links and an XML sitemap, may have to wait a while.
Typically an established active website will seldom have to wait more than a month to get Google's eyes; however, if your site has been sitting stagnant for several years, it may take longer.

How Long Will it Take For Rankings?

You now know some of the determining factors, but how long will it take for your site to see an improvement in its organic rankings? I really wish there was a solid answer to this question, but with such a vast array of variables there is no way to know for sure. I can say however, that from experience, the timelines below are fairly accurate.

Niche Industry
A niche industry is represented by phrases that are relatively specific, such as "widgets Bellingham". While they don't require a geographic modifier, phrases focused on a very specific area often are considered niche. Phrases used for a niche site will also often return less than 100,000 results in a Google search. The top 10 ranking sites will also often have less than 100 inbound links each.

Timeline:
- Brand New Site: Possibly as little as a few months
- Established Site: Potentially it could literally be over night, but most likely around 6 weeks.

Medium Industry
Medium Industry terms are slightly more general, but still include some kind of modifier, such as a state or color; "Washington Widgets" or "Blue Widgets". These phrases often represent no more than a few million results in a typical Google search with the top 10 ranking sites having between 100-1,000 inbound links.

Timeline:
- Brand New Site: 6 months to a year
- Established Site: 2-4 months

Highly Competitive Industry
These pages are those with phrases that are rather broad and seldom have any modifiers, such as simply "widgets". You will often find tens or even hundreds of millions of competing pages in Google for your target phrase. Often the links required for the top 10 will be in the thousands, or tens of thousands (sometimes even in the millions).

Timeline:
- Brand New Site: Anywhere from 1 to 5 years
- Established Site: Could be as long as a year or more

For a brand new site, starting with nothing, in most cases you will be looking at around a year before you start to see significant ranking changes. You may get the odd ranking here and there, and start to see some traffic, but for any phrases that are remotely competitive, it can take quite a while. Unless you have a very tight niche, expect to wait at least 6 months before you see any movement at all. This is not to say that you can't get quick results, but in the majority of cases it is quite rare.

For more established sites, rankings tend to come much more quickly. One significant factor in determining time is links. If your established site has lots, but the site itself is simply lacking fundamental SEO or proper navigation, then you can sometimes see results rather quickly. If you have no links and need to build them, it significantly increases the wait time. Even for an established site, achieving links in a competitive industry can still take some time.

Rankings Are Taking Forever

There are a number of reasons why your site may not achieve results. If you find that your campaign has been going on for a long time and you have seen no movement what-so-ever, it is possible that one of the following is hindering your efforts.

Spamming & Penalties
In some cases your site may take forever to achieve rankings, or the rankings may not come at all. If your site has been previously penalized for spamming, you absolutely must clean up all traces of the past dirtiness.

Once the site is entirely cleaned up, then you can apply for re-inclusion. This is certainly no assurance that Google will ever pay your site any attention again, but it's the first step to the land of maybe.

Duplicate Content
If your site has utilized mass amounts of duplicate content, chances are you will not ever see rankings until you replace it all with something original and meaningful. There is no "duplicate content" penalty per-se, but you are essentially penalizing yourself if you copy content. Google tends to look at the first instance it finds online for a piece of content as the official source (not always the case).

If you copy content that is already out there and indexed by Google, they will discount your content as it is already indexed somewhere else, and your site or page will simply not get any rankings for it - and rightfully so.

Links (or lack thereof)
If your site has no links, you probably will not get any rankings, even after you are fully indexed. This is not always the case, I have seen sites rank well for various phrases with zero inbound links - but it is rare, and should not be relied on. Build up your links – period.

On the flip side of this, let's say your site has thousands of links, but they are from free for all sites, link farms, or "bad neighborhoods", and so on - they won't help you. These links won't necessarily hurt you, but will be essentially ignored. You need quality, relevant links.

Competition
You just may be out of your league. If you have a small operation, and are competing for a major ultra competitive term, chances are you won't ever see the light of day. Not to say it is not possible, but if you are competing in a well established industry where literally 10's of thousands of links are required, and your target phrase is experiencing millions of searches a month, you need to weigh your targets. Chances are your keywords need to be re-evaluated as your chances of success are slim.

Not Listening
If your SEO gives you actionable recommendations, follow them. Recommendations are given for a reason, to help you achieve rankings. If you are not willing to implement what is suggested, then your campaign may go nowhere. I have seen websites fail to rank simply because clients ignored recommendations. Your SEO will not be able to help you if you refuse to implement their advice.

A Little Success Story

I have seen rankings come literally within hours. It is very rare but it happens. In one specific example a blog post was put up on a very specific niche topic that had almost no coverage online.

Google coincidently spidered the blog within an hour or so of posting, and within an hour from that, the blog post was #1 in the organic results for the most relevant phrase. The site saw a giant spike in traffic for the next couple days while the phrase was a hot topic. (The search phrase was very specific and localized: "election results"). This shows that for a site with an established link base, and a good reputation in Google, rankings can sometimes come extremely quickly.

Regardless of industry and target phrases, you will have to wait for your search results. Just how long you will wait varies on far too many factors to give a solid number, but expect to wait for results anywhere from a few days to several years. It's the best time frame I can give without knowing specific details of your site and project.

Getting Massive Free Websíte Traffic

2009-01-19T07:47:00.000-08:00

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

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

There are three real ways to get in front of the traffic flow. Those are: buy traffic, borrow traffic, or create traffic.

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

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

You can also buy traffic using an affiliate program. Since you only pay for the traffic when a sale is made, it's a very low-risk method. Since your affiliates are sending you their best customers, you can also think of it as borrowing traffic.
I love the affiliate program model, and have numerous products sold via affiliate programs. I also sell a lot of others' affiliate products. It's win-win.

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

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

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

Of the three methods of getting traffic (buying, borrowing, and creating it) my favorite has to be borrowing it... with creating it second. I generally only buy traffic when I need a really quick surge to test my website's conversion process.
The key to generating an absolute flood of free traffic is getting noticed, getting backlinks, etc., from high traffic websites such as Google, Craig's List, Yahoo, YouTube, and the various bookmarking and social networking sites.

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

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

It can be as simple as using the search engines to locate dozens or even hundreds of blogs and forums in your niche, and then interacting with these communities.
There's only one problem with most of the methods that I just mentioned. They can be time consuming and labor intensive. Just locating active communities in your niche can literally take hours.

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

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

So there you have my secret for generating literally hundreds of thousands of free hits to even my newest sites. Of course, your site has to be about something that people are interested it.

I do strongly advocate using software to automate many of the mundane processes such as just finding these sites. Many webmasters really struggle with website traffic generation, and there is absolutely no need to. You merely find the huge pools of traffic interested in your topic, and then you stand underneath the waterfall, and enjoy the cool, refreshing flow of new visitors.

Steps to Building a Successful Web Presence

2009-01-05T22:02:00.000-08:00

Doing business in the 21st century will eventually require every company to have a website in one form or another. Whether your site is interactive or simply informational, there are steps you can take to ensure you're on the right track to creating a successful web presence, seven to be exact (at least from our humble perspective).

While following these steps will not guarantee a successful website, it is certainly an intelligent place to start.

1. Perform a Business Analysis.

What is a business analysis? Simply put, review your business requirements and your objectives. What do you want to accomplish? How does your website fit into your overall business plan? What... no business plan? Develop a business plan first before you go any further into the process.

Your business plan will be your roadmap to success, so make sure the objective of your website fits into your overall business plan. I'll say it again, BUSINESS PLAN, don't have one? GET ONE!

2. Perform some research, also known as, the Research phase.

Research your competition and industry sites. See what kind of competition is out there. What kind of marketing does your competition engage in? Don't look to "reinvent the wheel", take a look at how the current market works; develop a list of pros and cons about your competition and then make your web presence work better.

3. Develop a concept and a design.

Finally time for the creative and fun stuff! This involves the selection of specific content, the layout of the site structure and navigation and the overall "look and feel" of your website.

Remember to pay special attention to your navigational structure!!! If visitors can't navigate your website or feel lost when doing so, your "pretty" site will have been a waste of time; don't go there, keep the navigation simple and for SEO purposes, make sure your navigation is text based. Although Flash driven websites look cool, they are not SEO friendly and can create more problems than the "coolness" factor they express (we'll discuss Flash sites in another article ).

4. Develop your website.

When considering which technology to develop your website, think cutting edge technology, not bleeding edge. Make sure the technology you use, such as ASP, PHP, HTML, CSS, will be useful for the next three to five years.

Database driven website are ultimately the easiest to maintain through the use of a content management system, but make sure the CMS you use is SEO friendly. An SEO friendly CMS will utilize real URLs, not strange looking query strings with lots of strange characters and question marks. Search engines despise query strings and rank these site accordingly.

5. Choose a host provider and implement your website.

When deciding on a host provider, make sure the host is not only reputable, but has been in business long enough that you can be sure they will be in business next year. Also, ask about site uptime. If your site is down for any reason, this will not only affect your potential and current customers, but the search engines as well. If the search engines decide on a given day to spider your site and it is unavailable, it could cost you your rank.

6. Promote and market your website.

Register your site with the major search engines such as Google and Yahoo. Initiate other marketing activities such as an email blasts to prospective customers. Consider "Pay per Click" advertising with the major search engines and don't forget about a long term SEO campaign to drive targeted traffic to your site.

7. Finally, maintain your website.

Probably the most important long term step is continuing to provide current and relevant information on your website. Keep your site content current to encourage return visitors and give them something to return for! Related to SEO, search engines just LOVE sites which provide new content on a regular basis and rank such websites accordingly.

Overall, remember, your website is not just a marketing tool, it's a business tool, and it should be generating a revenue stream for your business.

Basic SEO Strategies for Newbies

2008-12-18T07:07:00.000-08:00

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process getting your website ready to be found in organic web searches. Organic searches, refers to web searches that appear naturally as the result of a search for a particular keyword or phrase, rather than appearing in the sponsored links (pay-per-click advertising) section of a search page.

Here are the 11 strategies that you can regularly implement on your sites for better SEO positioning:

1.Page title tags: This refers to the page information that you see in the blue bar of your browser in the upper left-hand corner when you visit a website. For best SEO, use your top 2 keywords in your title tag. The best way to do that is separated with a bar, as illustrated in this example: Internet Marketing | Web Marketing.

2. Domain name: as much as possible, use one primary keyword in your domain name. You will have a slight edge over your competition by doing so. If you already have a domain that you have used for some time, include a keyword in the name of files for your website pages. Example: http://www.yoursite.com/internet-marketing.htm if your keyword is Internet marketing.

3. Meta tags: These are descriptions on a web page that are not seen by most visitors except when looking at the page source code in their browser. While the keyword and description metatags used to be the primary way that search engines indexed sites, that is no longer the case. However, you shouldn't ignore them entirely, as it is still worthwhile to include them as a part of your page description. For optimal SEO, your meta description and keyword tags should be no more than 150 characters each.

4. Header tags: Header tags are the HTML code that indicate a headline, like H1, H2 and H3 and show up as bolded headlines in your page content. The first 3 header tags are the only ones you need to be concerned about, and the primary header tag, H1, is the most important. Use your primary keyword once in the H1 tag, 2-3 times in your H2 tags, and multiple times in your H3 tags.

5.Alt image tag: The alt tag typically describes an image in a floating text window when you put your mouse over the image if the image isn't able to be displayed. The best use of any tag is to use your keywords in your image descriptions.

6. Content formatting: Search engines pay attention to formatted content, as in when text is bolded, italicized, and underlined. Make sure that you are bolding your keywords in the content of your website.

7. Keyword density: Keyword density refers to the number of times a keyword or keyword phrase appears on a web page. Rather than trying to focus on the number of times a keyword appears in the content of your page, aim for a more natural density by keeping your keyword phrases in mind as you write the copy for your page. Optimally, keyword density should be between 2% - 7%. There are a number of keyword density checkers available online to assist you with determining the keyword density of a page.

8. Anchor text: Anchor text refer to links on a page that connect your visitor to other pages. So, rather than telling someone to "click here" in the content of your page, include a keyword in your anchor text, as in "click here for dog training tips."

9. Inbound links: Reciprocal link exchange (you link to my site and I'll link to yours) used to be a great way to attract the attention of search engines to your site. Now, search engines pay attention only to the quality and popularity of the site providing you with an inbound link that is not a reciprocal link. One of the best ways to get quality inbound links back to your site is to submít articles to high traffic article directoríes and submit press releases to paid press release services.

A second way to gain high quality inbound links is by listíng your site in search engine-friendly directoríes in which humans review the listings. Google and other search engines place more credibility in the directories in which the listings are reviewed by real people than they do other kinds of directories. Consequently, these links are weighted more heavily and favorably in the inbound link evaluation process.

10. New content: Content is still king, so one way to improve your page rank for a search term is to write high quality articles containing one or two of your keywords in the title and posting those regularly (weekly is best) to your site. Search engines are always seeking good, fresh, content, so your goal should be to make your site into an information-rich resource for your industry.

11. Site maps: There are sitemaps that help a visitor navigate a site, and sitemaps that are expressly designed for the search engines. The two are not the same. To enhance your site, submit an xml sitemap to Google Webmaster Central and Yahoo Site Explorer. Use XML Sitemaps to build search engine-friendly sitemaps on your sites. You can refer to my previous post on how to make an XML sitemap.

Search engine optimization strategy is not as difficult as it appears. Take some time to do some keyword research for your site, and then spend another 15 minutes a day employing a few of these strategies until you have a well-optimized site. Why pay for visitors through pay-per-click advertising if you don't have to?

Proper Website Submission To Search Engines

2008-12-16T03:19:00.000-08:00

If you have a business website then the best advertising and marketing is done by submitting your website to a search engines.

It is still the best option for promotion.No amount of press releases, newspaper or radio ads, banner ads, spam emails or newsletters will achieve the same results, although it may be effective in a small proportion.

Automatic submission of your website to hundreds of search engines are a bad thing to do so beware of SEO companies providing such services. The best way to submit your website for search engine ranking and inclusion is to do it yourself or to hire an expert to do it manually, by contacting the search engine companies and directories.

Researching or referrals from other companies that have had great success with an SEO company is always the safest way to ensure that your website is going to be in genuinely good hands. There are so many SEO services on the internet trying to make a quick buck by any means necessary.

Business dealings with the wrong types of people can be very hard if you're not careful in considering and researching where you decide to go in finding your marketing partners for life.

Before website submission to search engines, it is best to ensure that your websites are thoroughly designed, having professional quality using the right keywords, good graphics and pictures and appropriate, relevant content. Don't submit websites that are incomplete.

While submitting to search engine, make sure to provide information about your website, keywords and any other information that may be pertinent, including the name and contact information of your business.

New and fresh website in the early stages are always going to come with many great challenges. But once you have overcome those challenges and beaten the odds, you will most likely be able to repeat this pattern over and over if you wanted to do so.

You could also decide to become a consultant and help others to become better with their dealings online. They could learn from your mistakes and discoveries just as you had with your wonderful guide.

Mere submissions alone to search engines will not guarantee that your site would be immediately listed and the ranking will be at the very top. Because there are thousands of new websites coming up every day and it may take quite some time before they take up your site for review by human editors.

One important factor to remember while submitting your website is to include a site map of your website which makes the crawling easy for the web robots. Search engines like Google hardly consider submissions without sitemaps.

You will need to do everything that you can think of to make the robot's job in crawling your website as easy as it can possibly be from your end. It can also be referred to as optimizing your website to just flow very smoothly without hardly any interruption at all from the search engine programs that hit all kinds of dead ends and errors as people place businesses online.

You will hear from many users online that you should stay as far away as you can get from these automatic submission companies. This is very much the case in most of what you may stumble onto online.

There are a few good, solid and dependable SEO companies that you can find by knowing the right people and being associated with a good network of business minded people.

Hitting Top 3 Spots on MSN

2008-12-09T09:19:00.000-08:00

MSN is the simplest search engine to dominate rankings on. Below is one amazingly simple formula to hit the top three spots nine out of ten times of MSN Search Engine.

Here's the formula, step by step:

Step 1: Target just one keyword per Website (don't worry it's just a one page Website anyway.) And don't even bother with long tail keywords. Go for the ones that are impossible on Google. This formula nails them on MSN.

Step 1a: If you want to see exactly how much traffic potential each keyword has on MSN you can use their keyword tool at https://adcenter.microsoft.com/Research/KeywordResearcher.aspx. But unfortunately you need to be an AdCenter member to access it. But on the plus side, it only costs five dollars to join up. Clicking the above link will redirect you to the signup page if you are not a member.

Step 1b: If you don't want to bother you can just use Google's free keyword tool at as a max estimate and do a little guesstimating as to what MSN's searches for the same keyword might be. There is no hard and fast rule but I find that dividing Google's search volume by a number between four and seven is usually close to MSN's numbers.

Step 2: Register a new domain name that is as close as possible to your keyword. Use hyphens as much as you like. If your keyword is a single word there is a 99.9 percent chance it is taken as a domain name so add a hyphen between each letter or add a double hyphen between two words. Be original.

Step 2a: Do not bother with any domains that do not end in .com, .net, or .org. Those are the ones MSN likes best (the original big three TLD's.)

Step 3: Build a one page Website as follows...

Step 3a: Put your title at the top of the page and use your keyword once. Don't bother with H1 and H2 tags. Just bold, underline or italicize it.

Step 3b: Write 250 to 350 words, broken out into three or more paragraphs. Use your keyword once in each paragraph (no more than four uses on the page.)

Step 3c: Use at least two instances of your keyword as anchor text linking back to the same (home) page.

Step 3d: Use as many images as you like but make sure at least one third of your text is above the first image. And if you find 350 words is not enough to say all you want, make images of your offer text and post those on the page as well. Just keep the actual text (search engine readable) to 350 words or less and have no more than four mentions of your keyword.

Step 3e: Limit your outbound links to one that leaves the site. This should go to your main offer page, payment processor, etc. All other links should simply link back to the same page. By the way, if you need to post a privacy policy or disclaímer, create an image of it and post it as an image if possible to cut down on page text.

Step 4: Use your Title and Description META tags. MSN still likes them. Here's how...

Step 4a: Make your title tag in two parts with a separator between. First is the keyword. Then place a separator like a pipe (above enter key) or colon. Then add a few words that complement the keyword. Try not to go over seven words in the title.

Step 4b: Make your description up to 250 characters long (or longer if you wish but anything beyond 250 will likely not count.) Use your keyword within the first five words of your description if possible and do not use it more than twice at most.

Step 5: Get links from other Web sites. This is important! GPR or Google PageRank does not matter at all and neither does the site theme matching yours. Just get plenty of links. Here's how I did it before buying a software tool...

Step 5a: Submít your site to as many directories as possible. DMOZ.org and Yahoo.com are the largest.

Step 5b: Do relevant blog and user group postings with a link back to your site.

Step 5c: Write and submit articles. The resource box from a single article can bring in dozens or even hundreds of links. It's easiest to use an article submission service like SubmitYourArticle.us or another with similar advanced distribution features.

Step 6: Consider investing in a software tool. I spent $167 for SE0elite.com and it does all I need and more. Of course, there are dozens of choices out there so shop around.

That’s it. Don’t forget to come back here to post your success.

Building A Better Business Website

2008-12-02T09:11:00.000-08:00

A look of a website can make or break your business. First impressions always count. Here are ten tips to building a better business website.

1. Colour - A black background is not recommended. It's hard on the eyes. I don't know how many people have problems reading white or coloured text on a black background and with that said, don't go neon pink or glaring orange either. Generally black text on white background is best. Ideally you can choose two colours, but make sure they match and use it consistently on all your pages to maintain fluidity and continuity.

For example: Reds and oranges which stimulates appetite works well on a food site while warm pastel colours matches a baby site.

2. Layout - Don't cram everything into one page. Cluttered websites overwhelms the visitors. Keep it clean, crisp and concise. I had a CMS style website before and although it looked organized because there were three columns, there were also a lot of text. Navigation wasn't as plain as day and it overloaded the senses. Take these three words to heart, less is more.

3. Navigation - The more user-friendly the better and your visitors are bound to stay longer. You don't want your visitors to be jumping through hoops to find what they are looking for. Make shopping carts or payment buttons visible and easily accessible. Everything should be just a click away. Make sure all your links are working. Finding broken links becomes frustrating and annoying.

4. Proper spelling and grammar - There's nothing good about visiting a website to find loads of misspelled words and poor grammar. It's unprofessional and you can bet your visitors will leave.

5. Speed - When it comes to website loading, no one likes to be kept waiting. They will definitely leave a site if it won't load properly. People's time is precious; don't make them wait.

6. Graphics - Be careful of using big flashy graphics or banners. Too many animated and too many big banners take away a site's credibility. It also slows down the loading time of your site considerably. Not everyone uses high speed Internet. Remember people don't wait around for slow loading sites.

7. Audio - If you like it and want it, change the default setting to give the visitor control if they want to hear audio or not. Make sure it's visibly accessible to the visitor. The last time I landed on a site, I couldn't find the button to disable the audio so I immediately X'ed out.

8. Pop-up anything - Although many people now have pop-up blockers, it may not be so much of a nuisance, but a pop-up of anything is intrusive, unwanted and annoying. Adding a form to your page in a highly visible spot is much more effective and non-intrusive.

9. Content - Informative, resourceful content will keep a visitor coming back. No one wants to visit a site that hasn't been updated in a long time. You can add a small graphic or a simple text in red with the word "NEW" or a "What's New?" page to inform your visitors you have made updates.

10. AdSense ads - Too many AdSense ads on any page looks scammy and it downgrades the quality of your site. If you can handle honest opinions, have someone critique your website. It really all comes down to personal preference and you will never be able to please everyone and that's okay.

The main goal is building a functioning, well laid out website that is successful and prosperous to you for many years to come.

Keyword Explained Part II

2008-11-28T10:33:00.000-08:00

This is the second part of our keyword article. I hope you have learned something on the first part. So here's the second part.

Where and how to look for keywords

In order to find the best keywords for our website we need to gather information from a variety of resources. Some of these resources may include:

Brainstorming: Getting your brain to go on a magic carpet ride is one of the best ways to find relevant keywords for your website. Don't just settle for asking the obvious question, what does my website sell? Ask questions such as: "What is this product made up of?" or "Who is using my services?" or "What problems do my products solve?"

Finding the main and secondary keyword phrases should take less than a month for even 2 or 3 websites. This does not mean your keyword research has ended forever, but finding the 4-5 word long secondary key phrases can be done with the free keyword research tools if your budget is tight.

Free keyword research tools: You can gain access to the powerful and free Google external keyword tool to expand your keyword list. Unfortunately the Google external keyword tool only gives a search volume indicator instead of the actual search numbers. Another very valuable feature in Google external keyword tool is the "Site-Related Keywords" finder. By simply entering the website URL of your competitors, you can find out in seconds which keywords they target on their web pages.

Another free keyword research tool available without creating an account is the Overture keyword inventory . As of now, August 2007, this tool only shows the January 2007 search volumes as it's being phased out, but Yahoo! is promising a replacement. If you have a Yahoo! Search Marketing account you can still gain access to their keyword tool albeit without the search volume numbers.

Related search terms suggestion tools: One of the fastest ways you can find hundreds of related keywords is to use online lexical or thesaurus tools.

Creating a large initial keyword list that includes a large number of synonyms and acronyms is essential to effective keyword research. Discovering related phrases that are not simply stemming from the original keyword term is a cornerstone of semantic latent indexing . Semantic indexing can be described as the grouping of related documents based on not only direct relationship between words, but the meaning of the words as well.

Some of the search engines provide a related search command list in their search results. Try Clusty by entering a search command and take a look at the "clusters" side bar. You can get dozens of ideas from the keyword clusters by playing with different combination of keywords. You can also visit Technorati a well known blog aggregator and social media tagging site to help unlocked your brain and generate new keywords. Enter a search term and observe the "Related tags" section directly under the search results.

Visitor statistic reports: These can be generated from web server log files or from script based visitor statistic programs. This can help you uncover new keywords for your website by discovering what the visitors are typing into the search engines to find your websites. In some cases, you'll find keywords you didn't expect to come up for in the search results. You should further research those keywords and uncover new keyword niches.

Site search engines: This can be a great source of new keywords and a potential data mining source. As well as further analysis of the average number of keywords, keyword length and other important keyword metrics.

Top ranking competitors: These websites are already well optimized and contain keyword rich web pages. Why not leverage their efforts and harvest the best keywords for your own website? With the help of the SEO Studio keyword analyzer you can extract hundreds of keywords from their META keywords and HTML page content in seconds.

A few examples of good keyword selection practices

Selecting the best keyword takes experience and a little know how, but it's always helpful to see how the pros do it, so here are a few basic steps for keyword selection.

Using your favorite keyword research tool Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery or the Keywords Analyzer, type in the main keyword phrase. Start with the broadest possible search terms, this way there is less chance of missing keywords that might otherwise be overlooked.

Look for 2-4 word key phrases that have at least a daily search volume of 200 or more. Since the top 3 sites will receive 60 of all searches, it follows you can expect at least 120 or more unique visitors for those keywords phrases. In some cases, you may want to lower the minimum search volume threshold to as low as 50 if the search term is well targeted for your business.

At this point you should have at least 20-30 really good secondary keywords in your basket.

Hopefully most of the keywords you have selected will have little competition. Some of the keyword tools we have recommended will also tell you the amount of competition for each keyword, but you can also verify these numbers manually by typing the search terms into the search engines with quotes.

It's very important that you use quotes around the keywords to let the engines know you are looking for an exact match. The rule of thumb we use to assess keyword competitiveness is around "100,000" websites. Anything above a hundred thousand results is fairly competitive and requires a fair amount of optimization and link building.

Keyword Explained

2008-11-25T06:05:00.000-08:00

What is a keyword? It's anything people type into a search engine. It could be made up of one word or several keyword phrases joined together. Every person uses their own method of searching, and that makes researching those keywords that will connect their websites with the right visitors very difficult. Keyword research starts with the understanding that finding lots of related keywords that deliver targeted traffic is the ultimate goal of any keyword research.

Sending thousands of visitors to a site who have no interest in your product, let alone in buying it, is just wasted effort and doesn't do any good for your business. If possible, we want to find the customer who has a clear knowledge of what they want and is close to buying something soon.

Ideally, every webmaster wants visitors who are seriously looking to buy in the near future. In order to achieve this, you need to find the least competitive keywords with the highest number of searches that are the most relevant to your website.
If you are just starting out, it definitely would be to your advantage to target lower competition terms. Having success with low competition terms will lead to increased confidence to target more competitive terms with higher search volumes.

Thinking like your customers

Thinking like your customers is easier said than done.

All merchants are guilty of thinking in terms of features and specs of the products and not thinking in terms of benefits it can provide to the customers.
You know your business and market too well. The industry terms and words are in your every day language. No wonder when you start your keyword research you have a very narrow keyword focus. You become your own worst enemy in exploring other ideas.

Here is an example: what is the most popular search term, "cheap flights," "cheap seats," "low fares" or "discount fares"?

As you can see it's not that simple to pick the best keywords, is it? The hardest part of keyword research is to keep an open mind about all possible search methods people might use to look for the same thing. Keyword research is part science, part intuition, and imagination. Since we can't get into the heads of every possible potential visitor to your site who may be interested in your products or services, we have to rely on keyword research tools to tell us what people actually search for and how often.

There are a handful of very powerful keyword research tools that are worth using, but the amount of information you can mine from them is mind-boggling.
Another great resource for proven keywords is to look at your competitor's website. We are talking about finding the highest ranking competitors on the search engines using your target keywords. Once you find the top 5-10 competitor sites, perform a quick review of their keywords on the web pages.

This can be a lengthy and slow process, but luckily there are free Keyword Analyzer tools that can dig up keywords from your competitor's sites in a snap. We'll cover in detail how the Keyword Analyzer can be used to add hundreds of keywords to your keyword research project.

Keyword research is like a job interview process

In order to find the right candidate you may need to interview hundreds of applicants to find the perfect fit for the job. Well, the keyword research process is very similar; you have to radiate a wide net first to capture all the possible combinations of keywords known to man. Even then, it's almost guaranteed you will discover new keywords you have missed in the original research only a few weeks earlier.

What this tells us is the keyword selection and refinement process never ends, or at least it should not end until you are happy with the number of visitors you are receiving to your site.

Tune in for Part II of keyword research.

SEO Crash Course

2008-11-22T10:30:00.000-08:00

SEO stands for search engine optimization. You probably already know this, but it pays to be safe so let’s take a quick look at what this acronym is really all about. SEO is the art and science of identifying the right markets to promote via Web search, and then helping the search engines rank your sites highly within their results.

Good and effective SEO involves creating pages and sites that are easily indexed and reviewed by the special software used by Google and other search engines.

These special software programs are referred to as spiders or robots, and they
literally crawl the entire Web (thousands of links per second) in a never-ending
effort to index and rank all files within the search results listings.

SEO also includes generating a large number of quality back links to your
website and individual pages, as doing so will increase the number of “votes”
the search engines see when they index your sites.

These two areas of SEO are called on-site and off-site SEO respectively. This
article is about offsite SEO, or link generation.

Keyword Selection

Choosing the right keywords for your site is important. Obviously your keywords and keyword phrases need to be targeted and descriptive, but you also want to select a number of phrases that are not being used by all the competition.

Online, as elsewhere, most people go for the low hanging fruit. Most of your
competitors will be trying hard to get traffic using the simplest, most obvious
keywords that come to mind.

The trouble is, this usually means thousands of people are optimizing for the
same search terms. What you need to do is find good keywords that are being
ignored by most webmasters.

For instance, the key term “Web Design” is wildly competitive. On the other hand “affordable we design” and “cheap web design” are much less competitive, while still being queried by many people every month.

Keyword Usage On-site

You’ve probably heard that your site, in order to be search engine friendly, needs
to have a solid keyword density and properly optimized tags. This is true, but
none of these elements are as important as the back linking strategies and
tactics you’ll learn in this article.

Making your sites search engine happy:

Good Title Tag - Your HTML Title tag for every page needs to be your top keyword phrase(s). It’s ok to use two or three keyword phrases and separate these with the | pipe character.

Keep your title short and to the point. If your site is about Web Design your title needs to be simply < TITLE >Web Design | Affordable Web Design Service< /TITLE >

Correct Use Of Heading Tags - Most of us use < H1 > tags to create big, bold headlines for our sales pages. This is great, but you also need to understand that search engine spiders read anything between < H1 >. < H2 >, etc. as important keyword content; it’s a good idea to add one or more of your top keyword
phrases here.

Smart Keyword Density - Be sure your main keywords are used often but naturally within your content. Should you use a 2% keyword density, 5%, or what? I have no idea and this has never stopped me from nailing top search engine rankings virtually at will.

If you want to study keyword density that’s great, but for now the least you should
know is to be sure and include your keywords within your page content. Be sure
not to “stuff” your pages with ridiculous, unnatural use of any terms as doing so
could get you penalized by Google and other engines.

Take good care of these basics and you can literally spend the rest of your
time building the right kinds of back links.

Watch out for the next part of our SEO Crash Course.

SEO and Link Building

2008-11-21T10:56:00.000-08:00

Not All Links Are Created Equal:

Every website or blog owners want their site to rank high in search engines and a very popular way of doing this is by building links. But you need to know that not all links are created equal.

Many links are more valuable for your site rankings than others, and certain types of links can even pull your website’s rankings down. So to make sure we are getting those valuable links we need to know more about the links we are getting.

Inbound | Outbound Links

When it comes to links there are a few different types, some which you may be aware of and others to which you probably have not given a lot of consideration. So, before we start talking about the types of links you want and the ones you don’t, let's dig deeper into our links.

Outbound links

Outbound links are links that you have on your site which lead to other sites. For example, if you were writing about directories and you linked to the directory site so your readers can access the directory or get more detailed information about it, that would be an outbound link from your site.

Inbound links

An inbound link is a link to your site from another site. To give you an idea, if you have a friend who has a site of their own, and they find a useful article or page on your site and link to it, this is an inbound link.

General links
A general link is a link to your main home page or your site's index page.

Specific links

This is generally a link to a specific section or posting on your site. For example, if you run a blog and someone links to the URL of a specific blog posting, in order to use your site as an example, reference or to provide information, then they have given you a specific link to your site. It should be noted, of course, that both general and specific links can be either inbound or outbound.

Low ranking versus high ranking sites

It is important to know that not all sites worry about the places where your inbound links come from, but some do. Just to be fair.

*Low ranking sites - This are sites that has linked to you but does not have a high traffic flow. This will be the bulk of sites.
*High ranking sites - These are sites with generally high traffic flow, and high rankings in search engines. These sites are usually also very well known.

Each of the search engines has an algorithm that determines how a site will be ranked. It is important to know that there are two main types of algorithms: those that count your inbound links and those that do not.

The theory behind the ones that do count your inbound links is that these links shows your popularity, and therefore your relevance to readers. The non-inbound links counters have the philosophy that, as a site administrator, you have no control over who, if anyone, can link to your site, and you should not be penalized for that.

Link Building No NO!

*Hire a link building service. At first, this seems like it would be a great idea; after all, you are guaranteed links to your site. But you should know that most search engines have a method in place to recognize when a site is link spamming, which is what these services are actually offering you. When you turn the work over to a third party, you lose control of the situation, and that is a problem because you are unable to control the quality and relevance of the links to your site.

*Doing it Yourself. Build links with every site you can get to agree or make a comment on. Well, this idea is great. You have the ability to exercise control, but you just aren’t doing it. Before you go off half-cocked you should think about why we practice SEO in the first place. We do it because higher rankings draw in readers, which brings in advertisers and revenue. Linking to or from an irrelevant site will not help you in the long run, and may even cause search engines to mark you off as surely as if you had paid a service.

Doing It the Right Way

Build your links wisely; worry about the long term and not immediate results. The path to doing this is surprisingly straightforward.

First make two lists. The first list should be of sites that you can build links to by yourself. The first list will include blogs in which you can post comments (and links), and the second will be sites with which you want to build a linking relationship in the content that the site publishes. Now choose your top 10 from each list.

On your self link building list, be sure that your comments or postings are not spam-like in nature; be relevant and thoughtful. For your second list, get the contact information and send polite and professional emails suggesting a shared linking arrangement. You have to be able to give as well as take here.

Build your self posted links slowly, focusing on one or two comments a day over a few weeks or months. For the second list, once you have sent out the emails, all you can do is wait. After a few weeks have gone by you can move on down your list to the next 10. Just be sure to honor your prior agreements or you may find yourself with angry link partners on your hands.

SEO: 10 Ways To Get More Website Traffic

2008-11-20T09:39:00.000-08:00

Having a website means a need for traffic. This traffic needs to be as targeted as possible to the website you are promoting, whether it is your own web site or an affiliate program. This is the core of the business.

No traffic means No business, More traffic means More sales

But the question is - How do you get this highly targeted web site traffic?

Below are some of the most popular methods.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
Of all the pay per click search engines, Google Adwords is the largest and most popular.

This method, when done properly, will increase your exposure, and give fast results. You must keep up to date with Google's rules, so be sure to read them. You pay a one off fee when you register and set up your campaign. You can have your campaign up and running in minutes. There is a minimum bid, but of course you will have to pay more than this. But the beauty of Adwords is you can set a daily budget of how much you are willing to spend.

You can create as many campaigns as you want, and then test your ads (changing the headline for example).

Google provide tools to help you with your campaigns, and have exellent tutorials that will walk you through everything from signing up to creating your Adwords campaigns.

Link popularity
Link popularity is achieved when other sites have links to your site. If a high traffic site has links, the search engines perceive both sites must be popular. The important thing is to have quality web sites linking back to your site.

Why should anyone want to link to your site? If you have quality content, this adds apparent value and makes your site popular, so others will want to link to you.
The popular type of content could be:

Free downloads
Free reports, articles, ezine or newsletter
Video
Links to other good sites

Reciprocal Links
This means exchanging links with other quality sites. You can create a links page on your site. This creates a resource that visitors will want to return to. Find quality web sites related to your niche and contact the webmaster about exchanging links.

Ezine advertising
Most ezines accept advertising. Ezines are online or email newsletters. They are used to build a relationship between a webmaster and a web site visitor, with news, updates, special offers etc. But as always they should have quality content. You place an ad in ezines that are highly targeted towards your niche. Prices depend on the ezine, and also the position of the ad. The most expensive is the solo ad, where yours is the only ad.

Article Submissions
Submitting articles is a great way to build back links and web site visitors. Your articles can become 'viral' when others want to re-publish them on their sites, or use them in their newsletters and ezines. You include links to your site in the author resource box offering more free information. The resource box is your chance to convince the reader to visit your web site.

Here are the list of the most popular Article Submission Sites:

EzineArticles.com
GoArticles.com
ArticleDashboard.com
SearchWarp.com
ArticlesBase.com
iSnare.com
SelfGrowth.com
Buzzle.com
ArticleCity.com
IdeaMarketers.com
ArticleAlley.com
Web-Source.net
SelfSEO.com
Amazines.com
ArticleTrader.com
SearchGuild.com
WebWorldIndex.com
ArticleSphere.com
BusinessKnowHow.com
PromotionWorld.com
ArticlesFactory.com
ExcellentGuide.com/article
ContentDesk.com
ArticleCube.com
AfroArticles.com
ArticleBiz.com

Forum Posting
In order to be successful using forums there are some things that are required. Do Your Homework: Prior to joining any forum, you must do some research. Join relevant forums that are in some way related to the promotion's primary sales market. Choose popular forums. There is no point in wasting your time and energy on forums that few members and few posts. Page raking and the amount of active members are two good ways to check for this. Choose forums that allow sig tags. Read the rules before joining and pay attention to them.

You've Joined: now what?

Keep your sig tag short and update it regularly. The ideal thing is to limit yourself to one link, preferably to your main website. Never create posts that are nothing more than an advertisement. This is a universal rule. At best this kind of post will be deleted by the monitors, at worst, you will be banned. Be an active member on the forum. Plan to spend at least an hour each day there. Get to know the users. Introduce yourself with intelligent questions depending upon the forum's topic.

Use Your Sig file to the best advantage and within the rules. Some Forums have places where you can advertise and give special deals to members.

Social Bookmarking
In a social bookmarking system, users store lists of Internet resources that they find useful. These lists are both accessible to the public or a specific network, and other people with similar interests can view the links by category, tags, or even randomly. Some allow for privacy on a per-bookmark basis.

Social Bookmarking can bring immediate traffic to your website, as web 2.0 community websites such as Technorati, Digg, Reddit and Tailrank provide almost immediate information on various topics. These type of Bookmarking sites index and categorize content usually faster than the major search engines. People looking for the latest information on certain topics usually refer to these types of services.

Here are some of the most popular Social Bookmarking Sites:

Backflip

barksbookmarks

BibSonomy

Blinklist

Blipoo

BlogBookMark

BlueDot

blurpalicious

Bmaccess

Bookkit

BookMarkAll

Bookmark-manager .

bookmarktracker

Bookmax

Buddymarks

Bukmark

Chipmark

Citeulike

Claimid

Clipclip

Cloudytags

Complore

Connectedy

Connotea

Contentpop

coRank

Crowdfound

de.lirio.us

del.icio.us

Diigo

Digg

Dropjack

Easybm

Enroll

ez4u

Favoor

Folkd

Freelink

Freezilla

Fungow

Furl

Gather

Getboo

Google

Hanzoweb

Hyperlinkomatic

i89.us

Icio

Ikeepbookmarks

Iloggo

Jigg

Kaboodle

Kinja

Lifelogger

Lilsto

Linkagogo

Linkarena

Linksnarf

Listerlister

Ma.gnolia.com

Markaboo

Marktd

Memfrag

Memotoo

Mister Wong

Mixx

Mobleo

Multiply

Murl

MyBookmarks

Myhq

MyLinkVault

mySiteVote

MyWebDesktop

Newsvine

Newsweight

Oyax

Philoi

PlugIM

Propeller

QuickieClick

Rambhai

RawSugar

Searchles

Segnalo

Simpy

Sitebar

Sitejot

Sk*rt

Slashdot

SocialDanger

Socialogs

Sphinn

Spotback

Spurl

Squidoo

Startaid

StumbleUpon

Stylehive

Syncone

Tagfacts

Taggly

Tagne

Tagtooga

Tagza

Technorati

Tedigo

Thinkpocket

Thoof

Totalpad

Urlex

Uvouch

Vmark

Voteboat

Votelists

Vuju

WeTogether

Whitelinks

Wink

Wirefan

Xilinus

Xlmark

Yahoo! Bookmarks

Yattle

Zlitt

Zurpy

If you don't have a Bookmark Account for the ones listed go and sign up.
Viral Traffic using free reports - ebooks etc.

Directory Submissions
Submit your website url's to the search engines Google, Yahoo, MSN.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search Engine Optimization, (SEO), is making web pages attractive to the search engines. The better optimized your web page is, the higher a ranking it will achieve in the search engines. Most people searching the internet only look at the first couple of search results.

So optimizing for the search engines focuses on techniques such as making sure that each web page is using the appropriate title tags and meta tags, and that the keyword or key phrases for the particular pages are distributed throughout the content. Search engines find and catalog web pages using spidering software.

Getting Indexed By Google

2008-11-18T12:03:00.000-08:00

While Google delivering so much traffic, it is only normal to be eager to submit your page and have it indexed as soon as possible. Yet, submitting your page is not your only option, and it's not the best one.

Google says about its indexing process;
"We add thousands of new sites to our index each time we crawl the Web, but if you like, you may submit your URL as well. Submission is not necessary and does not guarantee inclusion in our index. Given the large number of sites submitting URLs, it's likely your pages will be found in an automatic crawl before they make it into our index through the URL submission form."

We can therefore draw two conclusions:

· 1. Submitting your site does not guarantee inclusion.
· 2. Most pages are found and indexed automatically, when Google crawls the web.

Big G have also made it clear that Google gives a page more importance when it is found through an automatic crawl. This can be easily confirmed when considering how Google's PageRank system works: when page A links to page B, part of page A's PageRank trickles down to page B, increasing page B's PageRank (and, therefore, its importance). A manually submitted page will not enjoy this benefit.

Knowing that manual submission is neither necessary nor the best way to go, what can you do to make Google find your pages?

The best way, at least in my personal experience, is to write an article on your area of expertise and submit it to popular article syndication sites. These sites will post your article, so that online publishers can use them for free in exchange for including your resource box at the end of the article. A resource box (a.k.a. bylines) is a small paragraph about yourself, written by you, which contains a link to your homepage.

In very little time, your article will show up in websites and ezines across the web. It will then be just a matter of time (usually days) before Google crawls those pages and finds your links. If you followed good web design practices and have included a link to a site map in your homepage, Google will follow it as soon as it finds your homepage, and all your pages will be indexed. It's as simple as that.
The most popular articles you can write are those that list a collection of tips related to your area of expertise.

Another good way to help Google find your pages is to exchange links with other sites. Google will crawl those sites, find the links to your page, and add it to the index.

Finally, remember to optimize your pages before you try to get them listed, so that you have a better chance of ranking high in the search engine results pages (SERPs). After all, what good would it do to get your pages listed if nobody can find them?

Effective Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Campaign

2008-11-15T10:23:00.000-08:00

Many Search Engine Optimization companies unfortunately know what this involves. Many times you will see a "one size fits all" package, link popularity development in the form of submitting to link farms, or even the popular "Submit Your Site to 1000's of Search Engines" scam. While the basic principle of each of these ideas are true, execution is extremely important.

Above of all, your web site needs human attention. A real person should carefully analyze your site before any work is done. Get them on the phone and ask them questions. There should be a clear and concrete process that the Search Engine Optimization company uses and fits to each client’s needs. They should also have a clear idea of what your goals are for your web site.

The first thing that should be done is keyword research. Like any kind of advertising, you need to know where your target market goes and how they are going to find your business. The chosen keywords should apply to the theme of the web site. High rankings for these keywords should also be obtainable on your given budget. If you are a web design company servicing only a particular area, then targeting a term such as "web design service" is overkill. The cost for obtaining high rankings for a term such as that will be far greater than what you will make from the exposure, as much of your web site traffic will not be targeted enough.

Once keywords have been chosen for the web site, the content should be updated to reflect them. This may include slight changes to the meta tags, page titles and text headings; or it could involve adding additional sections to the site, rewriting content and reorganizing the web site's structure. It all depends on the specific requirements of the site and target market.

Once the on-page content optimization is complete, link popularity development needs to be done. A link development campaign should be done to acquire quality incoming links to the web site. This phase of search engine optimization should take place as soon as possible and can be continued as needed. Reciprocal linking is fine as long as some caution is used.

There are many sketchy services out there that use huge networks of gambling and pharmacy sites with no unique content. Always make sure that each incoming link can be interpreted by the search engines as a 'vote' by that site for yours. It is worthless and possibly dangerous if the site links out to link farms and Free-For-All sites (FFA's). Writing articles with a link to your web site, getting people to post on forums and message boards, and advertising or getting links to drive targeted traffic to your site are great methods to use in improving your link popularity.

For the most part, you get what you pay for with Search Engine Optimization. A quick fix rarely works, and if it seems too good to be true it probably is. Talk to the search engine optimization company about your concerns and make sure they understand your goals. Read their site and make sure they seem legitimate. Ask for results they've obtained for previous clients. Methods that not effective and have a chance to get a site banned include hiding text or links, participating in link farms, keyword stuffing, repeat search engine submissions, and copying web sites to multiple domains.

Proper SEO does not involve tricks. Web sites that have well written and well focused content, have been advertised in one way or another (including link popularity development), and overall are a good informational resource will get traffic from the search engines. Search engines are constantly updating ways to weed out the spamming and illegal SEO methods, so think long term with any search engine optimization campaign.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

2008-11-13T11:37:00.000-08:00

Before creating a site, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is something you should be aware of. Make sure you've done careful researches on the best keywords to use. Using the wrong keywords would eliminate your site from search engines forever!

In addition to On-page Optimization, to rank well in search engines you must optimize your Off-Page factors as well. What you have to do is basically creating many links pointing to your site and getting links from different IP Addresses.

Having many links pointing to your site means you have many votes. The more votes you get, the more popular you are to the search engines.

To create many links pointing to your site, the first thing you can do is submit your site to major search engines as well as directories. You can also start blog commenting without spamming which adds links pointing to your site. You can also do minor link exchange with other related sites. But you have to make sure you are linking to good websites!

Additionally, you can also write articles and submit them to major article sites as well as joining online forums and making a post containing your site's URL in the signature.

Improve your Off-Page and the search engines will love you!

Search Engine Crawlers and SEO

2008-11-12T10:55:00.000-08:00

When it comes to online or internet marketing and search engine optimization, there’s a lot to learn. That is the reason why a lot of people hire SEO consultants to worry about their internet marketing for them.

Nevertheless, if you do not want to pay SEO experts to help you with your website marketing, then you may want to think about doing it yourself! It's not that hard, it just takes some reading on the internet from trusted sources. Most of the SEO services that are provided online are built around one thing, and that is search engine crawlers.

We are going to discuss today more about search engine crawlers, and what they do. Soon you will find out that pretty much everything that you do, as far as search engine optimization goes, is to make these little crawlers happy. It is no longer as easy as a quick search engine submission and your website becomes popular.

These search engine crawlers are little bots that travel around the internet looking for new websites and ranking them based on an algorithm. When they come across a new website, they rank it in different ways, taking many things in to consideration. These ranks help to determine where the site is going to end up in a search result done by a search engine query.

The first thing that you have to do for these crawlers is to get noticed by them, and that is the hardest part of SEO, or at least that is what SEO consultants want you to think! The fact is, you can get your website noticed by simply visiting different popular search engines and adding your URL to their submission forms.

You also must get links from other web sites pointing to your web site to obtain link popularity and credibility with the search engines. This way the crawlers will know where your site is at, and find it a lot quicker. They will also consider it a relevant source of information if other sites link to you.

Next thing is all about marketing your web site on the internet through search engine optimization techniques. These little crawlers are programmed to look for certain things on your web site, these are things that SEO experts study and have an understanding for.

Using the services of SEO Consultants to help in your marketing, however they can be very costly, so you should hire a service provider that is talented and can provide a portfolio to ensure you get quality work.

Before hiring an SEO consultant to work on your web site you should make sure they use ethical search optimization and marketing tactics and also make sure that they can provide results.

The first thing that crawlers look for is, of course, keywords.

Keywords in your web sites content and keywords in the links pointing to your site. When it comes to search engine optimization, use your keywords wisely. Don't over-saturate your web site with keywords because you can get docked as a spammer. These keywords have to be worked into the web page and not just listed there. You should integrate them in to your content, page titles, meta tags and URL. Also, it will help the marketing of your web site if you work them into the titles of your web page as well.

Also make sure that your main page headings are bigger than that of your normal font so the crawlers can easily pick out what the main focus of your page is.

SEO consultants also worry about how many links there are out there that point back to your website. The more links, the better. However they must also be quality links from popular sites that are credible with the search engines. That is why SEO experts are always looking for different places where they can post links to your website. While crawlers are looking around, if they come across links to your website, then that helps to boost your ranking online.

As you can see, SEO services are very helpful, but if you can learn how to do online marketing by yourself, you don't need to hire anyone.

SEO Affected By Malware

2008-11-11T10:20:00.000-08:00

An expert has claimed that search engine optimization technique such as backlinking can go wrong if the site containing the hyperlinks is hosting malware.

Editor of Search Engine Journal Loren Baker said that a website's Google ranking may suffer if it links to or has links from malware-infested sites.

He recommended that webmasters use the Safe Browsing Diagnostic Checker from Google to find out whether websites have ever been investigated by the search giant for hosting malware.

'I highly suggest checking out the malware distribution history of a site, especially in the eyes of Google; if Google feels that the site is malicious, chances are linking to these bad sites, or building links from them, can hurt your rankings,' he said.

Google announced this month that it was changing the algorithm which worked out the 'quality score' of adverts on the site.

Specifically, the clickthrough rate (CTR) section of the code was being adjusted, to make it take into account the position of the advert in search results.

Keyword Research

2008-11-10T11:52:00.000-08:00

Keyword Research is the first important task in optimizing your web site and pay-per-click(PPC) campaign. You need to know what keywords your target group is using.
Your keywords are the words and phrases that people might use to find your products, brands, services, or information, via search engines.

Keyword Identification

The first step in keyword research is to identify keywords. Keyword identification is about finding the right keywords that your target group is using. You can probably develop a few ideas very quickly. If you run a pet shop, you may identify keywords such as: "dog food" and "cat food".

Find Keywords

The second step in your keyword research is to find keywords that people actually use and to organize your keywords by their popularity.

To find keywords and their popularities use the keyword search box from Aleksika to learn the search behavior of your audience. Find out what they call things, how they identify subjects, how precisely or broadly they generally search.

You can also get good keyword ideas from the top keywords collection that contains the top 100.000 keywords of the year or the keyword directory where you can find keywords organized by subject.

You can also use popular keyword research tool like wordtracker, keyword discovery and the likes.

Choose Keywords

You will have to choose keyword phrases that are most relevant to your Web site - two and three-words keyword phrases that best describe your products and services. Many searchers enter one-word queries into the search form but the chance of competing successfully for one-word search engine keywords is very hard. The number of competing websites is simply too high.

Instead of wasting your efforts on one word keywords, it is best to use or target long tail keywords which is more manageable, less competitive, and will surely provide you with positive results.

Long tail keyword Plus Unique Content Equals to Organic Search Engine Marketing

2008-11-08T22:06:00.000-08:00

Organic Search Engine Marketing needs a focus. In order to focus on what to market for, you need to have a solid foundation of the main keywords that best describes your business and/or products that you are selling. These main keywords are one to three phrase keywords (or keyword phrases) generally speaking and are more than likely highly competitive. These keywords are known as "Short Head" keywords. A good example for this is, "car insurance."

After you have decided on your short head keywords, you will want to market directly to more specific, longer keywords related to the main short head keywords. These longer, more specific keywords are known as Long Tail keywords. A god example is, "car insurance discounts in Georgia."

Though the traffic for each long tail keyword is usually much less than its short tail relative, if you sum up all the long tail keywords, they usually provide more traffíc and most importantly, targeted traffíc, than the short tail keywords alone.

Once you have targeted the long tail keywords for your business or niche, then you can start marketing for them.

The cornerstone for organic search engine marketing is unique content creation. Whether it's 500-word articles, blog posts, blog comments, forum posts, social snippets, or videos, you will need to create unique content based on your long tail keywords.

Web 3.0 is a term that refers to the future of the World Wide Web. In my opinion, that future includes the "Semantic Web" or web use affected by artificial intelligence. Semantic Web means that search engines will be able to understand what a web page is all about in a different, more intelligent way. The major idea here is that search engines will take a more encompassing view at a page and understand its meaning rather making a determination based on figuring out which keywords pop up most often. In this new Web 3.0 scenario, a search engine might find a web page on "sun tanning in Florida" to also be quite relevant to "sun tan oil application" and therefore líst this example page in the search engine results pages under both keywords.

What does Web 3.0 mean to you? Basically, when creating unique content, keep the semantic web concept in mind and use synonyms for your target keyword wherever it's natural. Don't stuff keywords in your content, i.e. use a keyword just to use it and not when it should be used naturally...and don't stuff keyword synonyms either!

Good SEO Will Create Traffic to Your Website

2008-11-06T09:04:00.000-08:00

To get the most out of your web site, it needs to get good web traffic, which means simply that a lot of people are coming to your web site. By checking your web stats, you can quickly observe how many visitors your web site is getting and even how many people stay long enough to browse the website.

Programs like Awstats, a web-analyzing program found on most Linux based servers will show you how those web visitors came to you. Did they click through from a search engine? If so, what keyword brought them to you? Or, did they come from a particular website that links to yours? Your stats will reveal all.

Are the keywords used by visitors who find your site through the search engines. In the past few years a new science called "Search Engine Optimization" (SEO) has evolved into a business model that specializes in making sure your web site gets a strong flow of business from people looking for your niche of goods and services using Google, Yahoo or one of the other big search engines.

The key on getting traffic from search engines is your "search engine ranking". That all sounds very complicated but it isn't. When you search for something on the Internet, Google (or your favorite search engine) provides you with lots of web sites for you to consider. The search result that comes first are called the first page. And usually there are dozens of pages of web sites that the search engine shows you.

Well, experts tell us that the majority of web shoppers use a web site shown on that first page of links that the search engine returns. So if your web site is among that first one or two pages, you have a good search engine ranking and you will see more customers than a business that is way down on page 54 where customers never go. One of the primary ways to get on that first page is by using good SEO.

SEO is the science of effective research and implementation with search engines so your web site gets a good ranking. SEO is also a fairly complicated science because it involves how your web site is programmed, the kind of text you have on each page and a good SEO expert has specialized tools and software to monitor your SEO on a daily basis to see how you are doing.

So how can we improve our web site's SEO? If you go talk to your web programmers, they will be aware of the terms we learned here today but they may not be equipped to do a professional job of improving your SEO. That is why most businesses that do well at improving SEO for their web sites do so using a professional outsourcing company that specializes in this kind of thing. There are good reasons for you to outsource this function as well.

An SEO company will have those specialized tools and software resources to do the job right. They understand how search engines work and they can prepare specific suggestions to your web team to improve your search engine ranking. And they can employ internet traffic specialists who have that expertise to take your web site from where it is and turn it into a successful money maker for you.

By learning the terminology and what SEO is as we have started to talk about today, you are on your way to finding a good SEO contractor who can help your web site find success and get lots of profitable traffic. Use good common sense in finding an SEO company and check references and employ someone who can really do the job. It will cost you a bit to get the best expertise there is to improve your SEO. But when you see the flood of business and sales that come from the effort, you will know you made a wise investment in using them.

You will also want to make sure the articles you purchase from private label sites or ghostwriter services are optimized for your site's keywords as well. If you purchase a set of private label articles, for example, on the subject of weight loss it will be a good idea to re-write them using your own site's keywords.

If, on the other hand, you are outsourcing custom articles to a ghostwriter you can specify the articles be "SEO" ready for your chosen keywords upon delivery. This will ensure your articles will rank well in the search engines. These are just a few ways that using good SEO will create traffic to your website.

On-Page Optimization

2008-11-03T22:01:00.000-08:00

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is something you should be preparing for before creating a site. Make sure you've made extensive researches on the best keywords to use. Using the wrong keywords would eliminate your site from search engines forever!

This keyword-tweaking process for a site is often referred to as On-Page Optimization. In order to rank high in search engines, make sure you execute these tasks:

1. Include your keywords in the domain name
2. Include them also in the page title
3. Use "h1" and "h2" header tags
4. Type some keywords in bold, italic and underline
5. Put your keywords at the beginning and end of your webpage
6. Named all the images or graphics after your keywords

A wrong thing to do is performing unnecessary keyword-filling! This could result to your site getting banned by search engines. An example of unnecessary keyword-filling is by putting hidden texts all over your web page. Also don't fill your meta tag, alt image tag, or title tag with keywords. You will get caught and your site will be banned for this!

Besides, there is another important factor that has a huge impact on your site's ranking in search engines. It is often referred to as Off-Page Optimization. You will find a lot of articles about it from my previous posts.

Creating Killer Keywords to Get FREE Traffic to Your Website

2008-11-02T02:46:00.000-08:00

There are several steps to consider in choosing a good keyword. The most important step is putting your self in the shoes of the target customer or visitor. Make a list of the keywords or phrases you think that customer would enter into a search engine or directory when searching for your company or site. A good tool is wordtracker which will help you brainstorm different key phrases. Ask friends and associates which words they would use to search for your site on the internet, if they were looking for a site similar to yours.

Brands -

If a brand applies, include more specific brand names that are applicable to your site or type of business. If you offer a service, then try to offer service brand names when ever possible. Legally, you should put a registered trademark (®) or trademark (?) symbol after the names whenever mentioning trademarked names on the page.

Concepts -

Include concept type keywords. A good example would be "Athletic Gear" Since this would be what a sports company might be selling.

Company Names -

If your site offers a product from a well known company with brand recognition, include that company name in your keyword. Ride on the popularity of that company. You're selling their product, correct? If that company has a good reputation and brand loyalty then this would only help in adding consumer confidence in your site even more.

Quality -

Your keywords may only bring up poor quality type web sites that your core audience may have no interest in anyway. Try to focus on words that will bring in quality visitors to your site who will stay long enough to search your site for information regarding your product or service. Unqualified visits are not only a waste of your visitor's time but also a waste of your time. You wouldn't want to be spammed with unqualified emails regarding your product if it's not what your site is trying to sell.

Your Company Name

Unless your company has a well known brand name such as Nike or Ford Motors, it's generally less important to emphasize the company name as a keyword. A go around for this is to create an "About Us" page that focuses on optimizing your company name several times as the keyword on that page. This way if someone searches for your company name it would still come up as a relevant search result.

Target Phrases not Words -

With over a billion pages on the web and millions added each day, it's virtually impossible to achieve to rankings for a common words such as "electronics", "web", "food" etc. Instead, try to focus on target phrases of between two and four words in length.

Test Your Keywords -

Try to see how many web sites match your keywords or phrases before and after you launch your web site. Obviously the few matches found, the easier it will be to obtain high rankings. With a proper strategy your site could be one near the top of that search. There may be phrases that are much easier to achieve for good ranking rather than more common words or phrases. Finding those ambiguous phrases and using this strategy can gain your site unexpected traffic.

Case Sensitivity -

If a user types in the word "Web," many engines will search for "Web" with an uppercase "W" only. If your page has only "Web" in lowercase "w" in it, it won't be found. On the other hand, if a user searches for "web" many engines will search for it in lowercase and uppercase forms. Therefore it helps to have some of your keywords in uppercase or starting with an uppercase letter if the user should search that way. The easiest way to do this is in the title of the page, in Meta tags and at the beginning of sentences. Some engines are not case sensitive like Google at this time. The easiest way to test this is to input your keyword or phrase into different search engines and see if the exact same search results come up.

Bad Spelling -

Some times bad spelling is a good thing. Search for obvious spelling errors and grammatical mistakes people are likely to make and then incorporate them into your pages to pick up unexpected traffic. Also, product names can have a multitude of variations so focus on those too. For example, Ford may have "Ford Motor," "Ford Vehicles," "Ford Auto," or "Ford Cars" etc.
Implement these search engine optimization strategies and you will boost your traffic with higher rankings

The Sandbox Effect

2008-10-30T10:35:00.000-07:00

Sandbox Effect is causing new web sites not to rank very well in the search results of Google, not even for the least competitive phrases. It usually means that a filter is being placed on new web sites and cannot rank very high for most words or phrases for a certain amount of time.

There has been a lot of debate as to why Google uses the sandbox filter. However, it is believed that this is an attempt by Google to discourage web site owners that uses SEO Spam techniques or some call it as blackhat technique to rank high fast and make a quick buck before Google discovers it. This is largely because Google uses link popularity so much to rank web sites in it's search engine.

There is no way to know for sure if a new web site is in the Sandbox, but the best way to determine if you are in the Sandbox is if your web site has a good amount of quality backlinks, quality content and a good ranking on other search engines, such as Yahoo!, MSN and Ask Jeeves, but still no where in Google's search engine results for your keywords.

It is a common trend that it can take up to 6 months before a new web site can get a high ranking in Google's search engine results and out of the Sandbox, but this varies from web site to web site. It also depends on how competitive your new web site's market and keywords are.

There is no known way of speeding up the amount time a new web site is in the Sandbox. But some new websites tend to get away with it by doing some tagging through social bookmarking sites. Some would even buy links from blogs or sites with high PR and were able to be crawled by SE spiders earlier than expected.

Better Search Engine Rankings with RSS

2008-10-29T02:05:00.000-07:00

RSS is the latest trend in online publishing. But what exactly is RSS?RSS or Rich Site Syndication is a file format similar to XML, and is used by publishers to make their content available to others in a format that can be generally understood.

RSS allows publishers to "syndicate" their content through the distribution of lists of hyperlinks.
It has actually been around for a while, but with the introduction of spam filters and online blogging, it is fast becoming the choice of ezine publishers who want to get their message across to their subscribers.

However, not much attention has been given to the advantages RSS provides for search engine optimization.

Search Engines Loves RSS

Many SEO experts believe that sites optimized around themes, or niches, where all pages correspond to a particular subject or set of keywords, rank better in the search engines.
For example, if your website is designed to sell tennis rackets, your entire site content would be focused around tennis and tennis rackets. Search engines like Google seem to prefer tightly-themed pages.

But where does RSS figure in all this?

RSS feeds, usually sourced from newsfeeds or blogs, often correspond to a particular theme or niche.By using highly targeted RSS feeds, you can enhance your site's content without having to write a single line on your own.It's like having your own content writer - writing theme-based articles for you - for free!

How can RSS improve Search Engine Rankings?

There are three powerful reasons why content from RSS Feeds is irresistible bait for search engine spiders.

1. RSS Feeds Provide Instant Themed Content
There are several publishers of RSS feeds that are specific to a particular theme.Since the feed is highly targeted, it could contain several keywords that you want to rank highly for.Adding these keywords to your pages helps Google tag your site as one with relevant content.

2. RSS Feeds Provide Fresh, Updated Content
RSS feeds from large publishers are updated at specific intervals. When the publisher adds a new article to the feed, the oldest article is dropped.These changes are immediately effected on your pages with the RSS feed as well. So you have fresh relevant content for your visitors every hour or day.

3. RSS Feeds Result in More Frequent Spidering
One thing I never anticipated would happen as a result of adding an RSS feed to my site was that the Googlebot visited my site almost daily. To the Googlebot, my page that had the RSS feed incorporated into it was as good as a page that was being updated daily, and in its judgement, was a page that was worth visiting daily.

What this means to you, is that you will have your site being indexed more frequently by the Googlebot and so any new pages that you add to your site will be picked up much faster than your competitors.

How does this benefit you as a marketer?

Well, for example, let's says a top Internet Marketer comes out with a new product that you review and write up a little article on, and that your competitors do the same.

Google generally tends to index pages at the start of the month and if you miss that update, you will probably need to wait till the next month to even see your entry in.But, since your site has RSS feeds, it now gets indexed more frequently. So the chances of getting your page indexed quickly are much higher.

This gives you an advantage over the competition, as your review will show up sooner in the search results than theirs.Imagine what an entire month's advantage could do to your affiliate sales!

Why Javascript Feeds Are Not Effective

Some sites offer javascript code that generates content sourced from RSS feeds for your site. These are of absolutely no value in terms of search engine rankings, as the googlebot cannot read javascript and the content is not interpreted as part of your page.

What you need is code that parses the RSS feed and renders the feed as html content that's part of your page.This is achieved using server side scripting languages like PHP or ASP.Feel free to visit my article in embedding RSS feeds to your websites.

So in conclusion, besides optimizing on page and off page factors, adding RSS feeds to your pages should be an important part of your strategy to boost your search engine rankings.