No One Can Guarantee for TOP 10 Rankings on Google!!

No search engine optimization company can guarantee where your site will appear in the natural search engine results; they can guarantee placement in the Sponsored Listings using Google's Adwords or Yahoo's Search Marketing products because you are paying for placement. This is not search engine marketing where your site earns high organic rankings by having good, keyword-rich content and a link building campaign. It's important that you know the difference.

From the pages of Google: "No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google. Beware of SEO's that claim to guarantee rankings."

The Only Guarantee in the SEO Industry?
There Are No Guarantees!

Beware of such SEO Companies OR SEO freelancers who claim that they can get the guaranteed TOP 10 rankings on search engines. This is simple impossible. No one can guarantee your keywords will get a top 10 ranking in all the major search engines. No one can guarantee a #1 ranking. If you see any guarantees of this kind being made it is time to start looking for another SEO firm.


You Can't Control the Search Engines

Here is the bottom line as to why no on can guarantee results: We (search engine marketing professionals) do not own or control the search engines. As a matter of fact, the search engines such as Yahoo!, Google and MSN keep their ranking algorithms closely guarded to keep anyone from cheating the system. Throw in the fact they are constantly evolving these ranking criteria to stay ahead of the SEO companies using unethical methods and you can see how impossible it is to issue a ranking guarantee. The search engines want to give top rankings to websites that are the best match for the search being done, not the websites that are able to best cheat the system.

If you tell your search engine marketing company you want a #1 ranking, they cannot guarantee you that result. They can recommend changes to your site and suggest actions to increase the possibility of ranking higher, but they should not guarantee it.

What Can a Search Engine Marketing Firm Do?

Since we do not offer you any ranking guarantees what can we do for you? We can assure you that we will work to give you good rankings across the many search engines and directories for your search terms (and other targeted keywords you probably didn't think of). We will always strive to give you the best results. After all, your success is our success and we will never forget that.

Our approach to Internet marketing has been successful for our clients and ourselves. Our client's search engine results speak for themselves. We promise to deliver results. We do things a little differently than most other SEO firms and we feel this gives us an advantage to help you have an advantage.

Reference: http://www.bigoakinc.com/seo-articles/guarantee-search-engine-rankings.php

How To Find The Right Keywords To Optimize Search Engine Results

Search engines are the vehicles that drive potential customers to your websites. But in order for visitors to reach their destination—your website—you need to provide them with effective signs that direct them right to your site by creating carefully chosen keywords.

Think of the right keywords as the “Open Sesame!” of the Internet. Find the exactly right words, and presto! Hoards of traffic will be pulling up to your front door. But if your keywords are too general or overused, the possibility of visitors actually making it all the way to your site—or of seeing any real profits from the visitors that do arrive—decreases dramatically.

Your keywords serve as the foundation of your marketing strategy. If they are not chosen with great precision, no matter how aggressive your marketing campaign may be, the right people may never get the chance to find out about it. So your first step in plotting your strategy is to gather and evaluate keywords and phrases.

You probably think you already know EXACTLY the right words for your search phrases. Unfortunately, if you haven’t followed certain specific steps, you are probably WRONG. It’s hard to be objective when you are right in the center of your business network, which is the reason that you may not be able to choose the most efficient keywords from the inside. You need to be able to think like your customers. And since you are a business owner and not the consumer, your best bet is to go directly to the source.

Instead of plunging in and scribbling down a list of potential search words and phrases yourself, ask for words from as many potential customers as you can. You will most likely find out that your understanding of your business and your customers’ understanding is significantly different.

The consumer is an invaluable resource. You will find the words you accumulate from them are words and phrases you probably never would have considered from deep inside the trenches of your business.

Only after you have gathered as many words and phrases from outside resources should you add your own keyword to the list. Once you have this list in hand, you are ready for the next step: evaluation.

The aim of evaluation is to narrow down your list to a small number of words and phrases that will direct the highest number of quality visitors to your website. By “quality visitors” I mean those consumers who are most likely to make a purchase rather than just cruise around your site and take off for greener pastures. In evaluating the effectiveness of keywords, bear in mind three elements: popularity, specificity, and motivation.

Popularity is the easiest to evaluate because it is an objective quality. The more popular your keyword is, the more likely the chances are that it will be typed into a search engine which will then bring up your URL.

You can now purchase software that will rate the popularity of keywords and phrases by giving words a number rating based on real search engine activity. Software such as WordTracker will even suggest variations of your words and phrases. The higher the number this software assigns to a given keyword, the more traffic you can logically expect to be directed to your site. The only fallacy with this concept is the more popular the keyword is, the greater the search engine position you will need to obtain. If you are down at the bottom of the search results, the consumer will probably never scroll down to find you.

Popularity isn’t enough to declare a keyword a good choice. You must move on to the next criteria, which is specificity. The more specific your keyword is, the greater the likelihood that the consumer who is ready to purchase your goods or services will find you.

Let’s look at a hypothetical example. Imagine that you have obtained popularity rankings for the keyword “automobile companies.” However, you company specializes in bodywork only. The keyword “automobile body shops” would rank lower on the popularity scale than “automobile companies,” but it would nevertheless serve you much better. Instead of getting a slew of people interested in everything from buying a car to changing their oil filters, you will get only those consumers with trashed front ends or crumpled fenders being directed to your site. In other words, consumers ready to buy your services are the ones who will immediately find you. Not only that, but the greater the specificity of your keyword is, the less competition you will face.

The third factor is consumer motivation. Once again, this requires putting yourself inside the mind of the customer rather than the seller to figure out what motivation prompts a person looking for a service or product to type in a particular word or phrase.

Let’s look at another example, such as a consumer who is searching for a job as an IT manager in a new city. If you have to choose between “Seattle job listings” and “Seattle IT recruiters” which do you think will benefit the consumer more? If you were looking for this type of specific job, which keyword would you type in? The second one, of course! Using the second keyword targets people who have decided on their career, have the necessary experience, and are ready to enlist you as their recruiter, rather than someone just out of school who is casually trying to figure out what to do with his or her life in between beer parties.

You want to find people who are ready to act or make a purchase, and this requires subtle tinkering of your keywords until your find the most specific and directly targeted phrases to bring the most motivated traffic to your site.

Once you have chosen your keywords, your work is not done. You must continually evaluate performance across a variety of search engines, bearing in mind that times and trends change, as does popular lingo. You cannot rely on your log traffic analysis alone because it will not tell you how many of your visitors actually made a purchase.

Luckily, some new tools have been invented to help you judge the effectiveness of your keywords in individual search engines. There is now software available that analyzes consumer behavior in relation to consumer traffic. This allows you to discern which keywords are bringing you the most valuable customers.

This is an essential concept: numbers alone do not make a good keyword; profits per visitor do. You need to find keywords that direct consumers to your site who actually buy your product, fill out your forms, or download your product. This is the most important factor in evaluating the efficacy of a keyword or phrase, and should be the sword you wield when discarding and replacing ineffective or inefficient keywords with keywords that bring in better profits.

Ongoing analysis of tested keywords is the formula for search engine success. This may sound like a lot of work—and it is! But the amount of informed effort you put into your keyword campaign is what will ultimately generate your business’ rewards.

Source: http://www.sitepronews.com/2009/06/10/how-to-find-the-right-keywords-to-optimize-search-engine-results/

Keep on TOP of Your Website Maintenance

You’ve probably tried many times in the past to visit a website only to find that it is no longer there, filled with broken links or that the information contained is well out of date. Just like you’d put in the effort to keep your home or your business in good condition, you should practice website maintenance to ensure that your visitors see a working site with updated content.

A website which is neglected will begin to show wear and tear. Visitors will simply go elsewhere if they see your site filled with out of date content and links which no longer work. You’ll need to ensure regular website updates to keep the content fresh and ensure that everything is working properly.

Many businesses fail to place the proper emphasis on website maintenance - which is a big mistake. To many consumers, your website is the point of contact for your business and your products and services. Suppose you had a brick and mortar storefront; you wouldn’t still be advertising a Christmas sale in May in your shop window, would you? Visitors will think your website has been abandoned and they will go to your competitors - hardly the result you want from your site.

Keep your content fresh

You’ll get a higher search engine ranking if you keep your content regularly updated, meaning more visitors will find and visit your site. Google, Yahoo and other search engines keep an eye out for updated content, so the more often you add new and relevant content, the higher your search engine ranking will be and the better you’ll be able to establish a reputation as an authoritative source of information in your field.

When you maintain a website by adding new content regularly, you’ll keep visitors coming back to see what you’ve added. This will build interest in your business and raise your profile online. You can use a blog or a news page to attract and retain the interest of consumers. Whenever you have new information to add that may be of interest to your visitors, get it up there on your site! You can also keep your visitors engaged by offering a newsletter or an RSS feed for updates.

To keep your site fresh

Maintain up-to-date information on services, products and pricing; add photos, graphics and other multimedia content to the site regularly; feature a blog, articles and other new content regularly; send out announcements via email (or an RSS feed) about any company-related news.

Check all of your links regularly

There are few things which are more annoying than broken links. Broken links are those that point to a website or other resource which is no longer there or has been moved. You can either check your links yourself or hire someone to perform this service for you. Make sure to remove or update any broken links that you find.

If you remove any pages from your site, check if these pages are linked to by other sites and let them know that these links will no longer work (if possible, provide an updated link to these other sites). When you add or remove pages, make sure to update your site map so that the search engines can update this information as quickly as possible.

Your website will grow and change over time as your business grows. Website maintenance is an essential part of this business growth; your website will keep doing its job of attracting customers and driving sales as long as it is properly maintained.

Source: http://www.sitepronews.com/2009/06/15/keep-on-top-of-your-website-maintenance/

How To Protect Your Search Engine Rankings

Your website’s ranking on search engines is a vital element of your overall marketing campaign, and there are ways to improve your link popularity through legitimate methods. Unfortunately, the Internet is populated by bands of dishonest webmasters seeking to improve their link popularity by faking out search engines.

The good news is that search engines have figured this out, and are now on guard for “spam” pages and sites that have increased their rankings by artificial methods. When a search engines tracks down such a site, that site is demoted in ranking or completely removed from the search engine’s index.

The bad news is that some high quality, completely above-board sites are being mistaken for these web page criminals. Your page may be in danger of being caught up in the “spam” net and tossed from a search engine’s index, even though you have done nothing to deserve such harsh treatment. But there are things you can do—and things you should be sure NOT to do—which will prevent this kind of misperception.

Link popularity is mostly based on the quality of sites you are linked to. Google pioneered this criteria for assigning website ranking, and virtually all search engines on the Internet now use it. There are legitimate ways to go about increasing your link popularity, but at the same time, you must be scrupulously careful about which sites you choose to link to. Google frequently imposes penalties on sites that have linked to other sites solely for the purpose of artificially boosting their link popularity. They have actually labeled these links “bad neighborhoods.”

You can raise a toast to the fact that you cannot be penalized when a bad neighborhood links to your site; penalty happens only when you are the one sending out the link to a bad neighborhood. But you must check and double-check all the links that are active on your links page to make sure you haven’t linked to a bad neighborhood.

The first thing to check out is whether or not the pages you have linked to have been penalized. The most direct way to do this is to download the Google toolbar. You will then see that most pages are given a “PageRank” which is represented by a sliding green scale on the Google toolbar.

Do not link to any site that shows no green at all on the scale. This is especially important when the scale is completely gray. It is more than likely that these pages have been penalized. If you are linked to these pages, you may catch their penalty, and like the flu, it may be difficult to recover from the infection.

There is no need to be afraid of linking to sites whose scale shows only a tiny sliver of green on their scale. These sites have not been penalized, and their links may grow in value and popularity. However, do make sure that you closely monitor these kind of links to ascertain that at some point they do not sustain a penalty once you have linked up to them from your links page.

Another evil trick that illicit webmasters use to artificially boost their link popularity is the use of hidden text. Search engines usually use the words on web pages as a factor in forming their rankings, which means that if the text on your page contains your keywords, you have more of an opportunity to increase your search engine ranking than a page that does not contain text inclusive of keywords.

Some webmasters have gotten around this formula by hiding their keywords in such a way so that they are invisible to any visitors to their site. For example, they have used the keywords but made them the same color as the background color of the page, such as a plethora of white keywords on a white background. You cannot see these words with the human eye—but the eye of search engine spider can spot them easily! A spider is the program search engines use to index web pages, and when it sees these invisible words, it goes back and boosts that page’s link ranking.

Webmasters may be brilliant and sometimes devious, but search engines have figured these tricks out. As soon as a search engine perceive the use of hidden text—splat! The page is penalized.

The downside of this is that sometimes the spider is a bit overzealous and will penalize a page by mistake. For example, if the background color of your page is gray, and you have placed gray text inside a black box, the spider will only take note of the gray text and assume you are employing hidden text. To avoid any risk of false penalty, simply direct your webmaster not to assign the same color to text as the background color of the page ever!

Another potential problem that can result in a penalty is called “keyword stuffing”. It is important to have your keywords appear in the text on your page, but sometimes you can go a little overboard in your enthusiasm to please those spiders. A search engine uses what is called “Keyword Density” to determine if a site is trying to artificially boost their ranking. This is the ratio of keywords to the rest of the words on the page. Search engines assign a limit to the number of times you can use a keyword before it decides you have overdone it and penalizes your site.

This ratio is quite high, so it is difficult to surpass without sounding as if you are stuttering—unless your keyword is part of your company name. If this is the case, it is easy for keyword density to soar. So, if your keyword is “renters insurance,” be sure you don’t use this phrase in every sentence. Carefully edit the text on your site so that the copy flows naturally and the keyword is not repeated incessantly. A good rule of thumb is your keyword should never appear in more than half the sentences on the page.

The final potential risk factor is known as “cloaking”. To those of you who are diligent Trekkies, this concept should be easy to understand. For the rest of you, cloaking is when the server directs a visitor to one page and a search engine spider to a different page. The page the spider sees is “cloaked” because it is invisible to regular traffic, and deliberately set-up to raise the site’s search engine ranking. A cloaked page tries to feed the spider everything it needs to rocket that page’s ranking to the top of the list.

It is natural that search engines have responded to this act of deception with extreme enmity, imposing steep penalties on these sites. The problem on your end is that sometimes pages are cloaked for legitimate reasons, such as prevention against the theft of code, often referred to as “pagejacking”. This kind of shielding is unnecessary these days due to the use of off-page elements, such as link popularity, that cannot be stolen.

To be on the safe side, be sure that your webmaster is aware that absolutely no cloaking is acceptable. Make sure the webmaster understands that cloaking of any kind will put your website at great risk.

Just as you must be diligent in increasing your link popularity and your ranking, you must be equally diligent to avoid being unfairly penalized. So be sure to monitor your site closely and avoid any appearance of artificially boosting your rankings.

Source: http://www.sitepronews.com/2009/06/15/how-to-protect-your-search-engine-rankings/

Link Building: When Will Backlinks Show Up In Google?

Many times website owners who are new to link building simply don’t know what to expect when it comes to the timeframe for registering backlinks.

Here’s a common question we get:

“I’ve just started marketing my brand new website, and I know I have backlinks coming into my site, yet when I do a check for incoming links, nothing shows up. Am I doing something wrong?”

Probably not–A backlink check will tell you how many incoming links are registered with a particular search engine, but it will not tell you how many backlinks you actually have.

Why is that? Well, it usually takes search engines months to re-evaluate incoming links, so if you do a backlink check today, there are likely links that are going into your site that haven’t yet been calculated in.

It would be nice if we could build links and then immediately have them show up in a backlink check, but that’s just not the way the internet works.

As you’re building links to your site, here are some ways to keep track of your progress and build links effectively over time:

How To Do A Backlink Check:

It’s incredibly easy to do a backlink check for your site. In Google, just type this into the search box link:http://www.yourwebsite.com/

The results of that search will bring up a list of sites that are linking to your website address. In the upper right hand corner of Google you’ll be able to see a total count of your registered backlinks.

An even better tool is Yahoo Site Explorer https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com which provides a list of your registered backlinks and much more detailed information. Both of these backlink checking tools are free, so you can try each one out (or do both).

Why Are Backlinks Not Showing Up For My Site?

Let’s suppose you know that you’ve build links to your site, but nothing is showing up when you do a backlink check (frustrating, I know!).

There are some logical reasons why backlinks may not be showing up:

1) Perhaps your website is brand new and has not yet been indexed by Google.

When you launch a new site it does not automatically appear in Google–it usually takes several months for Google to realize that the site is there and to index and categorize it.

Until your site is indexed, it will not show up in any search engine searches and no backlinks will be registered. You can even do a search for your exact site name or URL and nothing will show up–that is how you know that your site has not been indexed yet.

If this is your situation, don’t fret! This waiting period is something that all website owners go through, and Google (and the other search engines) will eventually index your site.

It can take anywhere from 3-5 months for a new website to be indexed.

I remember the last time I was launching a new site it took about 5 months for the site to be indexed in Google. On that 5th month, all of the backlinks that I had been building over the preceding months finally showed up–whew!

2) Not enough time has elapsed since building the links.

Even if your site is already indexed, it usually takes search engines several months (3-4) to recalculate the backlinks. So, if you have been doing article submissions for the past 2 months and you know for a fact that you have quite a few incoming links, those links will not show up in a backlink check for another month or two.

This doesn’t mean the links aren’t there–they are! The search engine just hasn’t registered them yet.

As you can see, one necessary component of any link building campaign is PATIENCE. There will be a time delay from when you build the link to when you see the fruit of your labor in Google.

Keep in mind, this time delay does not impact your marketing campaign–whether the links have started to show up or not, you should continue to market your website and submit articles. Immediate results are not the goal–you should be going for a long lasting impact on your search engine ranking for your keywords, rather than a brief shot of traffic that fades away after a day or so.

When you’re link building, you need to market your site consistently–develop an article submission schedule for yourself and stick to it, submitting articles each and every month.

You will be rewarded in the long run with an increased search engine ranking for your major keywords, which can of course build traffic dramatically for the long-term.

Source: http://www.sitepronews.com/2009/05/21/link-building-when-will-backlinks-show-up-in-google/

How to Optimize for Google

In today’s online world search engine rankings can make your business succeed, and while rankings in Yahoo and MSN are very valuable, their combined market value is still less than that of Google. This makes achieving top rankings in Google that much more important.

In this three-part series on How to Optimize for Google we will touch on a number of important aspects for top Google rankings including website optimization, links, Google Webmaster tools, and a number of other considerations.

THE RIGHT KEYWORDS

This article is not about keyword research so I will not spend too much time on this topic, however, I felt it was important to at least brush on this slightly.

Make sure that your targets are achievable. If you select the wrong keywords it can make your entire optimization experience essentially a waste. Choose keywords that are attainable but yet still offer a reasonable search frequency for your industry. Your phrase selection should also be targeted to bring qualified traffic to your site.

Using the hotel industry as an example, targeting the word “hotel” would make very little sense but by narrowing it down to “Victoria BC hotel” you now have less competition, and a more qualified audience. Keep your targets in perspective and go after the obtainable rankings.


WEBSITE OPTIMIZATION
There are many on-site factors that play a role in your search engine rankings. Here are a number of those factors and what you can do to increase your chances of success.

Title Tag
The title tag plays one of the most important roles in search results at Google, and is almost always the heading Google chooses for each of its listings. Placement of your target phrase is best used near the start of the tag and repeated again in the middle or near the end. Three uses of your target phrase may be helpful in some instances, as long as it is not too overwhelming. For best results each page on your site should have a totally unique title tag.

It is also important to remember that because Google will use this title as the main heading for your listing, you will want to keep it attractive to potential searchers. Try to also add a call to action, or other wording to help make your listing appear attractive to searchers.

To help illustrate the fact Google takes this tag into consideration, simply do a search for your target phrase and take a look at the titles of the top 10. I tried a search for a rather broad term “hotel” and saw that all 10/10 listings had it in the title tag, and 6/10 had it as the very first word. A quick scan showed that the entire top 30 either had the word hotel, or hotels in their title tags.

If you do only one thing to your website, make sure that all your title tags are relevant, unique, and contain your target phrase for each page.

Meta Description Tag
The Meta Description tag is still occasionally used by Google as the description which appears in the search results themselves. While this used to be a more common practice Google tends to use it most often on sites with very limited content, or those which are flash based. I have seen it still used for content rich sites, however this is less common.

The Meta Description tag still has an impact on search rankings. Your best bet when using this tag is to keep it short and sweet with your target phrase close to the start and never repeated more than 3 times. Like the title tag, each page on you site should have its own unique description tag.

Meta Keyword Tag
When it comes to Google this tag is useless, and won’t influence your rankings. There is some speculation as to whether a spammy keyword tag can however, have a negative effect on Google rankings. As a result, if you do utilize a keyword Meta tag for the smaller engines, it is best to keep it clean and play it safe.

Density
Keyword density plays a role in overall rankings; however, it is not as cut and dry as it once was. Once upon a time there was a magic number that when used could almost guarantee top rankings.

This is no longer the case. Today the ideal density varies from industry to industry, phrase to phrase. To find out what density you should aim for, take the top 10 or 20 search results and see what percentage those sites are using. In most cases you will find that the majority of these sites have a very similar density to one another, and this average density is a good estimation of what you should aim for.

Body Text and Keyword Placement
The location of relevant text on your site will help establish the overall importance of your target phrase. While you do not want to overwhelm the engines and site visitors with a bombardment of target phrases at the top of the page, try to sprinkle in some instances as close to the top of the page as possible.

Synonyms
Be sure to include various synonyms for your target phrases within your body text on your site. Google will use these synonyms to tie in the overall relevance of the page for your main target phrases, which in turn can improve your odds.

To find possible synonyms you can use a thesaurus, but the best way is to search Google itself and see exactly what they consider to be similar. Simply search in Google for your target phrase preceded with a tilde, such as “~hotels”. Next scan through the search results for any text Google has bolded. These are all words that Google considers to be related. Using the “~hotels” example Google brings up phrases such as ‘travel’, ‘tourism’, ‘accommodation’, as well as various hotel chain names such as ‘Hilton Hotels’.

Keywords in Domain
There is still some speculation if having a target phrase as part of your top level domain (TLD) is of use to search rankings. From my experience, yes, there is value here, although, nothing like it was several years ago.

If you are starting off in the online world and are contemplating which domain to go for, consider one that uses your target phrase, assuming that it is both relevant to your business name, and uses no more than a single hyphen. While multiple hyphens in a domain can be successful, they are very common with highly spammy websites, so it is best to not take that route if possible.

While having a keyword located within your domain can offer some ranking juice, I would not suggest heading out and doing a domain swap. In most cases you would be better off working on your existing site than starting from scratch with a new domain.

Keywords in page specific URL
Using keywords for specific page URL’s can also help add a little bit of value to your site, providing you use them responsibly. Consider using a keyword as a directory name and as part of a file name where it naturally makes sense to do so. If you have a website that focuses on tourism and includes local hotel listings, you may want to consider the following structure for your page on the Hilton:

MyTourismSite.com/Victoria/Accommodations/Hotels/Hilton.html

Heading Tags
Placement of target phrases within heading tags helps to establish the importance of those given phrases. That said do not over do it, or abuse it. Only place target phrases within a heading tag if it makes sense to do so, and don’t flood a page with numerous tags. Heading tags are not as critical as they once were, but still a good contribution to a well optimized page.

Link Anchor text
This is the actual text you click on as part of a link. When full or partial target phrases are used within your text links they help pass on some value to the linked page for those phrases. This is also true when considering surrounding text. When the content around the link is also relevant, the link holds slightly more value.

While a link that simply states “click here” or “www.domainname.com” does have its place, they provide considerably less value than a link that would use “discount hotels” as its anchor.

Image Alt Text
While image alt text still plays a minor role, its biggest part is within the use of image based navigation. If you have an image linked to another page, the alt text will be attributed much the same way as standard link anchor text is.

Image Alt text should always be short and to the point and should accurately describe either the image itself, or the page the image is linking to. Do not use alt tags as a place to stuff keywords.

Inline Links
These are links that are found mid sentence or mid paragraph as opposed to a simple listing of links as found in a menu or possibly on a sitemap. Links found mid paragraph tend to pass on a little more value from the surrounding text and can offer more relevance to the linked page.

Site Navigation
It is absolutely imperative that your website be fully spiderable by the search engines. This may seem obvious, but often webmasters overlook Google’s ability to crawl a website. Google has become very advanced in what links it can follow and how it can spider a website, but there are still some things that can cause significant roadblocks.

- Flash: One of the most commonly made mistakes is the use of flash. If flash is used as a sole   means of site navigation then you can count on Google not viewing your internal pages, and  having a significant disadvantage in terms of site rankings.

- Java Script/DHTML: These days most Java Script and even DHTML menus can be spidered by Google, however, this is not always the case. If your site utilizes any kind of  fancy navigation and you are wondering why Google has not indexed your internal pages, check out Google’s Cached Text version of your page. If you do not see any text links, then your navigation may be invisible to Google.

- Images: Image based navigation has been safe for many years now, but if your site uses  this form of navigation it is essential to have brief, relevant alt text on all your buttons. This alt text will act much like standard anchor text for text based links. This is not only for the purpose of search ranking value, but take a look at Google’s cached text version of  your page. If you have image based links that do not have alt text, those links do not  appear. This doesn’t mean Google won’t follow them, but for anyone viewing your site on a text based browser, your links will be invisible to them.

URL Structure
Avoid long elaborate URL’s with extraneous characters. While Google has reached a point where they can index massive URL strings, it is best to avoid them if at all possible. For dynamic sites consider utilizing mod rewrites to significantly clean up the URL to not only make it more search engine friendly, but more user friendly as well.

           MyTourismSite.com/?locid=”victoria”&catid=”accommodations”
           &type=”hotel”&comp=”hilton”

           stands a better chance if cleaned up to read:

           MyTourismSite.com/victoria/accommodations/hotels/hilton.htm

SUMMARY

Basic website optimization is a critical component for successful placement in Google but is only part of the overall picture.

Source: http://www.sitepronews.com/2009/04/30/how-to-optimize-for-google-%e2%80%93-part-1-of-3-2/

Learn How the Twitter Social Networking Site can Benefit You

Twitter now has 10 million people using it worldwide. It is one of the fastest growing social networks today and is starting to have an enormous impact on how internet marketers are networking and doing business online. There are many celebrities also using Twitter and they have a huge following amongst their fans.

So what exactly is Twitter?

Twitter is a social media service that describes itself as “a way for people to connect through a quick exchange of ideas”. The messages are referred to as tweets and they cannot be longer than 140 characters maximum and you can basically discuss anything that enters your mind. All the conversations start with the phrase “what are you doing”? But your messages don’t need to be only about what you are doing.

These messages can be viewed by anybody on Twitter who visits your page. Messages can be seen also on the pages of anyone who has elected to follow you. When they log into their own page, anything that you might have to say will show up there as a tweet.

You can also send private messages to people on Twitter who have chosen to follow you, and this is quite a useful tool for anyone involved in an internet based business.

The big advantage with a social network service like Twitter is that you can very quickly build up a network of contacts, and you can keep them up to date on all your business activities. You can post information that can be helpful to others and keep people entertained with any insights or tips you may have. Another advantage is that you can post links to your latest articles and is a great way to help build you email marketing list. In fact whenever you update your blog you can automatically send a message to your Twitter followers that there is a new blog post for them to read.

An important point to remember though is that Twitter is actually a social media site, so don’t go overboard with self promotion. Just keep in mind that people apart from promoting their internet businesses are there to make friends and chat to others within the Twitter community.

If you spend too much time on self promotion you will very quickly lose whatever following you have built up.

It is very quick and easy to sign up for a Twitter account, all you need to do is log in to twitter.com, click on the Get Started - Join button and fill in the online form. Then just click on create my account and you are ready to begin tweeting.

Initially I would suggest that you begin building your network by finding Twitter users that you can follow. There is a “find people” button, click on that and you will be able to run a search for anyone that you know or may want to follow.

When you find someone you would like to follow, simply click on their name or avatar and click the “follow” button that will appear on the next page.

Many of the people who you choose to follow, will return the compliment and follow you back and before you know it you will have built up a list of followers. So the more people you follow the bigger and faster your network will grow. One point to remember is that you cannot add more than 200 new followers to your network in a day. If you want to have more than 2000 people following you, you will need to follow at least 2000 as well.

As long as you stick to the rules above, you will be able to build a huge network of followers. But break the rules and you will be banned by Twitter. Twitter is a social networking site, but it is a great way to build your business as well.

Source: http://www.sitepronews.com/2009/04/13/learn-how-the-twitter-social-networking-site-can-benefit-you/

Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Content Relevancy and Link Popularity Explained

How does a web page get ranked #1 on Google? There is no doubt that the methods of the 1990s no longer work - and most definitely, not since Google went public in 2004.

Back then, the content of your website's pages was the major factor. Today, however, having links on the Internet that point back to your website is another important criteria, which will require that you involve yourself in the Internet community.

The later point is a very interesting to consider. How do you involve yourself in the Internet community? What does this have to do with search engine optimization (SEO)? Actually, involving yourself in the Internet community doesn't directly have anything to do with SEO; however, many people seem to pigeon hole anything related to the search engines into SEO. Therefore, we will need to define the various acronyms that are used in the Internet industry.

The Internet has also created an environment in which institutional control of information has been lost. As a result, control of information has trickled down to the individual level. Imagine the transition from several thousand companies once controlling messages through traditional media to today's expansive communication via several million individuals free to distribute their own information on the Internet. What you find is that the logic process has also been spread over millions of people; and for this reason, it is harder to explain why certain things happen on the Internet.

Because the Internet has opened the communications to the individual, the individuals are now exposed to the concepts of business. Not everyone has a business degree and most only have a superficial understanding. As such, the definition of marketing and how advertising plays a role in this process is not well understood at the individual level. This has caused improper usage of the various acronyms used on the Internet today.

Marketing and Advertising Defined

Before we can understand the various acronyms being used within the Internet industry, it is important to understand the definitions of marketing vs. advertising.

• Marketing' is the process or technique of promotion, selling and distributing a product or service.
• Advertising' is to make your product or service publicly known; an announcement to call public attention by emphasizing qualities to arouse a desire to purchase.

You can see from the definitions that advertising is part of marketing. Marketing includes everything about raising the awareness of your business from branding, messaging, public relations, advertising, events, customer relationships and much more. Advertising is a component of marketing and should never be the only method used to promote your business.


Defining SEM, SEA, SEO and LP

Using what we have learned about the definition of marketing, Search Engine Marketing (SEM) would include all processes related to promoting all of your website's pages with the search engines. Included in this process would be Search Engine Advertising (SEA), which would be the sponsored search advertising - or, what some also refer to as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. These are the sponsored links along the top, right side and bottom of search results. Also, included in SEM would be SEO and your outreach program on the Internet away from your website that increases the number of links to your website, also known as Link Popularity (LP).

What is SEO?

It is important to understand how to tell the search engines that a particular page of your website is an authority in a particular topic. Keywords and phrases are utilized to communicate this expert status to search engines. You will notice that we are talking about pages of your website. Each page of your website can be optimized for a topic based on its visible content. We are no longer optimizing blindly the entire website for the same information, but using each page to help drive traffic to our website. By all means, this does mean that for a particular search result, visitors may enter your website from somewhere else other than the home page!

Each search engine has a different algorithm in deciding what the person searching is seeking and how relevant the information on the individual pages of your website relates to the search. They take into account the title of the page, the meta description, and the visible text. Some search engines do look at your meta keywords, but not nearly as much as they used to in the past. What you are presenting with visible text is what the visitor will see; and therefore, the content has more value than the Meta keywords. This also prevents spammers and fraudulent websites from hiding their true identity.

Why is SEO Important?

The volume of information on the Internet is staggering. The Internet seems larger than our real world. Search engines have an enormous task to filter all of this information to provide something meaningful to the searcher in a matter of seconds. Compared to the old days of using search tools like Archie and Veronica that required hours and sometimes days finding information on the Internet, the results from the current search engines are significantly improved.

The competition of web pages (whether they are direct competitors or not) as well as your business competitors are all seeking to also be ranked within the first three pages of search results. It is important that you seek out the right resources to help you optimize your pages and give you a fighting chance.

What to do before you SEO

Research, research, research! There are many tools out there that provide you information about what people actually type into the search engine, the number of searches performed over a 30 day period, as well as how many competing web pages exist for that search term. These are the three major parts to the research you are seeking. The search engines can provide you the first two with their tools, while the third item may require you to perform a search in quotes to get a real understanding of the total competing web pages. There are third party tools that can also provide the complete information, however, always keep in mind that the search volume is not an absolute from any source including the search engines. Use the information as a guideline to give you direction. Regardless of the tool(s) you use for your research, they will all provide you options for other key phrases to consider based on your initial entry. This will be helpful to consider other alternatives you may not have thought about.

In this process you will learn two important items.

1) First you will learn that the rest of the world may not necessarily search for your website's products and services the same way you expect them to. For example, you may be ranked number one for a particular term, but if no one is searching for that term, what difference does it make if you're number one or number 100? Go with what people are searching.

2) Secondly, you will want to seek out a balance between the number of searches and the number of competing web pages. The search term that has several million competing web pages will take you longer to rank where as those that are only in the thousands will be easier. Take a look at the search volume to see what would happen if you had 1% of those visitors purchase? Based on what you are selling you may not need to be ranked for terms that have thousands of searches. For your business, those with lower search volumes and less competition may suffice as a foundation.

Consider your research as a starting point, not an end point. You can always change your optimization later; and always keep in mind that you can optimize the pages within your website to cover a variety of possibilities from your research.

What you do to SEO

Search Engine Optimization does require some technical understanding of the HTML code in order to add the necessary meta tags, insure you have the right image alt descriptions, the right link title descriptions and lastly, to appropriately write the visible text on the pages. The elements of this process include the following:

HTML Code

Be sure that your HTML code adheres to the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) standards. Many will ask the question why and the answer is simple. If you adhere to the standards, you can't go wrong. If you don't adhere to them, there is a higher chance that it will have a negative effect for browsers and search engines.

HTML structure

Websites with outdated Flash animations, frame designs, and broken links are certainly not going to allow search engines to identify the content of your web pages. Use current coding methods, not table based websites. Can you easily navigate your website? If not, then neither can the search engines; and therefore they cannot identify how to rank your web pages.

Website Flow

Does your website allow a visitor to reach your business objective easily from the point of entry? Make sure you have a call to action on all pages of your website.

Use of all Meta-Data

Meta data goes beyond Title, Keywords and Descriptions. There are a variety of meta tags that inform search engines about the content of your web page. Use all of them. Don't forget to have unique Title, Keywords and Descriptions for each of your web pages. Duplicate content is not something the search engines appreciate.

Visible Content

Be sure to have well-written, grammatically correct and spell-checked content to your web pages. If your website becomes a resource for its unique content you are more likely to receive traffic-seeking information about your business.

Your Outreach Program: Link Building

Consider link building as a process that will increase the critical mass of information about your business. The information or content you post (vs. advertise) on the Internet will have a shelf life of years. Therefore, the links to your website will also accumulate over time and also have a shelf life of years.

The more links you have pointing back to your website the more popular your website is considered by the search engines. Based on the content that is posted your website will be considered an authority on that topic.

The process of posting content on the Internet will not only generate traffic from the search engines, but also generate traffic to your website from the websites where the content is posted. Oddly enough you will get traffic from these websites before receiving traffic from the search engines.

Content you will post on the Internet will come in five primary forms: Articles, News Releases, Videos, Photos and Social Media Marketing. The process of content marketing is quite involved and is also labor intensive when done correctly. If you come across anything that may sound like a "link farm", you will want to run because they will not give you any long term results and are not considered responsible link building.

Finally the link building process comes in three formats: direct links to your website, cross linking content on the Internet, and deep linking to specific pages within your website. Understanding this process becomes a strategy in order for your prospects to find you and have all paths lead back to your website.

Conclusion

Is this an overnight process? Absolutely not! It is an ongoing process that acts not only as a public relations tool, but also as a long term advertising tool. The process of maintaining your website and the content marketing process of link building is something you do daily, weekly and monthly. Part of this process and Internet marketing strategy also requires the initial research process and the measurement of the results and the effects of your efforts.

Source: http://www.entireweb.com/newsletter/archive/2009/PRINT534.html

SEO Steps For a New Website

In this article, we cover everything from domain names, through to carrying out the research needed to prepare for On Page SEO.  

Step 1 - Domain Names:

There is a lot of debate on this is the SEO world. Should you choose a domain name that is relevant and memorable, or one that has lots of keywords in it?

Whilst it is widely believed that having key terms in your domain name is a good idea in terms of SEO, it is not essential. In most instances, an easy to remember and short domain is best. It would probably pay for both SEO and also brand recognition for you to have a name that sounds relevant to your website, and is easy to remember.

Regarding what TLD (Top Level Domain) is best, many say .com extension sites will rank easier than, say, .info domains. What I would say here is that if you value your site, go for a decent TLD. Cheaper domains may give the impression to your visitors that you don’t really value your site, as you are not prepared to spend $10 (or £) per year on your name!

One thing worth considering is that there is evidence that geo targeted TLDs work well, so if you are targeting solely the UK for example, a .co.uk domain may well be a good idea. - That said, do try to be ‘future proof’ and consider buying the .com and .net versions of your domain. If nothing else it helps to stop other people buying other TLD versions of your domain when you are successful, with the aim of relieving you of $$$ in exchange for the domain!

Step 2 - Plan Your Content Pages:
The next step would be to plan out your pages, and what you want on them. No need to actually make the pages or write the content at this stage… just plan the topic of the pages.

Be sure to plan for a contact us page, a privacy statement page, and ideally a sitemap page. (HTML Sitemap, not to be confused with an xml sitemap which is meant to be submitted to Google).

Try to focus your pages subject matter as much as possible, to help them be relevant. So, for example, if you run a Garage that services cars, motorbike and trucks, and also sells spare parts for vehicles, and does race tuning, plan a page for each of these services.

Step 3 - Plan Your Keywords:

Next, take a look at the pages you have planned, have a brainstorm and scribble down on a bit of paper they key terms you feel to be relevant to your site… Don’t think single words here, think key terms. Try to scribble down about 5 TERMS for each of your pages (inc. homepage) - For Example “motorbike race tuning” is one term, despite being 3 words.

Next, check out your competition. What words do they use in their Meta keywords? The Meta keyword tag is thought by many to be unimportant these days, especially for Google optimization, but it is a good place to look to check your competitions key terms. It is said that Yahoo still uses the Meta keyword tag.

Whilst on your competitions page(s), look at the browser title (you know, the very top bar of the browser, usually blue) - See what words they use here as, if they know what they are doing, they will have at least some of their main key terms in here). If you are struggling to understand where to find the title, view the source code again, and look for - this is the title tag, and we are looking to see what is between those 2 tags.

Write down your competitions key terms for pages that are similar in topic to your pages. Write this next to the words you thought of yourself.

Next, go to the Google Adwords keyword tool. Paste or type in the key terms you wrote down in the previous stages, using the keywords for one page at a time (so, for example, motorbike race tuning, and all it’s associated/scribbled down key terms). Make sure you have 1 key term per line.

One note here, many people may forget or not even realize this, but the tool I am showing your here needs to be configured to be focused on your countries results… so, look for “Results are tailored to …” and set it to your target audience. (UK or USA etc)

Next, enter the captcha code, and click “Get keyword ideas”… but Wait… we are not there yet… you should look for the words “Match Type:“, at the top right hand corner of the table, and set it to “Exact”. This will help ensure we don’t get disappointed by expecting too high a search volume for a given key term.

The resulting table will give you the average search volume. Now, this is a free tool made for Google Adwords users… so it is meant only as a guide. For true accuracy, a premium service such as word tracker should be used, but this data IS helpful, and the vast majorities of people tend to be happy with the results, so long as you ensure all the variables for country and ‘match type’ and correctly configured.

If you click on the term: “Approx Avg Search Volume Help“, you will be able to sort the terms by this field/result.

Try to find key terms with over 1000 average searches per month. Make a list of the terms with a higher search volume than this and type them into Google. Check the number of results for the term (Look for the words: Results 1 - 10 of about: below the search box on the results pages, on the right of it)

If your website is relatively new, try to focus on terms that have less than 1 million results.
Once you have made a chart with all this data (did I say that bit right? - make sure you write all these results down!) Choose your key terms for each page. When trying to decide which key terms to use, the overriding factor should be relevancy.

Step 4 - Plan the On Page SEO:
Remember, we are NOT trying to trick Google here, just help it to figure out what our pages are about. To that end…

4 - A) Title tags and h1 tag.
Perhaps the two most important factors it is believed Google looks at when trying to figure out a page’s topic/relevancy are the title tag and the h1 tag.
Make these two factors relevant (spotting a trend here… relevant relevant RELEVANT) And where possible, include the most important key term that you are targeting for your page. The title and h1 tag should be relevant to your pages topic.

4 - B) Page Names
It is advisable to have your actual page names as something related too, but don’t go too far with this… avoid stupidly long titles! Concise and relevant is good.

4 - C) Page Content
Next, you need some great content for your page. Good content is crucial really, both for Google to find, and for your readers to read. Decent content can actually generate back links for you!
If it is possible, and you have enough content, use sub headings where you can. h2 and h3 tags etc, can be used here. Again, make the headings descriptive and relevant to your page and key terms.

If/when you use images, be sure to set the alt tag for the images to something relevant to the page, and descriptive of the image. as well as the alt tag, use a title tag .

4 - D) Internal Linking Structure
When making the menu structure for your site, as well as with other URLs, consider using text instead of images. Using text links, where the text is relevant to the topic of the page being linked to, can, and will help your rankings.

As with most of these sections, one could write a whole article and just cover this topic!
It is a good idea (usually) to have a html sitemap, and if you have this one click away from your homepage, it will/should help with PR distribution and internal page rankings, especially if on the sitemap you also use anchor text relevant to the pages being linked to.

Ensure you don’t have any ‘Orphan pages’ - as in, no pages without a ‘Parent’ page that links to it.

I am going to leave it here for the internal link structure, or we run the risk of a 600 word article just for this section, but if you wish to learn more then comment at the end of this article, and perhaps I will write a piece just on that.

We could, for example, have a whole piece just about the use of the nofollow tag on internal links and ‘Pagerank sculpting’… But that’s another article, for another day!

5) Check Your Site.
There are various tools online that will enable you to check for broken links (Google Broken Link Tool). Use a couple of these tools, and check for broken links.

After this, go to http://validator.w3.org/ - and check your site for compliance. Print out the page if it shows errors, and work your way through them.

Step 6 - The next stage would be to plan your Off Page Promotion.
This is definitely a whole topic on it’s own! - Make sure whatever you do that you DO NOT try to rush things when off page promotion/link building is concerned. Avoid SPAM like the plague, as it can destroy both your rankings, and your online reputation.

Now, when we say avoid SPAM, that includes SPAMMING Google. (Spamdexing)
A good and relatively ethical way to kick off your Off Page Link building would be to pay for a decent Press Release to be made about your new site launch/redesign, using a professional press release distribution service.

Source: http://www.sitepronews.com/2009/02/13/seo-steps-for-a-new-website-–-part-1/
              http://www.sitepronews.com/2009/02/13/seo-steps-for-a-new-website-–-part-2/