Internet Marketing Strategies & Services

How To Optimize For Google – Tips For Your Website

2011-06-11T05:02:00.000-07:00

Getting to the top of a Google search result can bring tremendous amounts of traffic to a website. Websites that make it to the top do not get there by chance. They are there because their web pages are optimized. To optimize for Google, website designers must follow several key steps. Each step is designed to relay to the search engine some information about the web page. By performing this optimization, website owners increase their chances of making it to the top of a Google search result. To understand how the process works, the following information lists several of the basic steps that website designers need to follow to produce an optimized website.

The first step to getting a high ranking in Google’s search pages involves choosing the right keywords. But it is not only about finding the keywords – understanding their profitability is important as well. This is assessed by determining the level of competition for these keywords.
There are many commercial vendors that provide services to determine profitability and other aspects related to keywords, but to start, any website operator can use Google’s keyword tool to get a list of general keywords.

Shorter keyword phrases have the most competition and the most profitability and that is why it is harder to achieve high rankings for them. Because of this, many website owners look to rank for long tail keywords. These are keywords that contain the main keyword along with other words. Even though they are easier to rank for, long tail keywords are less profitable, which is why website owners typically look to rank for multiple long tail keywords.

After the keywords have been chosen and analyzed, website owners need to know about where to place the words on the web page. The first part of this optimization process involves placing the keyword in the title of the page. The title tag, located in the head section of the HTML code, is the first tag that the search engine spider analyses.

The header tag, h1 is the next important tag. This tag typically contains the name of the article, which, at the minimum, should contain the complete keyword. Additional words may be included with the keyword to help improve readability, but the words in this tag need to contain the entire keyword phrase.

Another important aspect of web page optimization is link optimization. These links or anchor texts help to indicate to the search engine spider what the web page is about. An anchor text should be a related keyword of the main keyword of your title, and the anchor destination should be a page that is related to the keyword in the anchor text. Leading to a page of unrelated content will not help with website optimization. So, to get value from the anchor text, make sure that it leads to a page related to the anchor text.

To optimize for Google also involves repeating keywords a certain number of times. Although there are different views amongst SEO experts as to the optimum keyword percentage within content, many writers generally aim for between 2 and 3 percent keyword density.

In addition to optimizing the article content, web designers should also optimize multimedia, such as images or videos. For example, if appropriate, the name of an image should also contain the keywords. If the keywords are not appropriate for the image name, web designers can use the alt attribute in the image tag to write a description of the image using the keywords. In fact, the alt attribute should always be used for optimization and also to ensure usability and access standards are followed.

In summary, if web designers follow and include all of the preceding on their web pages, they will be well on their way to optimizing their websites. These are the basic steps that they must follow if they want to get near the top of Google’s ranking for their particular keywords.

Source: http://www.sitepronews.com/2011/06/10/how-to-optimize-for-google-tips-for-your-website/

How to Optimize PDF Documents for SEO

2010-02-16T04:02:00.000-08:00

On page optimization and link building are the most basic techniques of optimizing a website. Apart from web pages, many sites contain assets in the form of documents (.doc, .pdf), spreadsheets (.xls), presentations and videos (.avi etc). Optimizing these assets is beneficial as they get indexed faster and rank well in the top search engine result pages.

Use a Text Based PDF Creator: There are a lot free tools available online with Adobe Acrobat being the best text based PDF creator. If a PDF document is created in an image based program, the search engines will completely ignore it. If the PDF is created using a text based creator like Adobe acrobat, the search engine robots will read and index the text like any other web page.
Update the Document Title: The title of the PDF file is as important as the title tag of a web page. The PDF title property tells the search engine robots about the type of content. The most important aspect of the title is that Google uses the text in the title field as the link in the search engine result pages. Thus, the title field should be keyword rich and should not contain random text.
Complete the document properties: A PDF file contains many document properties apart from the title field. These are keywords, description, author info, copyright info etc. All the fields must be completed with relevant information. The keyword field should not be stuffed with keywords or remain empty. It has not been proven that the search engines give importance to the keyword field in the document properties. If in future they do, your PDF file will have an advantage over other web pages.
Link to the PDF File from the Homepage: The Searchbots will not discover and index the PDF file if it is placed too deep within the website. To ensure that the PDF file gets crawled by the search engines, it should be visibly linked from the home page or any other page which gets crawled regularly. If your aim is to get the PDF in top search engine result pages, then you have to lead the searchbots to it.
Optimize the content in the PDF File: The content in the text based PDF files is similar to the content in a website. This makes content optimization an important aspect in optimization of PDF files. The content should be relevant to the subject matter. Important text should be highlighted by increasing their font size and utilizing the bold and italics features of the PDF files. Keywords should be placed in the first few lines of the content.
Place Links in the PDF File: When a visitor opens a PDF file ranking in the top search engine results page, there should be a provision in the file to link back to its original website. This action reduces the efforts of the visitor to hunt for the main website. Also, a link from the PDF file can be considered as a backlink by the search engine.

A PDF file is similar to a web page in an assortment of aspects. It should be optimized with as much care as a web page to achieve high rankings.

Source: http://www.sitepronews.com/2010/02/15/how-to-optimize-pdf-documents-for-seo/

Improve Your Website with Google’s Webmaster Central Tools

2010-01-12T03:03:00.000-08:00

As a website owner, one of your top priorities is going to be getting your site indexed and ranked by Google. People perform over 235 million searches a day with Google, so the potential to receive significant traffic from this search engine should be enough for you to invest the time to make sure it’s done right.

Google wants to fill its index with quality, error free websites that are beneficial and targeted to their searchers. Enter Google’s Webmaster Central Tools ….. http://google.com/webmasters . If you’ve never heard of it, it’s Google’s way of helping you with your website’s indexing. Not too long ago, it went through a redesign and upgrade process which made it more useful and easier to use than ever.

First thing you’ll need to sign in with is a Google account. Google requires an account to be able to use all of their free services, including Blogger and Analytics, so if youdon’t have one, now’s the time to register.

If you have multiple websites to list, that’s no problem. Up to 500 sites can be added all under one roof. You will need to perform what Google calls “site verification” for each site submitted. This proves to Google that you are the owner of the site before they release detailed information to you. At one time it was a lengthy process of cutting and pasting code into the head section of your index page or uploading a separate HTML file. Now they’ve streamlined the process and it’s all done with one click of an email.

If you use Blogger.com, “Webmaster Tools” can be enabled from within the Blogger dashboard under tools/resources. Once your sites have been submitted, you’ll have access to a whole suite of useful tools. The website is broken up into three main sections.

Site Configuration (Information about your site)
Your Site on the Web (Google data re: your site)
Diagnostics (Any problems Google had while indexing your site)

If your website has never received a decent ranking with Google, these numerous reports will help you in tracking down the problem. It’s truly an “eye opener” to see your site through the eyes of a search engine.

On the “Crawl Errors Page”, any errors Google encountered while crawling your site are revealed. The url’s not listed, and the types of problems such as restricted by robots txt, url’s that timed out, and unreachable url’s will be uncovered. If numerous pages of your site are not indexed, Sitemaps can also be submitted to help Google find and crawl all of the pages of your site.

If your website is not showing up in Google’s index, or you think it’s being penalized for some reason, you can contact Google from within the “tools interface” with a “reconsideration” request. This will ask Google to take another look at your site. Before submitting, make sure you’ve cleaned up any errors, and that you’re not in violation of any of Google’s webmaster guidelines.

Here’s a small sample of some other tasks that can be performed.

Keyword Research: The keywords page lists the most important words Google found when indexing your site. So you know what keyword/phrases your site is ranking for.
Who’s linking to your website.
Page rank for individual pages can be reviewed.
Change of address feature, which is useful when moving domains to let Google know.
Data can be downloaded in spreadsheet format in order to be analyzed and tracked.
Any RSS feeds can also be submitted as sitemaps.
Parameter Handling- Allows you to tell Google which url’s you want them to ignore.
Emails from Google’s Webmaster Tools can be forwarded to any email address you specify.

Contrary to popular belief, Google wants you to succeed online which is why they give you the tools needed to fix any problems, and make your site a search engine’s indexing dream. That’s not just good business for Google, it’s good for your website too.

Source: http://www.sitepronews.com/2010/01/11/improve-your-website-with-googles-webmaster-central-tools/

Social Media Optimization- Four Rules for Success

2009-11-26T01:44:00.000-08:00

Social Media Optimization is a way for organizations and individuals to generate publicity through social networking tools like Twitter and LinkedIn, online communities like Facebook, and automated tools like TwitterFeed and Ping.fm. The term “social media optimization” was originally coined by SEO consultant extraordinaire, Rohit Bhargava, the senior vice president of Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence and author of the Influential Marketing Blog.

Social media optimization is basically a way to promote your blog, website, or even your company’s brand, through social media, without being obnoxious or overtly commercial. Sure, you can blanket sites like Twitter with “Want to lose weight? Download my free report, ‘19 Ways to Lose Weight Fast’” repeatedly, or brag about your latest affiliate paycheck, but that’s not going to get you any followers. At least none worth talking to.

Whether you are an SEO consultant or you are new to social media marketing, there are a few rules you need to follow in order to be effective. Bhargava’s five rules of social media optimization included important things like increasing your linkability, helping your content travel, and encouraging the mash up. To that, we would add our own four rules.

Focus on a few networks, not many. Many social media optimization beginners make the mistake of joining as many social networks as they can, and getting a few followers in each. The problem is you’re getting 10 or 20 followers in 10 networks, rather than 400 or 500 in 2 networks. If you take this narrow route, chances are you will attract the same followers in each one.
Find people in allied fields, not just your own, to improve your social media optimization. Think referrals, not customers. If you’re in the financial services industry, don’t just focus on finding people who need to invest. Connect with people who can refer those same people to you, like lawyers, real estate agents, bankers, and anyone else who has clients who will need the financial services you offer.
Provide real value to others. Telling people how they can earn money while they sleep, or “Lose Weight Fast!!!” is not valuable. Steering people to a site that features recipes for people who are trying a low-carb diet, or writing a blog post about the top three fat-burning foods is valuable social media optimization. Refer people to helpful websites, even if they’re not your own. And don’t be nervous about asking questions of your own. It makes you look like a real person, and not just a know-it-all.
Commit to a social media optimization program for the long haul. It’s not enough to just use it a few times and be done with it. This is an ongoing process. You wouldn’t take the time to cultivate a new friend and then never hang out with them, would you? Some of these contacts will become your friends online. Ignore them, and you’ll waste all the effort you put into your social media optimization and developing those relationships. Remember, social media marketing is actually about building real relationships, not just broadcasting one-way information. That’s what a TV is for.

By starting a social media optimization program, you’ll accomplish two things: 1) You’ll become a thought leader in your chosen field, and 2) your expertise will lead to more and bigger clients or job opportunities.

Source: http://www.sitepronews.com/category/articles/web-20/page/3/

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

2009-09-19T05:13:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-17T03:51:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-17T03:29:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-17T02:55:00.000-07:00

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?

2009-05-22T03:00:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-01T04:02:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-14T11:21:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-09T23:30:00.000-07:00

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

2009-02-14T03:42:00.000-08:00

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/

Do Link Building Strategies Work?

2009-02-01T10:45:00.000-08:00

People always ask me how the syndication of press releases and book-marking your blog in many of the social book-marking sites can possibly generate traffic for your site.

The other day I submitted a press release to thousands of online sources for a client. As part of my regular routine, I then put the release up on their web site. Not 20 minutes later they had a new comment on that press release:

“I found your site on Technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. I’m looking forward to reading more from you.” So do these strategies work? You bet they do! Below are a few link-building strategies for you to use in your own business to help generate traffic for your site.

1. Social Book-Marking Sites

Social Media book-marking is the strategy used in the story above. It’s also usually the quickest way to get your content read. Use social book-marking sites like Digg, Delicious, Reddit and Technorati to bookmark your own blogs. Make sure to write an attention grabbing headline and use appropriate keywords so that people searching for your particular topic and/ or product will be able to find you. As the story above shows, this is a simple way to create a loyal fan base.

2. Comment on Other Blogs in Your Industry

Find relevant successful blogs in your particular niche that you can comment on. If you find a blog that already has a loyal fan base, become a part of their community and you can tap into that fan base. Start leaving comments on the blogs with a link back to your web site (or blog). Engaging with these relevant blogs is a great way to get noticed. It can also lead to valuable links back to your site. Just like with any other conversation, join in and share your opinion; however, make sure you present both you and your company in the best light possible by leaving relevant comments that will actually help others in your niche.

3. Article Syndication Sites

Start writing relevant articles about your niche and syndicate them. There a ton of these article syndication sites out there, some that we use and suggest are http://www.ezinearticles.com, http://www.articlemarketer.com, http://submityourarticle.com, http://www.articlebase.com.

Each of these sites allow you to have a byline at the bottom of your article so if someone reads your article and likes what they see they can visit your site for more information.

Submitting your article to these types of sites does several things. One benefit is that it allows you to get your information out there (through RSS feeds) on thousands of web sites and can lead to your content being referenced in other posts and articles. Also, make sure to always include your web address in your author byline because each time your article is picked up on a site, it provides a link back to your site, thus generating highly targeted traffic to your web site and also raising your search engine rankings through your increased number of link-backs.

Another simple hint: In your byline give the reader a reason to visit your web site. For example, “Want to find more insider secrets to successfully grow your business and increase profits? Check out www.yourwebsitehere.com for a free copy of Top 10 secrets to gaining ridiculous income in 6 months.” (Not to mention if they go and sign-up, then they’re on your mailing list!)

Conclusion:

Remember, if you don’t take the time to tell people about you and your business then no one will ever know what they’re missing!

Source: http://www.sitepronews.com/category/articles/linking-strategies/

Top 5 Tools to Analyze Your Website

2009-02-01T10:19:00.000-08:00

When you manage a website there are some things that you need to know. For example, might it be a good idea to ask yourself questions such as; is the site effective and does it accomplish what it should? Getting answers to such questions is not always the easiest thing in the world. That is - at least not if you haven’t looked at any website statistics. Thankfully there are several great tools on the market that can help you understand how your website is performing. If you know this, you’ll be able to optimize and make the site more sticky and converting. To help you get started we’ll list what we believe to be the top 5 tools to analyze your website.

1. SEO Analyzer:

The SEO Design Analyzer from Raven is free to use and it will give you tons of useful information. Simply type in your URL and you’ll get the data you need to get a good understanding of what you’re doing right and what needs to be better optimized. It’s all very easy and it only takes seconds to get the results.

Some of the information that you’ll get to know are the download time, obsolete HTML, inline styles and at the end you’ll get an overall score for the design. One big plus with this tool is that it covers as good as every area of an average SEO process. If you really want the best of the best you might want to take a look at the SEO Pro version. It will cost you $100 a month but the features that are included could very well be worth it - depending on your requirements. Take advantage of this tool and create a user friendly site with top conversion.

This is perhaps not a web analytics tool in its full meaning as it’s probably better explained as a log analyzer. Nevertheless it is very useful and as it’s an open source program, it’s free to download and use. Due to, or thanks to, its popularity, it comes in several different languages, making it easily accessible for people all over the world.

What it actually does is “generating advanced web, streaming, ftp or mail server statistics graphically” in a HTML report. AWStats surely will give you everything you might be looking for in a statistics tool. Most log file formats are supported by AWStats – such as Apache, IIS (W3C) and WebStar. Take advantage of this tool and get an easy overview of who your visitors are, what search engines they’re using and what time of day they’re visiting your site.

2. Website Grader:

The Website Grader is somewhat similar to SEO Analyzer and it will also provide you with all the necessary data you need to optimize your site. It’s free to use and we must say that we are impressed with the detailed data that appears after only a couple of seconds. Even though your site might be strong, it will always have some weak links that could be worth improving.

Some of the results that you get are heading summary, image summary, number of del.ici.ous bookmarks, on page SEO and off page SEO. Are you for example using too many images and not enough meta data? Website Grader can help you understand all these things for free and when done you can show your visitors the site’s score, with a badge from Website Grader. Try it out - we think that you might really like this tool.

3. AWStats:
This is perhaps not a web analytics tool in its full meaning as it’s probably better explained as a log analyzer. Nevertheless it is very useful and as it’s an open source program, it’s free to download and use. Due to, or thanks to, its popularity, it comes in several different languages, making it easily accessible for people all over the world.

4. Crazy Egg:

The Crazy Egg tool comes in three different versions; standard, plus and pro. The standard version is free and the others cost a bit, but they are in no way pricey. With the help of this tool you’ll be able to see what your visitors are doing on your site – right down to their precise mouse movements. In fact, what we loved the most about this tool is the heatmap.

With the heatmap you’ll be able to see what’s hot and what’s not on your site via an image showing you where your visitors are the most active – every click by your users is recorded. Its simple design makes it very user-friendly as well. The standard version will give you plenty of useful info but if you really want to dig into the core of your site, we would recommend you to pay for the plus or pro version.

5. Mint:

The Mint analytics tool will cost you $30 per site but it will be money well spent. With Mint you’ll get data such as number of visits, unique referrers, most popular pages and much, much more. As this is a tool that you’ll have to pay for, you can expect a little extra – and we can promise you that it will deliver. Mint uses a plugin system, called Pepper, which allows adding extra extensibility to your base script.

We understand that it might seem unnecessary to pay for something that you can get for free elsewhere but remember that $30 is still a cheap way of getting that much data and your site is worth all the attention it can get. All-in-all, mint is a very good analyzing tool.

Source: http://www.sitepronews.com/2009/01/29/top-5-tools-to-analyze-your-website/

What Is “Targeted Traffic” - How Can It Improve Your Sales?

2008-12-11T03:08:00.000-08:00

One thing all webmasters need is traffic to their website, without it your site may as well not exist, but all too often webmaster concentrate on all other expects of running their site
and the actual marketing of the site takes a back seat.

It doesn’t matter if you have the best widgets in the world and you’re giving them away for free, if no one is seeing your site, then you wont give any away, never mind sell one.

There are many ways to market a website, some free, some inexpensive and some very costly, one method is to “buy” visitors, but not just any visitors will do, it’s no good people
looking for cheap flights seeing your snowboarding site as it’s just not relevant to them.

For traffic to be effective it needs to be “targeted” i.e. people who are looking for your product or service right now when they’re ready to make a buying decision, but how does this
work?

How do the companies supplying this traffic know its “targeted”, well what they do is buy up lots of expired domains, these domains are no longer operated by the webmaster for various
reason, they may have lost interest, they may have forgotten to renew their domain name (happens all the time), they are lots of reason, however these domain are still registered in the search engines and still receive substantial traffic.

Once the traffic companies buy the expired domains this traffic is redirected to your website, for example a person goes to Google and types in “cheap flights” and gets a list of results,
they then click on the links in those results to find what they are looking for, if they click on a listing for a domain name that no longer exists but has been bought by the traffic company
that click is then redirected to one of their client websites that relates to “cheap flights”.

From the surfers point of view this is seamless and they end up on a website relating to what they were searching for, the webmaster who bought the “targeted” traffic get a visitor who is
interested in his products and the visitor find what he is looking for, so everyone wins.

It is also possible to specify where that traffic comes from i.e. what country, this is very important, if for instance you have a flower shop in the UK, it’s no use having visitors from
the USA as they are unlikely to want you to deliver flowers 3,000 miles.

Another aspect of choosing this kind of service to promote your website is how “unique” the traffic will be, this mean how often will the same visitor be sent to your site “24 hour unique” mean you will not receive the same visitor twice within 24 hours, “campaign unique” means you will not receive the same visitor twice during the whole campaign, “campaign unique” is the best
traffic to choose.

Redirected or “targeted traffic” is also very effective as prospective clients see your whole page, not a pop up or a pop under.

Source: http://www.thaidoweb.com/2008/11/30/what-is-targeted-traffic-how-can-it-improve-your-sales/

What is DoFollow? What is NoFollow?

2008-11-14T22:54:00.000-08:00

If you’ve been doing any kind of reading about link building, then you’ve probably seen people mentioning “nofollow” and “dofollow” links. These are very important terms to understand when you are trying to build great links back to your site in order to increase your search engine rankings. But, to the person who is new to all of this, it may be kind of confusing. I am going to help break it down for you.

When creating a link on a webpage using HTML, the standard code for that link includes the HTML tag, the URL the link will be going to, the text that will be shown on the webpage for that link, and the closing HTML tag.

You are able to add more HTML to the code above, in order to tell the search engine spiders whether or not you want them to follow the link when crawling your website. You may be thinking… “Why wouldn’t I want the search engine spiders to see all of the links on my site?” This is a very valid concern, which I will address further down. First, I am going to show you how to modify the HTML in order to tell the search engine spiders to crawl a link or not.
To tell the spiders to crawl a link, you don’t have to do anything. Simply using the format shown above, the search engine spiders will crawl the link provided.
To tell the spiders to NOT crawl a link, you need to add the following code to the HTML code:

rel="nofollow"

Basically, there is no true “dofollow”, it is just NOT using the “nofollow” tag.

Why does this matter?
When you are using different methods in order to build links on other websites, you need to determine if the websites you are attempting to get your site listed on use the “nofollow” tag or not. If they do, it may still be a good idea to try to get that link there, but it is generally regarded as not the best use of time since the search engines don’t follow that link and you don’t get any increase in search engine rankings from that link.
So, when you are looking for sites and blogs that you could leave your link on (through reciprocal links, commenting on a blog, directory submissions, buying links, etc) figure out if the links in the particular section of the site you are aiming for uses “nofollow” or not. (A good way to do this is to view the source code).

Why wouldn’t I want the search engine spiders to see all of the links on my site? (Or, Why would I use “nofollow”?)

There are many reasons you would want to use the “nofollow” tag, such as:

1) Paid Links: This is recommended by Google. Essentially, your sites page rank give a small amount of rank juice to the sites you link to (which helps their search engine ranking, which is the purpose of link building, to get that juice from others). If you have a paid link on your site, it’s essentially buying a higher rank in Google. They don’t like that.

2) Maybe in your blog’s comment section (if using most blog software, this is automatic). It is up to you if you want your commentators to get link juice back to their site. It is personal preference.

3) When linking to major, very popular sites. If you are linking to google.com, yahoo.com, digg.com (the front page), cnn.com, or whoever else, they are already popular, so you might as well use “nofollow” since your link won’t make or break them.

Cheers!!!

Understanding what the “No Follow” tag can do for you

2008-11-14T22:12:00.000-08:00

Learning to implement “nofollow” tags is fairly easy. Learning how to apply them in the proper way does require some skill. This post was created in order to educate the average webmaster, or website owner, on what “nofollow” tags can do for your site.

The use of “nofollow” tags can serve many different purposes. They can be used to limit the amount of link juice that flows out of a page to external pages of different domains, or they can be used to control where the link juice will flow to within a site and its internal pages.

Today, we’ll talk about the use of “nofollow” tags to control the amount of link juice flowing within a site and its internal pages. To better explain this I came up with an illustration that should help the “not so technical” crowd understand this process.

If you would, please visualize your homepage as a bucket, and the subpages as sub-buckets. See the Image 1.

Now, imagine that every link you have, in every page of your site, is a hole in the bucket. Once the different Search Engines pour their “SEO Juice” into your homepage bucket, the juice leaks out to your sub-pages, and external pages, through every link you have. See the Image 2.

The problem is that some of your sub-buckets (sub-pages) don’t need that “SEO Juice” as much, while others need a lot of it. A good example is having those “Privacy Policy”, “Shipping Info” types of pages that really don’t need to rank highly in any SERP. So, instead of spreading your “SEO Juice” thin, you’d direct it to where it is most needed. Your site could have an extremely relevant, and high converting sub-page that you want to boost, this would be a good place to start.

The “nofollow” tags help you plug the holes of different buckets and let most of the juice flow where you want more Search Engine authority. See the Image 3.

Once you’ve drawn the “nofollow” strategy map for your site, and decide on what pages need more search engine authority, the implementation part is quite simple.
Now that you understand what “nofollow” tags can do for your site, make sure you look into taking advantage of this awesome tool, and take control of where your “SEO Juice” is flowing!

Source: http://www.evisibility.com/blog/no-follow-tag/

What are Squeeze Pages and Why Do You Need Them?

2008-10-14T05:26:00.000-07:00

There are many terms that are used in the Internet Marketing world. Some are confusing, and some are simple. Some are simple but made to sound confusing. Name squeeze page how to information is a relatively new term, but it’s a technique that has been around for quite some time. Name squeeze page how to information is one of the first steps used by successful marketers for lead generation. Without leads, sales cannot be made – but getting good leads these days can be hard work – unless you know how to use a name squeeze page.

You’ve surely heard of opt-in lists. If you haven’t, an opt-in list is an email list of people who have agreed to receive information from you in their email inboxes. If you send them commercial email messages without that permission, you are spamming them – and that is against the law now. However, if you have their permission, you are not spamming them. They have the option of unsubscribing from your list anytime that they want to, and you must honor any remove requests that you receive.

An opt-in list is gold to an Internet marketer, and this is the end result of name squeeze pages. A name squeeze page is a webpage on your website that is intended to get the name and email address of visitors to the page. Now, there are many scripts that you can use to collect information about your visitors without them knowing about it, but this is not ethical, and in most cases, it violates the spam laws and privacy laws that are in effect.

To make an effective name squeeze page, you want to provide information that interests your readers and makes them want to be directed to more information, or to receive information via email. The visitor will be required to provide their name and email address for this information. This also works well when you have a freebie to give away, such as an ebook or free report. You can require the visitor to enter their email and name, and agree to receive information from you in the future in order to get the free download.

These names and email addresses that your name squeeze page collects can be added to your mailing list. You are now free to email them your newsletters and offers. But you should mail responsibly. Email good information or product reviews to your list, as opposed to spammy type advertisements. If you are mailing what appears to be spam to your list, you will lose a lot of subscribers in a very short time – and all of your efforts will be wasted.

Creating a name squeeze page is not hard. You just need some copy on the page that will make the visitor want to sign up. Of course the page needs to have a sign up form, and the HTML code for such a form can be obtained from your autoresponder service. Using an autoresponder service that requires double opt-in subscribing is highly recommended. The confirmation page that the person sees after confirming the subscription through email should redirect the visitor to the information that they are seeking, or to the free download that you are offering.

Name squeeze pages how to information is popping up all over the Internet. This is happening because this technique works. Internet marketers are using name squeeze pages on a regular basis to build massive opt-in lists. If lead generation is important to your business, you need to get your name squeeze pages up and working for you as soon as possible.

Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Name-Squeeze-Pages---What-Are-They-and-Why-Do-You-Need-Them?&id=91846

Tips for Meta Description and Keyword Tags

2008-10-11T02:55:00.000-07:00

Keyword and description meta tags optimization tutorial for better search engine rankings. Have you ever wondered why some web pages get higher search engine rankings than others? Of course you have, if you are a web developer. You may have read or heard of a hundred ways to improve your page ranking and tried them all. Only to see dismal results and wonder what the heck went wrong.

Been there and done that. So I thought I would let you in on the secrets I use to get my pages to rank high in the search engines. Once you read these tricks you might think that is so obvious I should have thought of it.

Here are the 10 rules I use to search engine optimize a page for keywords and description meta tags.

1. First let's assume that you already know what the page is about and have already created it. This is not a tutorial on how to write web pages. Rather guidelines for search engine optimization using your meta keywords and description tags.

Depending on the type of page you are creating determines how many keywords you should use. For instance a sales letter is typically 2000 or more words. In that type of page you need to describe all the advantages of your product and why it is the right solution. You will want to get testimonials and place them in appropriate places. You may even want to tell a story relating to how well the product has performed. Don't over do the page or you will lose your prospect to boredom.

The product page (different from the sales letter) should be between 500 and 750 words. All you are trying to do here is sell a product. Visitors that make it to these pages probably already know what they are looking for and are only looking for specific information. Your job is to convince them that your product is the right one. Beyond that and there is more opportunity for your visitors to disagree with your pitch and move on.

The article page should be at least 1000 words and not more than 5000 words. Okay some might say that 5000 is too long and others have said that isn't 1000 words aren't enough words to describe what they have to say. Too long - some say that 500 words is good for an article page. So lets look at this: a person who can read 10 words a second will be through your page in 50 seconds. Not enough time for them to soak up your message. A person reading 3 words a second will take about 2-1/2 minutes. Plenty of time for your message to sink in.

The average reader can read somewhere around 6 words per second. Which would take them 83 seconds to read your 500 word article. Barely enough time to get your visitors comfortable. At 1000 words the average reader will read your page in roughly 3 minutes. At 6 words a second your reader needs around 3 minutes to read a 1000 word article. This plenty of time for the reader to make a decision to click on your most wanted response.

At over 2000 words the average reader will need 5-1/2 minutes to get through it. This is stretching the limit of time most visitors will spend reading one web page. At 5000 words the average reader takes over 13 minutes to read your page. This is well past the amount of time a visitor will need to decide to click on your most wanted response. If your article is really good most people will read all the way through it. If not they are off to the next website in a flash. If you have more than 2000 words you may want to consider breaking the article into 2 pages.

Okay, back to rule #1 use the right amount of words for a particular type of page. Not too many and not too few.

2. Primary meta keyword (the first one) must be an exact match with the file name of your page. This lets the search engines match up your keyword with your page and give your page higher relevancy. Here is an example from: Ocular Defense Formula (Pr2 and #2 in Google). The first keyword for this page is "Ocular Defense Formula." This seemingly obsure product gets 33,000+ search engine results in Google alone. So it is not that obscure after all. And makes for a good example.

3. Use only 5 keywords in your meta keywords tag. More than that and the search engines might think you are keyword spamming and won't list your page. The search engines rank your keywords in the order that they appear. This makes the first one the primary keyword and the second one a secondary keyword and so on. You should line your keywords up in the order of relevance to the page. Here is the meta keyword tag I used in this example.

"Ocular Defense Formula, Lutein, Bilberry, eye health, vision"

4. Use all of your keywords in your meta description, with the primary keyword as close to the front as possible. Definitely within the first 5 words of your description. The search engines don't read your description verbatim, but can find and match them with your keyword list. So try to use them all but don't repeat them if at all possible. Again if your meta description repeats your keywords too often the search engines might think you are keyword spamming and not list your page, so don't do it.

5. Meta description should be between 100 and 200 characters. It is important to get a solid description of your page. Less that 100 characters and the search engine may not find it relevant enough to list. More than 200 characters and the search engines may truncate it. Which looks unprofessional on your part. Truncated meta descriptions may leave searchers with the impression that your content will be too wordy and full of you know what. Too short a description and your visitors may think there is not enough information on your page and move on to the next result. So try to get your description just right, not too long and not too short. Here is the meta description for ODF.

"Ocular Defense Formula with Lutein, Bilberry and herbs to support eye health and protect your vision from aging and oxidation. Learn how to improve your visual acuity."

6. Line up your meta keywords up too resemble a sentence. Although search engines don't read your keywords as a sentence verbatim, it should reflect well what your page is all about. See the meta keyword tag above.

7. Proof read your content twice. You should always proof read your work before you post for a lot of good reasons like spelling, grammar, placement and paragraph distribution. Once your page looks great proof read it again with your focus on keyword placement and repetition. You want your keywords placed in your content sparingly. What? you say. Again over use of your keywords might result in the search engines thinking you are keyword spamming. That isn't to say you shouldn't have too few. My rule of thumb is 3 uses of a keyword for every 300 words. This lets the search engines know that there is a lot of supporting content for the keyword.

As you are proof reading you may discover that you have a much better keyword for your meta tag than what you originally thought. For instance in ODF I discovered that I had left out the keyword "vision". After proof reading my page I added that keyword to my list and used it a couple more times in the page.

8. Put your meta description all on one line in your html code. This will ensure that the search engines reads it all. I have noticed that some search engine results leave off the second line of a description. That may leave out some of your meta keywords if that happens.

9. Never use more than 3 words for your primary keyword (and file name). People rarely search for a keyword phrase over 3 words long. Too many words in a keyword phrase and the search engines may not find enough relevancy to list your page in the results. Two words in a keyword phrase (and file name) is ideal. For Ocular Defense Formula, I thought 2 words weren't enough to describe the page. "Ocular Defense" would have been too vague and misleading. I could have named the page something else and optimized for those keywords, but, ODF is a product page and optimizing for something like "Eye Health" would have been misleading and probably not get listed high in the search engines.

10. Use your primary keyword in the first and last paragraph of your page. The search engines will give more relevancy to your page if they find your keywords at the beginning and the end of your page. Also your primary keyword should appear in the first 90 characters of your content.

Bonus tip - Use your primary keyword as a text link in your page only once. Not twice but definitely once. If you don't want your visitors to leave your page make that link an "add to favorites" bookmark. On a product page this works great because you don't want to give your visitors the opportunity to go else where.

In summary use these tips to increase your search engine rankings. Optimizing your keyword and descriptions should improve the relevancy of your page and boost your search engine rankings. Notice how I used my primary keyword and description meta tags in this last paragraph.

Source: http://www.entireweb.com/newsletter/archive/2008/ISSUE436.html

13 Tips to Keep in Mind When Writing Your PPC Ads

2008-10-11T02:32:00.000-07:00

1. Heading. This is the most important part of your Ad. The heading is what potential visitors see first when looking at various search results. The better the visitor can identify with your heading the more likely they are to click on your ad and visit your web site. Keep in mind that your headline MUST give them what they want. It must give them the answer they are searching for, if it doesn’t they won’t click. On the opposite side of that. The headline is a good place to qualify your prospects. You don’t just want “lookie loos” on your web site wasting your money by clicking on your ad and not signing up for your product.

2. Use keywords in your title. Use keywords that people are searching for in your ads. By using the keyword in the heading it captures the searcher and subconsciously they think that your as answers their search because you have the keyword in the title.

3. Benefit. The first line of the ad should describe the benefit of what you’re offering. Buyers want to know “what’s in it for them” so TELL THEM! For Example: “new affordable pool equipment” In this example, the benefit is that your equipment is new and affordable.

4. Feature. The second line of your ad should depict a major feature for your particular product or feature.

For Example: “deal with experienced experts” In this example, the feature is that your company is experienced and knowledgeable; “Been is business for over 20 years” is another good feature because people assume that if you’ve been in the business for a long time than you know what you’re doing (which may or may not be a good assumption on their part!)

5. Display URL vs Destination URL. Google give you two places to note your URL, one is seen on the ad (the display URL) and one is the actual web site a visitor is taken to when they click on your ad (the destination URL), both are very important.

Since the space you are given to get your message across is so small, the display URL is another place that viewers can subconsciously see your information. So, make it simple on them to read and consider using the keyword (of it fits) as a sub directory of your URL.

For example: www.YourWebSiteHere.com/PoolEquipment For the destination URL, make sure that the landing page (the page your visitor is taken to) gives them the answer to their search. If they were looking for pool equipment, DO NOT take them to the home page. Instead, direct them to a page that lists all the different pool equipment you have available. Simply by doing this one trick you will decrease your bounce rate (or the number of people that leave your site without visiting any other page on your site, more importantly the confirmation page that tracks your conversions!)

6. Capitalize EVERY word! Although these ads may say the same thing, but which stands out more to you? For Example: Pool equipment New affordable pool equipment deal with experienced experts. www.yourwebsitehere.com

For Example: Pool Equipment New Affordable Pool Equipment Deal With Experienced Experts. www.YourWebSiteHere.com

So, which do you think is going to attract the eye of the potential buyer?

7. Keyword Methods. There are several methods for choosing keywords

1. [Exact Match]- The search has to match exactly to your keyword with no additional keywords. For example: if [pool equipment] was searched, your ad would only be displayed someone searched for pool equipment and not new pool equipment.

2. “Phrase Match”- Your ad appears when that exact phrase is searched. Your ad will come up even if additional words are used, but you search has to be shown in the exact order.

For Example: if “pool equipment” was searched, your ad would come up new pool equipment, pool equipment store, but not for equipment for your pool.

3. Broad Match- If you do not put your keyword(s) in brackets or quotes, then Google will come up with results for all possible matches of your keyword(s).

For example: if some searched for pool equipment, your ad would show up for new pool equipment, pool equipment for your home, pool equipment store, etc. Unfortunately, there is no one “best way” to match your keywords. You must take a look at your business and decide what works for your product or service. One more tip- if you decide to use broad match make sure you use negative keywords, such as free. This was your ad would not come up when someone search free pool equipment (unless you really had free equipment to give out- and if that’s the case, let me know and we’ll talk).

It is quite easy to note the negative keywords. For example, if you didn’t want free you would write - free in your list of keywords. So you may have a list that looks like this:

[pool equipment] pool equipment - free

And yes, you can most certainly list exact, phrase and broad match keywords.

8. Don’t forget the “www.” Make sure that your use the “www” is your display URL. No, it is not necessary and the visitor will still reach your site without it; however, today, our brains are so systematic that by including the “www” it not only draws attention to the web site (and the ad) but it allows our brain to process that we are looking at a URL and thus we should remember what we are looking at.

9. Short and to the Point. You are VERY limited in the amount of characters you get for your ads. Therefore, keep your ads as concise as possible… GET TO THE POINT!

10. Price. We all know price drives a person. Even in real estate if your home isn’t selling than what’s wrong with it? The price. If you have competitively priced your product or service to be the lowest in your market, consider putting the price in your ad title. If a potential buyer sees your low price they’ll probably click on your ad to see what you’re all about.

11. Free. I like free- don’t you? People inherently like “free” things. So, if you are truly giving something away for free (like a free consultation, free bonus, free trial) than consider putting free in your title. Again, it will grab the attention of your potential buyer and encourage them to visit your web site.

12. Two things to look at: CTR (Click Through Rate) and Conversion Rate. Both of these elements are key when you are analyzing the success of your keywords and ads. You must find a “happy medium” between the two elements, because without it, your ads will fail. For Example: If you adjust your ad focusing solely on your conversion rate, although you may be converting more people and thus probably spending more money If you had 1,000 impressions and 4 visitors your CTR would be .04%. Of these 4 clicks, you had 1 conversion for a conversion rate of 25%. Not a bad conversion rate and you’re spending less money to get it. Good right? Well, kind of. Unfortunately, (or fortunately depending on the way you look at it) Google places rank of CTR and those ads with a higher CTR will be shown more often (keep in mind this is not the only factor but is one of many). So, although you may think you’re doing better because you’re spending less money and getting more leads/conversions you may sacrifice you position with Google.

13. Test, Test and Test AGAIN! Unfortunately, even after spending all the time in the world to make sure you have the best possible ad for your product or service you cannot just “set the ad and go.” You must keep testing the ad to see what works. Yes, at times, this re-testing can be a daunting task, but if you don’t continually test your market, ads and keywords you will loose the game because I guarantee you, your competition is still testing.

Source: http://www.sitepronews.com/2008/10/10/13-tips-to-keep-in-mind-when-writing-your-ppc-ads/

32 Most Important SEO Tips

2008-10-09T02:52:00.000-07:00

Following these simple tips will definitely boost your traffic and search engine rankings for free.

1. Make sure your site is not under construction, incomplete, with little or no unique content.

2. When your site is ready, submit it to Google, Yahoo, MSN and ASK.com. Consider also submitting to other search engine but most of them are powered by these four leading search engines. Submit also your site to reputable high PR web directories, open directories, yellow pages and social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us, furl, etc.

3. Submit your sitemap to Google, Yahoo, MSN and ASK.com (sitemap for search engines usually in XML format)

4. Offer sitemap to your site visitors for easy page navigation. (sitemap for visitors in HTML format)

5. Create unique and rich content sites. Avoid duplicate content. Do not create multiple pages, sub-domains, domains, mirror sites or sites with different domain names but same content.

6. Check your keywords and make sure they are relevant and actually are contained in your site. Avoid keywords stuffing.

7. Use text instead of images in your content, links and important subjects.

8. Make your TITLE and ALT tags descriptive, simple and keyword rich. Avoid irrelevant and repeated keywords.

9. Title tag should be 60-80 characters maximum length.

10. Meta tag description should be 160-180 characters including spaces. (about 25-30 words)

11. Meta Tag keywords must be 15-20 words maximum.

12. Optimize Pages with Headings (H1, H2, H3..) containing your site's primary keywords.

13. Validate your CSS and HTML. Check for errors and broken links.

14. If your site contains dynamic pages(i.e., the URL contains a "?" character), make sure you use SEO friendly URLs. Search engines' spiders having difficulty indexing dynamic pages.

15. Maximum links per page must be fewer than 100. Avoid the risk of being flagged as link farm by search engines.

16. Use Lynx as text browser to check your site. (http://lynx.isc.org/)

17. Allow search bots (good ones) to crawl your sites without session IDs or arguments that track their path through the site. Using these techniques may result in incomplete indexing of your site.

18. Check your web server/host if it supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header. It tells search engines whether your content has changed since last crawled your site. It will save you bandwidth, resources and avoid server overload.

19. Use Robots.txt file to manage and control search engine spiders in indexing your site. You can allow and disallow spiders and choose directories you want to be crawled and indexed. But with bad bots or spam bots you need to modify your HTACCESS file to properly and effectively manage bots or spiders. Visit http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/faq.html to learn more about Robots.txt file.

20. Do not attempt to present different content to search engines than what you show to your site visitors.

21. Avoid dirty tricks and exploiting loop holes to improve search engines ranking.

22. Avoid links to bad neighborhood such as web spammers, link farms, phishing, hacker, crack, gambling, porn and scam sites. Linking to them will greatly affects your search engine rankings.

23. Do not attempt to join in link schemes, excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging and link exchange web rings.

24. Do not use unauthorized programs or online tools to submit your site, check page rankings and other automated queries. Avoid the risk of being flagged as spam.

25. Do not use hidden text and links. Show to search engines what you show to your visitors. It will greatly affect your site's reputation.

26. Do not attempt to create pages that contains phishing, scam, viruses, trojans, backdoors, spyware, adware and other malicious programs.

27. Make your site useful and informative.

28. Improve your link building. Link to high PR websites. Quality of relevant links are far more important than quantity. Links will greatly improve your site's visibility, popularity and rankings. Search engines consider links as votes to your site.

29. Check your page link structure. Every page should be reachable by a single static text link.

30. Be extra careful in purchasing SEO services. Some uses illegal and questionable ways to improve rankings.

31. Do not buy or sell links.

32. Do not create sites that contains purely affiliate links and no valuable content that are useful to the users.

I hope these tips will add more popularity and visibility to your site. Enjoy!

Source: http://www.entireweb.com/newsletter/archive/2008/ISSUE464.html

Improve Website Visibility in Search Engines Yourself

2008-10-07T23:37:00.000-07:00

Do you drive yourself crazy trying to keep up with the latest SEO trends? If so, Stop! Please. You

have enough to worry about already. Quit running yourself ragged or spending a fortune trying to keep up with the latest and greatest SEO tricks and tips. The truth is search engine optimization has not changed nearly as much as experts (trying to sell you something) might want you to think.

To be perfectly honest getting to the top of Google, Yahoo, MSN or any other search engine is largely dependent on the quality of your Web pages. There’s no magic formula you must follow to the letter but there are a number of simple things you can better understand and do to help get you to the top of ANY search engine. It’s a lot easier than most people think.

First and most importantly, remember that search engines only care about your Web pages, NOT the whole site. If you end up with enough high ranking PAGES from a single site on Google, you can become a what it considers to be an “authority site” which can automatically double your top ten rankings. Here’s what I mean…

If you do a search on Google and search for “SEO partner” (without the quotes) you will see that number one looks like a normal return while number two is indented. You have just witnessed an authority site’s usurping of an extra top spot. There is a good chance that the indented one was actually number six or even fifteen. But since it is from an authority site it got to cut the line and push everybody else’s listings down one.

Secondly, the biggest and most important search engines use something called a natural text algorithm. This means they can tell when you are writing text that is intended more for search engine spiders than for actual people, and they will ding you for it. So to keep quality high, simply write your page text as if you were describing your goods or services to a good friend. Let the words flow and don’t get hung up on things like keyword density and ideal placement. We’ve got a great technique for that coming up next.

Keyword density is an outdated concept for the most part. As long as you don’t spam the text by having your keyword blatantly repeated or inserted in areas that don’t make sense, you will be OK. If having a guideline helps, plan to use each keyword about five or six times on each page and no more than twice in a single paragraph.

Keyword proximity is another concept that is a bit outdated but still somewhat valid. What that means is you should be aware of where your keywords go but you do not need to follow a strict formula of placing them in exact locations. Just be strategic. Put them where they make the most sense in context. Don’t force them to fit in one location just because it is the first sentence of the third paragraph or whatever. It helps the reader and the search engine if you can mention your main keyword toward the beginning of the page text and toward the end, but this is not a hard and fast rule. It’s just a suggestion.

As for the number of keywords you optimize a single page for, do what makes sense for the page length. If the page is really long and you have room for several keywords to be featured with good natural ext, go for it. As a rule of thumb I try to limit each page to about three keywords but that’s just because it helps me stay better organized and does not confuse the readers by splitting their focus too much. The other reason is because I really want it featured prominently in the page title.

Speaking of the title, this is one of the few META tags we care about and it’s a pretty big deal. Use the title as your chance to show off your keywords. After all, this is what your visitors searched for. Don’t feel that a page title needs to be clever and captivating like a book title. In fact this is probably the easiest part. Just take your keywords, in order of importance, and separate them with a comma or pipe (the vertical key over the enter key.) That’s it! Just remember most search engine will only count the first 65 letters.

So if you did a page on search engine optimization tips with the following keywords: “SEO, Search Engine Optimization, SEO Tips” your title could be just that. Or you can use like this “SEO | Search Engine Optimization | SEO Tips.”

And by the way, when Google sees “SEO Tips” it is counting the word SEO and Tips as individual words so the title text “SEO, SEO Tips” has the word SEO repeated. Just two instances of one keyword so close is not really SPAM but it’s good to be aware of.

I mentioned that the Title tag is one of the few META tags we care about. Another is the Description tag. No magic here. Just be sure to write it naturally and include a couple of your keywords if they fit in well. And you can make this as long as you like but most search engines don’t use more than the first 150 characters. Most importantly, think of the Description as your big chance to get people interested enough to visit your page. This is sales copy first.

Once someone lands on your page they will be looking for a little guidance. Give it to them with Headings (H1, H2, etc.) Think of a heading as an on page title use a similar keyword strategy, just not as cut and dry. Here it is a good idea to have not only your keyword but also some descriptive supporting text. Something like “SEO Tips That Really Work” is a good example. We have our SEO Tips keyword and reinforce it with a statement that the information they are about to read actually works. Too simple? Yes. It really is.

While headings are your first visual cue to the reader, links are the ones that really draw them in. Make sure your on page links stand out and contain relevant anchor text (clickable keywords.)

If you really want to get the most out of your online real estate consider dedicating one page to each major keyword and linking to it from the anchor text on another page. For example, the words SEO Tips would be great anchor text to a page titled “SEO Tips | Search Engine Optimization Strategies.”

The final piece of this SEO puzzle is linking. Quality inbound links will account for most of your success on Goggle and several other top search engines. You need to get the highest quality links possible and build optimal reciprocal linking partnerships. This is HUGE!

The final piece of this SEO puzzle is linking. Quality inbound links will account for most of your success on Google and several other top search engines. You need to get the highest quality links possible and build optimal reciprocal linking partnerships. This is HUGE!

You can do it all manually or use an inexpensive SEO software tool like SE0elite. But either way, manually or with a tool, focus your efforts on linking as much as possible. While onsite optimization is a one time (or at least limited) thing, linking should be part of your weekly routine.

Good luck!

Source: http://www.sitepronews.com/2008/10/02/seo-intervention-stop-driving-yourself-crazy-and-start-getting-results/

10 Most Useful Free Google Marketing Tools

2008-10-01T05:49:00.000-07:00

Google has become the dominant search engine on the Internet. It would be hard to imagine a web without Google. For that matter, it would now be hard to imagine a world without Google. As frightening as that may seem to many people, it is none the less true.

For better or worst, Google has permeated into almost every aspect of our everyday life. Being Googled is now a common expression and an act carried out by millions of users around the world each day. New Google products and services are coming on stream at a staggering pace, further increasing Google’s impact on our lives.

Despite this dominating presence, many people still don’t realize Google offers some excellent free marketing tools for marketers and webmasters. Marketing tools which can prove extremely valuable to any webmaster or marketer trying to promote their sites or products online. Useful
tools that will make your promotions easier and much more profitable.

Don’t be fooled by the ‘free’ label, these marketing tools might be free but there are also valuable. One even wonders why Google would be giving away these tools and services for free? It probably makes good business sense in the long run, by providing these free tools Google is fostering a lot of company good-will and building up the Google brand name in the process. Good PR is good business.

Every marketer and webmaster should be taking advantage of Google’s good-will and snapping up these professionally run services and marketing tools.

Here’s a quick run-down of the 10 most valuable free Google Internet marketing tools:

1. Google Analytics

Perhaps the premier marketing tool offered by Google. It will prove helpful to both the marketer and the webmaster. Google Analytics gives you a daily snapshot of your web site. Google Analytics analyzes your traffic, where it comes from and what it does once it enters your site.
You can monitor up to three sites for free.

Google Analytics is extremely valuable in analyzing your marketing funnel, it tracks all the steps leading up to your sales or checkout page. Vital information for raising your conversion rate and ROI.

You may be placed on a waiting list for this highly in demand service from Google.

2. Google Sitemaps

Webmasters can use Google Sitemaps to almost instantly place newly created pages on their site into the Google Search Index. This is an XML file that is uploaded to Google as new pages are added on your site. Needless to say this can be a valuable service for any webmaster or marketer who wants to get their information on the web quickly.

3. Google Alerts

Be notified when someone or another site lists your site or mentions your name. Great way to keep track of all your online activities. Great way to monitor all your online business interests and products.

4. Google Froogle

Froogle is Google’s price directory! It simply lists all the cheapest prices for different products on the web. For marketers and webmasters who are promoting products, it should be studied and analyzed. Optimizing your site’s content for Froogle may prove to be very beneficial.

Follow Froogle or Google directions exactly on how to list or display products on your site. Froogle will spider your site and display your prices and products to thousands of targeted customers. That, as they say, is priceless.

5. Google Checkout

Not exactly free but for those marketers who use AdWords - for every $1 spent on AdWords you can process $10 for free. You can also place the shopping cart logo on your AdWords ad and take advantage of the prestige and trust the Google brand name has built up.

Over time marketers may find this tool to be very effective and valuable.

6. Google eBlogger

Blogging has become vitally important to the health and functioning of your web site. No site should be without at least one blog and RSS feed. Creating a blog (online journal) on the topic of your web site or product will bring in extra traffic and targeted customers. eBlogger is a simple free blogging service that even lets you publish or post your blog files to your own web site server. Keep in mind, each blog has that all important Google Blog Search bar.

7. Google Toolbar - Enterprise Version

Try the new enterprise version of the Google Toolbar for your company or business. Integrates countless features with all your employees or corporate network. These could include a common customer database, company calendar, financial news…

Keep in mind, Google also ranks every page it indexes on a scale of 0-10. While it is important to know the Page Rank of your own pages, it is even more important to know the PR of your competitor’s pages. You can use the toolbar to get the PR of each page you’re visiting. Extremely helpful information for webmasters and marketers to know when forming online linking or business arrangements.

8. Google Groups

Every marketer knows the important of having a large contact list of people with a similar interest. Social networking will play an ever increasing role in your success on the web. Just look at the growing popularity of sites like MySpace and LiveJournal.

Google groups is another form of social and business networking that every marketer should be aware of and pursuing.

9. Google Adsense

One simple way to monetize your web content is to use Google Adsense. Just place the Adsense code on your site and receive a check from Google each month. For webmasters who are not really into online marketing (does such creatures exist?) Adsense can be a painless way to earn extra income from your site.

For professional marketers using the Adsense system can supply a tremendous amount of marketing information on the keywords in their particular niche. It keeps the marketer informed on what keywords are being bid on and how much advertisers are willing to pay.

Adsense also has an excellent real-time tracking system you can use to keep track of all your important web pages.

10. Google Docs

A recent addition to Google’s stable of free products. Google Docs (Writely.com) is a full featured online writing editor with spellcheck and great collaborating features. It also lets you publish your content directly to your blogs. One feature that may be of interest to marketers, it lets your save files in the popular download format of PDF.

Lets face it, until video takes over the web in four or five years time - the written word is still king on the net. It is the medium that markets, promotes and sells your content or products. Writely will help you write better.

Google Trends

This Google program will let you search popular trends, important for marketers searching for the latest hot product to promote. You can also break down these trends by different regions.

Final Note

Please take note that signing up for a Google account will usually help you in obtaining most of these free services or programs. Some of these programs may have to be applied for individually. But be assured, all these free Google marketing tools are well worth your time and effort. They will make your marketing easier and they will help any webmaster or marketer run their online business more efficiently.

Source: http://www.sitepronews.com/2008/09/27/10-most-useful-free-google-marketing-tools/

Social Media Optimization - How to Drive Traffic

2008-09-27T02:15:00.000-07:00

SMO, or Social Media Optimization, helps build website traffic by using social media based websites. The dawning of web 2.0 has seen many different social media websites crop up in an equally large number of different guises. Content sharing, social bookmarking, and collaborative websites form the basis of this initiative and it is these types of website that you need to use in order to leverage the power of the social web.

SMO As Guerrilla Marketing

The nature of Social Media Optimization is such that it could be considered form of guerrilla marketing. Website owners and blog owners have the choice of either investing money or their own skills and time in order to generate traffic from social sites. As long as your efforts are directed appropriately, the more work you put in the more reward you will reap.

SMO As A Link Building Technique

Social optimization also has a happy side effect - it helps to build your link profile so you will usually gain search engine traffic in the long term. Becoming a part of an online community is essential to your social optimization and this, in turn, will naturally provide links to your website. The links will usually be from relevant pages based on a similar topic to that of your own page. The more popular social sites are also given a lot of weight by certain search engines.

Optimize Your Existing Site

Create genuinely interesting, intriguing, or informative pages. Includes images, links, video, and collaborative tools so that visitors really get involved when they do visit your site. SMO is basically digital word-of-mouth and if your website doesn't offer some kind of appealing experience to your visitors, then it simply won't attract the positive word-of-mouth that you want.

Add new pages, if necessary, so that you can include more information. However, don't just add pages for the sake of it - ensure that each page really does have something unique to offer. A website still needs to be well structured.

Get A Blog

Add a blog. Every website has potential blog posts in it so find yours and start blogging regularly. Blog posts tend to attract links from other blog posts and those in turn will spread the word of your website. The more popular your blog becomes, the more value it is perceived to offer and the more visitors you will continue to get.

Be active in those blogs that are within your industry and use your link where permitted and relevant. Don't spam because that will lose you more friends than it will make but if you offer relevant information and a forum or blog allows you to link to it, then offer an insightful comment and provide a link.

Be Active

Being active is a vital part to your whole SMO campaign. Simply registering with social bookmarking sites and content sharing sites is not enough. You need to be involved, post regularly, and generally become a part of the community. If you don't have the time or the inclination to do this then find somebody else to do it instead.

Some Social Sites To Join

You really do reap what you sow in terms of SMO. Determine the sites that are most suitable to your website, join them, and become an active member. Choose some broad topic sites as well as some that are specific to those interested in the industry in which you operate or topic that you cover. Look at social news submission sites, content sharing sites, bookmarking, and networking sites and try to get a broad coverage of all of them. Here are just a few of the sites you should seriously consider using:

Social News/Media Sharing Websites

* Reddit - Reddit is a very popular social news website that boasts a lot of subscribers and covers a wide range of topics.
* Digg - Initially, Digg was reserved to technology and related topics but is now a broad topic news site that again has a lot of subscribers and regular readers.
* Newsvine - Not as popular as the two above but offering a slightly more formal tone to its content. Again, a good range of topics are covered.

Social Networking Sites

* MySpace - It may be largely riddled with spam but there are still too many genuine users for you to ignore MySpace. You don't have to be an unsigned band to take advantage either.
* Facebook - Has caused quite a stir and offers users the chance to create and distribute their own applications as well as content. Another very popular site.
* LinkedIn - LinkedIn is a social networking site dedicated to professionals and businesses. It can really help to build a huge network of partners, customers, and other useful contacts in a business network.

Social Bookmarking Websites

* del.icio.us - Register, store bookmarks that you find useful, and include a bookmark to your own website and use a public profile.
* Stumble Upon - Same again. Alternatively you can add a Stumble icon to each of your pages, blog posts, and other media and let your readers do the walking for you.

Buttons For Your Pages

Many social websites offer a button that your readers or visitors can use to automatically add a page. Bookmarking and content sharing sites, in particular, have these buttons and if you've ever read a website or an article site then you will have seen the Digg This and Stumble buttons at the bottom of each entry. Users registered with these sites can click the button and quickly add your page. The most popular websites are usually displayed on the high traffic home pages delivering yet more visitors to your site.

Offering Quality

The Social Internet has opened up a whole new avenue for promoting your business, but it needs to be done properly and carefully. Simply tagging, bookmarking, and sharing every page you have regardless of its quality will not bring you the desired results. You may find that it does you more harm than good in the long run.

Source: http://www.entireweb.com/newsletter/archive/2008/ISSUE445.html

Blended Search Optimization

2008-06-23T23:43:00.000-07:00

Apparently, “blended” search results are becoming all the rage. That is, search results containing images, videos, and news, Blogs, and reference results on the same page.

As with New trends coming upstream and heading there way right on the target to get good results. Thus 2007 saw some interesting developments with the search engine results pages. Google in fact introduced their Universal Search incorporating things such as video, image results, book results, news results, blog results and the like.

Recent Study:

The study found that 31 percent of users are now clicking images, with twice as many searchers aged 18–34 clicking them compared with those over 35. 17 percent are clicking on videos. The most frequently clicked vertical within blended search is news.

While Google kicked off the blended results craze nearly a year ago, and MSN and Yahoo followed suit later in 2007, newbie’s Askx.com and searchmash.com are among the blended search engines trying to find a toe-hold in Google’s world.

The importance of optimizing for universal search will be one of the main areas of focus for online marketers in 2008.So here is the list of all the potential blended search result options available.

Types of Blended Search Results

1. Image Results
2. Online Video
3. New Results
4. Blog Listings/Results
5. Book Listings
6. PDF’s
7. Local / GEO Search Listings
8. Traditional Text Link Results via Web Search
9. Product Search
10. Catalog Search
11. Movie Search
12. Music Search
13. Map Search
14. Health Search
15. Celebrity Search
16. Job Search
17. Recipe Search
18. Financial / Stock Search
19. People Search
20. Comparison Search

Blended search will tie into relevancy based on the query of the search. Ultimately the search engines will continue and work to provide the most relevant results possible. The days of simple text link web results are quickly being replaced by more dynamic, more targeted search results. Therefore the need to optimize for blended search becomes cardinal.

Some Tips for Optimizing for Blended Search

1. Optimize Your Existing Site Content – Do make sure that you optimize your existing content for the search engines. Begin with on page factors such as optimized page titles, Meta data and page copy. While text link search results are becoming less, they still dominate the current search results and will remain a part of the search page.

2. Optimize Images - something that is often overlooked is optimizing the images found on your site for your key phrases. This includes using alt text, proper naming conventions and optimizing images for size.

3. Review and Organize Your Content - determine if there is an opportunity to serve your content to your users in various formats. Consider html page copy, videos, video transcripts, blog content, press release news content, PDF etc.

4. Optimize, Upload and Publish Video - with so many video aggregator sites out there, creating, optimizing and uploading your videos for your user becomes even more important. The search engines have started to incorporate more video results into their search results.

5. Optimize Press Releases - syndicate company news through RSS feeds and press releases so that news results/press releases about your company show up in the blended search results.

6. Always Add Fresh Content - Whether it's page copy, new images, new videos, pod casts, white papers, always continue to add fresh content to your web properties. Blended search results will factor in relevancy and as a result content that is fresh may be given more weight in the search results. Continuing to create fresh content can help promote your various forms of content for blended search.

7. Blog - Blogs continue to be a more trusted form of content on the Web. As a result, expect the search engines to incorporate more blog content/results into their main results. Blogging is a great way to quickly get your content out there. Blog content (if your blog is well optimized) can expect to get optimized and ranked in the search engines within hours.

8. Start with Your Images - The number of people online searching for pictures is huge, and it's an audience that is frequently ignored when it comes to SEO. Make sure you name each image file in a descriptive way. The number of people online searching for pictures is huge, and it's an audience that is frequently ignored when it comes to SEO. Make sure you name each image file in a descriptive way. Also, be sure to have a descriptive caption next to the image.

Make them available everywhere. In particular, make them available anywhere people can rate them. For instance, Google owns Picasa and Yahoo! owns Flicker, so open up accounts and make your pictures available to all.

Upload images to social networking sites such as Face Book and My Space. And be sure to get pages with good images bookmarked around social media sites.

9. Target is local results - For Targeting results, open up a Google Account and make your way directly to the Local Business Center to enter your free listing.

So Why Not Get Started?

If you do not begin optimizing for universal search results as part of your online marketing strategy now, you may cost yourself more in the end. As you drop in search rankings, you may be forced to increase your pay per click spend driving up your online advertising expenditure. Why not optimize for organic placement via blended search optimization as part of your longer term strategy. So let’s Go with Today's trend that is Tomorrow’s Future i.e. Blend Search Optimization

How to start is with your images?

The number of people online searching for pictures is huge, and it's an audience that is frequently ignored when it comes to SEO. Make sure you name each image file in a descriptive way. If it's a picture of spring daffodils, then name it as such. And don't forget to do the same with the alt attribute. Also, be sure to have a descriptive caption next to the image.

But here's the most important thing with images you own: Make them available everywhere. In particular, make them available anywhere people can rate them. For instance, Google owns Picasa and Yahoo! owns Flickr, so open up accounts and make your pictures available to all.

Upload images to social networking sites such as Face Book and My Space. And be sure to get pages with good images bookmarked around social media sites.

Next target is local results

And a search for San Francisco airport brings back a list of ten local results related to the airport... right in the middle of the page! So, open up a Google Account and make your way directly to the Local Business Centre to enter your free listing.

Blogs are big. And that's a fact

If you can develop a popular blog, you can surge to the top of search engine results charts. A good blog attracts many, many subscribers to your RSS feed. Remember that Google owns Blogger and Feed Burner, so you can be sure they know which the popular blogs are. And, of course, popular Blogs attract lots of links. And Blogs are not just static text anymore. You can embed audio, video and images.

An RSS 2.0 document used for syndicating Blogs and pod casts can be optimized similar to an HTML document. There's a title tag, a description tag and a publishing date tag to give an indication of the freshness of your content. If you're syndicating a pod cast, for instance, this is a great way to get some keyword-rich optimization into your feed.

Get into movie business

Ten years ago (and that's not really a long, long time ago) the thought of making your own movies or advertisements was as alien as... er... something alien. But now, you can be making movies and showing them to people around the world for the price of a cheap camcorder. Videos are beginning to creep into all types of searches conducted on Google's Universal and blended search (and the other major search engines), not just those related to entertainment.

For example, at the time of this writing I made a short video chatting about the search engine strategies conference in London. I uploaded it to Google Video, YouTube and MetaCafe, bookmarked and tagged it at a few social media sites... and within two days (at the time of this writing) it was a number one result at Google.

Sell, sell, and sell. If you have anything from a single item to a huge database of stuff to sell, Google will gladly let you upload to its product search (formerly known as Froogle).

At the time of this writing, a search for Nikon camera brings back three shopping comparison results from Google's Product Search at the top of the pile, plus a link to items listed in Google's own checkout service. Submit your products at no cost (it's easy to set up a data feed) and add descriptions, images and prices. And with your Google Account, you can log in and manage your products at any time.

Optimizing for Video Search Engines

Things like anchor text, titles and descriptions are important but often overlooked.

Annotate the video clips with keyword rich text and use anchor text in links to the videos. Another good suggestion was to use PPC to drive awareness to current stories, since it can take a while for video and regular search engines to index content.

Video search is somewhat like the days of Alta Vista in that it's still a pretty straightforward process to optimize and get good results. Gregory Markel gave an example where one of their clients received more traffic from video search than their PPC campaign.

One of the greatest benefits of video search traffic is that it's free, it's viral and it can still be easily controlled for certain groups of phrases.

Popular video search engines and sources of videos:

My Space
You Tube
AOL Video
Yahoo Video
Google Youtube

Tips on video search optimization from Infuse Creative:

- Use Meta Data
- encode multiple file types
- titles descriptions are weighted most heavily
- piggyback on topically popular content, by using - similar keyword phrases
- watermark your video content
- end the video with "send to a friend" or some other incentive
- automate process of tracking and reporting if possible

My space:

A good number of marketers are creating multiple user profiles with multiple variations of the same video and variations of keywords. Is this spam? As long as the content is truly different no. I'm not sure what the search engines will say about that, but as mentioned before, it's still a bit of the Wild West with video search optimization.

How can businesses leverage blended search to their benefit?

1. Understand the Needs of your Users - The first (and the most important) item to address is to understand your user. Learn about what type of content they are looking for. Provide them with this content. If they are looking for images, optimize your images for the terms that your user will be looking for. If they are looking for PDF versions of white papers, yup you guessed it, provide them with this type of content.

2. Determine what type of Blended Search Results will work best for you - if Web search is too competitive, consider alternatives of t things such as video or Financial/Stock search. For retailers, product search becomes very important as does Catalog search.

3. Have the Proper Content for Blended Search - in order to be seen in the blended search results you need to have content that will create visibility for your brand in the blended search results. You may need to blog. You may need to upload video. You may need to launch frequent press releases. Whatever the case may be, you need to ensure that you have sufficient content that can be used for gaining a presence in the blended search results.

4. Optimize Your Content - you need to ensure that your content is optimized for terms and key phrases that A) Your Users and Prospects are using in their search queries and B) Terms that the Search Engines are using to Incorporate Blended Search Results. The fact is your should always optimize your content for relevancy. This means having proper titles on blog posts, tagging your videos with relevant keywords, naming image files with keywords descriptive of the image, submitting to local search, building links to your content, getting people to comment on your blog posts or videos and the list goes on.

5. Position for Blended Search Now - Although the search engines are still working on incorporating blended results, you can still optimize your content for blended search. Before it becomes saturated, optimize your content for blended search now before your competition does. Remember the drywall example earlier? Did you notice that there were only 78 video results for "how to install drywall" in You Tube? Personally if I was a dry Waller and wanted to promote my service offering, I’d probably try to upload a few videos to You Tube to promote my brand and my business.

Search Engine Ranking Factors, Google Ranking Factors

2008-05-24T03:16:00.000-07:00

Search Engine Ranking Factors can be categorized in four different sections:

Keyword Use Factors
Page Attributes
Inbound Link Attribute
Negative Crawling/Ranking Attributes

A) Keyword Use Factors

The following components relate to the use of the user's search query terms in determining the rank of a particular page.

I) Keyword use in Title Tag - It means placing the targeted search term or phrase in the title tag of the web page's HTML header. Of all the tags, Title tag is definitely the most important when used correctly. When calculating your web page's relevance to a search, most search engines consider the content of the title tag as one of the parameters and display that content in search engine results pages (SERP). Including the keywords in the Title tag increases the relevance of your web page, when someone searches the web with that keyword. Title tag therefore needs to be carefully constructed in such a way that it increases your website's position in the SERP, and it is attractive enough to encourage a surfer to click on your link. Similar to writing your site content; write your Title tag for your audience first and the search engines second.

II) Keyword use in Body Text - It means using the targeted search term in the visible, HTML text of the page. It is important to use the keyword phrase throughout the page where it makes sense. As engines get more sophisticated, it's not just the targeted keyword phrase that counts, but the mix of all the words on the page that help to determine what the page is about. Killer search engine optimization copy writing must satisfy two demanding masters - the search engines and your target audience. If your home page text doesn't have enough key phrases - that is, commonly searched-upon words that people would use to find your product or service in the search engines- you won't get the high rankings you want. Yet, if you pack your text full of key phrases without focusing on your marketing flow, you'll lose your prospects and run the risk of spamming the engines.

III) Keyword use in H1, H2, H3. Tag - It means creating H1 & other heading tags with the targeted search term/phrase. H1 or H2 tags also known as Heading Tags should be applied on every page where appropriate to embolden the relevance of the page. In other words, use the page's key-phrase within a Heading 1 tag to further enhance the visibility of the key phrase on the page. It is also important that the Heading Tags match the general content of the page. A page should only have one H1 tag. When you use several H1 tags, you're diluting the value of the keywords in those tags. If it seems like you need another H1 tag you should probably create another "Landing Page" Pages with specialized content rank better than pages with multiple topics.

IV) Keywords in URLs and File Names - It means including target terms in the website URL/webpage URL. The domain name and the whole URL of a site tell a lot about it. The presumption is that if your site is about dogs, you will have “dog”, “dogs”, or “puppy” as part of your domain name. For instance, if your site is mainly about adopting dogs, it is much better to name your dog site “dog-adopt.net” than “animal-care.org”, for example, because in the first case you have two major keywords in the URL, while in the second one you have no more than one potential minor keyword. When hunting for keyword rich domain names, don't get greedy. While from a SEO point of view it is better to have 5 keywords in the URL, just imagine how long and difficult to memorize the URL will be. So you need to strike a balance between the keywords in the URL and site usability, which says that more than 3 words in the URL is a way too much. Probably you will not be able to come on your own with tons of good suggestions. Additionally, even if you manage to think of a couple of good domain names, they might be already taken. In such cases tools like the Tool below can come very handy. File names and directory names are also important. Often search engines will give preference to pages that have a keyword in the file name. For instance http://mydomain.com/dog-adopt.html is not as good as http://dog-adopt.net/dog-adopt.html but is certainly better than http://mydomain.com/animal-care.html. The advantage of keywords in file names over keywords in URLs is that they are easier to change, if you decide to move to another niche, for example.

V) Keyword Use in Alt Tags and Image Titles - It means using target keywords inside alt HTML tags and img title tags. Always provide appropriate ALT text for each image on your website. The ALT text is supposed to accurately describe the image. This means that it is totally appropriate for the total occurrences for a keyword to increase if the images displayed are a good match. The ALT text is also used to improve accessibility for the visually impaired. In the future as more people are searching using images this will also increase your chances of being displayed in the search engine listings.

VI) Keyword use in Bold/Strong Tags - It means positioning keyword in HTML text with strong/bold attributes. While there is no set answer to which carries more weight, assume that both are the same. Emphasize keywords in bold using the BOLD or STRONG tags. Search engines give more weight to keywords if they are emphasized. They have some weight as a ranking factor, but not very much. Effective usage might lie in what type of tag you use, but it’s still undetermined. Bolds are for markup, strong is for emphasis. In general use strong tags and highlight 3-5 key phrases on a page in slight variations.

VII) Keyword use in Meta Description Tag - It means utilizing keywords in the Meta description tag in a webpage's HTML header. Descriptions are important. Need to be unique for each page and contain target keywords to encourage search engines to pull snippets from it. Make it interesting! A good description can help influence users to click on a listing. The Meta description is still used as the site description for many smaller directories and engines.

VIII) Keyword use in Meta Keywords Tag - It means utilizing keywords in the Meta keywords tag in a webpage's HTML header. Do not use the Meta keywords tag. Many people still think of this as a quick fix for SEO. It’s not. Google no longer uses it. Yahoo is perhaps the only search engine that still uses the Meta keywords tag but places very little weight on it. By placing this tag on a web page, the primary beneficiary is your competition. How so? The Meta keywords tag gives your competitors a nicely formatted list of your important keywords. Search engines used to rely heavily on the Meta keywords tag to guess which keywords were relevant on a web page. Now search engines are sophisticated enough to examine the actual keywords in the body of a web page. Major search engines place little, if any, value in the Meta keywords tag.

B) Page Attributes

The following elements comprise how the Google interprets specific data about a webpage independent of keywords.

I) Link Popularity within the Site's Internal Link Structure - Refers to the number and importance of internal links pointing to the target page.

II) Quality/Relevance of Links to External Sites/Pages - Refers to do links on the page point to high quality, topically-related pages.

III) Amount of Indexable Text Content - Refers to the literal quantity of visible HTML text on a page.

IV) Quality of the Document Content - As search engines can use text, visual or other analysis methods to determine the validity and value of content, this metric would provide some level of rating.

V) Frequency of Updates to Page - Refers to the number and time frame of changes made to the document over time.

VI) Accuracy of Spelling & Grammar - Refers to the literal correctness of spelling and grammar as related to the language of the document.

VII) HTML Validation of Document (to W3C Standards) - Refers to the validation of HTML page code as per the W3C consortium, an authoritative body on the standards of web-compatible code.

VII) Site/Domain Attributes: The factors below contribute to Google's rankings based on the site/domain on which a page resides.

VIII) Global Link Popularity of Site - Refers to the overall link weight/authority as measured by links from any and all sites across the web (both link quality and quantity).

IX) Age of Site - Not the date of original registration of the domain, but rather the launch of indexable content seen by the search engines.

X) Topical Relevance of Inbound Links to Site - Refers to the subject-specific relationship between the sites/pages linking to the target page and the target keyword.

XI) Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community - Refers to the link weight/authority of the target website amongst its topical peers in the online world.

XII) Historical Performance of Site as Measured by Time Spent on Page, Click throughs from SERPs, Direct Visits, Bookmarks, etc. - Metric of click-through-rate, time spent on a page/site, direct navigation via bookmarks, etc. that Google may be measuring through use of their toolbar, free wifi, Google analytics, etc. (note that this is purely speculation as Google has never publicly admitted to monitoring or recording this data)

XIII) Manual Authority/Weight Given to Site by Google - Google is occasionally suspected or accused of applying manual manipulation to a domain or page (note that this factor refers specifically to positive ranking manipulation)

XIV) TLD Extension of Site (edu, gov, us, ca, com etc) - The top-level domain extension of the site. Note that some domains, such as .edu, .gov, .mil and others have restrictions on who may purchase them. Their is at best a small difference within the TLDs for .com, .edu, .gov, .org and .mil. The common belief that the TLD matters is actually an artifact of the linking profile common for an .edu, .org or .mil site that is different than a commercial site. Other TLDs like .tv and .go are much less desirable.

XV) Rate of New Pages Added to Site - The amount & frequency of new, spiderable documents added to the domain over time.

XVI) Verification of Site with Google, Yahoo & MSN - Provides you with detailed reports about your pages' visibility. Get view of your site and diagnose problems, discover your link and query traffic.

c) Inbound Link Attribute

These pieces affect Google's weighting of links from external websites pointing to a page.

I) Anchor Text of Inbound Link - Anchor text for inbound links is one of the most important factors in search engine optimization. Let us take the example of Dell. Search the keyword "computer" in Google. Skip the other result and look at the Dell result. If you view Dell's homepage you don't see the word "computer" anywhere. When you view the source you can find the word "computer" just one time, in the Meta tag for keywords. Obviously that doesn't have the power to get it to that kind of ranking. If you check the anchor text of its back links you'll notice a lot of their back links use the text "Dell Computers" or something with the word "computer" in it.

II) Global Link Popularity of Linking Site – Refers to the link popularity of the linking page and site is probably the most important factor when deciding on a link.

III) Topical Relationship of Linking Page - Adding top-of-the-line back links from relevant, reputable, and trustworthy sources will have significant impact on your site’s search visibility. Nowadays, one high quality link is worth more than fifty spammy links. If you are promoting a product or service, your site’s link building strategy comes to play as an important component of an overall marketing plan.

IV) Age of Link - The age of a link is supposed to hold a lot of weight with the search engines (especially Google) because it is something that is very hard to manipulate and control. A link that has been pointing to the same website for a long time is thought to be of high value and organic.

V) Text Surrounding the Link - Based on recent studies, this is becoming more and more important. Looking at Google Image results testing showed us that they weight the image's content based on surrounding text as much as any image feature.

VI) Page Rank (as measured by the GG Toolbar) of Linking Page - Lots of people will say "no" but it is still a good measure of connectivity and says something about the site. The toolbar is perpetually outdated, but Google uses Page Rank values to help set crawling priorities and to determine if a document should go in the regular or supplemental index.

D) Negative Crawling/Ranking Attributes

These components may negatively affect a spider's ability to crawl a page or its rankings at Google.

I) Server is Often Inaccessible to Bots - If crawlers can't crawl your new content then others are at an advantage by being crawled first. Plus if a server is down often search engines may not want to send visitors to that site as much.

II) Content Very Similar or Duplicate of Existing Content in the Index - Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar. Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results.

III) External Links to Low Quality/Spam Sites - A bad neighborhood is one thing as a low quality MFA site is another, linking to a MFA (Made for Adsence) site will not harm your ranking but linking to a bad/rough neighborhood definitely could.

IV) Duplicate Title/Meta Tags on Many Pages - Duplicate titles and descriptions can discourage the spider from continuing through the site as all the pages at first glance "look" the same to it. Having duplicate titles on many pages severely limits the ranking ability of your pages, especially those in the long tail that will not have many inbound links. Those pages compete on internal links and title tag relevance, so it’s important to have a unique title on each page.

V) Overuse of Targeted Keywords (Stuffing/Spamming) - Whatever method the SE’s user to target stuffing, once a certain threshold is breached, the page in question gets flagged and some bad things could happen to your SE presence.

VI) Participation in Link Schemes or Actively Selling Links - Your site's ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to you. The quantity, quality, and relevance of links count towards your rating. The sites that link to you can provide context about the subject matter of your site, and can indicate its quality and popularity. However, some webmasters engage in link exchange schemes and build partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. This is in violation of Google's webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact your site's ranking in search results. Examples of link schemes can include:

· Links intended to manipulate Page Rank

· Links to web spammers or bad neighborhoods on the web

· Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging ("Link to me and I'll link to you.")

· Buying or selling links that pass Page Rank

VII) Very Slow Server Response Times - Crawlers operate within milliseconds, just be sure your site is able to be crawled as often as needed.

VIII) Inbound Links from Spam Sites - If you have a new site and most or all of your links are from spam sites it might be hard ever earn trust in Google. Older sites with many trusted links can get away with having many more spam links. It is more about the ratio of good links to bad links than the exact number of bad links.

Source - http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors

Differences between Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

2008-05-10T04:25:00.000-07:00

Confused by Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing? Is there even a difference between both techniques? To make matters worse, both terms are often used interchangeably by supposed industry experts. It's important to note that each method is different and in this article. Let's discuss both the terms one by one.

What is Search Engine Optimization?

Search Engine Optimization or SEO refers to improving a web sites' natural and organic ranking in the search engine results page (SERP). This more affordable method is often slow and new web sites may take up to a year to achieve decent rankings in Google. The methods of achieving high rankings are based on 2 main components, which follows:

On-page optimization

Keyword density

Title Tag optimization

Keywords in the content

Quality of original content

Keywords in hyperlinks

Keywords in headings and bold tags

Keywords in URL

Meta Tags (some engines)

Sitemap

Link structure

"Indexability" of the web page Off-page optimization

Amount of incoming links

Quality of sites that link to yours

Relevancy of sites that link to yours

Keywords in the anchor text

What is Search Engine Marketing?

Search Engine Marketing or SEM, refers mainly to the text advertisements which appear at the top or on the right hand side of search engine results pages. These advertising links are purchased mainly from Google (Adwords) and Yahoo (Overture). They then in turn publish these ads on their secondary ad network as well. For example AOL displaying Adwords.

These ads are Pay Per Click (PPC), meaning you pay for every time someone clicks on your ad. The ranking sequence is determined by a variety of factors such as top bid price, and in Google's case, a more complex combination of Click Through Rate (CTR) is thrown into the mix. Essentially in Google's Adwords, the less clicks on your ads, the more you have to pay and/or your ranking drops. This is because in Google's ranking system, it has deemed, ads that are highly relevant (high CTR) sould be rewarded with lower prices and better rankings. In the Overture system, ad rankings are based purely on bid prices, so theoretically, the advertiser with the most money wins top spot.

In many instances though, the top 2 spots are not necessarily the best positions. Often times, you will find that #3 - 5 are the optimal positions as you invariably pay a much lower click rate. Not to mention the many surfers, by the time they reach your ad, have probably price shopped or done comparison studies with your competing sites.

SEM also includes any banner advertising or ad placement advertising at authority related sites. So charge a flat monthly fee or a cost per impression. Traffic from these ads tends to be high, but the conversion rate is debatable.

In a nutshell, SEM is very controllable form of marketing in the sense that you have complete control over the budget, keywords and websites you wish to target.

SEO and SEM Showdown:

At the end of the day, which method should you choose? SEO, SEM or both?

SEM holds the advantage in the fact that you can get instant qualified traffic to your web page. How much traffic is only dependent on your budget. So what are the cons of SEM? Firstly, if you do not properly optimize your ads, as in Google's case, you run the risk of burning through your marketing budget very fast and having a low conversion rate to show for it. Basically, if you are paying more for each converted sale than the actual product itself, then something is seriously wrong. There is also the issue of click fraud. A situation whereby a competitor is deliberately clicking on your ads, causing a depletion in your funds. Although the main PPC systems claims to have systems in place to detect click fraud, there doesn't seem to be conclusive proof that this is no longer an issue.

SEO on the other hand is a longer term approach, and utilizes many best practice web design standards. Good original content, well implemented on page optimization and a solid link building campaign is usually more than sufficient for SEO. Apart from achieving good rankings, you are also developing a solid site that your visitors like to visit and stay on. Some people, however have no patience for SEO and often wonder why it is taking so long to rank well. To be honest, overdoing the SEO on your web site often results in an over optimization penalty, so it is imperative that your client fully understands the nature of SEO.

Also, be careful of individuals or firms that promise you top 10 rankings. This is impossible to guarantee! Anyone that says otherwise is either lying or using underhanded methods to boost your rankings. You run the risk of having your website banned altogether from the search engines. The best firms are the ones that practice clean, or white hat, optimization techniques that will eventually increase the amount of qualified traffic to your site anyways.

Source - http://www.visualscope.com/seo-sem.html

2008-05-08T03:26:00.000-07:00

Do you know the 6 signs of blog death?

There are 6 sure fire ways to spot blog death and you need

to know them before it is too late. Let’s say that you have a blog and you post regularly, can you spot the early warnings signs that your blog is dying? There are 6 sure fire ways to spot blog death and you need to know them before it is too late. It is far easier nurse a sick blog back to health than resurrect a dead one, so let’s look at how to tell if your blog is in it’s death throws and what you can do to breathe a little life back into it.

1. Backlinks are not growing

If your backlinks, meaning those links from other blogs or sites back to your site, aren’t growing, then you have a problem. Growing backlinks mean that other sites find your site useful and are recommending it. Backlinks are also a key component of how Google calculates Page Rank, so if you don’t continue to grow your backlinks your site will have a hard time increasing in Page Rank and climbing the search engine results pages.

SOLUTION:
Develop a solid backlink strategy that includes commenting on other industry or local blogs, syndicating your articles on social news and bookmarking sites. Click here to find out the list.

2. Nobody is commenting on the blog

If people aren’t commenting on your blog it’s one of two things:

No body is reading your blog
OR
Your blog content just isn’t engaging

SOLUTION: Set up a plan to engage visitors by writing more call to action posts.

3. Traffic and unique visitors do not increase from month to month

Traffic and unique visits are a starting point for generating leads so you need lots and lots of focused traffic. Start by writing a lot of location and industry specific posts then ping social networks with services like pingoat or ping-o-matic. You also want to tickle syndication sites like Digg and Real Estate Voices by syndicating your posts there. Be sure to join a robust industry specific network like Active Rain as well.

4. Google isn’t crawling your blog regularly

Most blogs have an analytics tool that will indicate search engine crawls, if you notice that Google don’t come ‘round no more… you need to worry. While Google goes through periods of deep and shallow crawls, you should see some search engine spiders visiting your site daily. If you don’t it is an indication that something about your blog is offensive to Google - it could be duplicate content, it could be validation errors, it could even be that you don’t post regularly enough. Use RSS Pieces free Google Suppressed Pages Tool

SOLUTION:
Post a new article at least 3 times per week and be sure to use pingoat or ping-o-matic after each post. You also want to ping Google directly with googleping to incite it to crawl you again.

5. Posts are falling out of Google’s index

Ouch. This one hurts. You should be visiting Google at least once per week and running a site:www.domainname.com on it. For example, here are Dmoz indexed pages. The search results it returns are all the pages you have indexed by Google. If you notice that number start to fall, instead of grow, again, get concerned. This is a very serious indication that something has gone horribly awry.

SOLUTION:
Do yourself a favor, go to the very end of your search results and click the “omitted results” link at the bottom, those are pages that Google is dropping from its primary search results. See what those pages have in common like do they all use a common word in the body, title or URL? Do your pages have more than 100 links or are they filled with RSS feeds? Are your posts copied from another post? (to see if you are copying someone else’s content on your site visit: www.copyscape.com.) In any case, find out what the common thread is and fix it.

6. Nobody Diggs your articles

Do you submit your articles to Digg, but nobody digs them. Makes you feel like kind of like a loser, huh? Well, fear not, there is a plan.

SOLUTION:
Put the Digg badge on each of your posts so people that read it can easily “digg” your article. The more digs you get on articles the more authoritative a voice you will gain in the industry and the more traffic you will drive. Now, don’t be afraid to ask friends, family and the neighbourhood to dig your article.

Source - http://www.rsspieces.com/do-you-know-the-6-signs-of-blog-death