Monday, July 30, 2007

Making SEO Affordable

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process by which a website can be optimised in order to improve its organic or natural rankings on search engines. The need for SEO came up only after the boom in online marketing was witnessed. As a result of the increasing popularity of Internet marketing and e-commerce, more and more companies are jumping on to the e-business bandwagon.

Obtaining search engine optimisation at affordable prices is not at all a difficult task these days, since numerous companies are coming up as search engine optimisation service providers. These SEO concerns offer services and cater to all kinds of companies engaged in e-commerce. The coming up of such SEO concerns also presents online companies with choices regarding choosing the one that best suits their budget.

SEO services use a number of tools and instruments in order to improve the website's ranking. Improving the ranking is very important for websites because visitors to search engines do not go beyond the first few names on a page, or probably the initial two to three pages. Out of all the services provided by SEO companies, some are affordable, but some may be really costly. It depends upon the website as to which service does it wish to take up. It is obvious that, the costlier the service, the higher the budget and vice versa.

Search engines can be used to find out SEO companies that offer affordable SEO services. All SEO companies have their own pricing structure, based on their market reputation as well as the services or combination of services that they offer. The best part about partaking services from an affordable search engine optimisation company is that it is very convenient for the website and provides valuable and much needed assistance in promoting and advertising the site, which is otherwise extremely difficult for the website to manage single handled.

SEO companies make life a lot easier for websites. They help in saving a considerable amount of valuable time for websites. The best part is that the websites can monitor the efficiency of the services, and in case they are dissatisfied can look on for better options.


http://www.a1articles.com/article_193716_62.html

Search Engine Optimization services India

The term consultancy is designated to the practice of extending assistance in terms of expertise to any company for promoting or enhancing its performance, while the agencies specializing in offering such services could be known as the Consultants. Like in any line of business there are many such Consultants eagerly offering their expert services, similarly in regards to the SEO – Search Engine Optimization India too some renowned Consultants offer their services, but sitting at very long distances across the seas who could be terms as the Offshore SEO Consultants.

The consultancy is usually initiated through analysis of the existing business hurdles by the consultant with his expertise and experience and assesses that how the business process could improve the scope of particular business, and thereby make possible improvements. The terms of such an SEO Services varies from party to party and deal to deal basis. In all, the consultant normally offers the need based consultancy services to his clients for assisting them enhance and speed up their profitability by his expert consulting services.

There are many professional Offshore SEO Consultancies that regularly offer their services to the clients from all over the world. Usually such consultants offer almost everything like complete range of software and information technology requirements. The experienced and expert consultants generally offer the overview of how the existing business of his client could grow and develop easily yet positively with the help of process and application developments. In order to build the long term rapport with his client, the consultant would offer all the necessary strategic solutions and relevant resources for the faster growth of the client’s present business. As per the available studies, the average Offshore SEO Consultancy service providers of consultants have categorized their services.

India is quick emerging as a winner in search engine optimization outsourcing services hype with almost 82% of the US based companies ranking India to be their first choice as an offshore outsourcing destination for e-commerce, web designing, web development and search engine optimization work. Being a talent rich country, India has all the right resources, infrastructure and facilities to stand apart from the crowd as one of the best offshore destinations to outsource services.


http://www.a1articles.com/article_193997_62.html

The importance of SEO services

There was a time when the internet and e-commerce were dominated by the domain name. Having a good domain name was considered crucial for the success of the business. However, in web 2.0, google came along and changed the scenario completely. Google used a series of algorithms to scan a website for keywords which would then project the website to the top of its rankings. A new term called SEO or search engine optimization came into being. Today SEO keywords are far more crucial than anything else in the success of a website. Hence there are specialized services called as SEO services or search engine optimization services that work on optimizing a website for a search engine like google.

There are various techniques and strategies that are used by these search engine optimization seo services to ensure that their clients’ website ranks among the top websites in the search engine result pages. Although a top rank is not always possible, your website will nevertheless get the visibility that you always wanted. The traffic to your website and the hits will also increase. The reason that you need an SEO service to promote your website is because each website differs in its theme, target audience and goal. The SEO experts will first analyze your website and then structure a plan for SEO.

Continuous monitoring of the website is also necessary for proper SEO servicing. If you desire your website to get the exposure on the web, then you need to hire SEO services.


http://www.a1articles.com/article_194044_62.html

Finding the Right Niche - Finding Your Alternatives

Ironically -- or perhaps appropriately -- the quickest way to find out about alternative search engines is to search on that phrase in Google. The first site that comes up is Search Engine Watch, a regular stop for anyone who does SEO. After all, they’ve been covering the field since 1996. If you visit this page on the site, it takes you to a list of links. These links take you to specific categories of search engines, such as news search engines, shopping search engines, multimedia search engines, kids’ search engines, specialty-related search engines, and more. If you have a fascination with knowledge in general and a few specific areas in particular, you might want to line up a number of pointed queries, get comfortable with this site, and spend a day or two poking around. Depending on how lucky you’ve been finding that kind of information on Google, you just might find some new favorites.

Another web site worth checking is altsearchengines. The entire site is devoted to coverage of alternative search engines, though it does cover the majors as well. You can subscribe to the site via email or RSS feed. While the site definitely has the feel of a professional blog (which is what it is, essentially), it’s better organized, making it somewhat easier to find things. There are colorful tabs labeled “alts,” “majors,” “updates,” “in beta,” “newcomers,” “news” and “verticals” to help you navigate. There are also ads from alternative search engines on the site. Each month, they compile a list of the top 100 alternative search engines; it seems to have turned into a mission for Charles Knight, the man doing the compiling. Here’s a link to the list for April 2007.

To coin an analogy, think of Google as the biggest department store in the world (I know, that’s either Wal-Mart or Amazon, but bear with me). For most of your needs, you’ll probably be able to find the right item at that department store. But say your portly Aunt Edna just fell and did something nasty to her knee, for which she now needs a custom-built brace. You wouldn’t go to the department store for that; you’d go to a hospital, which would be able to refer to you to the right place to have that made.

By the same token, if you’re looking for the most up-to-date medical information on a particular condition, you might go to Google if it’s a well-known and much-discussed condition such as breast cancer, but not if it’s something that’s more rare and unusual. For that, you’d be wise to consider some of the vertical search engines that explicitly cover the health and medical field.

Yet another site to check is About.com. Of course, it’s an alternative search engine itself these days. It has a guide, Wendy Boswell, for the Web Search topic. One of the areas she covers is search engines. The link I gave will take you to articles that review and discuss the alternatives. She even has an article titled “Web Search 101,” which gives you answers to frequently asked questions about search and helps you zoom in on the kind of search engine you want based on your needs.

Steve Buchanan writes article on many topics including Article Submission Service, Directory Submission Service, and Website Submission Services.


http://www.a1articles.com/article_194147_62.html

Thursday, July 26, 2007

What You Need To Know About Seo: Basic Facts

Exposure could mean a lot for different firms, organizations or groups seeking a wider venue to make their views heard, accepted, and patronized. The main term used for this web-positioning method is the seo, or the Search Engine Optimization.


What exactly is Search Engine Optimization?

The Internet age has spawned a phenomenon of new terms, new jobs, and new career paths. The growth of the Worldwide Web is creating a new realm, where new types of internet-savvy folks engage in careers that require the skills of an intrepid explorer, searching for new worlds to discover. Among these new tasks are those that require the faster, more strategic placement or positioning of company adverts, documents, products or issues, in order for these entities to have the most maximum level of exposure in the web.

Exposure could mean a lot for different firms, organizations or groups seeking a wider venue to make their views heard, accepted, and patronized. The main term used for this web-positioning method is the seo, or the Search Engine Optimization.

Search Engine Optimization is the terminology used to define, or describe the action of gaining a better position within a search engine or internet directory system based upon a selected key word or a group of key words. With well over 4 billion documents already on the internet, the prominent search engines are all flaunting that they can locate most of them and show you a link from within their systems, and each of the search engines or directory providers have different guidelines by which a listing within their system is accomplished.

* Achieving Maximum exposure

As web-updated consumers, we are constantly on the lookout for sites that address our specific interests, goals, or products at a specified time and day. Most of us do not always know the URL (Universal Resource Locator) for all the types of businesses that can fulfill that interest, so we use a search engine or directory service to find them for us.

For example, I plan to go out and take my girlfriend with me to a bar, but I haven’t got an idea of which place to go to that I haven’t already been to yet. The next most probable step for me would be to go to a search engine and type in something like: “bars and restaurants pasadena ca"; I put in the quotation marks to make the search more specific, to get me closer to what I am looking for. The phrase I wrote, "bars and restaurants pasadena ca" will be used represent my main key word phrase.

Once I write those key words, I am, hopefully, going to get back a list of the restaurants within the greater Pasadena area, and I indeed got well over 500 or so choices too. What makes it more helpful is that I could find those assorted choices in the local phonebook listings. However, if I wish to make my list of choices much shorter, I would type in, or enter a new search maybe like: "jazz bar pasadena ca”.

Once the search engine has done its job, then I probably will get a shorter list with these new, more precise characteristics. However, the list created will be made in an order that is determined by the search engine. The first one may or may not be starting with the letter A or a number like the one on the phone directory.

From the bar and restaurant viewpoint, if they could be in the top 10 or 20 and get a lot of “hits” or visits by web users, they will have a chance of being seen by the searcher. This is what Search Engine Optimization is all about: gaining a position as close to #1 as possible and then staying there on top, and to achieve maximum exposure.

* It’s all about location

For those who own businesses, then the primary name of the game is profits. Revenue of course, comes from people who spend their incomes with you. The more people spend their money with you, the richer and more successful you become.
In today’s business environment, it is all about LOCATION, and the next important word that comes is “ADVERTISE”.

The way the worldwide web works is the same as in the world of advertising or the directories: It’s about location in the search engines and directory systems, and advertising. If your listing is something less than the top 100, you stand an excellent chance of never being seen, or viewed. Most people are notoriously impatient, and they do not wish to wade through tons of listings. This simply means that you really need to be near, or on the top of the lists for the key words that you feel your prospective customers are, or will be using to find you.

* How Search Engine Optimizers Do This

Improving your position on the web could be done through a wide variety of methods. An easy way for this is to hire a professional Search Engine Optimization firm that can do the job for you. You could check their fees and price ranges on the web or the phone book. The process is definitely a labor-intensive one, and definitely doesn’t come cheap.

But anyway, you too can do it yourself. All you need to do is to get the rules for listing within each of the engines and directory systems where you wish to be listed, the register with them. If they allow you to point to secondary pages that also discuss specific topics, then be sure to do that by pointing to the pages within your site that cover that topic. You may also need to check on your position every month within each of the engines and directories to see how you are stacking up, and sometimes you may need to modify your site to improve your position, as well as your exposure.

Vanessa Arellano Doctor


http://www.articledashboard.com/Article/What-You-Need-To-Know-About-SEO--Basic-Facts/263859

Keyword Optimization: Why It Is Important To Online Marketers

Online marketers know that in order to be able to succeed in the vastness of cyberspace, they must be able to learn how to optimize their website’s online exposure by being able to optimize the use of certain keywords and phrases that can help with their site’s search engine ranking by improving their position in search engine results.

Since online businesses are starting to discover the complexity of marketing online, employing certain means can ensure the success of your attempts to market a certain product or Web content online, one of which is by keyword optimization.

Keyword Optimization In Online Marketing

Strategically placing keywords and phrases within your site’s content can help boost your site’s traffic immensely, thereby improving your site’s ranking in search engine results. The choice of keywords that you use, and how you optimize them, can play a role in how well you will be able to promote your website in your online marketing campaign.

Also, the places where you may situate these keywords can also affect how your site will be able to rank high on search engine results since search engines give higher relevance to keywords that are in the correct places within the web page.

Keyword optimization is such an important part of online marketing due to the fact that using the appropriate keyword in describing your site’s content helps inform online users, and potential clients, about your Web content. People will have an idea of what your site is offering them even before they actually access your site by merely reading the keywords used to describe it.

Your keywords should be relevant to the product or Web content that your site is offering, and these keywords should be prominently featured on the web page to give focus and importance to these keywords, in order to improve your search engine ranking since this will help your site receive consistent web searches over time, thereby increasing your site’s traffic.

Another reason as to why keyword optimization is such an important part of online marketing is so that you will be able to find your target potential customers online without having to exert that much effort. If you can improve your site’s ranking position in search engines, then prospective clients will be able to find your site much faster and in a more efficient manner, thereby increasing your chances of closing a sale with them.
By using appropriate keywords to improve your site’s search engine result, you can expose your site on the Internet better since your site is able to achieve omnipresence. Also, by making sure that your site is able to hit the top keywords that you aim to optimize, you can help make it easier for online users to find your site in almost all types of browsers.

Optimizing keywords will also help provide relevant information to some of your potential clients, giving them a clear idea as to what product you are selling, and making it easier for search engines to pinpoint what your site is all about. This helps avoid the problem of confusion, especially if you want to target a specific market to your site, by making sure that your site offers them with only the appropriate information and relevant links that can help them understand more about your site’s Web content.

Vanessa Arellano Doctor

http://www.articledashboard.com/Article/Keyword-Optimization--Why-It-Is-Important-To-Online-Marketers/263862

How To Focus Your Seo & Open Up Your Profit Margin

Your SEO should be not only a long-term strategy, it must be a focused one as well. What does that mean? First let me tell you what it DOESN’T mean.

Many sites make their main keyphrase very obvious. That’s not necessarily bad SEO. The problem cases are those that make it obvious by targeting that keyphrase on Every Single Page.

You know these sites. They have the same title – or very similar variations one one – on web page after web page after web page. You can get some use out of these sites by telling friends that you have ESP. Then prove it by telling them what the next web page’s Title will be. And what the next page’s heading will be. And what the next page’s subheading will be. And on and on and on.

Yes, that’s focused. But it’s like using a submachine gun on an archery target. It’s too much and it’s unnecessary. That’s not a focused SEO campaign. That’s a fixated SEO campaign. And it doesn’t go very far outside of that one keyphrase.

If you hit that one keyphrase you are:

1. Overdoing it. Search engines usually don’t credit you that much more for ranking on that keyphrase if you’re targeting it directly on more than 2 or 3 pages. You DO want to focus on the subject/industry/area of that keyphrase throughout the site. But not the same keyphrase over and over.

2. Missing a lot of other keyphrases. And therefore missing a lot of potential profit. There are always variations, different terms, and terminology, your customers are using beyond the top 1 or 2 keyphrases.
Often these less used keywords convert better than those 2 big ones that everyone in your industry is targeting. Therefore the ROI, or profit return, is better on them. Maybe the overall traffic is lower, but the bottom line benefit is higher. It’s not hard to see why you should be hitting a few keyphrases on your site. Not just 1 or 2.

What a Focused SEO Campaign Really Is

Focusing your SEO means directly targeting any one keyphrase on 2 or 3 web pages. Hit them on those pages, then move on to your other keywords. A simple example – the traffic numbers for Winter Jacket, that a dealer might let other keyword opportunities go, like Cold Weather Jacket, Snow Jacket, Winter Coat, etc. It happens more often than you think.

This requires you do keyword research that goes beyond simple brainstorming, but it’s worth your time. It can mean finding new markets you aren’t hitting right now. That translates into new profits and a fuller bottom line.

SEO should focus on both the individual web pages and the site as a whole. The site needs to be centered on your industry or area, while the pages drill down to hit certain keywords. Remember there are different degrees of focus in SEO. You have the important details, but there is a big picture you must build as well. You can be blinded after seeing the traffic numbers for the most popular keywords. Don’t forget the Big Picture.


http://www.articledashboard.com/Article/How-To-Focus-Your-SEO---Open-Up-Your-Profit-Margin/263924

Social Search Engine: Houston Entrepreneurs Seek A Sharper Search Engine. They Say Their System Of Letting Users Rank Sites Is Superior.

Four Houston entrepreneurs are launching a search engine today that they hope will challenge the likes of Google and Yahoo.

Frustrated with the results they get from other search engines, Neal Verma, founder and CEO of iRazoo.com, and three friends with technology backgrounds have spent their evenings and weekends — and an undisclosed amount of money — over the last eight months developing iRazoo.

Now they'll have to prove it works by drawing enough users, who in turn will attract advertisers to fund the company in a business where a handful of companies dominate.

They're betting they have a better approach to search — a site designed to highlight the most useful sites by seeking input from users who can earn rewards by voting for, or against, Web sites.

Even though 97 percent of Internet searches are done on Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask and Time Warner, according to comScore, there are hundreds of smaller search engines.

Newcomers keep trying because there is a lot of money to be made, said James Lamberti, senior vice president for comScore, which measures Web usage and ranks search engines by use.

In the U.S. alone, companies are spending $17 billion a year in online advertising, and 40 percent of that is spent on search engine sites, he said.

"There's still a ton of activity in this field," he said. "A lot of people think they can build a better mousetrap."

But it's very difficult to catch on. Hundreds of companies like iRazoo have started search engines. Not since Google emerged five years ago has a search engine really gotten traction, Lamberti said.

Those dominant search engines are always in a buying mood as they try to find niches that will catch on with users, he said.

In the technology world where paradigms can change faster than Google can find 63.5 million hits for "monkey," Verma pointed to that top competitor as evidence iRazoo can succeed.

Google may dominate now, but it, too, had humble beginnings, he said.

Last year, google — with a small "g" — knew it had arrived when it became an official dictionary entry. Members of the iRazoo team can dream of the day when their search engine makes the dictionary, but they could live with one of their targets taking notice and paying them a few million bucks for iRazoo.com.

"Either way is fine with us," Verma said.

For now they need to prove their site's features will appeal to users and return better search results.

• Users can recommend sites that come up in their searches. If a link had useful information, a user can vote to recommend it to others. If not, the user can vote against it. Sites that get good recommendations will show up at the top of future searches. Sites that get more "no" votes than "yes" votes eventually will be dropped.

• Users earn points every time they vote. When they earn enough points, they can redeem points for digital cameras, iPods and other gadgets. Each recommendation earns 2 points, and an iPod Shuffle costs 58,000 points.

• When users search for a term, iRazoo puts a thumbnail screen shot of the site next to the search result, allowing users to preview the page before linking to it.

Only once
To prevent users from manipulating the system — sometimes known as "Google-bombing" as in the recent example that got Comedy Central host Stephen Colbert listed as the top result when searching for "greatest living American" — iRazoo requires users to log in, and they can only recommend a particular site once, Verma said.

The iRazoo site also tracks users by the unique address on their computers, and one user can only vote for a site once per computer, Verma said.

"You'd have to have a lot of time on your hands to get around it," he said.

Doubts if it's enough
If there's anything the Internet has shown, it's that a lot of people have too much time on their hands. Todd Mintz, a Portland, Ore.-based Internet consultant, suspects iRazoo's checks and balances won't be enough to prevent efforts to move sites into the top spots mostly likely to be seen by users.

"There are very smart people out there who will figure out how to game it," he said.

Depending on recommendations can be risky because the site can't account for how smart users are, said Scott Hendison, another Portland Internet consultant specializing in search engine marketing and optimization — the practice of getting one group's site to come up higher in search results than another.

Moving up the list
Search engines rely on algorithms — mathematical formulas — to find the best search results. Basically, the engine looks for keywords on sites across the Web.

As Internet marketing has evolved, people such as Hendison have figured out ways to get their clients' sites listed higher in search results on popular search engines, in turn driving traffic to their sites.

"Commercialization has kind of taken over the algorithm a little bit," Lamberti said.

Mintz said the algorithms' recommendations are better than those of strangers.

"The Google or Yahoo algorithm may not be perfect, but I'd trust them more than someone I don't know," he said.


http://www.articledashboard.com/Article/Social-Search-Engine--Houston-entrepreneurs-seek-a-sharper-search-engine--They-say-their-system-of-letting-users-rank-sites-is-superior-/263960

Finding The Right Niche - Finding Your Alternatives

Ironically -- or perhaps appropriately -- the quickest way to find out about alternative search engines is to search on that phrase in Google. The first site that comes up is Search Engine Watch, a regular stop for anyone who does SEO. After all, they’ve been covering the field since 1996. If you visit this page on the site, it takes you to a list of links. These links take you to specific categories of search engines, such as news search engines, shopping search engines, multimedia search engines, kids’ search engines, specialty-related search engines, and more. If you have a fascination with knowledge in general and a few specific areas in particular, you might want to line up a number of pointed queries, get comfortable with this site, and spend a day or two poking around. Depending on how lucky you’ve been finding that kind of information on Google, you just might find some new favorites.

Another web site worth checking is altsearchengines. The entire site is devoted to coverage of alternative search engines, though it does cover the majors as well. You can subscribe to the site via email or RSS feed. While the site definitely has the feel of a professional blog (which is what it is, essentially), it’s better organized, making it somewhat easier to find things. There are colorful tabs labeled “alts,” “majors,” “updates,” “in beta,” “newcomers,” “news” and “verticals” to help you navigate. There are also ads from alternative search engines on the site. Each month, they compile a list of the top 100 alternative search engines; it seems to have turned into a mission for Charles Knight, the man doing the compiling. Here’s a link to the list for April 2007.

To coin an analogy, think of Google as the biggest department store in the world (I know, that’s either Wal-Mart or Amazon, but bear with me). For most of your needs, you’ll probably be able to find the right item at that department store. But say your portly Aunt Edna just fell and did something nasty to her knee, for which she now needs a custom-built brace. You wouldn’t go to the department store for that; you’d go to a hospital, which would be able to refer to you to the right place to have that made.

By the same token, if you’re looking for the most up-to-date medical information on a particular condition, you might go to Google if it’s a well-known and much-discussed condition such as breast cancer, but not if it’s something that’s more rare and unusual. For that, you’d be wise to consider some of the vertical search engines that explicitly cover the health and medical field.

Yet another site to check is About.com. Of course, it’s an alternative search engine itself these days. It has a guide, Wendy Boswell, for the Web Search topic. One of the areas she covers is search engines. The link I gave will take you to articles that review and discuss the alternatives. She even has an article titled “Web Search 101,” which gives you answers to frequently asked questions about search and helps you zoom in on the kind of search engine you want based on your needs.


http://www.articledashboard.com/Article/Finding-the-Right-Niche---Finding-Your-Alternatives/264113

Monday, July 23, 2007

Seo Techniques For Beginners

Before you start doing things to rank well in the search engines, you need to determine what your “money words” are. In other words, what keywords do people who buy from you type into the search engines. If you are selling auto insurance, are people typing auto insurance or car insurance? You can determine what your money keywords are by creating and using a Google Adwords account to quickly test keywords for profitability.

Once you know your money words, you need to pick one and start optimizing for it. The first thing you need to realize is that Google and the other major search engines rank individual pages, not entire websites. So you are actually going to want to optimize one or more pages on your site. Please start with just one. Maybe it’s your home page, but it does not have to be.

There are 2 types of optimization for the search engines. Internal (on page) and external (off page).

Internal optimization can be summarized as having:
1) Clean HTML Code on your site
2) A great Title Meta Tag that includes your money word AND inspires people to click on the link when it shows up in the search engines
3) A great Description Meta Tag where the text in that tag also shows up on the page somewhere
4) Links on your page that point to other pages on and off your site. Use relevant text when linking to other pages on your site and other sites. Don’t use the phrase “click here” instead; use text that describes the page you are linking to.
5) A site map page that links to every page on your website and is linked to by every page on your site.
6) Fresh Content which encourages the search engines to come back to your site more often so that you can test new ideas

External optimization is even simpler to summarize (and actually more powerful):
1) Get links from pages on your site and from other high ranking websites
2) Get more links
3) Get more links

The links you get should appear natural and not all use the exact same words to link to your site, but a majority of the links should link to your page on using your money word.

You can ask websites for a free link, you can buy links, or you can trade links. If you buy or trade, be careful because the search engines don’t like this and you might need to do it in a way that they can’t trace. For instance, linking to someone’s site and having them link back to you used to work well, but now you have to be more clever by linking to a site that doesn’t link back to you, but instead a different site links to you (called a 3-way link).

To prove how valuable links are, go to a major search engine and search for the phrase: “click here”. Notice that Adobe’s Acrobat Reader download link shows up near the top. If you go to their page, you will not see the phrase “click here” anywhere. But so many people have linked to their site on that phrase, that they rank really high for it.

There is a lot more to search engine optimization, but the information in this article should get you well on your way to ranking high in the search engines.

For more search engine tips and other online marketing tactics, you can download a copy of Rob’s Workbook. The workbook sells for $97 but is free for readers of this article. Just go to http://www.HowToMarketBetter.com/resources


http://ezinearticles.com/?Seo-Techniques-For-Beginners&id=650492

Friday, July 20, 2007

7 Tips for Effective Reciprocal Linking

Reciprocal linking...does it work? Yes it does. One can debate the value of reciprocal linking compared to other linking strategies. And without a doubt, one way links far outway the value of a reciprocal link. However, if done correctly, reciprocal linking can be a powerful SEO strategy for your website (See Search Engine Optimization Specialist for additional tips).

Tip #1
Search for reciprocal links from pages that have a Google PR equal or greater to your own. By doing so, you are enhancing the quality/value of the reciprocal link improving your overall success in the eyes of the search engines - especially Google. The higher the Google PR the more valuable the link becomes.

Tip #2
Exchange links only with sites that are related to your site/industry in some way. For example, don't link to web sites about athletic clothing if you're selling hardware. Sites that you're exchaning links with need to be contextually relevant. When they are, you earn extra points in the eyes of Google and other major search engines.

Tip #3
Make sure that your anchor text, the text that comprises your link contains your keywords. This is one of the most important aspects of linking. For example, a link to my primary site should look like this: "Internet Marketing Expert Marketing Secrets" instead of "www.marketingscoop.com". Doing so will signal the search engines with the specific keywords that you're optimizing for. This enhances your search results when someone searches on your keywords or keyword phrase.

Tip #4
Your links page should never include more than one hundred links. Keeping your link quantity below one hundred ensures that search engines do not discredit the value of your site or challenge it as SPAM. One way to include more than one hundred links to to create a mini-link directory. Develop categories and group your links appropriately.

Tip #5
Check your partner's websites on a regular basis to ensure that they are still linking back to you. Often I've exchanged links with a site only to find that they removed the link back to my site only days after the exchange. You can do this manually or utilize software to do it for you. There are a variety of options out there. No matter how you validate reciprocal links, check them on a regular basis.

Tip #6
View the title of the links page where your link will be placed. You can do this by visiting the link page and then pressing "view" on your browser menu bar. Then select "view source code" and find the meta tags. The title tag should include keywords relevant to your site. It doesn't have to, but if it does, the more valuable it becomes.

Tip #7
Quality over quantity. When you being the process of building reciprocal links for your website, go for quality over quantity. Once you get started, you will undoubtedly have numerous sites looking for an exchange. If the sites don't meet your linking criteria, you must say no to the link exchange.

In summary, make sure your reciprocal link program includes relevant links that have an equal or greater Google PR. Check your links often and make sure not to include more than 100 links on your link exchange page. Follow these tips and you're well on your way to a successful reciprocal linking campaign. Lastly, be patient. The value of reciprocal links is most clearly seen over time.


http://www.add-articles.com/Article/7-Tips-for-Effective-Reciprocal-Linking/116547

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION and Internet Marketing

Search Engine Optimization

Each search engine has a database of all web sites. When you search for any term in search engines, they actually search in their database and show the results from their database. As a user, when you need to find information on a topic, you use search engines to get a listing of web sites related to the topic of interest. As a webmaster, you want your site to be one of the first ones the user will see. How can the web designer make sure you are noticed? That is where effective search engine optimization comes in.
Search Engine Optimization is the process where a website is optimized to get better ranking in search results in popular search engine. As a website owner, you must aim to get listed in top 10 results for your site’s primary keywords. You must do several optimizations in your website to appear in search results. This process is called as
Search Engine Optimization. Search engine works through the better understanding of algorithm, which are but the rules which governs and helps the search engine to rank the respective sites.

The ranking depends on various factors:

Keywords
Keyword is the term used for words included in a web page that would match words used by web surfers in finding that web page. Each web page has different ranking for different keywords. Search engine sorts the keywords and displays the results.

Keyword Research: The search for keywords related to your Web site, and the analysis of which ones yield the highest return on investment. The search engine research the keywords and rank the website. If your site has higher rank than other site, then your page will appear on top.

Keyword density: Measure of how frequently a given keyword appears within a given web page. Improving the keyword density on your website is one of the fastest and simplest ways to increase your site’s visibility in the search engine results pages. If your keyword occurs only once or twice in a page of 500 or more words, obviously it has a lower keyword density than a keyword that would occur six or seven times in a page of similar length. As far as search engines are concerned, if a particular keyword has a higher density on that particular web page, then the chances of that page obtaining a much better search engine ranking increases almost exponentially.

Optimized content
The success of website is changing and optimizing the content on a regular basis is important. Therefore, we must routinely change your web site to test and see what changes work and what changes do not work when trying to achieve top ranking.

Meta tags:
If the word or phrase appears in the HTML title tag, that website will be considered the most relevant. Also, if the word appears close to the top of the first web page, for instance, the home page, the relevancy will be ranked accordingly.
Meta tags are information inserted in the head title of your web pages.

Link Building Services
Evaluate the source page:- Before assigning a value for a link, the search engine evaluate the rank for the page itself. If you get link from site that are related to your content, it has more value.

Site Submission
If you have a web page that is not linked by any other page that page may never get indexed by any search engine.

Internet Marketing
E-mail: - It is always better to have an e-mail to link to other website to promote the products. When we promote products and services, the other website come to know about our site. By sending e-mail, you get some quality link to your sites.

Choose partner for online marketing and advertisement: Make use of the website to evaluate the marketing effectiveness. By giving advertisement also, you can promote your site.

Benefits:
Increased usability:- More people visit the site, which lead to increased sales and generation.


http://www.add-articles.com/Article/SEARCH-ENGINE-OPTIMIZATION-and-Internet-Marketing/116780

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Importance-of-relevant-links

Links are an essential tool of search engine optimization. As more and more search engines adopt link popularity as an important aspect of their ranking algorithm, they also work to increase their ability to determine the value of links. By carefully crafting the text that you use to link internally and externally as well as any text that might accompany a link request, you can have a significant impact on the optimization of your web site.

Including keyword phrases in linked text helps improve not only the keyword density of your page, it also helps boost the relevancy of the page you are linking to. Search engines read and index the text used to describe a link and apply that text toward both the linker and the linkee's ranking.

For this reason, using your keywords in a link like so:

About Web Search

is much more effective than simply making the URL (which rarely contain keywords) the link text, as shown here:

http://websearch.about.com

In addition, some search engines will read and index the content of the title tag within an <> tag. Apart from the SEO value, this feature provides added usefulness for site visitors as the title tag is used to give further detail
about the page or content that a link refers to.


http://www.acmearticles.com/Article/Importance-of-relevant-links/13085

Best-5-Free-Seo-Tools

Let's face the facts: search engine optimization, for the most part, is hellishly boring. Doing the research, making the on-page changes, writing content and syndicating it is all tedious and time consuming. Fortunately I am not the only one, and like-minded web developers have come up with some great, and best of all, free seo tools.

Let's have a look at some of the best tools for any optimizer:

1. 7search.com Advertiser Tools ( www.tinyurl.com/2wj5ac ): as always, keyword research is the basis of any seo project - you have to get the right keywords or your work will be useless.

This is one of the best free keyword research tools out there, and although the traffic numbers aren't accurate, their related searches suggestions are the best!

2. Back Link Analyzer ( www.tinyurl.com/86hk8 ): this free link analyzer, courtesy of Aaron Wall, is an absolute jewel! The best way to use this is to actually spy on your competition and see where they are getting all that link juice from.

Here is some of the info that Back Link Analyzer can gather from Google, Yahoo, MSN and/or AllTheWeb on the backlinks for the query: anchor text and type (one-way or reciprocal) of the incoming link, the title of the page that has the link and the url that the link points to, ip address of the domain and much more!

3. Hub Finder ( www.tinyurl.com/9kpd3 ): yet another amazing tool from Aaron Wall, and this one is even open source! Like me, you've probably found out by now that it's a good idea to get links from the same places that your competition has.

Well this is the perfect tool: you input a keyword or keyphrase, which search engine to use (I recommend Yahoo) and the number of sites that each hub must have in common (between 2 and 10). Wait for the results and then try to get links from each of the sites.

4. SeoQuake ( www.tinyurl.com/2pzemv ): this plugin for Firefox is essential for any optimizer. When active it can be set to show any number of parameters including:

a) for Google: PageRank, number of links pointing to the url, number of pages in its index and cache date;
b) for Yahoo: same as for Google, but with links for domain and link in Yahoo Directory;
c) for MSN: the same as for Google;
d) number of links in DMOZ, Digg, del.icio.us and Technorati;
e) Alexa rank;
f) WebArchive age;
... and many more!

5. Free Monitor for Google ( www.tinyurl.com/85atz ): although it's only for Google, this ranking monitor does the job it is supposed to do. It works with all regional versions of Google flawlessly and it supports multiple keywords/keyphrases per url.

Bonus point: 6. The Tattler ( www.tinyurl.com/2ma5pg ): although I usually prefer Back Link Analyzer for link analysis, sometimes I need to look at all the data without the fluff.

One of the features I like that I like in Tattler is the possibility to show how many links you have from a certain domain - this is really nice to find out what sites your competitors find most valuable to them in terms of seo.


http://www.acmearticles.com/Article/Best-5-Free-Seo-Tools/16838

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Link Building That Makes Sense: Who To Link To

When you are building links to increase your link popularity, who do you link to? The question of where to link to increase ranking can be confusing. Logical thinking is needed to achieve link popularity in a natural way.

Google PageRank

First and foremost, PageRank is part of the algorithm of Google's ranking in the search engine results. Other search engines use link popularity in their algorithm to evaluate your website as well. But PageRank is only one of the 100 plus criteria Google uses to evaluate your web pages. Use the idea of PageRank as a "tool" to help make decisions, there's no need to live and die by the results. Link popularity itself is merely one way to improve your ranking.
Should You Link To Them?

Think about it. You see a quality website, you see good content. The site is a "Mom and Pop" website with little ranking. So what if the Google Toolbar says PageRank 2/10? That 2/10 may one day be 8/10. More importantly, you are linking to it because it is good to link to for your visitors - end of story.

Reciprocal Linking Fears

There is a general fear of reciprocal linking to websites who inadvertently link to a "bad neighborhood" with penalties or PageRank zero, passing on problems to you. Use your common sense. Is this a website you would want to visit or your visitors would want to visit? If the answer is no or you can't tell what the subject of the site is, make a note of it and keep looking. A website full of links with little content doesn't "make sense" because what benefit is it to you or your visitors? Of course you are going to link to your partners in business or maybe the small website that is doing a bang up job of selling widgets and providing widget information.

Linking Just To Link

If you are going to link, what purpose does it serve? The idea of acquiring link popularity by linking back and forth to other sites to boost your popularity artificially is a popular method. But is it of value to your website? Ask yourself:

* Would you link to this site if link popularity in the search engines didn't matter?
* Would your visitor care about this link or find it helpful?
* Does the website have good content?
* Is this an opportunity for you to publicize your website by being listed there?
* Will this link cause you to spend a great deal of time worrying about it?
* Is the link "just a link" or do you want a link from any site whose visitors care about what you have to say

Places To Seek Out Links That Make Sense

It makes sense to list your website in the search engines and directories. In fact, one-way linking, such as listing your site in directories, is a good way to improve your link popularity naturally. Well, you say to yourself, of course I've done that. Besides the major directories, what else is out there? You'd be surprised at the amount of good secondary and specialty directories that drive traffic. Some even specialize in a topic - maybe your topic. If you have a product to sell, look at who your competitor is linking to. Search for directories and business sites on your topic. Look for websites that talk about the widgets you sell and see if they accept submissions to their directory listings in the category for widgets. Do they accept original articles, product reviews, press releases or white papers about widgets? If so, submit your topical articles and watch your link popularity rise naturally. Always include your author bio, website link, reprint and copyright information for your company. With your good content on other websites as well as archived on your own website, there you have it, links pointing back to your website.

Think Like A Search Visitor

You've heard about good navigation, website usability and other ways to keep your site visitors interested in your site. Who are the search engines catering to? Webmasters? Search Engine Marketers? Google is a prime example - they want to create the best experience for their search engine users. It all ties in together - good content, good navigation, good usability, validated code, and relevant search engine results - because it makes sense. If Google as the leader in search engines is concerned about the visitor, don't you think the other search engines follow suit?

Hard Work Instead Of Worrying

Focus your time on good content which uses your important keyword phrases. Optimize your web pages using those keywords. Develop your website so once your visitors arrive, they will want to stay. The world wide web uses linking to connect us all. By using hard work to create a quality website and common sense when linking you can stop worrying and start succeeding.


http://www.searchinnovation.com/link-building.asp

Optimizing Dynamic Pages - Part I

The Widget Queen

You are the Widget Queen. You eat, breathe, and live widgets. You sell more widgets than anyone. You want to reach more widget customers, so you have decided to sell widgets on the web. You have spared no expense in designing and building the ultimate widget website. You have widget descriptions; you have widget specifications; you even have widget movies. The only thing your widget website does not have is visitors.

Off to the search engines you go. You type in the phrase "left-handed blue widgets" and look at the results. All of your major competitors are listed. There are even competitors you have never heard of. But you, the Widget Queen, do not have a listing there.

What's up with that? What follows is some very basic introductory material followed by some advanced technical details on dynamic sites and SEO.
What is a search engine?

First of all, you need to understand what a search engine actually searches. When a potential visitor does a search in a search engine, such as Google or AllTheWeb/FAST, she is not really searching the web; rather, she is looking at a database compiled by that search engine. This database consists of the text and links from the web pages that have been visited by the search engine's robot.

How is a search engine database compiled?

Search engines compile these databases automatically using software programs called "robots" or "spiders". These automatic programs visit pages on the World Wide Web, much as humans visit web pages using browsers, by starting at some arbitrary location and following links. When a website owner "submits" a page to a search engine, in most cases she is supplying the search engine's robot with a starting point for their automatic journey. Starting in that location, the robot then follows links and thus "discovers" other pages in your website or visits other sites to which your site is linked. (This, by the way, is how search engines can find individual pages or whole sites that have never been submitted to them--if there is a link to one site from another site, chances are good that eventually a search engine robot is going to find that link and follow it.)

Even though robots visit pages like human visitors do, what they can do with what they "see" is quite different. When a human visitor uses a browser to view a web page, that visitor can read the text on the page, look at images, play movies, listen to sounds, submit information in forms, follow hyperlinks, and any number of other tasks. The human visitor really interacts with the site. The search engine robot, on the other hand, can only do a few of these things. It is this difference that can keep your dynamic page from being included in the search engine database.
What does a robot do?

Search engine robots are very simple creatures. They can "read" text, and they can follow links. That's it. Robots cannot view a Flash movie, they cannot fill in a form, and they cannot click a "submit" button. What that means is that no matter how much great information your web page may contain, if a visitor has to select it from a list, or type a password, or submit a form full of information to get there, no robot will ever visit that page.

The origins of dynamic pages

Most dynamic web pages are generated in response to queries run against databases. Behind your widget website there is a large database of widgets. When a visitor comes to your site and looks for left-handed blue widgets, it is this database that supplies the response. The database provides that information to the visitor. Typically the visitor checks a box or selects from a list or even types text onto the page and presses a "submit" button. Once she jumps through those hoops, your visitor gets her page full of left-handed blue widgets.
I can't see you

Unfortunately, when a search engine robot visits this page, it cannot check that box, it cannot select from that list, and it cannot click the "submit" button. Put simply, the robot cannot get to page of widgets. If the robot can't get there, the page will not be included in the search engine database. If it's not in the database, searchers cannot find it.
So how do you get there?

So how do we attract other visitors to our dynamic page of left-handed blue widgets? There must be some way to get there without having to click on that "submit" button.

Next month we will look at several ways to get search engine robots to visit dynamic web pages. Stay tuned.


http://www.searchinnovation.com/optimize-dynamic-pages-1.asp

Finding Targeted Keyword Phrases Your Competitors Miss

Finding keyword phrases your competition is missing is easier than you might think. Combinations of two and three word phrases are often overlooked by your competitors when vying for the top competitive terms. This missed opportunity may be a benefit to you to overcome your competition in the search engine rankings.

Think Like A Searcher - Study Your Target Audience

Really look at the audience you want to bring to your website. Are there terms you might not ordinarily use, or that your competitors use, that would work for a small portion of visitors? Remember that single words tend to be more competitive. Find two and three word phrases that would work for a searcher looking for your website topic. If your visitors usually search on "vertical widgets", look at "horizontal widgets" as well. Dig deep to find terms that might not be obvious to you. Be sure to focus your terms on the actual topic of your website, and terms that people would really search for. Have another person compile a list of keyword phrases used to find your website or product. You'd be surprised at the number of variations two minds can come up with instead of one. Think like a searcher - not a website owner.

View Your Competitor's Source Code And Content For Keyword Phrases

Viewing your competitor's source code is very easy and a good way to see what keyword phrases (if any) they are using. Using your browser, view the source code of their page. The title and meta tags should contain the same keywords or variations of keyword phrases if the competitor's website is optimized. Look over the web page content as well as for keyword phrases worked into the text, image alt text, headings and hyperlinks of the pages. If their pages are not optimized you may gain an even bigger edge on the competition by optimizing your web pages.

Using Keyword Tools To Find Variations Of Keyword Phrases

The Overture Suggestion Tool will provide keyword variations. You can find the tool at http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

Clicking on the suggestion tool link will bring up a window that allows you to search for terms and variations of terms. Begin with your list and see how many variations come up with the results. You might be surprised at the popularity of some of the search variations you see. Be sure to add you new keyword phrases to your list.

WordTracker is a keyword tool as well, you can purchase a yearly subscription or even a one day subscription. Learn more about it here: http://www.wordtracker.com/
Search On Keyword Phrases In The Search Engines

Using your expanded list of keyword phrases, search for those terms in the search engine databases. Note the number of search engine results. The more results, typically the more competitive the term. See the differences in number of search results for plural versions as opposed to singular versions of your keywords in each engine. Note the descriptions that the search engine results bring up - are there any keyword phrases there that might apply to your website? Don't forget the ads Google displays in their search results. Study the ads that come up with your search terms as well. While you are searching on your keyword phrases, check your competitor's ranking, along with the new keyword phrase variations you come up with through the Overture Keyword and WordTracker tools.

Add Keywords Reflecting Your Local Cities And State

You can also target local areas by including them in your title/meta tags and text of your web pages. List only the cities and state you reside in and/or provide services to. You never know who will be looking for a local contact producer of "blue widgets" in your city or state. Some people prefer to work with a local company. Adding in those type of specifics, even on your contact page with your local information, can pull in traffic your local competitors are missing.

Check Your Site Statistics

Last but certainly not least, check your search engine stats program or raw server logs to see what terms your visitors are using to find your website. There may be combinations of words your visitors are using you have not thought of or that may not be in the content of your pages.
Incorporate Keyword Phrases Into Content Of Your Web Pages

Once you have your list of varied keyword phrases, work them into your web page. Incorporating these terms into your web pages should "make sense", in other words, they should read well and not sound "spammy". Most of all, they should realistically be part of the content of the page, not placed there only because you need them in the content. Have another person read your copy to see if it sounds reasonable to them.

Keyword Variations Make A Difference

Don't miss out on the keywords your competitors might miss. Those extra keywords could translate into profits and increased viewing of your website by visitors who might otherwise not find you.

http://www.searchinnovation.com/keyword-phrases-competitors.asp

Organic SEO: Patience For Long Term Ranking Results

When does long term SEO show ranking results? It takes time for optimization to produce targeted traffic to your website. Organic SEO requires time to take effect, just as it takes time for your web pages to start showing up in the search engine results.

Clients regularly ask me about the timing of a search engine optimization campaign and when those results will be seen in the search engine listings. A long term marketing campaign based on search engine optimization takes time: patience is the name of the game.

Optimization Timeframe

SEO's timeframe depends on a number of factors. Part of this involves the accuracy of keyword phrase choices: is the keyword phrase one your visitors would use to find your product or website? If your keyword phrases are targeted to your audience, you will gain optimum results. Did you use Paid Inclusion and/or PPC services? The best combination for success involves using a combination of SEO, Paid Inclusion and PPC services. If you do not use Paid Inclusion or PPC, using organic SEO only, it takes more time to achieve results.

Paid Results

When you use Paid Inclusion or PPC (Pay-Per-Click) bidding, your results show up sooner than traditional SEO. Paid Inclusion submissions state the time-frame in which your page will be indexed by the search engine robots when you sign up for services. PPC bidding results show up as soon as searchers start clicking on your PPC ads. This type of search engine marketing requires an annual budget to renew Paid Inclusion submissions and payment per month for PPC click-through costs. If you are paying too much for your PPC services, organic SEO combined with PPC often helps to keep the prices down for the paid service. By generating additional targeted traffic on those costly terms you may be able to bring the bidding prices down in your PPC campaign or even eliminate some keyword bidding.

The timeline given for paid submissions means the search engines are generating income through this process. Paying for results also gives you a guarantee the listings will be relatively stable in the database.

Paid Inclusion submissions will always take precedence over free submissions because the company makes money from Paid Inclusion. For this reason most search engines will implement free search engine submissions over a longer period of time than paid submissions. When using SEO without the paid submission choices, the process is the same but the optimized pages take longer to be processed into the search engine databases.

Organic SEO

Organic SEO works differently. The best reason to use organic SEO is that it is a low-cost method to promote your website. It can take up to three to six months to see the full results of optimizing your website, especially if you are only using organic optimization. The plus to an organic approach is that once you optimize your pages, the main part of the work is done. You may tweak your keywords and text here and there, but unless you completely re-design your pages, you have what you need in place to begin drawing in targeted traffic. Continue checking your ranking status and reading your log statistics, especially for new keywords visitors are using to find your website.

When using free submissions, expect a three to six month wait before seeing most of the long term results showing in the search engine listings. If you build on a link popularity program and have links pointing back to your website, the search engine robots will find your website through the links, eliminating the need for free submissions. Look at it this way: you pay once for basic optimization and over time the results improve to optimum level. You don't have to keep paying for this service because, unless search engine databases drops your free submission pages (which is not often these days), you will be visible and present to the search engine users when they search on your targeted keyword phrases. Over time you should see a progression in your ranking, depending on how competitive your keyword phrases are.

Budget SEO

What if you can't afford Paid Inclusion or PPC services? Organic SEO is a great way to increase targeted traffic to your website over time. If you do not have a budget for Paid Inclusion submissions and PPC programs, organic SEO will give you good results if you are willing to wait instead of gaining immediate results. Combine organic SEO with plenty of good content and a solid link building program for optimum results. Remember, the search engine listings may entice visitors to come to your website, but you must give them a reason to stay once they arrive. Build your content to keep your new visitors at your website.

Patience Pays Off

Organic SEO is "common sense" promotion. Not a lot of fancy bells and whistles, and it takes time. The addition of good navigation, good content with your keyword phrases throughout the pages and topical sites pointing links back to your website equals long term success.

Practice patience when going organic for your SEO campaign. It may take time but it will be worth the long term results you reap.


http://www.searchinnovation.com/seo-long-term.asp

Buzzwords vs Effective SEO Keywords

Ever see a website that seems to speak a foreign language...in English? We encounter many SEO client websites that rely on buzzwords in the page copy to get the word out about their product. The problem lies with visitors who may not be familiar with those terms. This means optimizing with buzzwords may not be the best way to gain traffic. If your prospective visitors are not searching for those terms, how do they find your website?

Start With The Obvious

You really need to know your industry. Study your prospective visitors--who your target audience is. If your prospective visitors are highly technical and work and talk in "buzzword speak", no problem. But if you also want to attract prospective visitors who may not be immersed in the terminology used in your business, you must compensate by optimizing with a wider array of targeted keywords.

How Do I Find All Those Keywords?

Start researching. Yes, it's going to take a little work on your part to take a close look at what keywords you may be missing out on. Keep account of prospective website visitors who may use other terms to find your website. Track the keywords used by visitors through your log reports. Most log statistics programs have a report showing the keywords used by searchers to find your website. Using your server logs or log statistics program for keyword information is a good way to get a better picture of how visitors are finding your website. Use Overture's keyword tool (http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/) or Wordtracker (http://www.wordtracker.com) and note the words used on your competitors' websites. Using these, or similar tools, type in your buzzwords and see what variations come up. Competitor websites may use a slightly different language than you when writing copy for their pages. Visit their websites and learn all you can about how many ways your business can get its message across. Read online articles; visit business newsgroups and forums. Find research information through industry websites and companies that specialize in producing reports about your industry.

Help Search Engine Robots Do Their Job

Search engine robots are just automated programs. Their concept and execution is relatively simple: search engine robots "read" the text on your pages by going through the source code of your web pages. If the majority of the words in your source code text are buzzwords, this is the information that will be taken back to the search engine database.

It's Obvious (the "DUH" factor)

Ok, so it's obvious to you what your industry buzzwords are. But don't discount the simpler versions of those catchy words. Focus also on some lesser used terms and make a list of additional keywords you might be able to add. Clear, precise copy that catches the visitor's attention and tells your story is generally more effective in the long run.
Compromise - Mix SEO Keywords and Buzzwords

You don't want to change the copy on your webpages? This is often a problem with business websites. Once you have your keyword list of other-than-obvious words, work at fitting them into the page text carefully. You want them to make sense with the context of the web page. Use these new keywords as many times as "makes sense" so they do not sound spammy. Read your copy out loud or have a colleague read your copy to get a sense of how it might sound to a website visitor.

The Bottom Line

It should be easy enough to see how those extra keywords are producing for you. Keep track of your log reports and see if those new terms start showing up in your reports. Test a variety of keywords, then test again to see if visitors are staying on your website, moving through your individual web pages, or clicking away. Create specific pages using those keywords as a test scenario. The information you need should be available to you in your log statistics reports for visited web pages.

Don't let business jargon get in the way of getting your message across to your audience. Yes, buzzwords may sound cutting edge, but the bottom line is, traffic and sales are what you really want to show for your hard work.


http://www.searchinnovation.com/seo-keywords-buzzwords.asp

Search Engine Wars - Innovate To Survive in 2004

Search Engine Innovation For 2004

After being blind-sided by the Google Florida update, many webmasters and SEO's were reeling from the results. The message is clear: you can't rely on just one search engine for all of your traffic. You must use all your wits to emerge victorious from the search engine wars. Google is important, but it is not everything. Keep your eyes and ears open to new opportunities and old standbys: other search engines and directories, paid placement and pay-per-click, newsletters, and even more traditional channels.

Wait To Change

So were you an innocent bystander caught in the onslaught of sites dumped in the Google Florida update? Many people lost their hard-earned ranking, even though they did nothing "wrong". Many websites that follow Google's rules for optimization to the letter were still caught up in the carnage. Unfortunately, many businesses were devastated by these changes, especially heading into the holiday months.

What to do? As difficult as it may have been to make sense of Google's changes, for many, the simplest course of action was to simply do nothing. While perhaps contrary to a normal "it's broken so I need to fix it" approach, for many webmasters "do nothing" has proven to be the correct course of action. Since the update, many sites that were exiled to search engine Siberia have returned to nearly their former ranking, shaken but intact. From all appearances, Google simply changed their algorithm and may not have gotten it quite right. Additional "tweaks" subsequent to the Florida update seem to have brought some sanity back to their results.
Who Will Stay Tops In The Search Engines?

You never know who will become the leader in search engines. It was only a few years ago that directories were the major force--until the upstart search engine Google came along. Google got its start about five years ago and hasn't looked back. As long as Google provides good results for its users, it is in a good position to stay on top. However, with MSN working on the creation of its own search engine and Yahoo's acquisition of Overture (which includes AllTheWeb and AltaVista), things could get interesting in 2004. Microsoft is always a force to be reckoned with, and Yahoo certainly has the tools to become a major competitor to Google.

Inktomi's New Role

Inktomi may play an important role in this growth since it is now owned by Yahoo. Keep an eye on this engine: it provides secondary results for MSN and will probably replace Google in supplying primary results in Yahoo. Inktomi's importance may also increase in MSN once the Microsoft property stops using LookSmart for its primary results.

To see which pages you have listed in Inktomi, use the Inktomi Pure Search function from Positiontech (http://search.positiontech.com/InktomiSearch/PositionTechSearch.jsp). Inktomi often adds a few free pages to its databases. Check first to see which pages you may already have in their database for free before using Paid Inclusion for your most important pages.

Other Ways To Promote Your Website

Keep your eye on search engine news. Google was an up and coming engine a few years ago, you never know what will happen in the industry so stay on your toes. Continue to promote your website through links in topical directory listings. Search for websites that contain topics related to yours. Link when it "makes sense". Don't forget traditional means of marketing your website: print ads, brochures, magazine articles and more may help to make a difference. One of the best ways to promote yourself online and increase your link popularity is to write articles on your subject. Find websites that accept free content and submit your ezine, articles or newsletters to those websites to build your link popularity. Newsletters, forums, FAQ's, blogs and tips on your subject are all viable means to inform your visitors and bring in new traffic to your website. Don't forget to archive your newsletters and articles on your website, which works to build your site size and increase link popularity through your authoritative knowledge of your subject. You aren't a writer? Consider working with a copywriter to help build your good content.

Paid Inclusion And Pay Per Click

If you haven't ventured into using Paid Inclusion or PPC services, consider using them to help balance the changes in your traffic. Use a Paid Inclusion subscription for your most important pages, or submit dynamically generated pages that aren't being picked up by the search engine robots so they will appear regularly in the search engine database. You can start your PPC bidding in small doses. Look for some of the secondary smaller terms that don't cost as much but will still bring in traffic your competitors may miss. Take a look at some of the smaller PPC engines available out there, a little traffic from a lot of places can add up.

For more information on choosing keyword phrases, read our article Finding Targeted Keyword Phrases Your Competitors Miss (http://www.searchinnovation.com/keyword-phrases-competitors.asp).
Content, Content, Content

The biggest mistake I see webmasters make is creating a website with little content. Don't rely on a few paragraphs of text with optimization to convince search engine robots to stick around. A skeleton website does not make a good impression on anyone. Build the content of your website. Google's new algorithm may be a sign of search engine robots getting a little smarter when it comes to understanding what your website content is about. Build information that will keep your visitors at your website. Become an authority on your subject so other websites will naturally link to you because your information is invaluable. Remember, Google is interested in serving those who use its search capabilities, just as you should be interested in serving your visitors. Give as much real content information as able to your visitors, they will thank you with return visits.

And In The End...

In the end, the information you give is often equal to the response you receive. Make the effort to become an authority site on your subject. Building the groundwork of your website with quality information and broadening your methods of marketing will help sustain you during the search engine wars upcoming.


http://www.searchinnovation.com/search-engine-survival.asp

SEM - Research Measures Success

Search engine marketing success comes from good research. By applying research to understand your competition and target audience, your optimization efforts will succeed. Remember when homework from school often required some research on your part to complete? It is much the same scenario for search engine marketing: you need to apply yourself by researching in order to understand your competition and target audience. Your visitors need to relate to you and understand your message and what you want them to do.

Know Your Industry

You must spend time understanding the industry you are trying to make a profit from. If you sell widgets, know everything you can about widgets: where they come from, how they are typically sold, why people need them, etc. You can learn a great deal from your competitors. Research using industry communications such as online magazines, forums, newsletters and blogs. Read articles written by industry leaders and keep up on the latest news about your industry. The more you know, the better your basis for building an authoritative website.

What's Your Point?

Ok, so you've got this product you want to sell online. What are you saying to your audience? Make sure you write in a clear, concise way so your message does not get lost in the process. Just because everyone in your company understands your message doesn't mean the visitors to your site will. Have a few test scenarios set up; ask a few objective readers what they understand from your website and see just how much your message is getting across. You'd be surprised that what may be obvious to you is not necessarily obvious to your website visitors. If you are having trouble creating a clear message for your website, consider hiring a copywriter to convey what you want to say.

Know Your Target Audience

Who buys your product and why? Who needs the information you have on your website? Who would you like to have visit your website that isn't already there? Who is visiting you? Are they professionals who understand your technical terms or visitors of varying levels who all need the same information from you? What do you offer that a certain market would want from you? Take the time to get a good look at what is out there and how your competitors are presenting their information to online visitors. Use your log statistics reports to track who comes to your website. Get familiar with the keyword terms they are using in the search engines to find you. Research the domains that most visit you. Find out why visitors are clicking away from certain pages before going deeper into the content of your website. Is it a lack of information? Too many choices to click on? Is the language used or instructions given easy to understand? Don't give your visitors a reason to leave before they understand your message.

Know Your Competition

Take a good look at your top competition and see what they are offering online. Even looking at websites that are not direct competitors may give you an idea of what to offer your visitors. Think of it this way: someone put effort into creating those websites. Visit your competitor's website. Search in the major search engines for your most important keyword phrases and see if your competitors show up in the top thirty search engine results. Learn what you can and see if what they are doing is something you should be doing. It's always good to know if your competitors are using SEO, Paid Inclusion, PPC, Link Building and other means to rank well.

Make Your Website Accessible

There's nothing worse than muddling through a website looking for what you want and clicking so much you finally give up. Use easy navigation, make sure your information or products are easily accessible to your visitors. Create written text that is easily understood in order to get your message across readily. Give your visitors plenty of written information. There's no such thing as "too much text" when it comes to search engine robots "understanding" your web pages. What's good for the visitor is often good for the search engine robots.

Do The Work

Research is the cornerstone to your success. The more you know about your subject, the better you will be able to inform your visitors. By informing your visitors you build trust and interest in learning more about your website. Do the math - get searching!


http://www.searchinnovation.com/sem-measures-success.asp

SEO's Relationship With Website Architecture

Search engine optimization for today's search engine robots requires that sites be well-designed and easy-to-navigate. To a great degree, organic search engine optimization is simply an extension of best practices in web page design. SEO's relationship with web design is a natural one. By making sites simple and easily accessible, you are providing the easiest path for the search engine robots to index your site, at the same time that you are creating the optimum experience for your human visitors.

This approach ties well into the notion of long-term search engine marketing success. Rather than trying to "psych out" the ever-changing search engine algorithms, build pages that have good text and good links. No matter what the search engines are looking for this month or next, they will always reward good content and simple navigation.
Search Engine Robots

Search engine robots are automated programs that go out on the World Wide Web and visit web pages. They read the text on a page and click through links in order to travel from page to page. What this really means is that they "read" or collect information from the source code of each page. Depending on the search engine, the robots typically pick up the title and meta description. The robots then go on to the body text of the page in the source code. They also pay attention to certain tags such as headings and alt text. Search engine robots have capabilities like first-generation browsers at best: no scripting, no frames, no Flash. When designing, think simple.

Search Engine Friendly Design

Creating search engine friendly design is relatively easy. Cut out all the bells and whistles and stick to simple architecture. Search engine robots "understand" text on the page and hyperlinks, especially text links. The relationship of SEO and web design makes sense when you start with good design techniques for your visitor. The easier the navigation and the more text on the page, the better it is not only for the visitor but also for the search engine robots.
Obstacles For Indexing Web Pages

Search engine robots cannot "choose" from drop down lists, click a submit button, or follow JavaScript links like a human visitor. In addition, the extra code necessary to script your pages or create those lists can trip-up the search engine robots while they index your web page. The long JavaScript in your source code means the search engine robots must go through all this code to finally reach the text that will appear on your page. Offload your JavaScript and CSS code for quicker access to your source code by the search engine robots, and faster loading time for your online visitors. Some search engine robots have difficulty with dynamically-generated pages, especially those with URLs that contain long querystrings. Some search engines, such as Google, index a portion of dynamically generated pages, but not all search engines do. Frames cause problems with indexing and are generally best left out of design for optimum indexing. Web pages built entirely in Flash can present another set of problems for indexing.
Depth Of Directories

Search engine robots may have difficulty reaching deeper pages in a website. Aim to keep your most important pages no more than one or two "clicks" away from your home page. Keep your pages closer to the root instead of in deeply-nested subdirectories. In this way you will be assured the optimum indexing of your web pages. Just as your website visitor may become lost and frustrated in too many clicks away from your homepage, the robots may also give up after multiple clicks away from the root of your site.
Solutions And Helpful Techniques

If there are so many problems with indexing, how will you ever make it work?

The use of static pages is the easiest way to ensure you will be indexed by the search engine robots. If you must use dynamically-generated pages, there are techniques you can use to improve the chances of their being indexed. Use your web server's rewrite capabilities to create simple URLs from complex ones. Use fixed landing pages including real content, which in turn will list the links to your dynamic pages. If you must use querystrings in your page addresses, make them as short as possible, and avoid the use of "session id" values.

When using Flash to dress up your pages, use a portion of Flash for an important message, but avoid building entire pages using that technology. Make sure that the search engine robots can look at all of the important text content on your pages. You want your message to get across to your human visitor as well. Give them enough information about your product to interest them in going the next step and purchasing your product.

If you must use frames, be sure to optimize the "no frames" section of your pages. Robots can't index framed pages, so they rely on the no frames text to understand what your site is about. Include JavaScript code to reload the pages as needed in the search engine results page.

Got imagemaps and mouseover links? Make sure your pages include text links that duplicate those images, and always include a link back to your homepage.

Use a sitemap to present all your web pages to the search engine robots, especially your deeper pages. Make sure you have hyperlink text links on your page, and a sentence or two describing each page listed, using a few of your keyword phrases in the text.

Remember that the search engine robots "read" the text on your web page. The more that your content is on-topic and includes a reasonable amount of keyword-rich text, the more the search engine robot will "understand" what the page is about. This information is then taken back to the search engine database to eventually become part of the data you see in the search engine results.

Last of all, it is very important to test your pages for validation. Errors from programming code and malformed html can keep the search engine robots from indexing your web pages. Keep your coding clean.
Check List For Success

* Include plenty of good content in text on your web pages
* Incorporate easy to follow text navigation
* Serve up dynamically generated pages as simply as possible
* Offload JavaScript and other non-text code (style sheets, etc.) to external files
* Add a sitemap for optimum indexing of pages
* Validate your pages using the World Wide Web Consortium's validation tool, or other html validator

On Your Way To Indexed Pages

The best way to assure that your pages will be indexed is to keep them simple. This type of architecture not only helps the search engine robots, but makes it easier for your website visitors to move throughout your site. Don't forget to provide plenty of good content on your pages. The search engine robots and your visitors will reward you with return visits.


http://www.searchinnovation.com/seo-website-architecture.asp

One Way Link Building Secures Long Term Ranking Results

One-way link building is a great way to improve your link popularity and ranking in the search engines. One-way links are more difficult to obtain than traditional reciprocal links, but pay off in securing solid long-term search engine ranking results.

Why Are One-Way Links Helpful?

Link building in general is an important part of making sure your site ranks well in the search engines. Google and many of the other search engines include link popularity as part of the way they evaluate the web pages they include in the search engine databases. Links are seen as a positive "vote" towards the quality of the web page. Each individual page acquires link popularity based on the pages that link to it. Google and Yahoo both have toolbars showing the page rank of pages you visit, so you can use these tools to get a good estimate of your pages' link popularity. It is not necessary to get totally caught up in the minutia of which types of links from which types of pages are the most important. The bottom line is this: acquiring links pointing back to your website, particularly links from sites covering the same or related topics as your site, is helpful in the overall scheme of search engine ranking.

The big "plus" of one-way links is that you don't have to worry about linking back to a "bad neighborhood". If your site has links pointing back to sites that serve as "link farms" or "free-for-all" sites, you may not gain, and could actually lose page rank. These sites are rarely focused, and tend to have links to and from all different sorts of sites. Since there is no particular topical emphasis here, it is clear to Google and the other search engines that the sole purpose of these sites is to artificially increase the number of links pointing to your site. Since there is no value added for the search engine's users, they in turn give no value to these links.

Another advantage to these focused, one-way links is that they will tend to stay in place. A website that features a link to your site probably does so because that site's owner thinks that their visitors will benefit from the content your site has to offer. Rather than simply trying to manipulate search results, they want to add to the experience of their visitors; you benefit from having a long term link in place. Sites featuring reciprocal links may simply drop your link when it no longer suits their linking strategy.

How Do I Obtain Natural Links?

Building good content helps interest your visitors and keeps them on your website. By becoming an authority on your topic, you will attract more visitors. When another website in essence "votes" for the quality of your website by placing a link pointing back to it, you are obtaining natural linking. The more you can build upon helpful articles, FAQs and white papers, etc., the better reason for visitors to link back to your website because of the quality content.
One-Way Linking Sources

There are a number of ways to get links from other sites back to yours. The most important principle to keep in mind is that you will get the most links when you offer something significant to link to. Think of what you can provide that people will want to link to:

* Natural links given from topic-related websites that like your website
* Providing free content, such as access to articles, e-books, FAQ's and white papers
* Directory links, listed under the category related to your topic
* Business directory links, listed under the category related to your topic
* Blogs, submitted to a blog directory and archived online
* Business associations, listed under the category related to your topic
* Newsletter text ads promoting your business, archived online at topic-related websites
* Original articles, submitted to and archived online at topic-related websites
* Original press releases, submitted to and archived online at topic-related websites
* Original newsletters, submitted to and archived online at topic-related websites
* White papers, submitted to and archived online at topic-related websites
* E-books, submitted to and archived online at topic-related websites
* Free software tools provided with required link back to website

For each of these types of content, you will want to have an active link pointing back to your site. Of course, when creating your own original content, always archive your own work on your website to build your content and increase your own link popularity by growing the number of pages on your website.

The extra value of one-way links is the fact that you are also promoting your website from the listing as well as the active link. Articles, newsletters, white papers, directory and business association links may bring in traffic from visitors who are interested in the description of your website listing.

How Do I Know The Links Are Valid?

To gain the most benefit from your links, the link back to your web page should be one that can be followed by the search engine robots. Plain old text links and image links usually can be followed by the search engine robots. More exotic types of links, like JavaScript links, cannot typically be followed by the search engine robots. When you provide suggested linking code, the simpler the better. Don't be afraid to suggest linking formats to owners of sites that link to you. The types of links that serve your purposes best will generally provide their visitors with the best experience as well.

Check to see if the page where the link will be located can be found in the search engine results. You can search via the entire website or by individual page. Different search engines use different syntax in looking for individual pages and links; refer to the advanced search function for each search engine for details.

Google Search Example:

Shows indexing of all pages listed in website
site:www.websitedomainname.com
Shows indexing of a specific web page in website
info:www.websitedomainname.com/pagename.html

If the page is listed in the search engine results, this means the page has been indexed by the search engine robots. This means the web page is valid for indexing and that your link will be picked up as well.

Research And Quality Content Equal Success

One-way link building means hard work and long term determination to achieve good link popularity. By improving the quality of your website, you improve the chance to obtain good quality natural links. Spend a set amount of time each week to seek out quality one-way links to achieve your goal. By using this long-term game plan you will be able to safely build links for optimum link popularity success.

http://www.searchinnovation.com/one-way-link-building.asp