Friday, September 14, 2007

What is basic SEO and how does one go about it?

What is basic SEO and how does one go about it?

SEO is the short way to say Search Engine Optimization. It is the practice of trying to get better rankings in Google, Yahoo! and MSN. Those three are known as the ‘big three’ because nearly all searchers use one of them, so it is the most profitable for you to try to optimize for them.

Americans conducted 7.4 billion searches online in May, up 12 percent from April. Google Sites registered the most search queries performed with 3.3 billion, followed by Yahoo! Sites (2.1 billion), MSN-Microsoft (963 million) - Comscore

Search engines take into account many things in your website, optimizing those is called on-page optimization, everything that isn’t your website is off-page optimization. Now, while the exact ranking formulae are secret, this is what is widely believed as ‘simple SEO’.

First, we want to improve on-page optimization. So we have to pick keywords. There are a variety of tools you can search for which will give you lists of keywords that are usable.

Now you have your keywords. So you now have to see what the top 10 people are doing for them (warning: basic html and math needed ahead). Go to the top person on the most important keyword you have, on google. As an example, we’ll use the keywords ‘free downloads’, and I’ll do the math with you.

The number one website is download.com, so let’s analyze this top website.

Keyword density is the measure of how many times a keyword appears compared to the rest of the text in that area. The areas include: title, meta keywords, meta description, plain content (text), h1, h2, h3, bold, italics, underlined and domain name.

Let’s do some of the math for download.com… Their title is: “Reviews and free downloads at download.com” First we ignore any ‘common’ word, like ‘and, the, at’ etc. So we have: “Reviews free downloads download.com” So, ‘free downloads’ takes up 14 characters out of 35, or 40%. In the meta description tag, it’s 14/272 = 5.14%, so go on and on through the list, keeping it in an excel. After you’ve done the top 10 in google, go to the top 10 in yahoo and msn, ignoring the repeats and do it again. Now, take the average. For the title, let’s say my average was 15%. I wanna try to have a percentage close to that. Too much, and I might get penalized, too little and It wont help.

That’s the basic on-site SEO. Matching keyword density on the site. Off-site seo is everything that is not on your site, mainly getting links for the beginner. The kind of links you want are links from a relevant website that has few other links to other sites. Ways to get these: Submit to directories and reciprocal linking. Submit your site to directories. You can find many lists of them on google. Reciprocal linking is trading links, or in effect, ‘I’ll link to you if you link to me’. The best way to get one is to go to a person who’s site is close in topic with yours, find their email and send a personal one.

_______________
Dear (contact info, or Webmaster)
I was looking at your site and I really liked (thing on their site) about it. (comment about site). I have placed a link to you at (URL of link you place to them) and would appreciate if you’d link back.

Regards,
(name)
(your site url)
_______________
Yes, you have to do this manually, yes, it will help you, and yes, you have to link first. You’re the one asking for a link, so you have to show them you mean it.

Do that for all the top websites in your keywords, and keep doing it. The more you get links, the higher you’ll be in the rankings. You can find the number your competitors have by going to MSN search and typing in ‘Link:download.com’ for my example. It showed that there were 692,811 links to download.com… Better get to work.


http://www.articlefair.com/Article/What-is-basic-SEO-and-how-does-one-go-about-it-/11462

Understanding Paid URL Inclusion

The Internet contains numerous search engines, some of which offer what is known as "paid inclusion." This means that you pay the specific search engine an annual fee for your web page to be included in their index.

Of course, every search engine already has an automated program commonly called a "spider" that indexes all the web pages it locates online, and it does this for free. So whether you pay or not, your web page will eventually be indexed by all Internet search engines, as long as the spider can follow a link to your page. The major issue is, then, how quickly your page is indexed.

A search engine that offers a paid URL inclusion uses an extra spider that is programmed to index the particular pages that have been paid for. The difference between the spider that indexes pages for free and the spider that indexes only pages for a fee is speed. If you have paid for inclusion, the additional search engine spider will index your page immediately.

The debate over paid URL inclusion centres around the annual fee. Since the regular spider of these search engines would eventually get around to indexing your web page anyway, why is a renewal fee necessary? The fee is necessary to keep your pages in the search engine's index. If you go the route of paid inclusion, you should be aware that at the end of the pay period, on some search engines, your page will be removed from their index for a certain amount of time.

It's easy to get confused about whether you would benefit from paid inclusion since the spider of any search engine will eventually index your page without the additional cost. There are both advantages and disadvantages to paid URL inclusion, and it is only by weighing your pros and cons that you will be able to decide whether to spring for the extra cash or not.

The advantages are obvious: rapid inclusion and rapid re-indexing. Paid inclusion means that your pages will be indexed quickly and added to search results in a very short time after you have paid the fee. The time difference between when the regular spider will index your pages, and when the paid spider will, is a matter of months. The spider for paid inclusion usually indexes your pages in a day or two. Be aware that if you have no incoming links to your pages, the regular spider will never locate them at all.

Additionally, paid inclusion spiders will go back to your pages often, sometimes even daily. The advantage of this is that you can update your pages constantly to improve the ranking in which they appear in search engines, and the paid URL inclusion spider will show that result in a matter of days.

First and foremost, the disadvantage is the cost. For a ten page website, the costs of paid URL inclusion range from $170 for Fast/Lycos to $600 for Altavista, and you have to pay each engine their annual fee. How relevant the cost factor is will depend on your company.

Another, and perhaps more important, disadvantage is the limited reach of paid URL inclusions. The largest search engines, Google, Yahoo, and MSN, do not offer paid URL inclusion. That means that the search engines you choose to pay an inclusion fee will amount to a small fraction of the traffic to your site on a daily basis.

Google usually updates its index every month, and there is no way you can speed up this process. You will have to wait for the Google spider to index your new pages no matter how many other search engines you have paid to update their index daily. Be aware that it is only after Google updates their index that your pages will show up in Google, or AOL results.

One way to figure out whether paid URL inclusion is a good deal for your company is to consider some common factors. First, find out if search engines have already indexed your pages. To do this, you may have to enter a number of different keywords, but the quickest way to find out is to enter your URL address in quotes. If your pages appear when you enter the URL address but do not appear when you enter keywords, using paid inclusion will not be beneficial. This is because your pages have already been indexed and ranked by the regular spider. If this is the case, your money would be better spent by updating your pages to improve your ranking in search results. Once you accomplish this, you can then consider using paid inclusion if you want to speed up the time it will take for the regular spider to revisit your pages.

The most important factor in deciding whether to use paid URL inclusion is to decide if it's a good investment. To figure this out, you have to look at the overall picture: what kind of product or service are you selling and how much traffic are you dependent on to see a profit?

If your company sells an inexpensive product that requires a large volume of traffic to your site, paid inclusion may not be the best investment for you; the biggest search engines do not offer it, and they are the engines that will bring you the majority of hits. On the other hand, if you have a business that offers an expensive service or product and requires a certain quality of traffic to your site, a paid URL inclusion is most likely an excellent investment.

Another factor is whether or not your pages are updated frequently. If the content changes on a daily or weekly basis, paid inclusion will insure that your new pages are indexed often and quickly. The new content is indexed by the paid spider and then appears when new relevant keywords are entered in the search engines. Using paid inclusion in this case will guarantee that your pages are being indexed in a timely manner.

You should also base your decision on whether or not your pages are dynamically generated. These types of pages are often difficult for regular spiders to locate and index. Paying to include the most important pages of a dynamically generated website will insure that the paid spider will index them.

Sometimes a regular spider will drop pages from its search engine, although these pages usually reappear in a few months. There are a number of reasons why this can happen, but by using paid URL inclusion, you will avoid the possibility. Paid URL inclusion guarantees that your pages are indexed, and if they are inadvertently dropped, the search engine will be on the lookout to locate them immediately.

As you can see, there are numerous factors to consider when it comes to paid URL inclusion. It can be a valuable investment depending on your situation. Evaluate your business needs and your website to determine if paid URL inclusion is a wise investment for your business goals.


http://www.articlefair.com/Article/Understanding-Paid-URL-Inclusion/11478

Why Backlinks Are Important For Your Website's Search Engine Ranking

Like any investment, your website must start turning a profit as early as possible, and pulling the search engines is a critical component. There are several tools your site can use to get these rankings:

1.Search-engine optimized text
2.Fresh content frequently
3.Links to your site from high-profile websites
4.Traffic to and from your site

The first two are all about how you put your web site together and subsequently work with it. The last one – quality inbound links– has nothing at all to do with your site, and if you work it properly, can give you both great rankings and pull in a surprising amount of traffic from sites other than search engines.

Once you start building up your traffic, your search engine ratings will stabilize, and your site will slowly grow. It's a lot like starting a car – it takes a lot of energy to get it going, but once it's running it only takes maintenance energy.

Article Submissions Services: Getting Those Inbound Links

Most people don't know where to start with inbound links. Do you just email webmasters and ask? Buy advertising? Or do you offer your own site up as a link farm, encouraging your hard-won customers to visit someone else?

None of these are the best bet (though emailing webmasters, over time, is a good additional strategy). The best way you can get great inbound links is by using an article submission service.

These services use article directories, large online repositories of articles donated by webmasters like you, to build backlinks to your site. Each article you donate contains a resource box that points back to your website, in whatever format you desire. And you can donate the same article to hundreds of article directories.

You can do this yourself. But article submissions services know how to find the best directories, and have specialists who can enter your information in the often-tedious and time-consuming directories forms. It may be a better expenditure of your time to focus on that great content and building your business in other ways, while leaving the submissions to experts who can do it cheaply, efficiently, and properly.

Article submissions services understand the search engines and how they examine links, and can use this knowledge to benefit you. And because you can expect the search engines to change their methodology about every four to six months, with major changes every year and a half to a year, these services will always have the most up-to-date information on the best way to use links to enhance your placement.

While you may be able to build your website ranking yourself, it's often better to seek help from people who have done it for years, at least the first few times you submit a site. Article submission services are your perfect ally when you're chasing search engine rankings.

Appropriate Linking

There are only so many directories you can submit to, of course. Once you have maxed out your directory submission, you can start looking for webmasters to trade links with. There are a few things you should seek out in this case. Your link partners should be suitable for you, and you should be right for them as well. You should trade up as much as you can; look for pages with good rankings themselves. Don't trade with a competitor; if you sell similar merchandise or if you're both close together using the same keyword phrase, you should trade with someone else.

But link trading only works once your site has been built up in the search engines. Few webmasters are willing to trade links with a low-ranking site (would you?). For the quickest rankings boost, and for a great foundation that you can really start to work from, use mass articles submissions. It will set you apart and above your competition.


http://www.articlefair.com/Article/Why-Backlinks-Are-Important-For-Your-Website-s-Search-Engine-Ranking/11486

Why Backlinks Are Important For Your Website's Search Engine Ranking

The Internet contains numerous search engines, some of which offer what is known as "paid inclusion." This means that you pay the specific search engine an annual fee for your web page to be included in their index.

Of course, every search engine already has an automated program commonly called a "spider" that indexes all the web pages it locates online, and it does this for free. So whether you pay or not, your web page will eventually be indexed by all Internet search engines, as long as the spider can follow a link to your page. The major issue is, then, how quickly your page is indexed.

A search engine that offers a paid URL inclusion uses an extra spider that is programmed to index the particular pages that have been paid for. The difference between the spider that indexes pages for free and the spider that indexes only pages for a fee is speed. If you have paid for inclusion, the additional search engine spider will index your page immediately.

The debate over paid URL inclusion centres around the annual fee. Since the regular spider of these search engines would eventually get around to indexing your web page anyway, why is a renewal fee necessary? The fee is necessary to keep your pages in the search engine's index. If you go the route of paid inclusion, you should be aware that at the end of the pay period, on some search engines, your page will be removed from their index for a certain amount of time.

It's easy to get confused about whether you would benefit from paid inclusion since the spider of any search engine will eventually index your page without the additional cost. There are both advantages and disadvantages to paid URL inclusion, and it is only by weighing your pros and cons that you will be able to decide whether to spring for the extra cash or not.

The advantages are obvious: rapid inclusion and rapid re-indexing. Paid inclusion means that your pages will be indexed quickly and added to search results in a very short time after you have paid the fee. The time difference between when the regular spider will index your pages, and when the paid spider will, is a matter of months. The spider for paid inclusion usually indexes your pages in a day or two. Be aware that if you have no incoming links to your pages, the regular spider will never locate them at all.

Additionally, paid inclusion spiders will go back to your pages often, sometimes even daily. The advantage of this is that you can update your pages constantly to improve the ranking in which they appear in search engines, and the paid URL inclusion spider will show that result in a matter of days.

First and foremost, the disadvantage is the cost. For a ten page website, the costs of paid URL inclusion range from $170 for Fast/Lycos to $600 for Altavista, and you have to pay each engine their annual fee. How relevant the cost factor is will depend on your company.

Another, and perhaps more important, disadvantage is the limited reach of paid URL inclusions. The largest search engines, Google, Yahoo, and MSN, do not offer paid URL inclusion. That means that the search engines you choose to pay an inclusion fee will amount to a small fraction of the traffic to your site on a daily basis.

Google usually updates its index every month, and there is no way you can speed up this process. You will have to wait for the Google spider to index your new pages no matter how many other search engines you have paid to update their index daily. Be aware that it is only after Google updates their index that your pages will show up in Google, or AOL results.

One way to figure out whether paid URL inclusion is a good deal for your company is to consider some common factors. First, find out if search engines have already indexed your pages. To do this, you may have to enter a number of different keywords, but the quickest way to find out is to enter your URL address in quotes. If your pages appear when you enter the URL address but do not appear when you enter keywords, using paid inclusion will not be beneficial. This is because your pages have already been indexed and ranked by the regular spider. If this is the case, your money would be better spent by updating your pages to improve your ranking in search results. Once you accomplish this, you can then consider using paid inclusion if you want to speed up the time it will take for the regular spider to revisit your pages.

The most important factor in deciding whether to use paid URL inclusion is to decide if it's a good investment. To figure this out, you have to look at the overall picture: what kind of product or service are you selling and how much traffic are you dependent on to see a profit?

If your company sells an inexpensive product that requires a large volume of traffic to your site, paid inclusion may not be the best investment for you; the biggest search engines do not offer it, and they are the engines that will bring you the majority of hits. On the other hand, if you have a business that offers an expensive service or product and requires a certain quality of traffic to your site, a paid URL inclusion is most likely an excellent investment.

Another factor is whether or not your pages are updated frequently. If the content changes on a daily or weekly basis, paid inclusion will insure that your new pages are indexed often and quickly. The new content is indexed by the paid spider and then appears when new relevant keywords are entered in the search engines. Using paid inclusion in this case will guarantee that your pages are being indexed in a timely manner.

You should also base your decision on whether or not your pages are dynamically generated. These types of pages are often difficult for regular spiders to locate and index. Paying to include the most important pages of a dynamically generated website will insure that the paid spider will index them.

Sometimes a regular spider will drop pages from its search engine, although these pages usually reappear in a few months. There are a number of reasons why this can happen, but by using paid URL inclusion, you will avoid the possibility. Paid URL inclusion guarantees that your pages are indexed, and if they are inadvertently dropped, the search engine will be on the lookout to locate them immediately.

As you can see, there are numerous factors to consider when it comes to paid URL inclusion. It can be a valuable investment depending on your situation. Evaluate your business needs and your website to determine if paid URL inclusion is a wise investment for your business goals.


http://www.articlefair.com/Article/Understanding-Paid-URL-Inclusion/11478

SEO With Blogs

Everyone knows that to get high search engine ranking is not easy. Many SEO experts agreed that the most effective and popular way is using link popularity technique. You want to get as many back links as you can to point to your website, when search engines see that, they will think that your website is a popular site and they will come index your site.

Blogging is a great way to get your website indexed fast, because blogs get new content updates often and search engines love new content. Blog also uses Post & Ping to get search engine to come index you every time you update your blog.

There are two ways to get back links through blogs - create your own blogs or posting comments on other people's blogs with your website link in the posts, either way will get your website indexed by SE.

However, you need to create or post to hundreds of blogs to be effective, and this is very time consuming. There is an easier way - I found a company (http://BlogAdBlasting.com/?adhits) that created a network of over 2,000 blogs for members to post daily to all the blogs in the entire network with just a click of the button (with a small one time fee and you can post daily for life)

I use this service to gain 1000's of permanant back links to my 1 Step System and PAS websites and get indexed within 24 hours of posting, it sure saves me a lot of time. You can either create hundreds of blogs or post thousands of comments one at a time by going to Blogger.com, or use the above mentioned blog blasting service to gain back links fast, either way will get your website indexed by search engines.


http://www.articlefair.com/Article/SEO-With-Blogs/12162

Latent Semantic Indexing and Search Engines Optimimization (SEO)

The closest search engines have come to actual applications of this technology so far is know as "Associative Indexing" and it is put in effect under Stemming,or the indexing of words on the basis of their uninflected roots (plurals, adverbs,and adjectival forms are reduced to simple noun and verb forms before indexing).

Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) is a technique in natural language processing,in particular in vectorial semantics, invented in 1990 [1] by Scott Deerwester,Susan Dumais, George Furnas, Thomas Landauer, and Richard Harshman.In the context of its application to information retrieval, it is sometimes called Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI).

Here are some quick facts about Latent Semantic Indexing:
1. LSI is 30% more effective than popular word matching methods.
2. LSI uses a fully automatic statistical method (Singular Value Decomposition)
3. It is very effective in cross-languages retrievals.
5. LSI can retrieve relevant information that does not contain query words.
6. It finds more relevant information than other methods.

Latent Semantic Indexing adds an important step to the document indexing process. In addition to recording which keywords a document contains, the method examines document collections as a whole, to see which others do contain some of those same words. LSI considers documents that have many words in common to be semantically close, and ones that have few words in
common to be semantically distant. This method correlates surprisingly well with how a human being looking at content, classifies multiple documents.


http://www.articlefair.com/Article/Latent-Semantic-Indexing-and-Search-Engines-Optimimization--SEO-/12500

Trinity Insight's Seven Golden Rules to Search Optimization Success

Trinity Insight's Seven Golden Rules to SEO Success

Having achieved numerous #1 rankings for a plethora of keywords within a competitive sector (eCommerce), I have been able to identify and understand the variables that positively affect the major search algorithms. That is what this article is all about, letting you in on the most important variables that affect your website from a search optimization standpoint.
Google, Yahoo, and MSN should all be three sources of substantial traffic to your website or your eCommerce store. To not try and execute some sort of SEO optimization attempt is literally missing out on thousands of potential customers that may have interest with your business or your product offering.

The following list outlines ten rules to follow when embarking on your SEO journey. Enough talk - lets get to work!

When just starting in SEO - Target words that are attainable and precise
Of course every business wants to be ranked #1 for the top 3 highest trafficked keywords, but in most cases it is the secondary tier of terms that can deliver your best profits. This rule becomes even more true if you are just starting your SEO execution and have a limited # of existing links that are inbound. By starting out optimizing for the 2nd tier of keywords, your success chances are raised and your speed to first page rank increases dramatically.
Understand the concept of keyword density and make sure your terms are in the right percentage range

Keyword density is the percentage of total words within the body of a page that is the keyword that you are targeting. For example, lets suppose your were a fishing products retailer trying to optimize your homepage for the terms "fishing supplies". Within the page, the term "fishing supplies" should represent between 5-10% of the total text. Go more than ten percent through un-natural writing and your page may be flagged as spam. Go less than 5% and your density may not be high enough. 5-10% has proven to be the "sweet spot" in today's search algorithm regarding keyword density.

Leverage "viral" marketing for your link building

One way links are more valuable than reciprocal links. Because of "link farms", the major engines have reconstructed their algorithms to place a higher value on one way links. Outside of buying these links which is also considered black hat tactics by Google engineers, the most effective way is to syndicate original content on via the internet to other content hungry webmasters. By crafting original articles that include your business URL, and by manually submitting these articles to content networks/article directories on the internet, when these articles are shown live by other sites you have a natural "one way" credit link for the content. These one way links make you seen as more of an authority within the engines and hence drive up your natural rankings.

Go after 2-3 primary keywords per page, no more and no less

Each page should focus on ranking well for two, maybe three keywords per page. By targeting tags and content towards a more specific keyword focus, success chances are increased and the content can be focused towards the keywords. Optimizing a page for 5+ terms is a waste of time and will just lead to poor rankings for the attempted terms.

Tighten up your title tags

Title tags are the single biggest “on page” component to the major search engine algorithms. It is crucial that your tag be only the two to three keyword phrases that you are targeting within the webpage and that the keywords are replicated within additional tags and within the body of the text. Avoid commas within title tags and stick to a format that has worked tremendously for many retailers and brands. Use the “|” key on your keyboard as it is a natural looking phrase separator that is easier to index than a title with commas. Take a look at the example below:

Title 1: Fishing Supplies, Tackle, Rods
Title 2: Fishing Supplies | Fishing Tackle | Fishing Rods
The second example is a more effective written title tag that will rank better within the engines. It is more specific to a user, easier to index, and repeats the keyword “fishing” which is extremely pertinent to the theme of the page.
Include core keyword in the url if possible
Including a targeted keyword within a url string has become a vital practice of SEO as of late, especially within eCommerce where businesses are targeting to increase rankings of unique product pages for researching shoppers online. Most sites in the eCommerce sector however are dynamic, and generate URL’s that include characters such as “?” or a “&” that tend to limit crawling by web spiders.

A better practice is to implement a module within your platform that automatically generates static URL’s (ie. an “.htm” URL string) that includes your most profitable keyword. Look below for an example:

Old URL: www.yourcompany.com/category/641?product-632.aspx
New URL: www.yourcompany.com/category/dvd/sony-dvd-recorder-63754.htm
Notice the .htm at the end of the string and the mention of the product within the URL. By executing both your site will be more deeply crawled and more properly indexed.
Understand "anchor text" and why it is so critical Anchor text is the text of your links on external site. For instance, using Trinity as the example, the link eCommerce Consulting on a link partner site will take a web surfer to http://www.trinityinsight.com. “eCommerce Consulting” is considered the anchor text for that link. It is crucial that within content syndication and organic link building your business make sure that you’re most vital and targeted keywords are represented within the anchor text that points to your website.
Make these changes and continue to add great original content to your site and see your rise in the search engines happen. More than anything you need patience as it does not happen overnight. Be prepared to wait at least 6 months to see any immediate impact, especially if you have just been recently indexed.



http://www.articlefair.com/Article/Trinity-Insight-s-Seven-Golden-Rules-to-Search-Optimization-Success/12529

How to Make the Most Out of Automated Link Exchanges

One of the early problems of automated link exchanges was that when you joined such a website and submitted your link, you would instantly get hundreds or thousands of incoming links. This might sound great, at first, but that was not true for the search engines.

Reality shows that all the major SEs want to see a lot of link towards your site, but they want to see a natural link building process. When a 1,000 links are instantly directed towards your website, Google and the other search engines will see something suspicious and your web pages will not get the expected popularity and recognition.

Here are a few things that you should consider when you are using an automated link exchange website or directory:

Add your website in the right category – this is very important, as webmasters are looking for websites related to their own topics.

Don’t place your pet website in the “travel” section of the directory, as that will make it very difficult for other webmasters to find you and initiate link exchanges.

Create a well written description for your site – this is also essential, as you want webmasters looking for link exchanges to see that your website is (or wishes to become) an authority in the field. No one will want to trade links with a short, rushed description that is full of errors.

Filter out unwanted categories – your wedding related website, for example, will not benefit much from trading links with online poker websites. A great directory which allows you to filter unwanted categories of topics and only allow link exchanges with related websites is:

o http://www.MyLinkMachine.com

Allow the link exchange process to be gradual – this is important as the search engines want to see a natural link exchange pattern. Don’t rush to approve hundreds of link exchanges each day.

Take things slowly and only deal with a few dozen link exchanges each day – in the long run, this will be extremely beneficial as Google and the other search engines will consider that you are doing a quality-based exchange campaign, not a bulk links campaign.

Allow the link exchange directory to be visible – some webmasters fear that by placing their link exchange pages where their visitors can reach them they will lose traffic. Although some visitors are lost to link partners, the same number of visitors is probably gained from the links you have on other websites.

So don’t hide your link exchange pages and place a link to easily access them from most areas of your site. Your link exchange partners will notice this and this will also determine how many link exchange requests you get.

Be constant with your link exchange campaign – you will need at least a month or two of decent link exchanges to start seeing results in search engine placement and traffic numbers. Automated link exchange programs are the best choice for keeping a constant link exchange campaign while also investing very little time and effort.


http://www.articlefair.com/Article/How-to-Make-the-Most-Out-of-Automated-Link-Exchanges/12530

Link Exchange Q and A

Here are some of the most common questions webmasters have when the topic refers to incoming links and link exchanges:

Q: How many links do I need to rank high in the search engines? A: This is a tricky question that cannot get a definite answer. If your website is dedicated to some deep ocean bacteria with a very long and strange name, chances are that you can rank first on Google with only a couple of links. On the other hand, if your website is dedicated to losing weight, chances are you will need thousands upon thousands of high quality links to even get a chance to rank high on such a competitive topic.

Q: Which is better – manual or automated link exchange? A: Before automated link exchange directories started offering complete control over link exchange parameters and partners, manual exchanges were better. Today, however, there are websites offering unprecedented control and flexibility over how to conduct your link exchange campaign. Automated link exchanges are the top choice. A great resource to start linking to other websites is:

o http://www.MyLinkMachine.com

Q: How can I get even more links to my website? A: Design a visually appealing website and fill it with interesting and unique content – this will trigger a good response from fellow webmasters and they will be more open to link exchanges.

Q: What’s all the hype about when it comes to getting high PageRank website links? A: PageRank (or PR) is the algorithm used by Google to rank websites. If your website receives a link from a high PR page, your website will also become more popular. Since Google is the leading search engine at the moment and all the other Search Engines are using relatively similar algorithms, PR is a good indication on how well a website is doing on all the major search engines.

Q: What’s the difference between one-way links and reciprocal links? A: One way links are considered to be more valuable than reciprocal links, but they are also much harder to get. Search engines use both one way and reciprocal links to determine where your website will appear in a search, so it’s important to run link campaigns that aim for receiving both kinds of links.

Q: I hear that link anchor text is important. Why? A: The anchor text is basically the series of words that will become hyperlinked when you insert an HTML link code into a webpage. Anchor text is important because it allows you to insert keywords and key phrases in the link anchor, thus increasing the popularity of the web page the link is pointing to.

Q: Apart from link exchanges, what other things should I do to get more traffic? A: Link exchanges are just part of the online promotion strategy. You will also need unique content and you will have to keep your website updated. The site navigation should also be intuitive and the graphics should be visually pleasant but not too demanding and slow-loading. Press releases, article submissions, contributions to other websites – these are all things that will gradually help you increase traffic numbers. A great resource for article submissions is:

o http://www.MyContentBuilder.com

Article submission can be tedious, which is why you may want to consider an automatic article submitter. It will submit one article to over 30 directories in half an hour. To watch a video on how to accomplish this, go to:

o http://1trac.com/dt/t/Article_Submitter_Video.php


http://www.articlefair.com/Article/Link-Exchange-Q-and-A/12540

Why Google Sitemaps is a Win-Win Situation for Webmasters

The process of informing search engines about new pages in your website or about new websites in your care can be quite a time consuming task. The submissions process is just way too much trouble for its own good that even the search engines have realized that it is a path not worth pursuing and completely stopped using this method a long time ago.

There have been many innovations presented since then as a way of simplifying the submission process and eliminate most of the drudgery that has been associated with this task. With the development Google Sitemaps, the process has indeed been a big help to many webmasters and business owners. In fact, many people contend that Google Sitemaps is probably the most important development on the internet since the RSS, blogs and ping.

RSS, blog and ping had actually been used by webmasters as tools in informing search engines about new additions to their websites even though this function was not the primary purpose of the aforementioned innovations. Of course, Google Sitemaps is so much faster and easier to use compared to the said systems and this is the reason why it has risen in popularity and is now acknowledged as the most effective way of updating a website to search engines. In fact, this new innovation of using sitemaps for the search engine submission process has become a very vital part of operating a website and a webmaster can ignore it at his own risk.

There may still be some sceptics who may still not believe that a sitemap method of submitting new web pages or new content to a website is very effective. One reason why using the sitemap method like Google Sitemaps is that the technology was developed from the ground up with solely one primary goal, which is to alert and direct the Google search engine spiders to the web pages that you have specified. All the other methods are considered as indirect and submissions to search engines are not their primary purpose either.

Clearly, using Google sitemaps provides a win-win situation for webmasters and online business owners.

First, Google sitemaps limits the huge waste of the resources needed to crawl web site that have not changed. The technology allows webmasters to inform Google which pages have changed or if there are new content added to a website and then direct Google’s spiders directly to those pertinent pages.

Google Sitemaps also radically speeds up the process of discovery and addition of pages to Google’s web site index. This can only be achieved if you use the technology and nothing else.

Google Sitemaps offers a level of usability that is different from conventional sitemaps because it offers a directory of all the web pages in the web site that the webmaster or online business owner wants the search engine to visit.

Without the assistance of sitemaps like Google’s, it may become hard for a web page to be found by the search engine crawlers. There is even a chance that the page may not be found at all.


http://www.articlefair.com/Article/Why-Google-Sitemaps-is-a-Win-Win-Situation-for-Webmasters/12825

Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) and Search Engines (SEO)

Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) is applied by taking millions of web pages, where the search engines can learn which words are related and which noun concepts relate to one another. Searh Engines are considering related terms and recognizing which terms that frequently occur together, maybe on the same page, or in close enough proximity. So it is mainly used for language modeling or most other applications.

Part of this process involves looking at the copy content of a page, or included on the links, and looking through the ways on how they are related. Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) is based on the well known Singular Value Decomposition Theorem from Matrix Algebra but applied to text. That is why some of the semantic analysis that is done at the page content level it may also be done on the linkage data.

LSA represents the meaning of words as a vector, thus calculating word similarity. Iit has been very efficient to that purpose, and is still used. Regarding text for this application, is considered linear. This makes LSA slow due to using a matrix method called Singular Value Decomposition to create the concept space. But it does only address semantic similarity and not ranking, which is the SEO priority.

Scientific SEOs have a similar goal. They try to discover which words and phrases are most semantically linked together for a given keyword phrase, so when Search Engines crawl the web, they find that links to particular pages and content within them is semantically related to other information that is currently in their database. So, in conclusion, LSA calculates a measure of similarity for words based on possible occurrence patterns of words in documents and on how often words appear in the same context or together with the same set of



http://www.articlefair.com/Article/Latent-Semantic-Analysis--LSA--and-Search-Engines--SEO-/12691

Is a Linking Campaign the Only Trend?

An appropriate linking strategy can improve the page rank for Google and the other search engines. But how can a search engine optimizer's inbound links be spidered and indexed by Google and the other search engines?

The important part in a successful linking strategy is that pages linked to highly ranked sites are a higher value than those with fewer links. Links from serious and higher ranked sites are increasing the value of their destination, improving its position, giving a higher placement in the results list.

Similar results can be obtained using any of the search engines with the same keywords or phrases. To improve the search engine position, the most often recommended solution is to make a linking campaign.

An inbound links method is a proven solution in the high ranking attempt of almost every search engine optimizer. Some inbound links may come from the sites that had added interesting articles about the main site's topics. If the keywords are used with a moderate frequency, keeping the article’s content pleasant, attractive, and interesting; this kind of linking strategy can bring spectacular results.

But what about the reciprocal links? Are they really useful for this strategy? If a long list of reciprocal links exists, does the website have spectacular improved position on the results pages? After a few important experiments, it looks like the result is not as spectacular as the premises are.

Only a small part of the reciprocal links is considered valid by Google and the other search engines. The part applied to the page rank is not as important as the number of reciprocal links is, so this technique must be applied with measure and prudence.

Those thoughts are the results of my personal experience in a site's ranking. I used all the SEO possibilities I knew, but using inbound links was the most powerful tool to improve my web site ranking.

Every link added is ranking the site higher than linking every page individually. If the link also contains valuable keywords for the website content, the results are more promising. A linking strategy well done for each site containing single articles listed on small sites is bringing good results.

The page rank can also be improved by designing a sitemap. It is wise to have a page that links to all others to get every page spidered and indexed. It is not difficult to create a map page and link it from the site’s home page. The results will be appreciable.

To begin linking your sites with other sites, you can start by joining a linking directory. This will help increase your page rank, but you must make sure people are linking back to you. Don't just add a bunch of links to your page and think you're done. You have to have your link reciprocated on the other person's site. To learn more about joining a linking directory, go to:

o http://www.MyLinkMachine.com

Article writing is also a good resource to help with your PR. By joining article directories, you can insert your link in your articles as well as the Resource Box. A great resource to submit your articles is:

o http://www.MyContentBuilder.com

If you are already familiar with submitting articles and you are looking for a faster and easier way to get them into all those directories, you may want to consider an automatic submitting software. To watch a video on how to accomplish this, go to:

o http://1trac.com/dt/t/Article_Submitter_Video.php


http://www.articlefair.com/Article/Is-a-Linking-Campaign-the-Only-Trend-/13011

Information Retrieval Systems (IRS) and Search Engines (SEO)

Information Retrieval Systems (IRS) use phrases to retrieve, organize, describe and index documents. The phrases identified, normally predict the presence of other phrases in those documents. Documents are then indexed, in accordance to the existing phrases. The index is partitioned into multiple ones, including a primary index and secondary. The primary one stores phrases with relevant rank ordered documents. The secondary one stores excess documents in document order.

One application of this concept is meaning-based search. This allows web users to locate information that is close in meaning to concepts being searched. Searching is done by determining a semantic distance between the first and second meaning differentiator, since this distance represents their closeness in meaning. Results for search queries are presented where the target data elements closest in meaning, based on their determined semantic distance, are ranked higher.

Data Mining is also called knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD). Data mining is the extraction of useful patterns and relationships from data sources. It uses the statistical and pattern matching techniques. Also, Data Mining includes data from statistics, machine learning, databases, data visualization and other fields.

Data Mining is often overlooked, when in fact, it can provide us very interesting information that statistical methods are unable to produce. The data SEOs have is often vast, and noisy, meaning that it is imprecise and data structure is complex. The issues that appear in Data Mining are noisy data, missing values, static data, sparse data, dynamic data, relevance, interestingness, heterogeneity, algorithm efficiency, size and complexity of data. These types of problems often occur in large amounts of data, like in search engine indexes.


http://www.articlefair.com/Article/Information-Retrieval-Systems--IRS--and-Search-Engines--SEO-/13100

Manual Article submission Vs Automated Article Submission

So you have made a great article and certainly it needs to be distributed across the web helping lot of readers and generating traffic to your website. A quality article with good information goes a long place over the Internet ensuring loads of one way incoming links, high position in SERPS and permanent traffic propelling your website to new heights.

The first step will be to submit your articles to the article directories. There are hundreds of general and niche article directories which are ready to publish your quality articles with back links to your website(s). The question is how you are going to do the submissions and which directories are you going to submit in? Certainly you don’t want to see your article on “robotics” on a porn article directory or a sports article wrongly placed in the business category on an article directory.

You may have come across

“Completely automated article submission service that submits your article to thousands of publishers around the globe... IN SECONDS!"

and lot of other software’s which claim to automatically submit articles in thousands of article directories. The charges come very cheap and so is the result. Consider the facts before you utilize a software or service to do automatic submission.

Every article directory is unique and they differ in

Allowing html code in the articles
Having links in the main content
Number of links per article which varies from 2-7
Different categories and sections. (Some may have as less as 12 categories while others have more than 100 categories and the category names are not consistent across the directories)
Different types of form input.
Registration and confirmation methods.
CAPTCHA (IMAGE Confirmation) – A picture with numbers which have to be manually entered.
Approval of articles
Maximum number of articles per user (some of them restrict to 10 articles/user)
Length of articles.

The best article directories are opposed to Automated Submissions and it is considered to be a SPAM. No automated software or service can take into account the above differences of article directories and submit to the article directories. The fact is most of the article directories do a manual review on articles and submissions and will find out the automated submissions sooner or later.

What is Manual article submission and how it is better than automated article submission?

Manual article submission is the process of analyzing where and what to submit in the directories by humans and doing each and every article submission by hand ensuring a good acceptance rate of articles.

Manual article submission involves

Finding the right article directory, creating an unique account and submitting the articles in the right category.
Modify the articles as per the need of various directories. This involves
Adding and removing html code inside the article as per requirement. Various article directories have different forms to input the articles and the input fields differ from one article directory to other.

Add, Remove, Format and position the links as per specifications. (Some article directories accept only 3 links, some others accept unlimited numbers. Some of the directories accept html codes for links while others have an option in their system for hyper links. Also some directories accept links only in the certain text areas they have provided )

Confirming the article submissions (Image confirmation, email confirmations) wherever needed and co coordinating with the editors of article directories whenever required.
The advantage over automated article submission is,

First and foremost, manual article submission is the only method an article directory approves off and automated article submission is considered as SPAM.
An article directory is organized into categories and subcategories. Editors review each article submission manually and evaluate the article’s relevance with adequate data. In manual article submission the articles are submitted in the related directory under the right category which is not possible in the case of automated article submission. Automated software can't adequately submit to any article directory because it cannot study the directory’s structure and decide which category is best suited.

Articles are submitted according to the different input systems of various directories by manual article submission. Whereas automated submission just posts a set of predefined data irrespective of the input fields which results in an incomplete submission followed by rejection.
No article directory is skipped in manual article submission. Any Image Confirmation and email confirmation is done immediately which is not possible with automated software. Incase for any reason the article directory is down or the article submission is not through, then it will be done another time.

More emphasis on niche article directories related to your website theme.
Good acceptance rate and thus more links compared to an automated submission.


http://www.articlefair.com/Article/Manual-Article-submission-Vs-Automated-Article-Submission/13161

Manual search engine submission Vs Automated search engine Submission

Manual search engine submission is the best, effective and preferred method when it comes to submitting your website in the search engines. Search engines expect every details of the site to be filled in manually through their website mechanism. Automated submission through back door is considered as a SPAM in most of the popular search engines and directories.

There are hundreds of general and niche search engines which are eager to accept your website if you submit the required information in the right category according to the submission guidelines. The question is how you are going to do the search engine submissions and which search engines are you going to submit in? Certainly you don’t want to submit your mortgage site in a "health directory” or place it in the sports category of a general web directory.

You may have come across

“Completely automated search engine submission service that submits your site to 90,000 search engines on a click of mouse ... IN SECONDS!"

and lot of other software’s which claim to automatically submit your website to thousands of search engines and directories. The rates of these submissions are very cheap and so is the result of these submissions. Chances are your website will be blacklisted by some of the popular search engines and directories. Consider the facts before you utilize a software or service to do automatic search engine submission.

Every search engine and directory is unique and the have various features which differ in

Different categories and sections. (Some may have as less as 12 main categories while others have more than 3000 categories classified into sub categories and inner categories. The category names are not consistent across the directories)
Different types of form input. Some search engines will ask for a very few details of your website whereas a dedicated account is needed in others for submitting your website. You need to do a detailed registration by providing phone numbers, address etc.
Registration and confirmation methods. Most of the search engines and directories need a confirmation from your email to avoid automatic submission.
CAPTCHA (IMAGE Confirmation) – A picture with numbers which have to be manually entered. This is also to avoid automated submission.
Approval of your website.

Maximum number of submissions per user (some of them restrict to a single submission per user)

Frequency of submission..
The popular search engines and directories are opposed to automated submissions and it is considered as a SPAM. No automated software or service can take into account the above different features of search engines and directories while submitting the web sites. The fact is most of the directories do a manual review on the submissions and will find out the automated submissions sooner or later and block them.

What is manual search engine submission and how is it better than automated search engine submission?

Manual search engine submission is the process of analyzing where and what to submit in the search engines and directories by experts and doing each and every submission by hand ensuring a good acceptance rate for your website.

Manual search engine submission involves

Analyzing your website, doing the submission text with title, description, key words and creating a unique account.
Collecting the appropriate search engine and directories for submission and submit the website in the right category.
Modify the submission text as per the need of various search engines and directories.
Confirming the submissions (Image confirmation, email confirmations) wherever needed and co coordinating with the editors of search engines and directories whenever required.
The advantage over automated search engine submission is

First and foremost, manual search engine submission is the only acceptable method of submission to a search engine or directory. Automated article submission is considered as SPAM which is obvious from the various confirmations implemented by them.
A directory is organized into categories and subcategories. Editors review each submission manually and evaluate the submission. In manual search engine submission the websites are submitted in the related directory, search engine under the right category which is not possible in the case of automated submission. Automated software can't adequately submit to any article directory because it cannot study the directory’s structure and decide which category is best suited.
Websites are submitted according to the different input systems of various directories by manual submission. Whereas automated submission just posts a set of predefined data irrespective of the input fields which results in an incomplete submission followed by rejection.
No search engine or directory is skipped in manual submission. Any Image confirmation (CAPCHA code) and email confirmation is done immediately which is not possible with automated software. Incase for any reason the search engine, directory is down or the website submission is not through, then it will be done another time.
More emphasis on niche search engines, directory related to your website theme.
Very high acceptance compared to an automated search engine submission.



http://www.articlefair.com/Article/Manual-search-engine-submission-Vs-Automated-search-engine-Submission/13162

Top Ranked Websites Are Using A Linking Strategy

Many SEOs quickly learn why they need a linking strategy. They know now that links from other web sites pointing at theirs are improving their page ranking. Let’s see how links generate traffic.

Inbound links are an important way to increase the page rank, to be known in your field, to generate traffic to the website. This is the most important method to generate traffic, to have more visitors, potential clients or website services’ users.

Without traffic, a website is almost useless. Its role can be only a name on a business card or a place to find a products or services list or email addresses.

To bring clients from the Internet, to be alive, to fulfill its main purpose, a web site must have huge traffic. What can a search engine optimizer do to get this important traffic? The web content including the appropriate keywords, the ease navigation, the most appropriate images, the inspired headlines are improving the traffic.

Do not forget the site’s style, sophisticated and simple at the same time, professional and efficient. But the work isn’t over yet. The inbound links strategy must be used too. It brings spectacular results and realizes the traffic that will attire the clients’ attention. The search engines will note the web site.

Some will think that without traffic, a web site is useless as a marketing and selling tool. The web site will not sell products or services, nor communicate ideas or events, and won't publish articles about any imaginable subject.

As we have already established, the traffic will be increased in the most spectacular way by getting links from other important websites, and having related topics. You will receive direct traffic from links, but mainly from links that have similar audiences to the main website.

A client visiting a web site similar to the main one, seeing the link to the main one, will visit it immediately. He becomes a potential client, increases the traffic, and improve, finally, the main site’s rank. 21% of the entire traffic is the result of inbound links. This is not a secret, top ranked web sites are using this successful strategy and everyone can see the results.

What is the reason why people are clicking the new links? First of all, this is the human curiosity in action. Maybe the next site can have more products, best prices, most appropriate services.

Maybe the next site is looking better and it is giving to its visitors the look and feel they are waiting for, maybe the next site is more useful, interesting and helpful. The visitors, potential clients at the same time, are hoping to find something to amaze them, to make them purchase without regrets and doubts.

Part of your linking strategy is joining a linking directory. You will need to do a search for these websites with a high PR. In these directories, you will have great success because they are where the strong, relevant websites are. To start linking your websites to higher ranked sites, go to:

o http://www.MyLinkMachine.com

Another part of your linking strategy should be to include your link in articles that you submit to article directories. This will help you out a lot because if a reader is interested in your article, chances are that they will click on your link to learn more. A great site to submit your articles is:

o http://www.MyContentBuilder.com

If you are submitting articles and are looking for a faster and easier way to do this, you might want to consider an automatic article submitter. To watch a video on how to accomplish this, go to:


http://www.articlefair.com/Article/Top-Ranked-Websites-Are-Using-A-Linking-Strategy/13257

Spectacular Traffic Improvement Using Inbound Links

Important inbound links are the key of a successful website. Its style, products list, offers, but first of all, its traffic, will make the business grow. Theme oriented sites as well as publishing some inspired articles will help the traffic grow too.

Articles are generating important direct traffic for a website. People who read them become interested in the products or services presented in the articles’ content. If people are searching for information about a special subject, clicking on the appropriate link will increase the traffic more than someone could expect.

Submitting articles will get your site noticed even more than before. Which, in the end, means you will be more popular with Google. To take advantage of this great traffic generating method, you may want to try:

o http://www.MyContentBuilder.com

To submit articles in a faster manner, many have been using an article submitting software to do it for them. To watch a video on just how fast you can submit your articles to several directories, go to:

o http://1trac.com/dt/t/Article_Submitter_Video.php

Embedding the links in articles is a good and decent solution. It is an efficient method to increase the inbound links number. If the article is interesting enough and well written, then it will be published in many sites on the web.

The keywords frequency must be moderate. Do not make the article annoying and embed the links. If you follow these two rules, this will most certainly increase the web site’s traffic. Valuable content will also increase the website’s content too.

It is possible to make one more step: if the subject is connected to something more specific, publish the article on the web-oriented sites, making it more valuable than publishing it on a regular site.

The embedded links must also contain some keywords, the most significant ones. The visitors will quickly have an idea about the link’s subject and they will surely click on the link. Using anchor text will make the article more powerful and interesting at the same time. And it will bring more genuinely interested visitors too.

The anchor text of the inbound links must be treated seriously because Google puts a significant amount of weight on high quality inbound links. Anchor text can play a decisive role in this strategy.

An interesting phenomenon is happening often when the search engine optimizer is working hard. Some sites are higher ranked on Google, for example, for keywords that never appear in their web content.

At first sight, this can look like a strange behavior of the search engines. The only explanation is that the anchor text of the inbound links contains the searched keywords or phrases.

The easiest and the most cost effective way to use the articles and anchor text is to choose descriptive names for the site and be descriptive naming the files and directories.

You know by now that having high quality links on your site is key to getting a higher Google rank. Just be careful that they are linking back to you or else it will not score points with Google. A great place to get high quality links to your website is:

About The Author
Karianne Kline is a Graphic Design student currently attaining her Associate's Degree. She is also learning the other end of the spectrum in Marketing and SEO. You can learn more about what she does by visiting www.LazyLinking.com