Saturday, September 29, 2007

Affordable Search Engine Marketing Will help you Work within Budget

To search for anything from any place, you need a medium. Search engines are the source through which online visitors search for any information on the web. So search engines are the best place of online site owners to market about their goods and services. If you are selling anything, then everyone must know about it. Otherwise how do you expect people to come and do business with you? So make sure that you adopted all methods that will help you in marketing your wares in all major search engines.

Affordable search engine marketing is one means through which this can be done very easily. All of us have to face the fact that at some point of time or the other, we have to face the fact that our business will be short on finances. So taking up affordable search engine marketing services to promote our goods and services is the best way to deal with this issue. If the services are affordable, anyone can hire the services of a search engine marketing firm to promote their goods and services.

Working within the allocated budget ensures that you will be able to take care of all aspects related to your business. Search engine marketing has been found to be the most innovative and result oriented marketing strategies. There are several marketing strategies that can be adopted for marketing and branding of any product on the web. The idea is to create a favorable image for your business, so that everyone recognizes and knows about your business.

The best resort for any online business owner is to hire the services of a search engine marketing firm to do the work for you. The first work of the search engine marketing firm is to find out exactly what methods will be suitable for marketing of your site on the web. Using the latest coding language to design a site can be one good way of going about it. So if the firm feels that this needs to be done, they will do that for promoting the site. It is up to the search engine marketing firm to study a site carefully and find out what needs to be done.

Pay per click is one marketing methods that has been found to be very effective for marking a business or an online business site on the web. Pay per click is nothing but an advertisement method that makes use of the most appropriate keywords to advertise about the goods or services that you are selling. Here you can bid certain sum of money for putting up your site at the top of the sponsored listing section of search engines.

There are several search engine marketing firms that works toward providing affordable search engine marketing solution to online business owners. The trick of being successful on the web lies in adopting those methods for marketing which are result oriented and guarantee better results for your business. So, just make sure that you hire the best to do the work for you.



http://www.articleson.com/Article/Affordable-Search-Engine-Marketing-Will-help-you-Work-within-Budget/27763

Frequent errors in the optimization for search engines

The most usual errors in web optimization refer to the following aspects
Ignore of ‘Title’ tags
It is one of the most frequent errors committed, with a direct negative effect upon the positioning of your site in a search engine. Most of search engines consider the ‘title’ tag very important because the information entered here is the one that is presented. Therefore try to enter in the title the keywords which you consider to have the biggest relevance for your site.
Irrelevant keywords
A certain category of webmasters use irrelevant keywords which are meant to increase the traffic on site. If you want to develop an on-line business, the key words that you use must be representative for the domain of of your activity.
Spamming
This is a method deprived of ethics through which the same keywords are repeatedly used in the “title” tag, the meta tags and in the content. This method is used in order to improve the position of a site in an artificial way, but the search engines detect these techniques and diminish the ranking of those sites. Therefore, do not use too many keywords.
Text and invisible links
This is a method through which it is tried the misleading of the search engines. Web pages are loaded by links and keywords which are hidden to the user but visible for search engines. The problem is that these have now the capacity to detect this technique and its utilization leads without any exception to the exclusion of your site.
Links to and from useless sites
It is known the fact that a high number of links that lead to your site increase its importance for search engines. Though, not every link that leads to your site helps you. Try always to obtain links only from sites that have a good ranking.

Errors as a part of the HTML code
If your site presents errors in the html code it will not be well ranked by the search engines even if it has an optimized content .The loading speed will be small and there will be incompatibilities with certain internet browsers. The best way to avoid this situation is the html code validation before subscribing the site in search engines.

The utilization of un-canonical URLs

During the optimization process make sure that every URL of the page that follows is canonic. This will have a positive influence upon the visibility of your site in a search engine.

The excessive graphic in a page

The way through which search engines are reading your site resembles with that of a text browser. A huge amount of graphic does not lead to a good site positioning. It will negatively influence the download speed of the site and will not attract the visitors. Try to use content with many key words instead of a great number of images. Also, use ALT text in order to describe the used images.


http://www.articleson.com/Article/Frequent-errors-in-the-optimization-for-search-engines/28348

Learn How to Fight the Search Engines (And Win!)

If you want to maximize your profits by driving an endless stream of eager shoppers to your website -- without spending a PENNY to get them -- then nothing beats the free search engines,like Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

But here's the kicker...

... According to a recent AOL study, a whopping 89.7% of people arching the Internet NEVER look past the first page of search results!

Now in the past, it see med that getting to that coveted top spot in the search engines was half rocket science, half voodoo magic. And it could take months -- even years -- to see any real results.

But all that has changed! Let me explain...

I was recently talking to Derek Gehl over at the Internet Marketing Center, and he was telling me about the success he was having with his *own* search engine strategies.You see, Working with his in-house experts (who all work with his customers daily to improve their traffic and sales), they
came up with a set of strategies for getting your site to No. 1 on
ALL the major search engines that are SO easy to use, even a complete "newbie" could do it.Then he had them tested out on his newest website,
www.auctiontips.com. And here's what happened:

After just 26 days, he was already sitting at the No. 2 spot on Google (out of a whopping 36,000,000 results!) Now, just in case you think that this can only work for Internet gurus and other 'web savvy' entrepreneurs, take a look at how these *same* strategies have been working for his other
customers, who are regular people just like YOU!

>> Peter B. increased his sales by 40% while chopping his adbudget in HALF, thanks to the No.1 spot Derek's strategies got him on Google. He's now selling $1.2 MILLION in services a year!

>> Dave U. not only has the number two spot on Google, he's ALSO No.1 in MSN (and that's out of a staggering 9,070,000 results!!)

>> Alex D. is now getting an extra 15,650 visitors a MONTH,because Derek's team swooped in and grabbed the No.1 slot on Google right out from under his toughest competitors'noses. Now he's earning $100,000 a MONTH!

>> Julian and Jane B. got an extra 46,732 visitors in just one month -- all showing up with their wallets in their hands -- after taking the No.2 spot on Google (imagine how much more they'll get when they hit No.1!)

>> Nick J got 'greedy' and swiped the top TWO spots on Yahoo! (out of 4,910,000 results).And Derek's system can do the same for you!

To find out how, just go to:

www.marketingtips.com/searchmarketinglab/marketingsecrets

Good luck with your rankings!

Campbell Shaw

P.S. Need MORE proof that Derek can deliver the goods when it comes to getting your website to the top of the search engines?

Check this out: One of the most competitive keywords in his industry is "Internet Marketing." It gets literally millions of searches a month, and there are over 452,000,000 competing websites. He's currently at No.2 on Google. Enough said.


http://www.articleson.com/Article/Learn-How-to-Fight-the-Search-Engines--And-Win--/28420

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) the Safe Way

To start this article, let’s make certain that everyone knows what a search engine (SE) is. This is a website that will accept an input word or phrase and search a database to give you information that matches the input information that you supplied to it. The best known SE’s are Google and Yahoo.
There are many definitions for SEO so we will try to boil them down into a simple one. The condensed definition of SEO is -- the action of using techniques to make your page(s) appeal to search engines so they will rank the page high in the search engine results pages (SERP). For additional definitions, run a Google search to get plenty of reading on the subject.
Why be concerned about the SERP ranking? This is what produces the free traffic to your site. These people found you all by themselves using the SE and they arrive at your site open to read what you have to present. They are not suspicious as they would be if they arrived at your site by clicking on a banner ad or on a Google Adwords or Adsense ad. This traffic is the life blood of your business. Readers who arrive at your site by a search engine are much easier to sell than those who come from pay per click or banner ads.
SEO has created the profession of search engine optimizer. This profession breaks down into two groups called the white hats and the black hats. (From the old western movies where the good guys wore white hats and the bad guys wore black hats).
The white hats work to create good, solid content that the SE’s are looking for. Their form of optimization is presenting the good, solid material in a format which appeals to the SE.
The black hats try to trick the SE into thinking that a site has valuable information on it by various methods and tricks.
When search engines (SE’s) first came on the scene, they were not very sophisticated and people on the Net found ways to easily trick them into giving a page a higher ranking on the SERP than the page deserved.
An early black hat trick was to fill in all the white space on the page with the page keyword in white font color (white letters on a white background). If the page was viewed on the screen, it looked normal with five or six keyword occurrences, but if you looked at the HTML, you would see the keyword on the page say 300 times. This was called “increasing keyword density” and this worked for a short time until the SE’s got smarter. When they learned to look at the background color and the font color for these 300 keywords, the SE’s started penalizing those website for cheating. The interaction between the black hat SEO’s and the search engines has developed into a “cat and mouse” game and is still on going.
Google has some of the best minds on the Net working for it and those minds are constantly working to stay ahead of the “black hats”.
It is not uncommon for a “black hat” page to be ranked well in the SERP’s one day and gone the next. This is because Google has changed its algorithm for what it considers relevant on the page. The black hat tricks that worked yesterday were discovered and the page is gone from Google or ranked so far back in the SERP that it is “dead meat”. Google has a goal to rank pages with outstanding, relevant content high on the SERP. If you create that outstanding, relevant content and develop traffic, your page will rise in the SERP rank. You are not trying to fool Google, you are building what Google wants.
I learned this information from using Site Build It (SBI) since it guides you through this part of building your page. Each time you create a page, you first preview it to see that it meets your visual requirements. Then you submit it to “Analyze It” a program that evaluates the page. Once it has completed its evaluation, it tells you what it detected that needs to be changed to make the page more acceptable to search engine spiders.
Make the changes to the page and resubmit to “Analyze It” until it gives you a report with no more suggestions. At that point, you preview the page to make certain your changes have not affected the visual presentation and it is ready to publish.

The following are a few guidelines what I learned from building my Site.

If you follow these guidelines, you will build a page that is structured the way the SE’s like.

1. The web page file name should contain the primary keyword. For retirement jobs online.com this would be “retirement-jobs-online.com/keyword.html.

2. The page title should contain the primary keyword. This is the Title tag in the HTML code.

3. The page description should contain the primary keyword. This is the description meta tag.

4. The keyword list should begin with the primary keyword. This is the keywords meta tag.

5. The first heading in the body should contain the primary keyword. This will be the H1, H2, or H3 tags in HTML. “H” tags indicate a heading which will be bold font. The 1, 2, or 3 indicate the size of the font for the heading.

6. The keyword should appear in the first 90 visible characters of the text.

7. The key word should appear a moderate number of times in the body. Here is where it gets a little fuzzy. Too few occurrences will not help you and too many occurrences can be considered “keyword spamming”. I do not know the exact formula, I just do what SBI says. Quite often “Analyze It” tells me to lower the occurrences of keywords on a page.

8. The keyword should appear in the text of a text link on the page.
If you build your own website, you will need to know HTML so you can fill in the meta tags for the title, keywords, and description. This is not hard to do and you can learn it without too much trouble. If you use SBI, you fill in text boxes in the SBI template and SBI writes the HTML to accomplish this. If you are using MS Internet Explorer, to see the HTML for these inputs, go to www.profit-online-today.com and right click in the center of the page. Click View Source in the dropdown box and a Notepad window will open with the HTML code for the page. Here is what you will see near the top:



http://www.articleson.com/Article/Search-Engine-Optimization--SEO--the-Safe-Way/28645

10 Cool Ways To Attract People To Your Website

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of ways to drive traffic to your website; some are free while others cost money. Many of the free ways are more effective (and, of course, FREE!) than those that cost money. Check out these 10 simple, but COOL, ways to attract people to your website.

1. Give people a free subscription to your e-zine. Almost everyone is publishing an e-zine nowadays so it's important to give something extra with the free subscription. You could offer a free gift or advertising when people subscribe.

2. Provide your visitors with free content. Your content will be more attractive to your visitors if it's up-to-date or original. You could also offer people the option to reprint the content in their e-zine or website.

3. Offer a free online directory. The directory could be full of interesting e-books, e-zines, websites etc. If people find your directory to be a valuable resource they will visit it over and over.

4. Give your visitors a free e-book. You could also include your own ad in the e-book and allow other people to give it away. If you don't want to take the time to write one, you could ask other writers' permission to use their articles.

5. Hold free online classes or seminars. They could be held in your website's chat room. The idea of "live" information will definitely entice people to visit your website. You will become known as an expert on the topic.

6. Give visitors a free entry into your contest or sweepstakes. The prizes should be something of interest or value to your visitors. Most people who enter will continually revisit your website to get the results.

7. Let visitors download free software. It could be freeware, shareware, demos, etc. You could even turn part of your site into a free software directory. If you created the software, include your ad inside and let other people give it away.

8. Offer free online services or utilities from your website. They could be search engine submitting, copywriting, proofreading, etc. The service or utility should be helpful to your target audience.

9. Give free consulting to people who visit your website. You could offer your knowledge via e-mail or by telephone. People will consider this a huge value because consulting fees can be very expensive.

10. Give your visitors a free membership to your online club. People want to belong to something - why not your online club? You could also give away a free e-zine for club members only.



http://www.articleson.com/Article/10-Cool-Ways-To-Attract-People-To-Your-Website/28648

Successful SEO for your website.

Successful SEO for your website.

Many of you over here are for sure trying to get your hands on tips for successful SEO for your website, in layman terms getting top rankings on Search Engines.

The most important target for Search Engine Optimizers and webmasters has been Google.

This legendary search engine since its inception has grown to a mammoth size from a small company to a Multi National Giant with facilities world wide now.

It’s by far the most used search engine available today.

Though official statistics show that Yahoo and MSN do hold a big share of the search market, but that’s still has a long way to compete with Google.

Google has been always trying to get relevant content to it’s users, so the most important tips to get your site visible in Google is content and that too I repeat relevant content.

You often may come across pages over the Internet, with long promotional information and nothing but text, text and text filled in the websites who are trying to sell you a package for $49 only.

Long time ago, I use to bypass this information, and scroll straight to the bottom, wondering why this guy has put so up much text, does he think any sane person will be reading all this?

Many of you would have the obvious answer that they are trying to lure the search engines to put you on top, but for those who don’t, it’s correct, they are trying to fill in the text not always for you, but for the search engines to read it as well.

So, shall we do the same, well it depends on you choice.

You have to ask these questions to yourself.

What is your primary goal?

a) Get top listings on top of search engines, no matter what your visitors feel about your website?
b) Put search engine rankings as secondary and create a site fully loaded with graphics and content to get your visitors remain hooked.
c) To get the best of both worlds.

Many of you would think, that the guy is talking completely off beat, how can you get the best of both the worlds.

The answer is by adding more pages, serving as much information to your visitors and content hungry search engines as possible.

In this way you would be serving the online community by giving them as much relevant information as possible by getting blogs, articles, links, news, directory, related to your business field on your website.

You may create small and tiny links and sub-domains for these additional services at the bottom of your website pages and mention them in your Sitemap, for sure you would be submitting the sitemap in Google, and insure that it lies on a fairly visible corner of your homepage.

Next thing, would be to invite as many as visitors as possible to visit your homepage, as well as free pages to advertise their business, or share their views on your blogs, articles, and forums which you have created with much efforts.

This would definitely give your company an advertising leverage and a reputation for potential buyers who would consider you as a stable and large business.

Now, since your services are free, you would get more of these automatic links and offline referrals, which would again serve you well as advertisement for your business as well as inbound links coming to your website from various sources, without you actually doing any work on it.

Hey, did I mention that Link Building and relevant links pointing to your websites is one of the most important factor for getting top listings on Google and a superior page rank for your website?

So, keep working on it, and if you think that you like the idea and want to see a site with a working model, do visit http://www.webdesigningcompany.net/articles.php

I bet you would think twice before switching over to any other website for information on website design and promotion.

Wish you best of luck.

Sean McGill

The author is Business Head for www.webdesigningcompany.net, and is into web-design, development and Search Engine optimization.


http://www.articleson.com/Article/Successful-SEO-for-your-website-/29004

SEO: Gaining Top Placement In The Warm Markets -

Search engines become smarter by the minute. It is no longer the sheer placement of numerous keywords on a single page. There is the correct placement of anchored text, the specific Meta tags, the watching out for competitors, the page ranking and back links, the RSS fields, the appropriate content and the link popularity, the robot.txt files, just to name a few.

Today, search engine optimization can only be successful by experts, or by those that have an idea of what search engines are looking for. You must optimize everything on your site if you wish to land within the top 10 on search engines.

In the sense of web optimization, search engine is a broad subject, and a tiny branch of web marketing. When you get your site optimized, individually or with hired help, it must not show a 404 page when pinged, your IP is not blacklisted, it should be easily accessible, it should come up within the first page when searched for, it should be head to head (or supersede) your competitors site, and it should be easily read by search engine spiders.

Search engine optimization doesn't mean much until you know what your business could benefit by utilizing it.

By having your site optimized for search engines, you will gain a higher traffic and a greater chance of your site being back-linked; this will also increase your site's popularity, increase sales, increase potential repeat visits, and increase your visibility in the international market place. Not only does search engine optimization increase the knowledge of your business, it is also an extremely cost effective way to get out there.

Other search engine optimization tools include content articles, keyword density, title tags, advertising, and sitemaps/user menus. These key points are the major stepping stone of any website optimization and they should be used in moderation.

For example, your content should not have too much, but just enough of your keywords in it. It is recommended that your keyword in content density be about 10%; if more than that, or repetitious key terms, search engine spiders may recognize it as spam.

Today's marketer needs everything to be accessible and intact. Search engine optimization is one of the cheapest way of reaching the public. In this current age, everything is moving to the internet and the internet is becoming a very fierce world. Reaching the audience is all that matters if any business is to be performed. Optimization is at its greatest when it is included in blogs, forums, general discussion panels, or mentioned in high ranking sites. Once your site has been optimized to the fullest, cost reductions can come from PPC ads.

Who knows, your site might just become the world's next MySpace!


http://www.articleson.com/Article/SEO--Gaining-Top-Placement-In-The-Warm-Markets/29246

How To Get 1st Page Rankings Using SEO Software

Now days, everyone and their mother own a website or some sort of internet based real-estate, but does everyone receive the amount of traffic that they’d wish to receive? That one is a tough question, but it can definitely be a lot easier on your part if you complete the following procedures. Let’s face it, you can purchase all of the targeted traffic you want, and still not receive one sale if you own a website related to selling items.

It’s just not going to work out for you, but if you rank high in Search Engines, then you definitely have a shot at becoming a rich man or woman for that matter. The thing is when people think of SEO, they think it takes a couple of weeks and then you’re set, but it doesn’t and anyone who tells you otherwise is just pulling your chain. SEO is a slow process, but if done right, can really show you the results you want it to show.

A few methods of SEO that people live by are link building, content creation, and using the right Meta tags that target your keywords in your content. In fact if you’ve ever heard about people who own a website, you will see them use the same words over and over again in their content.

This is a strategy that does work and SEO software will determine if that is what your website needs. If you own a computer website and you are trying to target keywords; laptop computer and notebook computer, then you would obviously have to use those keywords in your content, but making sure you don’t over exaggerate it too much.

The thing with some keywords is that it’s just too hard to beat out the competition, just because the keyword you are trying to target is overused by a majority of the population. This is where other forms of SEO come into play, if you can’t retain that rank you want.

I’m sure you all are wondering, well if this is such an easy way of obtaining a high rank in the Search Engines, then who would people be giving these tips away? Well you see, everyone owns a different website, and this software will work differently for each person, but if you don’t follow the rules, you won’t reach your goal, it’s that simple.

Wouldn’t you love to have a program that would let you know what Search Engines want before you even get a top ranking? Wouldn’t you love to know what keywords are being used the most and what you can do to improve your keywords so that you can rank higher then your competition? Well in good time you will be able to do that with this software and many people will be wondering and asking you how you did it, but they can vouch for themselves by trying the same program you are using.

Content, which is the key to success on the internet isn’t easy to come by, and many people take this for granted, because they believe that posting any sort of content will bring them to success, but they are wrong. Each time you add content, Search Engines browse your website to check if the content you are using is duplicate content and if they find out that it is, they will remove your pages from their directory and you won’t have anything, so it’s critical to watch what you’re doing.

If you decide that your content is being duplicated by another party, then the Search Engine will figure that out and penalize the first person who added the content. Meta Tags that are posted in your code is what the Search Engines see, so it’s important to match the keywords that are used in your Tags in your articles also. I guarantee if you have a little patience and can add premium content to your website that you will see your stat counter grow every day. That is the gift that is given to you for all of your hard work.

Last but not least, link exchanges and link building. This form of SEO is great because this will also bring massive traffic to your website. Increasing your page rank is ever so important, because this is how Google ranks your website in their directory, and the higher your page rank is, the better your site is ranked in their directory.

If you’ve ever noticed some sites that aren’t that high in page rank, but are receiving a lot of traffic, this is because they have focused on their content and are receiving traffic that decides they are going to come back for more. Using link building solutions is hard work, but also with time will allow you to achieve the goal you have been working hard to get for a long time.

So ending with a bang is obviously what you want to do, so taking an overall look at what you are trying to do with your website using SEO methods that are so powerful, they will make your head spin. One, you want to find the best keywords for your target area. I can’t stress this anymore, because there is so much competition out there that you really need to actually “compete” against them to rank higher then them.

The advantage you have using SEO software is that the program will let you know what keywords are working and what one aren’t, so basically the program isn’t doing as much work as you’d want it to do, but it is helping you maintain your keywords, where others might not know how theirs are doing. Definitely try it out, because you won’t know until you try and you’re only going to risk a few dollars, which in my opinion is a very good investment.


http://www.articleson.com/Article/How-To-Get-1st-Page-Rankings-Using-SEO-Software/29381

A Quick Guide to Web Directories

If you are a seasoned Internet marketer, then it is common knowledge that submitting to web directories can dramatically increase your page rank. If you are a newbie webmaster, then you might be quite in doubt as to how web directories can do for you. This article would relay to you what exactly is a web directory, how they work, and how you can use them in promoting your site. By the end of the article, I want you to go add your link to one of the web directories on the Internet and see how it would work for you.

What are web directories?
Simply put, a Web Directory is a collection of web sites presented in a categorized format. I suppose that you know how Yellow Pages looks like, a web directory is pretty much the same thing, only this time websites are categorized in such a way that internet users can easily navigate through them and find the website that they need.

How do web directories work?
A web directory submission is one type of marketing strategy you can employ. By simply adding your website in web directories it can dramatically increase your site�s exposure and your pagerank. Why so? Of course aside for submitting your website name, you would naturally add your website link or URL to the site. This constitute for one back link. What do you need inbound links for? Increasing the number of your inbound links would relatively increase your pagerank.

A pagerank simply refers to your position in search engines results. For instance, if an online user searches for "car parts", along with your SEO-content and bunch of good back links, you would likely hit the first few pages of the search results, thus increasing the exposure of your website. If back links are what you are after, then submitting your site to web directories is one effective way to get some.

Web directories are also one way of acquiring permanent links. Permanent links are very valuable since you would have your live link posted on web directories for good or at least during the lifetime of the web directory where you posted your link. It is important to take note though, that offering permanent links are still in the discretion of web directories owner.

Aside from improving your page rank, web directories are also a form of web advertising. In addition to using search engines, online users also rely on web directories to direct them to certain websites they are searching for. Since websites in web directories are categorized accordingly, navigating through them is easy and convenient. If for example one online user is about to buy bathroom tiles, he would probably go to the category under 'home improvement' and if your related site is under that, you are most likely to have an instant visitor, thus increasing your traffic. In the online world, traffic is everything. If you get more visitors drop by your site, then that means you have a number of potential clients, thus increasing your sales.

Choosing a web directory
There are three types of web directories free, paid and niche directories. Free web directories are, of course, the natural choice for webmasters with a tight budget. Some free web directories requires a reciprocal link and some don't. Reciprocal links are simply links of the web directory's URL that you are required to post in your own site. It's a give and take concept. When you post your website to a web directory, you need to return the favor by posting their URL to your site as well.

The only drawback with some free directories is that they may not be properly maintained. Spam sites may find their way into these free directories because they may lack appropriate monitoring. Then again, there are free web directories that can offer as much quality links than paid directories.

If you have the budget for it, you can also opt to submit your site to paid directories. These types of websites may charge as low as $10 per year. Some popular directories, like Yahoo, can charge as high as $299 as annual fees. The rate that paid web directories charge is relative to the website's pagerank. If the web directory site you are submitting to have PR9, then prepare to shell out a big chunk of your advertising budget. A web directory with a PR3 or PR4 would normally charge low.

The third type of web directory is a niche web directory. These are web directory sites that cater to a particular group of websites. For instance, a web directory with the niche under "business" would only allow submission from business websites. Posting your websites into niche web directories would give you better hits since you have a bigger exposure to your target market.

How to submit your website
First, you need to find a good web directory site. Check the web directory and be sure it does not contain several spam sites. One way to find out if spam sites are listed is by doing a search for terms like Viagra, Sex etc. If you notice a large number of search results, then that directory is not a good one. Because in worst-case scenario, your own website may even be penalized by some search engines.

The second thing you need to do is to choose the appropriate category where you should add your website to. You would get to your target audience better if you place your website in the right category. If not, you would not get much traffic from your possible visitors.

The next thing is to write a good description of your website. These are snippets that would describe what your website has to offer. Description should be short and catchy. It is also a good idea to make sure to write a good meaningful description as many directories do not approve websites with bad descriptions.

The last thing to do, which is very important and the part that is often take for granted, is to check if your link is working! You don't want to get your website URL misspelled or anything like that, hence the whole process would be to no avail.



http://www.articleson.com/Article/A-Quick-Guide-to-Web-Directories/29590

Using SEO To Make Your Mark On The Internet

Everyone is talking about SEO these days and the best ways to go about it. There are s may different theories that it can be pretty hard to sort through them all and still have time to use them.

These days if a site is to succeed SEO needs to be addressed. Search engine optimization is a powerful tool, one that can change the way your site is seen by others. In fact, without any there is a good chance that your site will never be seen at all.

Your best bet is to hire a professional to do your SEO for you. This is the easiest way by far to ensure that the job gets done right. This does not mean that you shouldn’t do a little bit of homework yourself though.

Even when you outsource this work, you still need to know the basics in order to make sure you are not throwing your money away. You need to see that you are not getting taken advantage of and the only way to do that is to make it clear to the professional that you are no dummy.

Let them know from the start that you know your stuff. Never tell them that you are new to the game of SEO, that is just opening the door to trouble. Instead you need to throw around some terms and make it look like you know even more than you do, it is always better to be safe than sorry!

If you want to save some money then you will need to do your best to learn what you can on your own. SEO is a complicated matter and it is vital that you take things slow. You can simply learn as you go, that is what I did and I am a seasoned pro now.

Start with the basics, put them to use and go from there. The internet is a fount of information and the vast majority of it is free. Why pay for something if you don’t have to. You may want to checkout the local library as well, you could find a ton of books there to read through. Just make sure you take notes.

One last tip: If you do choose to hire an SEO professional pick their brain as they work. Keep comprehensive notes on everything he or she tells you so that the next time you need to get this job done, you will be able to do it yourself. Ask all of the questions you can think of, it will save you thousands in the future.



http://www.articleson.com/Article/Using-SEO-To-Make-Your-Mark-On-The-Internet/30061

Three Steps to Search Engine Traffic

I generally follow a fairly straight forward 3 step process when I want to get search engine traffic for a new website. I have outlined this three step process in a simple guide below.

Step One: Make a List of Targeted Keyword Phrases
What is it that your site has to offer and what will people that want what you have to offer likely be searching for in the search engines? As you think about this begin to make a list of possible phrases that your potential visitors will be searching for. Be as specific and targeted as possible. If you sell philosophy books on your site then a possible phrase could be "Medieval philosophy books". Don't write just "Philosophy" as that would be too general.

After you have made your list of possible keyword phrases narrow down the list to the phrases that you want to target the most. Use keyword research tools to find the keyword phrases that will be most worth your time to go after. For more information on the subject of Keyword research please read SEOmoz's article, How to Conduct Keyword Research.

Step Two: Create an Optimized Page for Each Keyword Phrase on Your List
Many people trying to rank high in the search engines make the mistake of trying to optimize for too many keywords on any one page. It is a better strategy to just stick with optimizing for one keyword phrase per page. By focusing on one phrase you are more likely to rank high for that particular phrase and you may get lucky and rank high for other related keyword phrases at the same time. If you want to rank high for more than just one phrase then just create an additional page for each phrase you would like to rank high for.

You have already made a list of keyword phrases so now all you have to do is create a unique page for each of those phrases. Treat each of your pages as a stand alone entry page. Keep in mind that when a visitor comes to your site from the search engines they were most likely looking for something specific, so each page should help visitors find what they were looking for by providing information about the keyword phrase that it is being optimized for. In order to fully optimize each page your keyword phrase should be included in the title, heading, and naturally within the text of the page.

Step Three: Obtain Quality Backlinks to Each of Your Pages
The third and probably most important step in ranking high in the search engines is to obtain links pointing to your pages from other websites. The more links the better, but you should focus your efforts on sites that themselves have many links pointing to them, because the search engines place higher value on links from those sites. The amount of links that a site has pointing to it is called link popularity. Google uses a ranking system called PageRank to measure the link popularity of each page. Do a search for "Pagerank tool" or download the Google toolbar to find out the pagerank of specific pages. Don't rely too heavily on PageRank or link popularity to determine a page's worth, though. It is more important to obtain links form sites that are related to yours than to just obtain links from high pagerank sites that may not be related to your site. The search engines place a higher value on links from sites with topics that are related to yours than from those that are not related. For some ideas on how to get links please visit Andy Hagan and Aaron Wall's 101 Ways to Build Link Popularity in 2006 or SEOmoz' Advanced Link Building Tactics.

When obtaining links, get links to each of your individual pages, not just your homepage. You should encourage those that link to a given page to use the keywords that that page has been optimized for in the anchor text of the link, since this helps the search engines determine that the page is relevant for the term you want to rank for. In most cases webmasters will do this naturally since you have already included your desired keywords in the title and heading of your page.

In general it is a better strategy to focus your link building efforts on encouraging other webmasters to link to your site naturally rather trying to go out and obtain links manually one by one. Designing a page to encourage others to link to it is called LinkBaiting. Good linkbait gives users something of value, which webmasters will link to because they want to share it with their website visitors. Coming up with good linkbait ideas is where some creativity and marketing know how come in very handy. Being a creative marketer is more valuable in SEO than knowing everything there is to know about search engine algorithms.

I hope the above information is helpful. The above guide is just a basic overview and is just one way to do SEO. If you would like to learn more about SEO and Internet Marketing, please visit the SEM Research Blog.



http://www.articleson.com/Article/Three-Steps-to-Search-Engine-Traffic/30198

The Secret to Effective SEO

What is the secret to SEO? Well, I’m going to tell you right now. All you have to do is have great content that incorporates the keywords search users will be using to find what you have to offer, design your site in a way that can be easily crawled by search engine spiders, and get relevant, inbound links pointing to the pages on your site. That’s it. Pretty simple, eh.

If it is so easy then why is there a whole industry built around it? It’s because knowing SEO and actually doing it are two different things. SEO is actually a bit more complicated than I made it out to be in the opening paragraph, you do need to know some of the details of what search engines look for, but it really isn’t that hard to learn. You could just read Aaron Wall’s SEO book and read up on some good SEO blogs such as such as SEOmoz and SEM Research be an expert in no time. However, as I have already stated SEO is more than just know how.

A big part of SEO is getting relevant inbound links to the pages on your site. This can be accomplished in many ways. Andy Hagans and Aaron Wall have put together a pretty comprehensive list of link building ideas here. However, to be a really effective SEO you are going to have to be little creative and have some marketing and business skills. You need to be able to come up link building ideas and implement them in a cost effective manner. It is pretty easy to get a lot of traffic from the search engines with some know how and a little effort, however, It is the SEO that can leverage their resources in creative ways to get the most out of their money and efforts that are most successful. Effective SEO really just comes down to effective marketing, creating buzz about you site and getting people to link to you naturally. If you want to be an effective SEO learn as much as you can about marketing, then supplement that knowledge with some basic information on how the search engines work.

So what is the "secret" to SEO? It's simply good Marketing.



http://www.articleson.com/Article/The-Secret-to-Effective-SEO/30200

Article Directory Submission

Article submission refers to submitting articles to article directories to achieve hyperlinks from websites that wish to publish your content. This is becoming a cost-effective and increasingly popular method of attaining links that are embedded in content, on-topic and from unique domains and class-C IP addresses.

Choosing to submit articles to article directories can be a lengthy process that is a strain on in-house resources. It is essential that efficiency can be achieved, and now many companies are looking towards article writing services and article submission services to ensure efficiency and quality benchmarks can be met and surpassed. Article submission companies will pro-actively find, locate and enhance their article directory submission portfolio to ensure quality benchmarks and cost-effectiveness is attained and constantly evolving to meet their client’s requirements.

As article directory submission providers offer varied and ambiguously named services it is essential that any potential clients firstly ensure accountability from the service provider they are choosing to contract with. Should the article submission company provide screenshots of submissions then the client can be sure that every submission they have commissioned has been fulfilled. Most reputable article directory submission providers will have a policy such as this as a standard approach to all submission projects.

Article submission companies may also be particularly beneficial to companies based in the USA, UK and Western countries. Using remote outsourced labour it is possible to attain services for a fraction of the cost of employing and training in-house staff. Indian article directory submission companies will provide services for rates of well below $5 an hour, and in doing so will increase the ROI a western company can attain from their directory submission spend. Choosing to contract with an article directory submission company may also aid in the UKarticle writers phase.

The article submission company will have a good understanding of best-practise article writing and the requirements of article directories to ensure higher acceptance rates and linking incentive. An experienced article submission company will also have links with article writers with experience in SEO and writing articles for the specific purpose of article directory publishing.

An article writing company may also be a potential source for purchasing article submission services or to ask for independent advice. Their desire to aid their customers in attaining the highest ROI for their article marketing spend may mean that asking your copywriter to recommend an article submission company could be a sensible approach.


http://www.articleson.com/Article/Article-Directory-Submission/30731

In house SEO versus hiring an SEO company

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is very much a buzz phrase. Often companies looking to learn more about what SEO are baffled at how this new field of marketing can gain them an edge. Well it has been proven time and time again that it definitely can gain an edge over your competition. The problem a business has to assess is whether they should employ a specialist SEO Company or use existing resources within their respective IT Departments or Do It Yourself. This article explores the advantages and disadvantages of each.

In-house & Do It Yourself
Advantages: You have complete control. You can change things instantly. You will learn about the inner working of your website and also learn more about the Internet and how search engines work.

Disadvantages: It is a specialized field and attempting to do it delays the inevitable and allows your competition to gain an edge on you; also you may end up with more problems in the future by getting it wrong. You will need to have an intimate knowledge of your website, how it works, HTML and possibly any scripting languages that the website uses, like PHP. Also, you will need to buy some commercial tools to use, like WordTracker, WebPosition and SEO Elite. WordTracker allows you to effectively research Keywords, WebPosition allows you to track your websites ranking in the search results for given keyword phrases and SEO Elite allows you to track all links to your website. Purchasing these three necessary pieces of software will cost you around USD$900. Also, you will need to have a lot of time to read about SEO, take online courses, like StomperNet, listen to podcasts, like MrSEO podcast and read as much SEO material as you possibly can. For the StomperNet course you are looking at about USD$3000 and miscellaneous of books is likely to run up to another USD$1000. Total for In-house DIY, roughly USD$1500 to USD$4900. Not being experienced enough to know when and what to change. Not knowing how to link build effectively. Not having any time to study and learn enough to make the correct changes and modifications to your website - estimated at about 200 hours of study, learning and analyzing. As SEO takes time to see any results in the search engines it is important to not only learn the required knowledge to implement SEO but also give yourself the time to make tweaks and ongoing analysis. So to setup and configure an average website with 10 static pages it will take you probably 2 days and ongoing link building will be many, many countless days. Also, you need to take your time so that you do not overdo your SEO, spamming and stuffing keywords into pages as this can be as detrimental as not doing anything to the website in the first place.

Hiring an SEO Company
Advantages : You don’t have to use internal staff resources or alter the focus of your business. Hiring a specialized online marketing and SEO Company will mean you have instant access to experts in the field who have a wealth of knowledge and resources. An SEO Company will know the lay of the land without you having to learn what they already know to expert levels. The Online Marketing Company will be your best partner in working towards achieving your online Internet marketing objectives.

Disadvantages: Using an Expert SEO Company will cost you money. It is important to realize that even though you have hired a firm to implement your Search Engine Optimisation you will still need to work in consultation with them in order to market your website online correctly - explaining your internet marketing goals, objectives, deadlines and budgets. Do your research, look at the SEO Firm and its portfolio, case studies and history of successes, ensure it is a reputable firm and don't be scared to ask questions.

What to Look for in an SEO Company
A decent and reliable SEO company will have a good reputation and a strong presence within the Online Marketing and SEO industry. When you start, I suggest searching in Google for "Online Marketing" or "SEO" within your country or region. Look at the potential SEO firm’s websites, their portfolios and take some notes. Give them a call and see if you can arrange a meeting at their office and in person to discuss details and gather more information. Discuss your situation and how you can best achieve your goals. Take note of their professional nature, their history, case studies and vision for your online presence and also ensure that you are happy with the professional and personal relationship you have with the company representatives as this will be an ongoing one.

While the advantages and disadvantages of optimizing your own website and employing an SEO Company are diverse I think it important to point out that no matter how good you think you are an SEO firm will always be better at SEO. So if you really want to see results, you have very little time then hiring an SEO company is the only way to go. If you have time and some website expertise then you may be willing to put in the time and try doing it yourself. My only thought on this is that you wouldn't hire a plumber to fix a problem with your car.

When all is said and done, good Search Engine Optimisation will get your website results. It is important to make sure you are making the right decisions in your online marketing as this may well be the lifeblood of your business and is certainly an effective way to promote your business and generate sales leads.



http://www.artsymmetry.com/Article/In-house-SEO-versus-hiring-an-SEO-company/10888

Search Engine Optimisation - Key Facts You Need To Know

For your online business to be a success, you need traffic. You need visitors actively searching for the product or service you’re selling. This is especially true if you're involved in search engine marketing (SEM). Search engine optimisation is ultimately about optimising your site so that it gets the maximum targeted traffic from the search engines but getting it right can difficult. So how does it work? In practical terms, SEO is of two basic types- on page and off page.

On page refers to how you organise your actual web pages in terms of your keywords. This involves matters of keyword density, the terms you put in the various html tags and headers, and the names you give to your pages and internal links.

Off page refers to your site's relationship with the rest of the internet, in other words, the links it has to websites and directories. These links, whether to other sites or to directories, are seen as a vote for your site. This evolved from Google being based on the academic writing model which judges the worth of a text by the number of citations it has from other texts.

So what does this mean for you in practical terms?

Firstly, you need to optimise your web content thematically around relevant keywords that people are actually searching for. Then the visitors to your site are more likely to be interested in your product or service. This requires keyword research expertise. This work is complex and best contracted to search engine optimisation companies and SEO agencies.

Then you need to to build your web content around these words and phrases while keeping the text natural and interesting. In this regard, the content of your site is probably the most important factor for a successful SEO strategy.

Another thing to do is regularly update your website with fresh content. The aim is to provide a valuable user experience. The search engines reward sites that continually update their content by giving them higher rankings. Plus, the internal linking of your site can influence your SEO status. So make sure your links have meaningful, keyword-based anchor text.

As for off site optimisation, you should work on steadily building up links. If your content is valuable you'll probably get other webmasters linking to you. Or you can actively seek out sites with similar themes to your own and contact the webmaster to request reciprocal links. As for submitting link requests to directories, it' better to outsource this task. There are thousands of directories with varying requirements. Doing the job yourself would be very time consuming.

Stay away from black hat techniques such as tricks like cloaking, hidden text, and keyword packing. They might give you a quick burst of traffic but soon lead to your site being de-indexed. At the end of the day, the websites that achieve a lasting SEO success are ones that give the searcher what he wants, in other words, relevant content.

The ever shifting landscape of SEO needs a professional's touch. Not only is the initial optimisation a complex affair but you need a pro on hand to deal with the frequent changes to search engine policies and algorithms. The use of SEO Specialists and SEO consultants can give you that edge you need to compete in the crowded online world. And if you're involved in SEM, then search engine optimisation companies with access to SEM consulants are a must.


http://www.artsymmetry.com/Article/Search-Engine-Optimisation---Key-Facts-You-Need-To-Know/11000