Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Importance and techniques of on page optimization

SEO is divided into on page optimization and off page optimization. On page is which can be done to website itself and off page is which is done away from the website. Creation of right title for a webpage is classified as on page optimization. On the other hand creation of inbound links and their anchor text is termed as off page optimization.

On page optimization is one of the forms of search engine optimization. This acts as the vital requirement which is necessary to improve website rankings in major search engines like Google, yahoo and msn. In this process the elements of website are designed in this way that website is able to qualify for high search engine ranking on the basis of certain specific keywords. These are the basics which are often ignored by webmaster. They try to spend most of their time getting links to their site. If you want to make a successful online web presence, on page optimization is must. In on page optimization you need to have keyword in title tag and should also appear few times on the page.

Your website is focused on a theme, service or product. You need to select a unique keyword for it and this is the keyword on the main index page. Rest is secondary keywords associated with the main keyword. So there should be separate pages for secondary and associating keywords.

Your web page title tag must contain the keyword. It should be that word which you are targeting on a specific page. Do not use irrelevant words or website name in your keywords.

Make two sitemaps for your website. One site map is for a visitor that is in html format and other is for search engine which is in xml form.

Put quality content in all the pages of website and interlink on those pages on the basis of keywords used in the content.

Put emphasis on the keyword density. Keyword need to be there related with the product, services or the theme of the web page. Only on the basis of these the users are able to search for it in the search engines. Make sure keyword should used for a selected number of times so that keyword stuffing does not occur. So recommended keyword density is 5%.

Ensure your target keywords are used in h1 tag and displayed as strong italic and bold text wherever required. Make a practice to use the keyword in your opening paragraph at least once or twice and near to the bottom of page.

Every page of the website must have two Meta tags in the head section and other for your web page description and other for your web page main and secondary keywords.

Do not build a website with many pages in a short time, the search engines see the steady growth of website with the content and the number of pages they search for. Focus on providing the visitors the relevant information which they require.

Every image on the website must have an associated alt tag that must describe the image and include the content part.

Put emphasis on the inbound links.

Thus on page optimization factors are the base for search engine optimization for a website and which can not be ignored.


http://www.articlefair.com/Article/Importance-and-techniques-of-on-page-optimization/40287

Little SEO Secret about Headlines

Folks are concentrating so much on using keywords and keyword phrases that they have forgotten something much more important and without which keywords can be virtually useless.

Lets illustrate this with a common scenario that we all go through fairly frequently. You enter a keyword phrase at your favorite search engine and the first page of the results comes through. What do you do next? Do you go to the first site listed or do you scroll down the listed sites. Most people do the latter, but what would they be looking for? The answer is simple, the headline or article title that looks the most relevant to what they are looking for.

Now let us assume that the site that comes up right at the top, at number one has a boring uninspiring headline and the site that is number 10 at the very bottom of the first page has a hot enticing title. What will happen? But of course No 10 will end up getting all the traffic while number one will be starved of hits. That is how important headlines are. So without a good headline all the good SEO work that you put in will not yield the expected results, even if you do end up right at the top of results for popular keyword searches.

Why SEO Will Hardly Work Without Powerful Headlines
In fact, SEO will hardly work without excellent headlines and titles to your articles. One of the key aspects about SEO is the accumulation of back links pointing to your site. Search engines favor this happening in a natural way rather than you having to purchase links. For this to happen, your article on the web page will need to get very high traffic so that when a fraction of these visitors link to your article, you will quickly end up with thousands or even tens of thousands of links pointing to your site.

To attract this traffic, a key component of your content will be the headline. Many stories have been told about headlines making the difference between a few hundred copies of a supermarket tabloid sold and a couple of millions. Online headlines are even more critical because many times it is all that somebody sees before they make a decision on whether or not to click on a link that will lead to you and your article.

Why Good Headlines Without Keywords Still Work
Many times webmasters have been greatly hindered in their work of creating suitable article titles by the need to use exact keyword phrases. The result has been awkward headlines that hardly inspire readership. Yet those who have realized that it is possible to leave out a keyword phrase from your headline or to modify it slightly and still succeed in SEO have greatly benefited.

The truth is that while it is true that your keyword phrase as early as possible in a headline will help a great deal in terms of SEO, it is in fact not the only consideration that leading search engines take into account when deciding how your site will be ranked in search engine results. More important are the number of relevant back links pointing to your site. This means that an excellent headline that will attract readership and ultimately back links to a site is much more important than a poor headline with the exact keyword phrase slotted in at the beginning of the headline.

What Is A Good Headline?
A good article title or headline has to be relevant to start with. Never forget that headlines are supposed to flag down your target readership and not everybody. This is perhaps the most common mistake people make when creating headlines. And this is where the webmaster thinks to create a headline that has as general an appeal as possible. Actually a headline that seeks to attract everybody quite often ends up attracting nobody.

Excellent Headlines Are the Fuel That Will Drive Your SEO Campaign
Always remember that without good targeted headlines your SEO effort will most probably come to nothing. It is therefore a good investment to spend your time studying the art of creating good headlines for your SEO content.


http://www.articlefair.com/Article/Little-SEO-Secret-about-Headlines/40289

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

SEO Services are necessary for online website requirements

Your website is a vital part of your business plan. It provides the first online view of your business to the visitors. It becomes essential to update it regularly so that visitors keep on revisiting your website and doing business with you. This has created the need of websites to be designed according to the basic SEO Guidelines. So the growing number of companies nowadays are designing and developing websites according to the SEO guidelines described by Google and other major search engines. Without SEO Services it’s sure that you are missing important web promotion aspects existing in the present scenario of online marketing.

Nowadays SEO stream is catching the attention of everyone on the web so more people are keen to learn about SEO. If your business has an online presence but does not have high ranking then in major search engines then it seems like lost in the crowd. As majority of traffic comes from search engines, SEO services are required to make your websites search engine friendly and place them in the top of rankings. So Online industry is catching the attention of all, it has become essential for businesses to create their online identities. There are million of Internet users which indicates that huge amount of information is being done on the internet. You need an expert to find the right kind of information for you.

SEO provides the services of on page optimization, one way link building, directory submissions, article submissions, content writing and press release etc. These are termed as organic aspects of SEO and you can expect search engine rankings. The main aim is to get higher site traffic, more visibility over competitors, and increase in sales and conversions, brand recognition, better performance feedback and less promotion costs.

Another aspect of SEO Services is that these are cost effective as compared to the other marketing services in long run. They prove to be very effective in getting you the results and meeting the targets which you set. SEO gets you fast results as compared with traditional type of advertisements. In time and costs aspects also SEO rankings has more advantages than emails, banners and pay per click ads etc. SEO services also includes different types of services like keyword density help for your web pages, search engine submission, search engine optimization targeting certain areas of world. These consists of writing of keyword rich articles for you and provide you with a list of new keywords that can be added to your website pages to make it more search engine friendly.

Nowadays SEO also involves the aspects of site design and content which requires dedicated research, nice communication skills and other technical aspects. Just specifying the list of keywords for website’s Meta tags is not sufficient in the present scenario. As many factors affect the search engine relevance to it is necessary to carry on the task according to search engine behaviors. Even file naming conventions and site navigation aspects are framed keeping in view the search engine rules.


http://www.articlebliss.com/Article/SEO-Services-are-necessary-for-online-website-requirements/151451

Ten Search Engine Optimisation Mistakes

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not something performed as a blanket approach to website development, it is an individual set of actions performed page by page to suit that page's particular goals and SEO needs. I like to break up a clients website into specific and important pages based on the keyword terms we have identified through research and then write the first few pages to suit those terms. We associate page titles, page file names (buy-blue-widgets.html), H1 tags, description and keyword Meta tags and in page content to tell the story that match those identified keywords. It is also important to ensure your pages are W3 compliant and have no errors.

I have compiled a list of some of some common Search Engine Optimization (SEO) mistakes.

1. Bad Titles. Titles are the most important thing about a webpage. Search engines spiders see the title on your page first and they make a general assessment about it based upon this. They scan the page and make sure the content of the page matches the title and then assign rankings based upon these matches and how they best fit. The title tag is the best way to inform the search engine what your page is about, and they play an important part in ranking if used properly. Placing your main identified keywords in the title and ensuring to obey the rule of leftward and stemming is vital - leftward rule, the closer the word to the left of the sentence the more important it is, stemming is where words can be associated but with words in-between i.e.: Great Blue Widgets when stemmed would allow Great Widgets. It is important to ensure your title matches your page content, description and Meta keywords and in unique for your website. Every page title and content should be unique otherwise is will be ranked supplemental.

2. Filename of the page. It is important if you are using dynamic websites like Joomla or other content management systems that a search engine friendly URL translator is installed. Because I use Joomla every day I will describe what I mean relating to Joomla. In Joomla (and most other dynamic websites) URL's like the normal Joomla URL "index.php?option=com_mtree&task=listcats&cat_id=1766&Itemid=35" drive the website. The problem with these URL's is that they are unintelligible by humans and also by search engines. Installing a search engine friendly URL component will change these pages to something more meaningful and also including your keywords in these page names can help with SEO. The newly transformed search engine friendly URL would look like this "buy-blue-widgets.html". If you do not have a dynamic website then ensuring your page name is short, to the point and contains your main keywords for that page maybe with a call to action like "buy" and "blue widgets".

3. Duplicate or Bad Content. Ensuring your content is unique and relevant is vital in SEO success. Often websites just duplicate content or bring in plagiarized content from other websites. It is my experience that these websites fail dismally in search engine rankings. Write some decent and unique content or maybe search online and find someone who can actually write you decent unique content for a fee. Make it good, friendly and unique content that people will want to link to. If you are listed in the supplemental index of Google then making sure you titles, descriptions, Meta keywords and on page content is unique is the only way to drag them out of the supplemental index.

4. No Links. Having covered off a few of the on page most important SEO tips we now look at links, which are an off page SEO concept. For each person or website that links to your website it is a vote for your site. If the website that links to yours has a high pagerank itself then it carries more weight. Simply having good keywords, titles and text on your page is only part of SEO. Just because you created a unique and perfectly optimized webpage does not mean you will automatically gain a decent pagerank for that page. In order to ensure SEO success you have to create incoming links - this is probably the hardest part of search engine optimization because you are effectively selling your pages all over the Internet. One way to gain instant (within a few weeks) links is to pay for text advertising - A search on Google will uncover some of the best text linking services. Link exchanges are bad because for every vote you get you are giving one away and if you happen to link to a "black listed" site then Google will penalize you significantly. One way links are the ultimate in SEO link campaigns so seek out directories (either paid or free, you need to evaluate), post in forums, write articles and submit them and ask other friendly webmasters if they can help you out with a link. The best way to gain links is to have unique content that other people actually want to link to.

5. Incoming link anchor text. Having pointed out how important it is to gain incoming links it is now important to also point out that the text those links are anchored to is important also. The text should be targeted at your main keywords and the page they point to should have those keywords as relevant and prominent also. The website you link from should be relevant to your website. So, as an example I own a web design company in Melbourne, Australia so I gain links from web hosting providers and/or open source Joomla sites in or around my region. Getting 1000 links from a casino related website will serve no benefit to my website and will not make it rank higher for "web design" keyword search terms. Use professional common sense when gaining links.

6. Bad Internal Page Links. We return to on page factors that you can work on within your website. It is important to make sure that the anchor text linking to pages within your own website is relevant to the target page. Make sure the title tag is filled in also for each link. You have the greatest control over links from within your own web site so make sure they are relevant and that link title and the on page copy match the main keywords of the target page.

7. Live links. Using some external tools like the link checker that W3 Org offer is good. I suggest harnessing as many tools as you can to ensure all of the links on your website are live, working and not sending people to 404 error pages. It is also important to check and make sure your page markup, or html, xhtml, is valid so W3 also offer a tool to check this. Make use of both of these freely available tools.

8. Impatience. Search Engine Optimization is not a short term task. It is one of an ongoing refinement after refinement and hour after hour of working on your website. Producing unique content, checking it, validating, listing and checking the search engines and making sure they have it listed correctly. Do not think for one second that you can optimize your site thoroughly ever and do not ever think that just because you are number one for a search term that it will indefinitely stay that way. Search Engine Companies are always changing their ranking and rating systems and coupled with this there are always other people out there gunning for your top spot. Keep looking to improve and learn more and don't sit back and wait for others to take your top spot, be proactive, seek out new content, links and keep ahead of the curve.

9. Keyword selection. This is proving to be a very common mistake among beginners to SEO. Often people base their own keyword selection on what they *think* is right but is this what people actually search for when they are looking for your product or service? Often the answer to this questions is no. It is an important step to do the correct keyword research and ensure you have the right keyword list before you optimize any pages with them. Using Overture, Google Adwords and some other paid keyword tools like WordTracker (the default standard in Keyword Finding) are vital to success in finding good keywords. It is important to localize your target market and figure out what they are actually searching on when they are looking for products or services that you offer. Do the research and be as specific as possible while still being broad enough to capture some high keyword traffic.

10. Keyword Spamming and Stuffing. If you sell "Blue Widgets" then every page of your site does not need to have "Blue Widgets" in the title, description and Meta tags. Try and be objective and analyze you website. Focus pages on a specific group of keywords you have identified from the keyword list. Sometimes finding niche markets locally first can be best. So, as an example, "Buy Blue Widgets Australia" or "Buy Blue Widgets Melbourne". These would be examples of good second or even third tier search keyword phrases but you can make some good sales with these niche terms because the searcher is targeting buying these items.

These are not the be-all and end-all of Search Engine Optimization mistakes but I have found these to be the main mistakes made by my clients prior to Kanga Internet being involved. Good luck and I wish you all the best with your SEO efforts.


http://www.articlebliss.com/Article/Ten-Search-Engine-Optimisation-Mistakes/150318

Search Engine Optimization - Ensuring the Best Results for your Business

In last, today every site wants to be featured in the top ten list of the search engine. Therefore, to reach such cliff, you need to understand the algorithm of the search engines and you should implement changes according to the search engines. In order to achieve the benefits of search engine optimization, an effective SEO strategy is necessary. One of the biggest SEO strategies is link popularity, keyword research and website marketing.

Doing the proper research and finding the correct keyword combination will bring you're the proper rankings in the search engines and a traffic that is targeted to your site, and the added benefit is that it is free traffic. As you heard many time before content is king, your content should be structured to include the keywords that are relevant to your site, and your website needs to be SEO optimized so the search engines can spider it with ease. All the other pages on your site should revolve around a central theme and all be related in some way.

When visitors come to your website the text on the home page should explain and reflect the theme of your site and all of the other pages should relate to it. Search engine optimization or SEO is the hottest way to drive targeted traffic to your website. Your investment in the future of your website will be worth while. The reason you need to optimize your site is to get rankings in the search engines, by concentrating on search phrases and by promoting these keywords you will begin to build your rankings in the search engines.

Billions of sites are updated daily and they all need to be crawled on a daily basis. You can purchase high PR links and shorten the waiting period of getting your site in the serps. Check you site for broken links, not having links that work will have a negative effect on your sites ranking if the links stay broken for a period of time.

High quality articles are quickly snapped up and published prolifically. Every time you write an article and you get it published you receive another link pointing back to your site which will in turn increase your link popularity. Traffic is generated to your website from your signature box. This article can be freely published on a website as long as. With this wonderful innovation in web writing, each article will surely be given ample attention in terms of engine optimization and accessibility. The natural listing depends on the optimization techniques employed on and off the web site. A single article can be reprinted hundreds of times, and each time is another link back to your site. Ensure that each web page of yours would focus on a particular keyword or key phrase. If there is an article in that page, make sure that the article will only discuss and include one keyword or key phrase from the list you have made.

Getting more traffic is pointless if your site isn't an efficient sales machine. Since there are only a "handful" of search engines that everyone uses (the major ones), this is where we place our best promotional efforts. If you encourage them to link to your site, join your newsletter, read your articles, and so on, then the traffic will increase your search engine popularity. If you only sell product, then that is what you get money for products. Traffic is a must if any online business is to succeed.


http://www.articlebliss.com/Article/Search-Engine-Optimization---Ensuring-the-Best-Results-for-your-Business/150375

Monday, October 29, 2007

Search Engine Optimization Techniques

One of the thing I get asked a lot is how to get a website higher in the SERPs. Well, it is going to take a lot of time, effort, and patience.

There are two elements to SEO - what you do on your website and what you do off your website. Let's talk about things you can do on your website to improve SERP results.

1. Hierarchal Design

The web pages you create should be in a hierarchal design with your home page at the top of the hierarchy. Every page of your website should be reachable by at least one static link.

2. Quality Content

You have to have a lot of quality content on your websites about your particular niche. For real estate websites, this can be achieved by news articles, blog threads, events calendar, and thousands of property detail pages.

3. Keywords

You have to use keywords in your content that related to your particular niche. If you just use the keyword "real estate" you probably are not going to rank very high in the SERPs. However, if you use "Holland Michigan Real Estate" for your key phrase, that gives a specific location. Chances are if you have a great website about Holland Michigan Real Estate, then you are going to rank high in the SERPs. By the way, you should make sure you have your keywords in a the keyword meta tag. Try to limit yourself to 10 keyword phrases.

4. Sitemap

You should have a sitemap on your website. This helps crawlers learn about the structure of your site and makes every section of your website reachable. I would make one sitemap for your users and another XML sitemap for the crawlers. Make sure you submit the XML sitemap to google and yahoo using the webmaster tools.

5. Avoid Black Hat Techniques

There are several black hat techniques such as keyword stuffing and hidden text that can temporarily give you a boost in the SERPs. However, in the long run, your website will be penalized and be even lower in the SERPs than you started out with. Stay away from these techniques.

6. Include a ROBOTS.TXT file on your site.

This tells the crawlers what parts of your site can be crawled. You should avoid making your member and admin sections crawlable.

7. Dynamic Content

Most real estate website use dynamic content. If you use dynamic content, keep your URL strings short and do not use session IDs in your URL strings.

8. Linking to other sites

Make sure you only link to sites you trust. Do not link to link farms or websites that have poor quality. Do not create a link farm yourself either. Linking to sites related to yours is good, but watch out for sites that are not directly related. A couple of these links will not hurt you, but if you get carried away it might.

9. Relevant Title Tags / Description Tag

Make sure your keywords appear in your title tag and description meta tag. Check out this home page to see how it is done: Holland Michigan Real Estate

Now, let's talk about what you can do outside of your website to improve SERP rankings.

1. Backlinks

You need to get as many backlinks as possible. However, you should pace yourself. Google knows the rate to which you get backlinks. If you increase this rate to fast, alarms go off and your website may get penalized. Plan on doing about 1 hour a day getting backlinks. Do not spend all day doing this.

2. Directories

Submit your website to directories and lots of them including dmoz and yahoo directory.

3. RSS feeds

There are a lot of RSS feed directories out there. If you got a RSS feed, submit it to these directories. This will increase traffic to your website.

4. Social Bookmarking

Submit articles to websites such as digg.com and propeller. Submit videos to websites such as youtube and google. People will bookmark your articles and videos. This will drive traffic to your site.

5. News Releases

Submit a news release about your website.

I hope you enjoyed this article. I may write another SEO article in the future with more advanced techniques.



Search Engine Friendly Pages - The Way To A Crawler's Heart

As the employment trend is shifting towards self-employment. To be a success in whatever field an entrepreneur is in, he must have the best marketing tools. One of which is a business website. Many business owners are faced with technical dilemmas, caused by the further merging of the business industry with the Information Technology field. Because of this, they outsource the development of their websites.

To enable people or internet users to find YOU, one important consideration in building a website is SEO. It is a process involving strategies to increase quantity as well as quality of traffic to a website. Targeted traffic is what the search engines bring to a website, through algorithmic, natural or organic search results.

Visitors to the site are the lifeblood of the website's existence.

Traffic means business and dominant contributors to this are major search engines like Google, MSN, and Yahoo. Thus, when blueprinting or designing a web page, outsourcing services should ensure Search Engine friendly pages to obtain higher rankings that would lead to more people clicking on the link to your site and more probable sales.

Primary search engines utilize programs or automated scripts that are more known as web crawlers or web spiders. These robots browse through the World Wide Web, methodically indexing web content, checking links and validating html codes. Information is stored and the websites that manage up-to-date content are pulled up into a listing when people type in one relevant keyword/ keyword phrase.

For your website/ web page to get indexed easily, the following are some of the techniques you could apply when designing on your own:

• Avoid the application of frames. The lengthy and complex codes used to create frames causes disarray among search engine spiders making them skip the site and makes bookmarking a lot more difficult.

• Use CSS or Cascading Style Sheets instead of bombarding html codes to style a page. Its efficacy lies in the elimination of redundant html tags that confuses the crawlers and makes page loading faster.

• Meta Tag use and positioning are one factor noted by web crawlers in deciding whether or not to index a site or how frequent they would visit it. So make sure to use relevant meta tags appropriately.

• Flash animations or images are not the best way to contain very vital information. Aside from slow page upload, search engine crawlers only index text in your source code. A good way to use images to represent text are when displaying email contact addresses, as these could be kept private from other bots accumulating unsolicited email lists.



Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Aweng_Moral-Basco

Web Design And Development Vs Search Engine Optimization

Online promotion and search engine optimization is the in thing in the speedy growing internet world. Get an online promotion service for your website through a leading search engine optimization company and your website will be ranking high with the desired keywords. Although, an SEO service provider who is also accountable will cost you heavens, but you will certainly not mind if you are blessed with thousands of visitors per day.

However, do all highly ranked websites are the best providers in their field? Not essentially. So what are the options and how does one can find a GENUINE WEB DEISGN & DEVLOPMENT COMPANY?

While you are thinking of building a website, what would be your requirements? Let see, you would need an enticing website that is also user friendly and eloquent. You may require some dynamic features and therefore need appropriate development resources. Now comes another point worth consideration.

You have spent hundreds of dollars building a website and then pass it to a SEO service provider, who further recommends a number of changes on the website to make it search engine friendly and you end up re building your website, spending hundreds of dollars once again. Why not get a service that provides a search engine compliant web design & development.

Summing up, a typical web design and development requirements, the following are the most common of all:

1. A website design that goes with the latest trend e.g. web 2.0, div based etc.
2. Your website subject e.g. do you want to sell a product, is the website educational kind, revenue source etc.
3. The development requirements & details. Note down each single point/features that comes to your mind, may it be the simplest thing, while sending across the development needs to the company. This is to ensure that there is minimum space for ambiguity.
4. The website should be search engine compliant
5. Primary search engine optimization on the website e.g. unique title & metadata for all pages, optimum keyword density on pages, search engine friendly navigation and website architecture etc.

As of now, this has been apparent that web design & development and search engine optimization goes together. None is beneficial in absence of another. A clumsy and unimpressive website with high traffic will not get leads. Neither an awesome but unfamiliar website will earn revenues.

If you have not taken advantages of the emerging concept of search engine optimization, try to get some by exploring the www.synapseindia.com another web design & development company where information is available in abundance. You can further get reference of search engine optimization company to give you the full information on a search engine compliant website design & development. You may also find a brief detail on the service that may result far-fetched to connect you with your overseas clients and customers. Broaden your wings with the search engine compliant website design & development to reach to your ultimate customers.

Mridu Sinha is working with a leading web design & development company. While dealing with the clients, she has documented some typical problems that a prospective customer who wishes to design or develop a website comes through.



Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mridu_Sinha

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Turn big via SEO New York

Who does not want to have a great and profitable business? However, most of the times, they lag behind because they do not opt for information tools like getting their business advertised on a website or even going full fledged online for a better business deal. This happens due to the unawareness of online business strategies that can actually elevate a business on a bigger platform. Well, if these are your concern, then it is high time to consult SEO New York for getting your business optimized on internet. Many business ventures are going online, and it is a better way to get attracted at one go! What say!

Therefore, it has become necessary to be well versed with the ways of the web world for ever running business. Now you must be wondering that how can you achieve a way to a profitable business? Well, the answer is simple, in today’s time web is not just used as a tool for entertaining you, but also plays a crucial role in executing work perfectly. In fact, it serves as a guide for getting significant information on various topics, including social or non-social issues. Moreover, internet has shown the best results in the field of business and promotions. Therefore, if you want to make it big then turn to SEO New York, as it will take you ladders ahead in your online business deals with its marketing strategies. It utilizes a variety of pay per click, affiliate and content management methods.

You can say that it is the right medium to approach various people living in different time zones at one go. Yes, you got it right; with the help of SEO New York you can have people from all over the world who can be interested in buying your products. Search engine optimization plays a crucial role in the world of online business. You can find millions of people getting glued to the internet for various types of information that is helpful in the growth of business. In fact, for you, SEO in New York is an ideal choice as it not only designs websites that are user friendly but also takes your website amongst the best search engines; moreover, it has the ability to market products and services online by driving maximum traffic to your website.

However, creating the website only will not solve your purpose; the content has to be fresh and relevant as well as catchy. Otherwise, no user will visit your website for business purpose or for gaining knowledge on your products. Hence, it is important to impart significant information that can be easily understood by the users. You can say that the larger the traffic, the greater the profits and benefits. Further, it will make your business profitable. If you want to get a higher search engine visibility then you need the help of SEO New York. It is economically reasonable too, as it promotes your goods and services. So hurry up and grab the opportunity for the best available deal.



http://www.articlebliss.com/Article/Turn-big-via-SEO-New-York/158105

Friday, October 26, 2007

Search Engine Optimization – The Right Use!

Bothered that your website lacks visitors and traffic? Concerned that there isn’t much feedback? This may be because your search engine optimization needs some fine-tuning. There are many ways to drive the traffic to a website but search engine optimization still rules the roost. Tweaking the SEO of your webpage is one of the prime ways to improve the traffic. Also an improved SEO leads to a great usability by the users to find your website in the list that appears in the search engine.

By enhancing your Search Engine Optimization for your webpage, you will:

• Advance your page’s rankings
• Enhance traffic to your webpage
• Cope with genuine visitors who are interested in your products and services

Here are a few factors that would help drive traffic
The Right Keyword: - Determining the right keyword that describes your website in a word is of primary importance. The word should reflect the content of the page the visitor would want to know about. These words should be closely considered as this form a very important part of the search. Also the keyword that is selected should appear in all the primary locations on the webpage including the first few paragraphs of a page, headers etc.

Effective use of Directories: - By submitting the website to search engine friendly directories would help in effective ranking of the websites. The website should carry at least three descriptions with varied titles. This would increase the number of backlinks for your website. Backlinks determine the popularity or importance that your website possesses.

Relevance of Content:- Choice of the right words and necessary phrases is an important step as the content will induce many users the urge to click your website. Kindling their interest should be the main objective when the content of the webpage is decided. Linking blogs that advertise the link of your product and service with the website will also help in improving the ranking of your page.

The right use of Article Directories: - Choosing an appropriate title and designing articles and submitting them to the article directories also form an integral part of SEO ranking. The top rated article directories have to be listed to submit your website as that would be more popular among the users. Backlinks should be included in the website for effective search results. This would result in book marking your webpage for further reading or linking your page to the user’s website. This would only result in more traffic.

Effective use of Link Exchanges: - There are many webpage owners who are open to exchanging links to share your link to their page and vice versa. This is an effective way to increase traffic in both the web pages. Search Engine Optimization forums provide this opportunity to exchange links and send testimonials about your webpage.

The business of creating webpage and to make it effective among the users has a lot of challenges. By applying these rules of the SEO will give your webpage a better chance to be viewed, picked and bookmarked.


http://www.articledashboard.com/Article/Search-Engine-Optimization---The-Right-Use-/332677

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Seo Salary

A set of salary estimates for SEO people. I understand the marketing value of having an “SEO Salary” post, but I don’t see the point for people working in SEO. If you have to argue about your salary level using outside references, you need Challenger Gray & Christmas or Robert Half or something based on data. But the article did remind me of the importance of staying aware of the real money in SEO work.

As I read, I see that Firm SEO work is quite different from Independent SEO or in-house SEO work. According to Rand’s descriptions, Firm SEO (like his SEO company) is a group of people working together on client projects, guided by an SEO Boss. Rand admits he hires inexperienced talent and the salaries he pays are “on the low side”. This is the opposite of what I do in my own SEO consulting, and what my better clients do with their competitive web and Internet projects. I am not an SEO Firm, so again this is perhaps highlighting yet another a different perspective of the unusual industry we call Search Engine Optimization (SEO).


Steve Jobs once said something like “A people hire A people; B people hire C people” and I have always carried that around in my head. I often see it in action. The best people tend to want the best people to work for them. Less-than-the-best often hire people “lesser” than them, for what I suppose is a myriad of reasons. Please note I am not suggesting Rand is hiring people lesser than he is (nor am I suggesting that Rand might be an “A” person). I am simply saying that his description of Firm SEO is opposite of my SEO consulting experience, where the better clients seek out the best SEOs, the best web designers, the best developers, and the best marketers to work on projects. In fact, more times than not, my clients have experienced extreme frustration dealing with “agencies”. From advertising agencies to web design agencies, the expertise and dedication of the individuals assigned by that agency to the projects turns out to be significantly below the caliber of the leaders of that “agency”. Sometimes we collectively wonder if the agency actually has anyone at all of adequate caliber beyond the founder. Other times we know they do, but we wonder why those people are not available to our projects, even when price is not a barrier. Perhaps it is just an “agency” mentality?



http://www.articledashboard.com/Article/SEO-Salary/330848

Search Engine Marketing - A New Start

Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet Marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in the Search Engine results pages (SERPs). According to the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization, SEM methods include: Search Engine Optimization (or SEO), paid placement, and paid inclusion. Other sources, including the New York Times, define SEM as the practice of buying paid search listings with the goal of obtaining better free search listings.

As the number of sites on the Web increased in the mid-to-late 90s, search engines started appearing to help people find information quickly. Search engines developed business models to finance their services, such as pay per click programs offered by Open Text in 1996 and then Goto.com in 1998. Goto.com later changed its name to Overture in 2001, and was purchased by Yahoo! in 2003, and now offers paid search opportunities for advertisers through Yahoo! Search Marketing. Google also began to offer advertisements on search results pages in 2000 through the Google AdWords program. By 2007 pay-per-click programs proved to be primary money-makers for search engines.

Paid search advertising hasn't been without controversy, and issues around how many search engines present advertising on their pages of search result sets have been the target of a series of studies and reports by Consumer Reports WebWatch, from Consumers Union. The FTC also issued a letter in 2002 about the importance of disclosure of paid advertising on search engines, in response to a complaint from Commercial Alert, a consumer advocacy group with ties to Ralph Nader.



http://www.articledashboard.com/Article/Search-Engine-Marketing---A-New-Start/330845

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Stay on top with search engine marketing firm

Internet is a living network as it is inevitably changing day by bay. That is the reason why strategies and tips that did well in past are not that effective in present circumstances. Today every business needs to stay on top to be able to understand and control the ever changing situation. Businesses need to analyze and adapt these changes so that they may walk shoulder to shoulder with their competitors. To help business with that task of analyzing and adapting changes search engine marketing firms provide them with affordable and power powerful solutions. It provides you guidance regarding safe proceedings of maze and makes your task easier. However, all strategic decisions will be yours as only you are the caption of your ship. Ultimately it is up to you that how efficient you are in doing wonders with the help of search engine marketing support.

A search engine marketing firm is paves your way to get top position in your field. In order to secure concrete positive results these firms do whatever they can to make you website noticeable on web but it can serve its purpose best if you are also ready to accompany it in every step. Accompanying the hired firm does not mean that you will also have to sit with them to discuss everything but it refers to the support that you may provide by entrusting them your site completely. Well you may have an excellent site with plenty of content and vibrant graphics but if you are not visible at search engine rankings then your site can never give desired results. Search engine marketing firm decides what content is needed to get identification among consumers. Though big traffic does not mean big profit but getting heavy traffic represents that people are taking interest in your product and a bit more convincing can turn them in to regular consumers.

Many products that are in mass demand, fails in touching estimated sales figure just because of unremarkable presence. To gain real visibility and trust of your online consumers you need to market it properly so that the real and steady traffic can move to your website. Whether you are going to sell product or offer services, analyze which section of society will be your chief consumer. It is going to be youngsters, housewives, professionals, businesses or students, your website must speak the language they understand means it should contain exact information they are looking for.

Using irrelevant and misleading keywords can affect the traffic. Search engine marketing firm emphasizes on correct usage of keywords and supportive keywords so that your site may solve it very purpose. If your website has plenty of meaningful content that cannot be replaced by keyword containing text then search engine marketing firm uses invisible text improve your search engine ranking. Such firms provide their clients with advanced methods that are helpful in increasing traffic and turning the visitors in to regular customers. They go beyond the regular search engine optimization and profit your business beyond your expectations.


http://www.articlebliss.com/Article/Stay-on-top-with-search-engine-marketing-firm/156277

Why Good Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is Important

Many people new to internet marketing wonder why search engine optimization, or SEO, is so important. In explaining why, this article could be very short or very long, according to how much of the topic I wish to write on, although the answer is basically a matter of common sense.

Anybody who uses search engines to find out information, which is the vast majority of internet users, uses phrases to find the information they are seeking. These phrases, to them, best describe the information they seek. Thus, if the are looking for information on what to look for when buying a second hand car they might use the term ‘buying second hand cars’, or ‘buying used cars’, or ‘how to buy used cars’ and so on. Each of these terms is commonly termed a ‘keyword’, and searching for the most used keywords, or even lesser used keywords, is big business on the internet.

If you have a website, or even just one web page, dealing with that topic, you can optimize it only for one of these keywords if you want the bets results. Many people make the mistake of trying to optimize a webpage for all the keywords they can think of, totally ignorant of the fact that if they have 20 keywords then they should have 20 web pages, each optimized for one keyword.

Some people make millions of dollars explaining to others how to find and use these keywords on their websites, even though it is historical information. Yesterdays most frequently used keyword could never be used again for the rest of the year. Let me give you an example of that.

When I was new to internet marketing, I wrote a website to sell my trivia quizzes. I run trivia quizzes in my local pub, and at that time also sold them to pubs in nearby towns and cities and wrote a book on how to go about it. I decided to advertise it online and also to sell my trivia quizzes. I paid $6,500 for a mentor from Corey Rudl’s Internet Marketing Center to teach me how to do it, and I was shown how to use keyword research to publicise my book.

My mentor ended up recommending I use the keyword ‘black american history quiz’ since it had a very high demand and low supply: so I did. Silly me! He was Canadian, and he didn’t know that the word ‘quiz’ in the USA can also apply to a school exam, and the ‘black american history quiz’ was in demand by American high school kids for an exam on the topic.

I spent a fortune and made zilch. That is the last time I paid for information, and I was ripped off by the late Corey Rudl and his so-called Internet Marketing Center. At least that is my experience. It was only later that I found I could have got the same information free by registering for a few newsletters from other marketers.

I ended up losing many thousands of dollars through that experience, and using the bad information I was given, and am only now making up for it. That is the importance of knowing how to use SEO in your website. Learn how to select and use proper keywords, and do not be mislead by trends or spikes due to high school exams or current news as I was.

There are techniques to use to ensure that your website gets traffic from people browsing the web for information. If you know these techniques, you can make money from any topic, or niche, even if you personally know nothing about it. I have many websites on a number of topics, each of which makes me money in many different ways. There is no reason why you should do the same.

However, to do that, you must learn how to optimize each of the pages on your website. Stop regarding the site as an entity. It is the collection of pages that is important, each of those of which has to be treated as a separate entity. Every page will be listed separately in the search engines, and you need to know how to treat each differently, and how to optimize each so that every one will be listed in the search results when somebody uses your keyword to find the information they are seeking.

Good search engine optimization is very important, and without a good understanding of SEO, your internet business will have less a chance of success.


http://www.articlebliss.com/Article/Why-Good-Search-Engine-Optimization--SEO--is-Important/156357

Friday, October 19, 2007

Why Google is so popular?

Nowadays everyone seems to talk about Google. What makes Google so popular and great? Well the answer lies in these facts. Only this search engine has the capability to search more than 9 million urls. Google is able to crawl and index multiple pages at the same time and increase the chances of getting what you have been looking for. This returns more relevant results for your website. On the basis of a query Google returns the result that most likely match with your query and criteria. So you are able to get information on the top.

Google is fast and simple to use. In less than a second you are able to find the most results. Google also shows the cached version of the web page. Day by day Google is improving their results continuously. It provides results with information and links related to your query. Google helps to make and quickly find what you are searching for.

Lot of people trusts Google and this is the biggest search engine. People in good companies want to use it and put ads in these. There are also many choices in Google. There can be different results for different countries. So you can have a variety of choice and information forms all other world. Besides these Google are most dominant search engines in web. It is hard to think about web without Google. Google has entered in almost every aspect our our life.

Google marketing feature have covered various products like Google analytics, Google alerts, Google checkout, Google eblogger, Google toolbar-enterprise version. Google groups, Google adsense etc. and continuously research is going on these products to enhance it further.

The most popular online advertising tool these days has been Google AdWords. People are moving towards Google ad words that have something to offer by the way of products and services. Some people generally loose money through fraud clicks and bad techniques adopted by them. Google adword has become one of the top ways of money earning program and you can also implement ways to use get and use this program free of cost.

Adsense has been vital part of Google marketing. This has allowed webmasters to put content relevant advertisements on their websites. If a visitor clicks one of the adsense ads served to the website, the owner is credited for referral

Thus Google on its 9th birthday has become online electronic hub of human knowledge as it hold the distinction of indexing around billions of web pages as well as images ,books and vides . Google was registered in 1997 and it was officially launched one year later. People faith on Google has been growing as they are able to get the most exact and reliable information. Happy birth day Google. Go ahead with more innovations in the near future.



http://www.articlebase.info/Article/Why-Google-is-so-popular-/1816

What is Google pagerank?

Everyone will have heard of the phrase ‘Google pagerank’ being mentioned from time to time, most people don’t even know what it is or how much of an important role is plays on the performance of your website. By learning basic methods that can increase your page rank you will be able to get the full potential out of your website. The scale goes from 0 – 10 with each step being harder to achieve, it doesn’t necessarily go up one level at a time, you could be page rank (pr for short) 0 when you first do your site and then after the first update, it could jump to pr 4. It depends solely on how much work you put into it, there are no set periods when Google decides to update but it’s generally around every 3 months or so. Basically Google page rank is the method of which Google uses to establish where in the search engine you will be place and your sites authority.

This does not mean if you have a pr 5 site you will outrank every competing page below you. There are a lot of factors that decide where you will actually rank which is why it’s important you do your research to ensure you don’t miss anything out that could severely affect your ranking. The pr of your website doesn’t really alter the search engine results that much compared to the content level and link building you will of performed, but if there are two or more identical pages, Google would place the one with highest pr above the rest.

A great way of increasing your page rank is to get other sites with high pr linking to your site, this will show to Google that highly respected sites think that you have a quality site which in turn will boost your pr. You need to put a lot of thought into your link building campaign, try to go for quality over quantity. Many people waste time grabbing thousands of pr0 sites which won’t have that much of an effect, Google may even penalise you for spamming. If you can get 10 pr5 links to your site it would give a better result than the thousands of pr0 would, if you get them on targeted sites you will have more chance of targeted traffic coming through to your website which has more chance of converting.



http://www.articlebase.info/Article/What-is-Google-pagerank-/2353

Optimize PDFs for search engines

As competitive as the online world becomes, it also is crucial that a website is noticed online.

As repetitive as this might be, Search Engine Optimization ensures that your web content appears when a user is searching for it. It is essential that search engines can read the content from a website therefore optimizing PDF files as well as normal HTML/ XHTML web content would be an excellent step to take.

Search Engines rate websites based on their relevancy to content and keywords, but also on many quality links the sites has - outgoing and incoming. The same way Search Engine Optimization specialists can optimize websites, PDF documents can be optimized too.

How to optimize a PDF file:

* Make all PDF's in text format, so that the search engine can read it;
* Complete the document's properties, (especially the title) - what usually happens is that people forget to set a title, that way the search engine will pick content from the PDF file and it might not be exactly what you would want.
* Optimize text, by making sure that selected keywords are there and can easily be identified;
* Add links to PDF files, so that readers can always be redirected to your website;
* Save files at the lowest possible Acrobat version, so that readers can easily open it, and search engines can find it;
* Sizes should be kept as small as possible, if files take too long to download users will abandon the site;
* Place links to your files on your web page where it can easily be found, i.e. closer to the root level of the site’s file structure.
* Specify reading order, in terms of text and headlines;
* Publish articles in different directories that directly link to your PDF documents

In order to achieve a higher ranking, it is important to use a set of well chosen keywords and relevant content, by optimizing PDF files. They can achieve a higher number of links and the opportunity to have more content associated with your website and your business, which would ultimately affect one's ranking on the most popular search engines.



http://www.articlebase.info/Article/Optimize-PDFs-for-search-engines/2540

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Organic SEO methods ensure your success on the web

Does the term sound confusing? Well don’t be, as this is nothing drastically different from the usual methods that are implemented by online business owners for search engine optimization of their site on the web. Organic SEO are the simple natural methods that are used for promoting a site on the web. The web is populated with numerous sites that provide different kinds of services to clients. Visitors always look out for information and if you manage to reach out to such visitors, you can surely do good business. After all, this is exactly what all online business owners aim to do through their online business sites.

To be successful on the web, you have to understand search engines really well. So understanding search engines is very crucial, if you want to be successful in this business. Search engines work very differently and they do not view and receive a site like we do. Search engines have certain criteria and guidelines, and if a site fulfills those requirements search engines receive those sites very favorably. It is very important for you to understand what search engines like to see and what they do not like to see on a site. Taking care of all these factors will ensure that the organic SEO methods that you use for your site will be successful.

Search engines change their algorithms very frequently. There are several reasons behind this, and the most obvious among them is the fact that they want to improve their results. The results are concluded after making a study of the users who are active on the web. Organic search engine optimization methods involve using all the legal and white hat methods for the optimization of a site on the web. If you make use of all the legal methods, it will ensure that you will never be tangled in any kind of legal mess.

It is not humanely possible for search engines to crawl the huge number of websites on the web. So it is not a person rather automated software called spiders or bots used to crawl the sites. The relevance and importance of a site is determined based on the results of the crawling done by the software. Since search engines keep on changing their algorithm and criteria for giving rankings to sites, you must be fully aware of what is needed to attract the attention of all the major search engines.

There are several methods and technique that can be used for optimizing your site on the web. The idea is to announce to everyone that you have entered the market and are interested in doing serious business on the web. Well if you do not tell anyone about you, how do you expect others to know and find out about your business? Ultimately, it is your call to determine what methods you feel will be the best for your site. However, it can be safely said that organic SEO are one of the best methods that can be used for the promotion of your online business site.



http://www.articlejoe.com/Article/Organic-SEO-methods-ensure-your-success-on-the-web/35014

SEO: Proving Your Keywords Are Worth Investing Search Engine Optimisation Time

One of the key skills you must develop when undertaking Search Engine Optimisation is the ability to identify and choose keywords that your clients are going to use, or I should say, most likely going to use to visit your website or to search for in a search engine. There are lots of great tools out there that will help you find the right keywords but be warned always test the results you get because there are anomalies in some of these tools that can cost you time and money. I want to examine a number of steps to follow to test that you have the right keywords.

There are a range of tools that you can use to work out what keywords are going to be most appropriate for your market, some of them are free, some of them you need to register and some you have to pay for. The tools include -

1. Wordtracker
2. Google Adwords
3. Overture
4. Free Keywords
5. Your Website Session Logs
6. Yahoo Advertising
7. Keyword Locator
8. Keyword Elite
9. Good Keywords
10. Competitors Websites

Before investing in the keywords you have found always check to see if the keyword is in fact as popular as the resources tell you in that search.

Why?

I recently had a situation recently where one keyword we found "advanced wealth planning techniques" was supposed to have 250 hits a day coming in from Google. We garnered this information from a range of different sources however what we found was that this was not the case, in fact those keywords prior to writing this article actually only get between 2 and 5 hits per day.

One of the most important lessons both I and my team learned from this was to ensure that you run a trial of the keywords in pay-per-click programs before you actually purchase any domains that use the keywords to ensure that the keywords really do get the traffic the keyword tools tell you. The way my team achieves this, is we will create the sales pages for the product or service that we want to sell and trial it on the key search engine we want to optimize the new website for using one of our existing websites.

For example, if we know that a certain keyword will get the most traffic on Google, then we will certainly use Adwords to prove that the traffic really is there. If we new that Yahoo was the major source of traffic for the keywords then we would use Overture.

Generally we will test the keywords for 2 to 3 days. Longer tests maybe necessary but two to three days is normally a good indicator. Once we are confident that the keywords get the volume of traffic we are looking for, we will then stop the advertising, secure the domain name and then implement our products onto that domain and optimize the webpages for that product or service. This ensures we are not caught in a situation, which we have been in the past, where we have domain name which contains keywords that are totally useless.

The best tool I have found for quick testing your keywords is Google Adwords. One of the core reasons I like using this resource is that you can immediately test your keywords rather than waiting anywhere up to 5 days for the other Pay-Per-Click engines like Overture.

One of the other ways that we look to see if the keywords we have chosen are in fact worthwhile is to look at what our competitors are doing. However, use this technique merely as a guide because they could be making the same mistakes as you. We know of a few people who copied what we were doing with the keywords mentioned before and they would have been achieving no traffic off those keywords just as we were.

The key to success in any business whether it be online or in the traditional world is to test and measure. The way we test to make sure that the keywords are being used is to check our logs and see who is actually referring traffic to our site. In ASP code there are a number of Session Values that will contain this information. We check our sites each day to ensure that the traffic is coming from our target keywords.

If they are not coming from the keywords we are targeting and the customers are buying our products we will then look at the keywords that are being used and find out how competitive they are and whether we should be optimizing our site for those keywords. Search Engine Optimisation and Internet marketing is really a science and like all science, you need facts and figures to make decisions so the better quality statistics you can collect the easier it is to make a direction change.

For example, we recently had a situation where we started getting a couple of hundred hits per day for a 5 word statement that was being used in both Google and Yahoo to find our site. Whilst a couple of hundred hits per day may not seem very many our conversion rate on that key statement was running around 70% which is huge for any Internet business. The bizarre part was that our website was actually place at number 97 in the search engine results for both Google and Yahoo.

What we did at this point was to simply write a number of articles on the keyword topics. Submit the articles to related sites, including article directories and then ensured in the Author Bio Section we included Hypertext that included the Key Word Statement back to the associated page. The result was that we increased our ranking from 97 to the top 5 and we gained a 70% conversion rate on all people who visited that webpage.

The key issue though is to make sure that the keywords you are using are what your buyers associate with. Sometimes I find that a client's perception of what keywords a person would use to search for a product is far more different to what their clients are actually using. Whenever we are looking at that issue, we simply go back to the client's logs for the last 6 months and troll through the data and find out how their clients are finding them.

The secret to search engine optimization for any website is in the logs because it will tell you very clearly what people are using to get to your site and more so which search engines they are using.

When you are looking at buying a new domain or building a new site, make sure that you really do your homework to identify the right keywords that people will use to find your products or services. Before committing to buying a new domain that contains your keywords always test to see that the keywords are actually being used and that there is sufficient volume to justify the purchase.

Remember, the reason why we test and measure is to ensure that you are making a sound investment. If you get it wrong, you are going to have to spend more money to correct your mistake and nobody likes having to spend their own hard earned money.



http://www.articlejoe.com/Article/SEO--Proving-Your-Keywords-Are-Worth-Investing-Search-Engine-Optimisation-Time/35030

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

The New Directory: Articles, Peer Review, and Deeplinks

The New Directory: Articles, Peer Review, and Deeplinks
The SEO world has been following with rapt attention the news of dozens of directories' penalization by Google. For a very long time, directories were the mainstay of linkbuilding, and they do retain an important role in linkbuilding to this day, albeit a diminished one. So with the news that some of the best-known directories around were being slapped by the Internet’s most popular search engine, the debate about the ongoing relevancy of directories has been reopened.

In this article, I will propose my answer to a question that has been bothering search marketers for so long and introduce the New Directory.

For those of you who might not have known, one of the most perennially popular questions on SEO forums and blogs is whether directory submissions are worthwhile. With search engines counting decreasingly on directories as part of their algorithms, should SEOs still bother submitting? Or will other tactics provide a better ROI? (The subsequent question for those convinced of its worthiness as an SEO tactic is which directories to submit to.

Underlying the debate is the question of the value that directories offer surfers. The question can be put thus: “Why would a random surfer visit a directory?” The answer for most directories is … there is no reason.

Offline, the Yellow Pages help people find businesses. Search engines fill this role online in a much more effective way than directories ever could. The engines have taken away the raison-d’être of online directories as we know them. Why would you bother digging through 5 levels of a directory – in what may turn out to be an irrelevant category so that you will need to start over – when you could just type your keywords into MSN Live and get your answer instantly?

You wouldn’t.

That’s why directories need to have their purpose re-examined.

As we have just seen, the purpose of a directory offline is to provide searchers with an index of various options relevant to their search. If you look up “cabinet makers” in the yellow pages, you’ll find some phone numbers (and email addresses for the smart cabinet makers) that you can call for more information. In this paradigm, directories function as the starting point of a search.

But directories are obsolete as the starting point of a search in the online world, because of search engines. So what’s a directory to do?

Directories will become the end points of searches, if they want to remain relevant. Rather than list websites, directories will provide answers. The business model is already out there, and you’ve probably seen it around: About and Wikipedia are masters of it. Yes, I’m talking about articles. Not just your uncle’s “Here, go post the text of my brochure on Ezine Articles” type of articles, though.

Presenting … The New Directory: peer-reviewed articles with deeplinking.

The New Directory is a destination, not a starting point. It no longer serves as an intermediary for a person to ask a question to and deliver up an answer from its list of businesses/people. The New Directory serves as a destination where the question is answered. To answer the question, the New Directory relies on articles submitted to it.

Let’s compare About, Wikipedia and Ezine Articles to get a better handle on where the New Directory situates itself.

About and Wikipedia rank on the peaks and summits of the SERPs because they provide genuine value to users. Their articles are well-written, informative and generally feature proper spelling and grammar.

By comparison, Ezine Articles ranks on occasion, but mostly it doesn’t. This is because the overwhelming majority of its articles are of average-to-mediocre quality. The difference is not just in awareness, where Wikipedia will get links to its articles due to brand awareness that Ezine’s lesser brand awareness might not get it. It’s the quality of the writing.

To give you an example, I once found a fairly informative piece on Canada’s Constitution. It almost didn’t get reposted on my site because the grammar and style were such a headache and required so much editing.

Directory Owner Challenge One: Quality Control

The first challenge facing New Directory owners and promoters then is to ensure that the articles their directory features are only high quality pieces. How can that be done?

The solution I offer to ensure quality control is
• anonymous,
• randomized,
• peer-review
• overseen by an editorial team.

(To the folks at Avenue Q: That’s what you can do with a Bachelor of Arts, with an English major.)

Peer Review
I’ll be honest here: this isn’t entirely an original solution. I borrowed the idea from web design forums like Sitepoint (want to review my new corporate site?) where those people who want a review of their website must first review the work of others. I had to review three other sites before I could submit my own for review.

Similarly, The New Directory requires people to read and review other people’s writing before submitting their own. It requires a minimum amount of commentary on certain set aspects of the work – other aspects can also be discussed but there is a baseline set that must be reviewed - and a grade from 0-10, 10 being the best.

For example, The New Directory might ask for a minimum 150 words covering originality, style, grammar, quality of analysis and depth of research. This would then be rounded out by a grade. In this way, the New Directory can ensure a minimum substance to each review.

Anonymous and Randomized

The reviewer’s name is not available to the author, nor is the author’s name available to the reviewer, though both are available to the editors (we’ll get to them in a moment). This ensures that reviews are not biased upwards or downwards based on friendship/adversity/admiration/loathing between parties.

Once an author has written a certain number of reviews, they can submit one article. This article will in turn be randomly distributed to other would-be-submitters for review. Once a minimum number of reviews have been written on the article, it will have its average grade calculated. In order to gain admission into the directory, the average grade must be above a certain mark.

Editorial Oversight

This system is further reinforced by the oversight of human editors. Their role is to control for unusual circumstances and thus
maintain the directory’s quality. They would do this by checking on those articles that narrowly miss admission and those that display some strange characteristic.

Articles that narrowly miss are those within half a mark (a mark if you’re lenient) of the minimum required average. Editors would have the power to admit them to the directory if they deemed them good enough.

Strange characteristics might include oddities like four out of five reviews giving the piece a 10 and the fifth giving it a 3 – a large discrepancy between what most of the reviews said and what one or two of the reviews opined. Overly harsh or lenient reviewers would see their other reviews checked out by editors as well.

Note: Editors’ work should be limited by the fact that this system requires people to write detailed reviews before posting their own article. Further reducing their workload is the fact that potential submitters know that only good writing will be admitted into the directory.

Thus your submitter is someone confident in the quality of the article they’re about to post. And they’re dedicated enough to getting it into the directory that they’ll take the time to write reviews of others’ articles.

The sluggishness and slow-death of the ODP (taken as an example for being the largest human-edited free directory around) is avoided by The New Directory as editors needn’t personally look at each submission, but only at the strange ones. The directory would be regularly populated with new content independent of the editors’ work. Editors’ contribution would just be to help populate The New Directory with even more content.

Directory Owner Challenge Two: Attracting Quality

I’ve just shown that it’s possible to ensure you only accept quality into your directory. But now that you have a moderation system in place, how do you attract quality writers to begin with? You need to give them something they want.

Deeplinks

Most people submit to directories because they want links. That’s why many SEOs were so bothered by Google’s assault on such a great number of the directories that they had relied upon. Previously effective sources of links were now useless.

So attracting quality can be done by giving links to your authors (those whose articles achieve the minimum required grade). But you want to ensure that you offer your visitors good value now that they’re on your site (recall that a random surfer has no reason to visit old-style directories in the era of search engines).

So don’t just let the links be generic: make them deeplinks to quality content the authors posted on their own sites. You can include these in a bio paragraph at the start/end of the article or on a separate author bio page (and rank for the author’s name so that people who look them up will find an answer in your New Directory).

These links will be more valuable to authors than regular directory links for two reasons. First, they will be able to funnel traffic to the authors’ sites, which is the ultimate sign of an editorial quality link. Second, they will link to pages with little outside link popularity.

Alternatives

Other ideas to attract talented writers to submit their pieces to you: Offer cash or prizes for the best article of the week/month. It could get authors to edit their piece a little more thoroughly or even submit a better piece that they had wanted to save for their own site.

Directory Owner Challenge Three: Attract and Retain Editors

The editors of The New Directory are linguistically proficient experts interested in creating/developing a name for themselves as a topical authority. So the first place to look for editors is in places where their writing may already be published. Look at niche magazines, industry-specific websites and so on. Check out About.com and Wikipedia too.

Once you’ve identified your targets, you’ll need to pitch them on becoming editors. The benefit to them is an author bio page accessible from the homepage, with links to their own sites, publications and so on. In addition, they won’t need to write individual reviews before submitting their own articles (since they’ll already be reading plenty of articles as part of their editorial duties) and will see their articles passed on to regular contributors faster – skipping the line, if you will. Again, cash or prizes doesn’t hurt if you have the budget.

Managing Your Editorial Team

Retaining editors could probably be an article in itself. From my own experience as a soccer coach (similar role to human resources) and as a moblog owner/manager, I can suggest generous amounts of recognition, constructive criticism and a relationship that goes beyond strict business.

For instance, I always praised my players when they showed they had acquired a new skill or were working hard at such acquisition. Compliments go a long way, especially when you’re on a budget.

Constructive criticism addresses work done, not persons. You might say: “Way to find those three obscure articles we almost relegated to the bin. Try and do it faster in the future if you can so we get that content available to our users sooner.” Notice that the critique didn’t say they were a slow editor?

Other points of note are that it started with some kind words, to soften the blow. It also avoided the word ‘but’ so that the advice doesn’t come off as criticism (which everyone hates) but rather a suggestion for future improvement (perceived neutrally or as an appreciated tip). Not only will such criticism help you improve your editors’ work, it will motivate them to keep it up as they see somebody is paying attention.

Finally, I recall that with both my coaching and my moblogging, I regularly chatted with my team about non-work issues. For example, some of my players told me about their weekend up north before our semi-final. A fellow blogger would fill me in on the celebs he’d met/spoken to and the important work he was doing at Wikipedia as an admin.


Conclusions on The New Directory

I hope that this article has helped convince you about the direction the directory industry needs to go. Plain old site listing directories are going to die out eventually for all but a worthy core that are already established, because there’s just no more reason for these directories to exist – nobody uses them.

The New Directory gives visitors a reason to surf it by being a destination, rather than a starting point. It answers questions rather than serving as a medium to ask them through.

For its functioning, The New Directory relies on its would-be-submitters to also play the role of reviewers. They will provide the core content of the directory while remaining anonymous to each other [until their article is posted]. Editors will provide some oversight to ensure quality articles don’t somehow get left out.

I don’t pretend to claim that The New Directory is infallible. There are certainly minds more clever than my own out there that could figure out how to spam it despite the quality control system. I wasn’t trying to make the claim that my concept for a new type of directory is spam-proof. All I did was try to incorporate some safeguards into it.

I do think, however, that directories as they currently stand are obsolete old sites in the era of my search engines. My further claim is that by changing their paradigm of the purpose to be served by their directories, directory owners can make their sites relevant to surfers again. And by providing answers – who knows? They might yet reclaim their place as the starting point in a search as people bypass the search engines entirely in favor of their favorite directory. That is The New Directory.



http://www.isedb.com/db/articles/1725/1/The-New-Directory-Articles-Peer-Review-and-Deeplinks-/Page1.html

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

5 Ways To Make Money With Blogs

There are hundreds of ways to make money on the internet, but most oversee the idea of making money with blogs. Blogs are a great way to promote articles, discuss various ideas, and promote your website itself. However, there are several ways you can make money with blogs as well. Here are 5 ways to make money with blogs.

1. Sell advertising
The most common way people make money with blogs is selling advertising. If you build a large blog you can sell advertising space for people to put their ads on your blog. However, a majority of people aren’t capable of building a blog big enough to do this. That is where Google AdSense and BlogAds can help you. It is free and they pay you based on the number of people that click their ads for further information.

2. Sell your products
A blog is a great place to discuss advice and opinions on various subjects. It can also be a great place to promote your product and tell them how it can benefit them. Whether it’s your blog or someone else’s, look at it as an opportunity to fulfill peoples’ needs, not that you are just selling your product.

3. Affiliate programs
This is a great way to make money with blogs that hardly anyone even considers. By mentioning the product, the affiliate program will provide you with a clickable link to hyperlink the word with. This way if people are interested in your blog post and click on the product word, they are directed to the affiliate program website where you make commission on all products they buy.

4. Sell your website
It may seem cliché because everyone sells their own website and business through blogs. However, it is your approach that can mean the difference of you making money with blogs or not. If you spend the whole time talking you will seem uninterested in others’ insight. If you incorporate others’ thoughts and opinions and strike up a conversation with little bits and pieces about your business, you soon will have them reeled in. By talking about their business and showing interest you will find that more people are interested in your business in turn.

5. Consistency
The more you post the more chances people have to see you and your website link. It is vital that you make one post a day or at minimum a few a week. This way people become accustomed to seeing your posts and hearing your advice or questions. This is a great way to build relationships, which will help you sell your product, share ideas, and promote your website.

If you take the time to put in the effort in blogs you can easily make money with blogs. There are some people that make a living through making money with blogs. However it is commitment, consistency, and your approach that can either break your or make you money with blogs.



http://www.articlejoe.com/Article/5-Ways-To-Make-Money-With-Blogs/27636

How To Determine A Name For Your Business Blog

The growing popularity of blogging by the general public is making business blogging a necessary marketing tool to stay competitive. There are many factors that can determine the success or failure of business blogging, and how successful it is with the business's target market. These factors include how well the blog is marketed, how easy it is to comprehend the blog content, and how well the blog entices people to take action. Determining the name for the blog is one important factor in driving the right kind of targeted visitors to the business website.

Why the name of the blog is important

The name of your blog is important because it sets the tone for the blog and it is the first line of marketing for your desired visitors. If a business names their blog 'Jim's Blog' or 'Jane's Blog', it isn't descriptive enough for people at a first glance to decide if they even want to visit your blog.

Another important result of how you name your business blog, is that most blogging software will put the name of the blog in the title of the browser. Many search engines will list the title of a web page in their results page. If your blog name isn't very descriptive and accurate, you will risk losing potential customers or prospects coming to your site if they stumble upon your blog from a search engine results page.

Research the keywords for your blog:

This is an important step because you will want to include some keywords in your business blog name to get maximum results. In order to determin which keywords you should use in the name of your blog, you will need to research the viable keywords for your industry. There are many free and paid tools that you can use that will tell you what keyword phrases are being used in searches. This information will tell you what phrases your target market uses to find businesses in your industry.

While performing your research, you will find many results for keyword phrases. The ones you should be most interested in are the keyword phrases that don't have too many words (no more than 4), as we will be adding more to the name if possible. You will also want to pick the keyword phrases that have a relatively high number of total searches for the month (10,000 or more).

Once you have decided upon a few keyword phrases, experiment with some different arrangements of the words to create the beginnings of a compelling business blog name.

Pick a clear benefit of your services to use in your blog name:

You are in business to fill a need or pain for your target market. If you aren't doing that, you won't be in business for long. Pick a clear and concise solution to a problem that your business provides for your target market, and try to incorporate that benefit into the name of your blog. You should end up with a name that will include relevant keywords and also contain a benefit for your clients or customers. Following these steps will give the title of your business blog a more relevant and enticing name.

How to put all the elements together for the name of your business blog:

How do you put together a keyword phrase and a clear benefit to create a powerful blog name? Let us go over an example for the travel industry. We will use a hypothetical company that provides travel insurance to travelers. A common problem for travelers that need travel insurance is to replace lost property and luggage. The benefit of this particular travel insurance business is that it provides coverage that is over and above what the other travel companies provide, or provides a service that makes it quicker and easier to process claims.

Our keyword research for this industry finds that 'travel insurance online' has just over 10,000 total keyword searches for the month (total of all 3 of the major search engines). So in creating the name for the blog, we could call it 'Quick Claims in Online Travel Insurance' or 'More Than You Expect From Online Travel Insurance'. We have included a benefit, and the keyword phrase in one short sentence, and we did not make the name too long to make it look awkward.

As you have seen, the name of your business blog serves a couple of functions. The biggest one is that it can be used to help drive targeted visitors to your website, but the name also plays a role in search engine optimization for your business blog. When choosing a name of your business blog, don't leave out the fact that it should also fit into the branding strategy of your business. Choose wisely and do your research well and you could reap the benefits and rewards for your business.



http://www.articlejoe.com/Article/How-To-Determine-A-Name-For-Your-Business-Blog/28199

Monday, October 15, 2007

Search Engine Algorithm Quandaries

Before you make drastic changes to your website after a rocky search engine update, take time to study your web server logs, changes in traffic to your site, and your ranking in the search engines.

Making Changes Before Analysis

Making rash decisions when you are hearing one thing then another from forum postings and articles is not the best choice to make. Much of the talk about fluctuations in the search engine rankings is just that--talk. Cold hard facts come from established tests of what is going on and why. Don't jump ship before examining what is going on with your website first. Panic will lead you nowhere.

Let's talk about basic search engine fundamentals you need to know.
Search Engine Rankings Fluctuate

First, you need to know that search engine rankings fluctuate; that is just the way it is. Google is a prime example of ranking changes happening throughout the day. The best way to find out how you are faring is to study the traffic coming to your site over time. Nope, not just a day or two, try a week or two at least to see if your rankings return. A search engine update may last a week before finishing and the rankings settle. Most importantly, are you receiving traffic at your website? Are you still making sales? Okay then, something is working. Don't jump on the "change everything" bandwagon. Pay attention to what is true in regard to your website.
No One Knows Algorithms Like The Search Engines

The truth is much of the talk about organic (natural) search engine marketing information is speculative. The people who know exactly what the search engine is doing are the engineers who created it, and they are not going to give away their secrets. This means that understanding what happens when updates occur may be difficult to pin down. Keeping tabs with leaders in the industry through articles, forum postings and blogs may give you a general idea of what is happening. Take that information and then apply it to what is actually happening with your website traffic and sales.

You Need A Log Statistics Program

If you do not take anything else away with you from this article be sure you heed this advice: you need a log statistics program in place. With a good log statistics program you will be able to see various reports showing the number of unique visits taking place on your website, what keyword phrases visitors use to find your pages, what pages are being visited, which search engines are being used to find your website, and much more. Knowing what the "normal" website traffic of your website is will give you a good idea of what may be actually changing over time when updates do occur.

Resubmitting Doesn't Help

Don't resubmit your web pages in the crush of an update. Search engines have crawlers, known as search engine robots or spiders, that are able to pick up a web page through links in order to add it to the search engine databases. For this reason you do not need to submit your pages to search engines anymore. Even if you mysteriously go from "top ten" to number 500 in the rankings, the fact that you are still listed means that you are still in the search engine's database, and you do not need to resubmit. Watch search engine robot activity in your server logs and you will be able to see when your web pages are being revisited by the robots.

Google PageRank Should Not Rule Your Life

So many people fixate on Google's PageRank. I suggest you should be more concerned about the traffic coming to your website, sales, the amount of content on your site and the number of on topic or directory backlinks you have acquired. PageRank is part of a much bigger equation of over 100 ways in which Google evaluates your website. Don't forget about the traffic that comes from the other search engines as well. Google may not always be the leader in search engines, keep current with the other major search engine players in the industry.

Common Sense Makes Sense

Use common sense. If you are a small business you can ill afford to make changes that may adversely affect your bottom line. Observation and patience will gain you more than quick fixes. In my experience, the true test of an update is watching the search engine results settle over at least a week or two worth of time. Let the dust settle, analyze the situation, and see what happens from there.

Moderation may be helpful, whether in gaining backlinks, making website changes or your reactions to changes. Don't panic. If it isn't broken...don't fix it.



http://www.searchinnovation.com/search-engine-algorithm-quandaries.asp

Saturday, October 13, 2007

The Secret of Black hat seo

Are your seo efforts at a standstill while everyone else seems to be getting results? Maybe it's time to take some tips from the guys that know the limits of optimization and the benefits of playing in the grey area.

So let's see what black hats do to get traffic:

1. Go for the long tail - black hats do this because it's easier to rank for a 4,5 or even 6 keyword search that has no direct competition than it is to rank for a search phrase that has hundreds of thousands or millions of results.

Of course, spam sites have the advantage of massive numbers of pages, so even if that page only brings one visitor per month it's still enough - spam sites are created in only a couple of hours and usually have from 30 000 pages and up.

But if you keep writing daily (or even more than once a day), it will add up. This brings us to the next point:

2. The money's in the archives - although some visitors will first see the main page of your site, many more will first see one of the inside pages as these will be the ones that come up for specific, long tail searches.

With each page you publish you increase your chances that at least one more visitor will find your site and more importantly, if it's a good resource, it will more than pay for itself by getting backlinks from many different sites that will diversify your inbound links profile.

3. Small degrees of separation - this is one of the best methods for writing new content: if you have a page on a certain subject just write another that has some differences.

For example: you've just written an article on how to promote a site on Digg - now write another on how to promote on Del.icio.us, and yet another on how to promote your site on Slashdot (of course, don't just change the names and URLs, you actually have to change the article a little bit).

Please understand this: if you have a 30 page site don't put up 10 pages that resemble each other very much. By doing this you'll surely trip a duplicate content filter.

4. Comment spam but without the spam - let's face it: black hats are synonymous with spammers. They rely on comment and guestbook spamming to get their huge websites indexed and this proves one thing that i've tested and found to be true: even "no-follow" links have the power to rank and index your site, although most optimizers say these are useless.

What to do: find 10 or 15 blogs that are on the same subject as your site and start contributing with valuable information. Don't spam, don't say "Nice blog!" every time just to get a link! You must actually participate.

5. Create (legitimate) doorway pages - this is a great method for link building and actually getting customers while your site is in the sandbox or not ranking very good.

A very good example is Squidoo.com: it's a very powerful site with lots of link juice that lets you create pages on almost any subject. Start by creating 10 or 12 pages with unique content on various subjects that match your site and then place various links to your site on the Squidoo pages you have created.

Even better, you can actually create a very big network of pages which you can logically structure as a homepage with categories and product pages - it's allowed, encouraged and in the end very good for you.

Now think of other powerful sites on which you can put your content: Blogger, Google Base, Wordpress.com, Xanga, Livespace and many more.

6. Blog and ping - this is very simple and yet a very good method to get indexed fast. Each time you write a new article go to Pingoat.com, put in the name of the article and the url and ping away. You'll be indexed in no time!

Apply these tips now and just watch your rankings improve and traffic increase!



http://www.articlejoe.com/Article/The-Secret-of-Black-hat-seo/35709