Not so long ago there was a booming cottage industry that catered to novice internet marketers who were in a bat-outta-hell rush to get their websites indexed by Google.
The purveyors of those services that catered to the burgeoning get-indexed-quickly-by-Google crowd usually directed internet marketing newbies to buy expensive one-way links for the duration of one month from high page rank websites or more specifically, high PR web pages.
Such links commonly cost as much as $800/month (not an expense for the faint of heart, as you can see). But why would someone shell out that kind of money for one measly link?
MYTH 1: BEING INDEXED BY GOOGLE MEANS LOTS OF TRAFFIC
A lot of new marketers think that once they've got their site indexed by Google, they can sit back, relax, kick off their shoes and contentedly watch the show of internet traffic snaking its way to their website. If you happen to have been (or still are) a student of this school of thought take consolation in the fact that you were (are) not alone, not by a long shot!
How come?
Because seo practioners of the day certainly weren't about to go out of their way to disavow such a misconception; after all it was very much in their interest to perpetuate the myth. How else would they convince you to fork over a princely sum for a mere one-month link? Anyway here's how the technique worked:
When you bought a one-way link on a webpage with a page rank value of 7 and above you were guaranteed of getting your website crawled by the googlebot within 24 hrs at the outmost which by proxy ensured that your site was indexed within 24 hrs. If your link was found on a web page with PR8 and above, your site would be indexed by Google within hours thanks to that high page rank link!
MYTH 2: BEING INDEXED BY GOOGLE MEANS A TURBO-CHARGED DASH UP THE SERPs
The 2nd selling point for acquiring an expensive one-month one-way link was the premise that your website would accelerate up the SERPs once it was indexed by Google. (SERPs stands for search engine rank pages which is just a fancy way of referring to the search engine page that lists relevant websites in response to your query). Obviously the higher up the SERPs your website gets, the greater the traffic flow!
But like any over-inflated bubble this one too had to explode, and so it did in time. With increased awareness and knowledge came new understanding of budget techniques that worked just as effectively.
Besides Google effectively nullified the system by introducing the Link-Aging Filter which is an algorithm tweak that negates any influence that any new link may pass to your website or blog until said link has been in place for a certain amount of time. The interval of probation varies from link to link and appears to be based upon the competitiveness of the keyword incorporated in your back-link.
The Link-Aging Filter hence effectively nullifies the technique of acquiring short-term links in order to get your website indexed rapidly by Google or accelerate your website up the search engines.
TECHNIQUES TO GET YOUR WEBSITE GOOGLED QUICK AND CHEAP!
1. Submit an original article to a high page rank article directory; don't forget to include a back-link pointing to your website with the anchor text of your choice!
This technique works as follows: article directories are content rich sites (a quality Google loves) and assuming that the directory has a high page rank, you can bet that the googlebot (google crawler, google spider, it all means the same thing) will crawl such a site several times a day. When the googlebot comes across your article it will continue its eternal crawl across your back-link to your site and Hey Presto You Just Got Googled! (Well at least your site did.)
2. The second way to get your website googled fast and cheap, is by getting a back-link pointing to your site on one of the popular tagging websites which includes the likes of: Digg.com, Technorati.com, del.icio.us to name but a few.
The trick here is not to get lost in the sea of over-popular keywords; in other words, since you're aiming to attract the googlebot not eyeballs (human internet traffic), tag your website with a little-used-little-known keyword! Once again these sites are crawled multiple times a day and tend to have a page rank value of 8 and above!
About the Author
Cheap Internet Marketing Methods
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
SEO COMPANIES: HOW TO SELECT AN AFFORDABLE ONE
Search Engine Optimization has helped millions of people to get more people to visit their websites and thereby increased their earnings manifolds. If you want to make use of SEO methods for your website you can either put it to use by yourself, or you can take professional help. The first step towards implementing SEO on your website would be to augment your site's search engine ranking. Your present lack of funds might keep your from investing the kind of money topnotch SEO services require you to, but there are other ways of making it work for you. A number of companies and individuals offer SEO services for a modest price, but you need to scan through your options before deciding the one which will work for you. Don't jump the gun and hire the first company/individual you find, you may live to regret such a rash decision. Instead, take some time to conduct your own background checks and research, spend time comparing possible options and only then decide which SEO service will be right for you.
If you are searching for someone else to implement SEO for you then chances are that you don't really know how it works. If the company you are dealing with has a creditable work background it will not hesitate to provide you with references to check up on. Once you get the feedback run your own search through search engine's to see whether their work has made the claimed difference to the former user's links.
Although you are making use of a service which asks for a modest amount in the form of fee do not allow yourself to accept anything besides quality service. Affordable SEO services are easily available and a wise and effective idea for website owners who wish to step up their profits. Once you are truly satisfied with a company put your SEO responsibilities in their hands and watch your website earn you a fortune.
CHOOSING THE RIGHT SEO COMPANY
Deciding on the ablest search engine optimization company can become a Herculean task, if you are not very sure of what you are looking for. You ought to know what exactly you want the SEO company to do for you. Often, misleading company ads claim to add your website into hundreds of search engines and assure good rankings too. No company can assure that and this does not work for two reasons. Secondly, these sites that they submit your website to (or search engines as they call them) usually do not generate enough traffic to effect your website. Sounds doubtful.
Steer clear of companies who claim to give top rankings to your website immediately after submission to search engines. The company should strictly abide by the SEO code of ethics and not make false promises to its clients.
So, how do you choose a reliable SEO company? Work with companies that have earned good recommendations in the industry.
About the Author
Joseph Dietrick is a successful internet marketer. Visit his PLR Articles membership site at http://BestArticleshouse.com. BestArticleshouse provides plr articles every month. As a member you will recieve 500 well written articles a month .
If you are searching for someone else to implement SEO for you then chances are that you don't really know how it works. If the company you are dealing with has a creditable work background it will not hesitate to provide you with references to check up on. Once you get the feedback run your own search through search engine's to see whether their work has made the claimed difference to the former user's links.
Although you are making use of a service which asks for a modest amount in the form of fee do not allow yourself to accept anything besides quality service. Affordable SEO services are easily available and a wise and effective idea for website owners who wish to step up their profits. Once you are truly satisfied with a company put your SEO responsibilities in their hands and watch your website earn you a fortune.
CHOOSING THE RIGHT SEO COMPANY
Deciding on the ablest search engine optimization company can become a Herculean task, if you are not very sure of what you are looking for. You ought to know what exactly you want the SEO company to do for you. Often, misleading company ads claim to add your website into hundreds of search engines and assure good rankings too. No company can assure that and this does not work for two reasons. Secondly, these sites that they submit your website to (or search engines as they call them) usually do not generate enough traffic to effect your website. Sounds doubtful.
Steer clear of companies who claim to give top rankings to your website immediately after submission to search engines. The company should strictly abide by the SEO code of ethics and not make false promises to its clients.
So, how do you choose a reliable SEO company? Work with companies that have earned good recommendations in the industry.
About the Author
Joseph Dietrick is a successful internet marketer. Visit his PLR Articles membership site at http://BestArticleshouse.com. BestArticleshouse provides plr articles every month. As a member you will recieve 500 well written articles a month .
SEO and Meta Tags
Every search engine uses it's own, very specific algorithm to index the websites. All major search engines keep updating their search algorithms quite frequently to give their searchers the best searching experience. Your website's place in the search result pages depends on it's calculation from the algorithm it follows. These algorithms are not changing everyday but are evolving into more intelligent and accurate. Yet, the major focus is on the Meta tags of the site.
These Meta tags are not visible when someone browses your web page but the search engines read these Meta tags alone and decide the place of a web page on its search result pages. It does so by finding the relevance of the Meta tags within them and with its contents. The most important Meta tags are the title, description and keywords. The first thing a search engine looks for is to find a relevance in these meta tags by looking at the keywords used in them and secondly it looks the relevance of the keywords used in these meta tags with the contents of the page.
The Title Tag
The title is the most important Meta tag of your website. This is the first thing shown on a web page and this is visible to both your visitor and most importantly to the search engine. That's why it has to be given the utmost importance while search engine optimization is the consideration.
It is always depicted on the left top bar of in the browser window. This tag should include the most relevant keyword about your business. If the most relevant keywords are used in here, your web site will sure get a boost in a search.
Most websites use their company name in the title which in fact, is not something desirable. Because, nobody usually searches for a company name unless it is very well known or some giant multinational.
The perfect title tags should be something between 10-70 characters. It is not so that one can not put a longer title but the search engine would ignore the longer part of the title.
The Title tag should be written for the visitors (people searching for your business or services) first and the search engines second. This should be such as to motivate a click and obviously to favor the search engine indexing too.
Different title tags should be assigned to each page of your website containing its own keywords that relate to that specific page.
Description tag
The description tag should be written in such way that it speaks about the website contents in just one or two sentences. It should be short and clear that your visitors get a close idea about your site by reading this in a short time.
The description tag should be 100 to 200 characters long. The Meta description tag also has a great role in the SEO of your page. This tag displays the information at a search engine result page (SERP) after a search is performed by a user. So, this should be such as this puts the concise summary of your page. Most search engines truncate longer Description. Remember this while writing this tag.
Same as above every page should have a different description tag in accordance with the contents it holds. This tag has quite some effect on the ranking of your site in Search Engine results. The Search Engine will read your description tag and will check if the keywords or search terms match your title tag and content of your web site. My suggestion is to take the first sentence or two of the contents from your web page and use that for the Meta description content.
Include the most relevant sentences matching with the page contents in description tag instead of stuffing the tag with more keywords. Remember that the Meta Description Tag of a web page must not look just a bunch of keywords, but should contain an informative and concise summary of your web page.
Keywords Tag
The most heavily sought technique in Search Engine Optimization process is Keyword optimization. But at the same time if keywords are too often repeated, chances are that the site gets marked out as "spam". However, if your target keyword are not included enough, its ranking will not be optimized. So, with present algorithms which are really smart and intelligent include only those relevant keywords you want to target and make sure that these are included in the contents too.
Use variations of a keyword like watch, watches, wrist watch etc. They are slightly changed keywords and yet don't render any feeling to the search engine for their being repeated in the tag.
Geographical information (name of the country, city or place) may be used in the keywords. Sometimes it plays a great role when a search is made for a location based business. Or, even brand names, model name of a product can be used in this tag. That also helps when a search is made for a specific product model or brand.
Search engines give different weights to the keywords according to their positions in HTML tags used in the content. For example if a keyword is used in this tag which is present in Heading Tag also has more weight particularly when the same is in H1 tag.
Write your Alt tags of the images and the text links being used in the page such that it includes at least one keyword from the keyword tag. But, remember the same should look just relevant with the image or the hyper link for which it has been written.
The content should have included all of your keywords. The aggregate keyword density (all the keywords used in keyword tag) should be between 20% to 30% but not less than 5% to the best optimized results. However, Density for a single keyword should not be less than 2% and higher than 6%. The best is about 5% with the major keywords and 2% with subsequent keywords.
The Meta tags should be fine tuned with the contents and a good relevance is brought about between themselves with a perfect balance between the target audience and the search engines.
These Meta tags have been used really very un-carefully by the spammers, if we commit to use them methodically with the due respect, I hope, we should be able to create ever increasing web traffic on our sites.
About the Author
Well known author for articles on Search Engine Optimization and Internet Marketing. Read more at http://www.mysmartseo.com
These Meta tags are not visible when someone browses your web page but the search engines read these Meta tags alone and decide the place of a web page on its search result pages. It does so by finding the relevance of the Meta tags within them and with its contents. The most important Meta tags are the title, description and keywords. The first thing a search engine looks for is to find a relevance in these meta tags by looking at the keywords used in them and secondly it looks the relevance of the keywords used in these meta tags with the contents of the page.
The Title Tag
The title is the most important Meta tag of your website. This is the first thing shown on a web page and this is visible to both your visitor and most importantly to the search engine. That's why it has to be given the utmost importance while search engine optimization is the consideration.
It is always depicted on the left top bar of in the browser window. This tag should include the most relevant keyword about your business. If the most relevant keywords are used in here, your web site will sure get a boost in a search.
Most websites use their company name in the title which in fact, is not something desirable. Because, nobody usually searches for a company name unless it is very well known or some giant multinational.
The perfect title tags should be something between 10-70 characters. It is not so that one can not put a longer title but the search engine would ignore the longer part of the title.
The Title tag should be written for the visitors (people searching for your business or services) first and the search engines second. This should be such as to motivate a click and obviously to favor the search engine indexing too.
Different title tags should be assigned to each page of your website containing its own keywords that relate to that specific page.
Description tag
The description tag should be written in such way that it speaks about the website contents in just one or two sentences. It should be short and clear that your visitors get a close idea about your site by reading this in a short time.
The description tag should be 100 to 200 characters long. The Meta description tag also has a great role in the SEO of your page. This tag displays the information at a search engine result page (SERP) after a search is performed by a user. So, this should be such as this puts the concise summary of your page. Most search engines truncate longer Description. Remember this while writing this tag.
Same as above every page should have a different description tag in accordance with the contents it holds. This tag has quite some effect on the ranking of your site in Search Engine results. The Search Engine will read your description tag and will check if the keywords or search terms match your title tag and content of your web site. My suggestion is to take the first sentence or two of the contents from your web page and use that for the Meta description content.
Include the most relevant sentences matching with the page contents in description tag instead of stuffing the tag with more keywords. Remember that the Meta Description Tag of a web page must not look just a bunch of keywords, but should contain an informative and concise summary of your web page.
Keywords Tag
The most heavily sought technique in Search Engine Optimization process is Keyword optimization. But at the same time if keywords are too often repeated, chances are that the site gets marked out as "spam". However, if your target keyword are not included enough, its ranking will not be optimized. So, with present algorithms which are really smart and intelligent include only those relevant keywords you want to target and make sure that these are included in the contents too.
Use variations of a keyword like watch, watches, wrist watch etc. They are slightly changed keywords and yet don't render any feeling to the search engine for their being repeated in the tag.
Geographical information (name of the country, city or place) may be used in the keywords. Sometimes it plays a great role when a search is made for a location based business. Or, even brand names, model name of a product can be used in this tag. That also helps when a search is made for a specific product model or brand.
Search engines give different weights to the keywords according to their positions in HTML tags used in the content. For example if a keyword is used in this tag which is present in Heading Tag also has more weight particularly when the same is in H1 tag.
Write your Alt tags of the images and the text links being used in the page such that it includes at least one keyword from the keyword tag. But, remember the same should look just relevant with the image or the hyper link for which it has been written.
The content should have included all of your keywords. The aggregate keyword density (all the keywords used in keyword tag) should be between 20% to 30% but not less than 5% to the best optimized results. However, Density for a single keyword should not be less than 2% and higher than 6%. The best is about 5% with the major keywords and 2% with subsequent keywords.
The Meta tags should be fine tuned with the contents and a good relevance is brought about between themselves with a perfect balance between the target audience and the search engines.
These Meta tags have been used really very un-carefully by the spammers, if we commit to use them methodically with the due respect, I hope, we should be able to create ever increasing web traffic on our sites.
About the Author
Well known author for articles on Search Engine Optimization and Internet Marketing. Read more at http://www.mysmartseo.com
Why You Should Write Search Engine Friendly Copy
In the early days of the World Wide Web, traffic was king. Just get traffic to your website and hey, you were up and running. With the amazing number of websites now, there is a need to market your website, or optimise it by using search engine optimization techniques. Getting your site noticed is a challenge. Most web users search for information using search engines. So you need to design your site in such a way to attract the search engine spiders that index your web pages in order for them to be found. So, what is search engine friendly copy? Well it is not about stuffing your website with target keywords. Indeed, you will probably fall foul of the search engines if you do that. You do need to research your keywords but you need also to write to human beings, not just spiders. There is no point in having a highly ranked website that nobody can understand.
Remember that your website has to be user friendly. First of all, what is your website for? What does it do? What do you want your visitors to do? Do you want them to spend money while they are visiting? Or is it just an information site? This will have an impact on how you compose your copy. Bearing in mind that you are designing your website for humans to interact, it is advisable to plan the style of your written content. Short paragraphs and bullet points will attract eager eyes, whereas lengthy essays with few breaks will drive people away. If you are selling something, you need to make your site look interesting with many calls to action and not just like an online price list. In conclusion, remember that you are trying to attract the search engines but your website is first and foremost designed for human readers. As a general rule, any site that is written and designed well for people will be search engine friendly, so do not compromise your message to your human audience simply to make your pages more accessible to search engines. People are your audience. You may have to pragmatically balance the two needs, but in doing so, never take a decision in favour of search engines. It is pointless getting a high ranking and attracting visitors to pages which do not communicate properly.
About the Author
Manager at White hat media.A seo and web design agency providing a wide range of services such as web design, seo consultancy, pay per click, email marketing... http://www.whitehatmedia.com
Remember that your website has to be user friendly. First of all, what is your website for? What does it do? What do you want your visitors to do? Do you want them to spend money while they are visiting? Or is it just an information site? This will have an impact on how you compose your copy. Bearing in mind that you are designing your website for humans to interact, it is advisable to plan the style of your written content. Short paragraphs and bullet points will attract eager eyes, whereas lengthy essays with few breaks will drive people away. If you are selling something, you need to make your site look interesting with many calls to action and not just like an online price list. In conclusion, remember that you are trying to attract the search engines but your website is first and foremost designed for human readers. As a general rule, any site that is written and designed well for people will be search engine friendly, so do not compromise your message to your human audience simply to make your pages more accessible to search engines. People are your audience. You may have to pragmatically balance the two needs, but in doing so, never take a decision in favour of search engines. It is pointless getting a high ranking and attracting visitors to pages which do not communicate properly.
About the Author
Manager at White hat media.A seo and web design agency providing a wide range of services such as web design, seo consultancy, pay per click, email marketing... http://www.whitehatmedia.com
How To Get Blacklisted By The Search Engines: Black Hat SEO Techniques
Black Hat SEO is a real problem as more and more SEO companies are set up every day. Just as a reminder, Black Hat SEO is to be opposed to White Hat SEO. Black Hat search engine optimization can be defined as the practice of using unethical techniques to make your search rankings go up. Here is a list of the bad techniques that would get you blacklisted by the search engines.
Cloaking As a general rule, websites designed for ease of use by visitors will attract search engine spiders. That doesn't stop some less than reputable individuals from disguising their pages in an attempt to gain an unfair advantage. What you see is most definitely not what you get. The information presented to the search engine is not the same that the human visitor gets to see. One example is to put in some text the same colour as the background. In this way, the spiders but not the human eye can pick up keywords. This enables the website owner to present well written content but give the search engine the impression that the copy is filled with keywords, thereby attracting searches for those keywords. Rest assured though, that if the offending site were holding a high search engine position, it would be spotted, reported and banned from search engines.
Duplicate Sites Search engines would prefer to find unique content throughout the net. When affiliate schemes first became popular, some web owners would post duplicate sites in an attempt to outrank the site being promoted and siphon off sales from the original. Subsequently, the search engines now have procedures in place to stop duplicate sites. Sites that may have been altered slightly to avoid detection can be spotted by competitors, reported and banned.
Keyword Stuffing The easiest to spot and most common example of "black hat" methods, keyword stuffing relies on targeted keywords being placed en masse on a web page in the anticipation of being picked up and indexed by the search engines. Usually found written in a tiny font size at the bottom of a web page in order for the main content to make sense.
Link farms Link farms have evolved from the strategy of building inbound links in order to raise search engine rankings. Sites have been built specifically to provide links, which are not particularly relevant to the site concerned. Search engines expect links between websites to be based on relevant content. Sites that build links of no relevance, purely for the sake of search engine optimisation, can be banned from search engines, maybe for life.
Doorway Pages Probably the easiest way to get blacklisted and lose even genuinely earned rankings, doorway pages are appended to a website, giving no value to a visitor. The page exists solely to attract search engines to the targeted keyword or phrase. These pages are usually mass-produced and posted automatically by software.
Redirects Used in connection with doorways, redirects automatically move the visitor to a genuine page. Illegal methods are constantly being devised to beat attempts by search engines to detect this practice. The search engines do generally catch up with them and ban the sites. If not, competitors do pick up what's going on and report the offenders. What colour is your hat? Many of these practices are blatantly in use today. Some webmasters tread the thin line between illegality and shady practices. Search engine rankings can still be achieved by operating a "black hat" strategy. Generally though, any gain is at best temporary and offenders do face the prospect of being blacklisted by the search engines. SEO agencies that operate legitimately and provide good seo services, will not tolerate competitors getting an unfair advantage and will report offenders. Some bans can be permanent, but even in cases where a site is only banned for a temporary period; it is increasingly difficult to get back up the ladder.
Articles Source - Free Articles
Manager at White hat media. A seo and web design agency providing a wide range of services such as web design, seo consultancy, pay per click, email marketing... http://www.whitehatmedia.com
Cloaking As a general rule, websites designed for ease of use by visitors will attract search engine spiders. That doesn't stop some less than reputable individuals from disguising their pages in an attempt to gain an unfair advantage. What you see is most definitely not what you get. The information presented to the search engine is not the same that the human visitor gets to see. One example is to put in some text the same colour as the background. In this way, the spiders but not the human eye can pick up keywords. This enables the website owner to present well written content but give the search engine the impression that the copy is filled with keywords, thereby attracting searches for those keywords. Rest assured though, that if the offending site were holding a high search engine position, it would be spotted, reported and banned from search engines.
Duplicate Sites Search engines would prefer to find unique content throughout the net. When affiliate schemes first became popular, some web owners would post duplicate sites in an attempt to outrank the site being promoted and siphon off sales from the original. Subsequently, the search engines now have procedures in place to stop duplicate sites. Sites that may have been altered slightly to avoid detection can be spotted by competitors, reported and banned.
Keyword Stuffing The easiest to spot and most common example of "black hat" methods, keyword stuffing relies on targeted keywords being placed en masse on a web page in the anticipation of being picked up and indexed by the search engines. Usually found written in a tiny font size at the bottom of a web page in order for the main content to make sense.
Link farms Link farms have evolved from the strategy of building inbound links in order to raise search engine rankings. Sites have been built specifically to provide links, which are not particularly relevant to the site concerned. Search engines expect links between websites to be based on relevant content. Sites that build links of no relevance, purely for the sake of search engine optimisation, can be banned from search engines, maybe for life.
Doorway Pages Probably the easiest way to get blacklisted and lose even genuinely earned rankings, doorway pages are appended to a website, giving no value to a visitor. The page exists solely to attract search engines to the targeted keyword or phrase. These pages are usually mass-produced and posted automatically by software.
Redirects Used in connection with doorways, redirects automatically move the visitor to a genuine page. Illegal methods are constantly being devised to beat attempts by search engines to detect this practice. The search engines do generally catch up with them and ban the sites. If not, competitors do pick up what's going on and report the offenders. What colour is your hat? Many of these practices are blatantly in use today. Some webmasters tread the thin line between illegality and shady practices. Search engine rankings can still be achieved by operating a "black hat" strategy. Generally though, any gain is at best temporary and offenders do face the prospect of being blacklisted by the search engines. SEO agencies that operate legitimately and provide good seo services, will not tolerate competitors getting an unfair advantage and will report offenders. Some bans can be permanent, but even in cases where a site is only banned for a temporary period; it is increasingly difficult to get back up the ladder.
Articles Source - Free Articles
Manager at White hat media. A seo and web design agency providing a wide range of services such as web design, seo consultancy, pay per click, email marketing... http://www.whitehatmedia.com
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