Monday, October 1, 2007

SEO Guide to Choosing a Good Website Host

There are many factors we look at when choosing a host. There are literally thousands of providers in the World and there are many, many considerations to take into account. I like to take a systematic approach and narrow down my field of possible hosting provider candidates before I even look at prices. I write down a list of criteria that I must place on choosing an appropriate website host and these form my requirements base.

1. I look at the required target audience and their geographic location - where does you target market live And I seek to answer the question; do I want to rank more highly in a regional index rather than an International Index For example, lets say you sell blue widgets and you are based in Melbourne, Australia. Through your website you only ship to addresses within Australia. In this situation you would ideally want to be listed more prominently in the Australian regional search indexes - like google.com.au

Why do we need to consider this The reason is simple, the search engines will rank you more highly in a regional index if you use a hosting provider based in region or country in question. So, this is our first factor

2. Dedicated IP Addresses or Shared. When it comes to search engine optimization this can have an impact so I like to mention it as early as possible in choosing candidates for website hosting provider. Some SEO professionals believe that not having a dedicated IP can have a detrimental affect in Google rankings but from my experience it sometimes does and it sometimes doesnt. I have had some sites come in with high PR rankings on shared IPs and others when I shifted to a new IP the PR of the site jumped, so this is still a bit of a mystery when it comes to Google rankings. My advice from a logical SEO perspective is that you never know with whom you are sharing an IP address; they could be running a banned web site, so logic says get the dedicated IP if you can.

3. Requirements of the coding and database for my website. As an example you might be using a Joomla website and with this comes certain requirements - we need PHP, a MySQL database, a web server (HTTP), sendmail (if you want to get/end email), and some kind of file transfer access (FTP or SFTP). These might seem like fairly common requirements but there are additional items you might want to consider in this segment like the operating system of the host, Linux or windows or what other services they have running on the server, Perl CGI-BIN access, SSI, .htaccess, telnet or SSH crontabs. This item covers all dependencies your website has on services and software to make it perform correctly on the web server.

4. Reliability, Speed and Uptime Guarantee. There is nothing that can hurt your business more than your website visitors coming to your web site only to find that its inaccessible. You lose a lot of credibility and possibly even sales through your website being down. You should consider removing a candidate web host if they do not provide you with at least 99.9% uptime. Many web hosts will provide guarantees like this and you should seek to find them. Many web hosts have redundant back-up systems for Internet access that are used when the main connection fails for some reason. Do your research and find out how many redundant connections they have to ensure less chance of the website being unavailable. Website "Redundancy" means if any of the normal Internet connections are interrupted then an alternate Internet connection will be used.

5. Customer Support. One of the most frequent complaints that people make about website hosts is the lack of customer and technical support. From my experience it does not matter if you are an expert or a novice in web hosting, you still need a web host with a good customer support system. Many web hosts offer email, online chat and phone support while others are available only via email. In most cases, email support is adequate, but you should be cautious if a potential web host has no phone number available in case of an emergency.

Response times to support questions can vary greatly. Some web hosts may take only a few minutes to get back to you while others take days or even longer. It's important to find out what support any web host candidate provides. Searching on the Internet for references can often be of assistance in this regard.

6. Data Transfer - Traffic/Bandwidth. This is often referred to as "bandwidth", which is the amount of data that can be transferred from or to your website. Basically look for a service which provides a good amount of traffic when compared to other services available. Also when choosing your website host you should ensure that the plan you are on can be expanded so that any foreseen increases in traffic can be accommodated accordingly.

7. Disk space. Again, take into consideration other hosting providers and find a service which provides a good amount of storage space in comparison. You might want to take into account any foreseen increases in storage space required also and factor the ability to be able to change the plan to accommodate these needs.

8. Price. This is always a huge consideration after all you could get a dedicated server for about $200 per month but for the most part this is not required for a new business website. The normal business website is not going to have 5000 visitors per day when it first starts up. Of course there are exceptions and if you are expecting this much traffic then you should get the dedicated server straight away. If however you are like most normal businesses and looking to gain a web presence then I would advise you to get a shared server with a dedicated IP. For something like this the prices can vary from $5 per month to $100 per month. Often you get what you pay for, so you should look at what services they provide for the money and weigh these up against the benefits. Often there are extra's that are suitable for your particular needs, like Joomla support or content input or specialized hosting services.



http://www.articleco.com/Article/SEO-Guide-to-Choosing-a-Good-Website-Host/45629

Outsource SEO Services to India

We are residing at a global village and several telecommunication innovations have improved our communication processes. Business houses are now exploring new markets and there has been a drastic improvement in the field of business process outsourcing. Outsourcing SEO services to India has both advantages and disadvantages. For profit mnaximization, outsoursing is a major business tool. But in the recent past it has been witnessed that many global corporations have failed to remain adherent to social obligations and outsourced its operations to cheaper destinations only for cutting operational costs. This has created a tension among the youth of developed economically rich nations. The crisis prevails but for better profits, the business houses are highly favoring outsourcing.

There are different dimension of outsource link building / SEO service; it is wise to have a rough idea about the entire process. Actually the wave of outsourcing generated since last two decades and it has consistently increased. English speaking nations like India has been enormously benefited and many people joined the trend of grabbing outsourced jobs of customer care. On the contrary, outsoursing speeded like wildfire and from software development to knowledge processing; all of these jobs were outsourced in cheaper south easy Asian countries. China is at present leading in serving outsourced business processes and India also joins as second runner. Again, many of the manufacturing units have been also out sources and this has caused massive job cuts.So, time has come to analyze how it is affecting across different societies.

There are several online resources that provide a clear idea about various processes of outsourcing and self-research can be of great help to understand the processs.Actually different markets are being explored now with this, transnationmal corporations are analyzing the cheapest production and maintenance costs. Many of the companies have withdrawn offices from cheaper destinations as professionals have failed to provide satisfactory customer care.

Software development has been a major area where a large chunk of work is getting outsourced nowadays. In reality it has been found that India and China based professionals are really skilled in this field. Leading car manufacturers are also setting up manufacturing plants in developing nations to find cheap labors. But the final assembly is often done in the country where the cars will be finally sold. Almost all types of business processes are getting outsourced. Financial services of leading financial organizations are outsourced as well. Before outsoursing, it is prudent to clearly analyze the purpose and the required business goals. Otherwise the venture may not be successful.

Despite different obstacles, outsoursing is highly in vogue. Major leading companies are following the models of business process outsourcing. And several studies suggest that outsourcing will increase in many folds in the coming years.Stll, it is necessary for the government of developed economies to increase more focus on youth employment otherwise outsourcing may be a cause of unemployment.



http://www.articleco.com/Article/Outsource-SEO-Services-to-India/46104

Finding Good Reciprocal Links

What should you be looking for when you are attempting to build reciprocal links
Most people with a little knowledge think the answer to this question is simple. PR rank.

Well yes, PR rank is important, but it is not the be all and end-all to reciprocal linking and search engine placement.

Pagerank is important to a Google listing for your market keywords but Google a long time ago decided to make things a little more complicated than just awarding placement to the site with the largest number of high PR ranking links.

Google does not like you buying links so it started to put more importance on the relevance of the site linking to you as well as the page rank. So as far as Google goes what you need to find are high PR relevant sites to yours.

That is a little more difficult, but not impossible.

First you need to find relevant sites. This is easy as all you need to do is search for the keywords that you wish to be ranked for and up pop millions of pages that you eventually dream of overtaking. Now you want to find those sites that will exchange links. To do this just search for keyword + Add Url + Add Link or a combination of the two. This will find you pages where there is add link in the text of the page somewhere so more than likely they are open to exchanging links.

I work a lot in the Spanish property market so I might search for;

Property + Add Url or Spanish + All Link or Spain + Submit site. You can also use related keywords such as Real Estate etc.

Once you have narrowed down the search to the relevant sites that will exchange links you can start filtering out those sites whose Link pages will never get cached and thus will never provide any value to your site.

First, go to the homepage and see if the link pages are linked from it. This will tell you if the page your link is going to appear on will ever have any value. If the page where your link is likely to appear is more than two clicks away from the homepage I would disregard it unless it is a high ranking site with PR valued links pages already.

Also check the source code of the links page. There are sneaky, underhand people out there who will put a meta tag in the head portion of the page HTML with a no follow tag. This tells the search engines not to look on this page. Your link will never be found whilst the link you put on your site will add value to their site.

A neat trick you can use following on from the searches above to find .edu or .gov sites which may be deemed important to your market is;
site:.edu inurl:blog "post a comment" -"comments closed" -"you must be logged in" "your keyword"

This search will find blogs for .edu sites which allow you to post a comment. Keep your comments relevant and fresh and you should be able to insert a link to your site as well.



http://www.articleco.com/Article/Finding-Good-Reciprocal-Links/46408

Article Submission As Organic SEO Technique

There is no doubt that search engine optimization (SEO) plays a very important role in the internet marketing field. If you are someone who is looking to take part in internet marketing, chances are that you may want to consider article submission as an organic SEO technique. Here, through this informative article, we will take a much closer look at how article submission works, as well as some of the ways that you can have the most success with this SEO technique.

Article submission is also referred to as article marketing. The way that this SEO technique works is when you decide to pay a company to have articles written for you, or if you decide that you have enough knowledge on the subject to write them yourself. Once you have the articles written that you are interested using for your company or whatever area you are interested in trying to promote, you will then submit your articles to directories. The entire concept of article submission is very easy to understand.

Keep in mind that there are a number of different things that you can do to improve the overall success that you have with article submission as the SEO technique that you are interested in using. The most important thing that you will want to take into consideration is that you will want to make sure that your articles have the right amount of keyword density. It is typically recommended for you to have articles which offer two to three percent keyword density. This will help improve the overall search engine, or directory, ranking that your submitted articles will have.

Another one of the most important things that you will want to take into consideration is the fact that your articles should be much more than just keyword dense. While this is very important to the amount of success that you have with article submission, it is also important to keep in mind that the content of your articles is very important as well. Not only should they be well written with perfect grammar, but your submitted articles should also be relevant to the subject which they are about. Although you may have thought about offering the information that you want included in your articles in a playful manner, chances are that you will find that you will have the most success when you decide to present your information more professionally. This will help you gain the credibility that you need to gain the most success for your company or product.

One of the main benefits that article submission has to offer you is the fact that it is known to be very successful. If you are interested in getting the internet marketing results through one of the best SEO techniques which is out there, then article submission can really do a lot for you. Another one of the main benefits of this marketing solution is the fact that it is known to be very cost effective, which is great for anyone who has a low marketing budget to begin with. Whether you have a large or small business, you very well may find article submission to be one of the best internet marketing solutions for you.



http://www.articleco.com/Article/Article-Submission-As-Organic-SEO-Technique/46920

Search Engine Optimization - The Basics of Boosting Website Traffic

Search engine optimization is vital if you want to get your website listed at the top of the search engine rankings. You will have to design and write your pages not only for the customer, but also for the search engine spiders and crawlers. It does not have to be hard and it does not have to make you pull your hair out in frustration. By following a few tips on how to go about writing your pages, you will find success with your website.

One of the first mistakes that most people make when designing a website is that they think about the entire website. Do not concentrate on the entire site. Instead, create your landing page with only that page in mind. The rest of the design will come later.

Next, narrow down your list of keywords to keyword phrases. Make sure they are highly targeted keyword phrases. For example, if you sell motor oil your keyword phrase would be motor oil and not just oil. Remember that people, when searching for your website in the search engines, will search for general phrases, and not just keywords.

After you have chosen your phrase to use, put it into a search engine and see what comes up. This is an honest way to check out your competition and to get a real look at how your keywords work. You might find that your keywords are highly popular, and you will need to rework your phrases. Targeting a keyword that is not highly sought after could lead you to keyword phrases in niche markets. Fortunes have been built of niche markets in the Internet community.

Next you will want to look at your meta tags. The tags are html code that lists the different words in relation to your product on the web page. Search engines look mainly for descriptive tags that tell the engine and visitor what the website is about. If there is no tag, it will use other ways to search for information, like in a cached page of the directories.

When setting up your keyword phrase, include it twice, and make it a clickable title tag too. You will need to describe your information for your page with the keywords. Be creative in the description. Search engines like versatility up to a point.

One important aspect that you will need to use is not only your Meta keyword phrases, but a few sub keywords that are relevant to your site. Do not overuse keyword phrases because will hurt you with certain engines - your site will actually be penalized, and drop in the search engine rankings.

Make sure you use a header tag. Certain search engines use these tags heavily for rating the value of your site. When writing your page, use your main keyword phrase or phrases right off the bat. A good inclusion would be twice in the first paragraph. Any other types of information about your site should include your keyword-targeted phrase as well.

Do not think that that is all you will have to do though. You will have to get others to notice your web site. Continue using your keyword phrase or phrases in any text on the page.

For instance, if you have a blog set up on your site; use the keyword phrase in your Meta tag about the web blog. You may have to submit your web page to the search engines. Sometimes the engines do not pick up a site with the spiders and crawlers.

In fact, you might have to redesign your site with new Meta tags, and targeted keyword phrases and sub keywords. Do not rush to do it though. First, find out if the search engines pick up your page. Usually only 2 - 3 weeks will suffice to see if its happened. If not re-do your site words so you can climb to at least the first two pages of any search engine.

The key is to remain patient and to follow the ever changing rules of SEO search engine optimization. It will take time and developing your confidence about your skills. In the end, you will be glad that you have learned the valuable technique, and you will go on to build improved sites that are finely tuned.


http://www.articleco.com/Article/Search-Engine-Optimization---The-Basics-of-Boosting-Website-Traffic/48049

The Beauty of Search Engine Optimization Phobias

It is a common belief among many web business owners that once they submit their website to a search engines theyre on their way to financial success. Yes submitting your site is important. But simply informing the search engines that you exist (which is all you are doing) is not enough because they reaction you may get is so youre out there, so what. Today web pages need to be optimized in order for search engines to take them seriously.

Search engine optimization is the art and science of making your web pages attractive to the search engines.

But mention search engine optimization to some folks and you get winces. Some completely bury their heads in the sand. This in part is because search engine optimization is work. It requires research of keywords, content creation, producing well written Meta tags, enhancing your web pages with a few pictures, audio and video to improve the user experience and keeping up to date on the latest trends in SEO. For many webmaster this is more than they want to handle, especially since the internet businesses have be synonyms with get rich quick schemes.

An internet marketer recently said, I dont understand why I have to do it, the search engine will find me eventually. The fact that she was willing to wait around rather than put in a little effort to make things happen for her business puzzled me. Then I thought maybe shes just afraid to get her feet wet. SEO is like anything its scary if you dont know how to go about it.

First, you have to ask yourself what are you are willing to lose. If you do not participate in SEO you will lose your business, this is a fact. Search engines are still the number one traffic generator and most users who use search engines do not go past the second page of results. If you dont get serious and undertake search engine optimization you will be lucky to see a handful of customers because only a slight few will ever see you. Needless to say you wont become a millionaire with only 5 visitors per day (if youre lucky).

Next, join a forum that discusses it. There are a lot of masters out there that who are willing to share SEO tips for free. Start asking questions about what you dont know. If youve tried SEO but failed, find out where you went wrong.

Another excuse many use is that they want to do SEO but they dont have the time. This may be valid. However, a great number of people can spend hours looking for gossip but when it come to their pages they suddenly realize they have something better to do. Ill optimize my page after my favorite show; I cant miss my favorite show! The shed needs cleaning. I dont have the energy for it after I come home from my other job.

It only takes an hour a day to build a successful business. If time spent optimizing your website leads to an increase in sales isnt it time well spent Take it one page at a time; optimize one page today and move on to the next when youre done. Trying to take on the whole website would make anyone have an anxiety attack, especially for a large site.

The beauty of SEO is that it does not take too long to become proficient and once you have the hang of it youll find that run through it quicker.

Its all about increasing the potential for sales. And if search engine optimization is going to increase your profit margin dont you think you should take head out the sand.



http://www.articleco.com/Article/The-Beauty-of-Search-Engine-Optimization-Phobias/49777

Capturing The Virtual Market

A higher rank in the leading search engines will undoubtedly give your business enterprise a cutting edge over its market peers. In an age when e-commerce is gradually emerging as the most effective mode of marketing products and services, attaining the best level of internet marketing goes a long way in attracting the target customers to a website and thereby, achieving maximum commercial success in the long run.

In order to maximize target audience visits to a website, one of the first steps to be taken is creating a website design that simultaneously runs parallel to your business objectives and is attractive enough to engage the attention of visitors. The right structure, appropriate website designs and relevant content are the three most important aspects of any good website. A professionally designed website conveying your business messages to potential clients is one of the best internet marketing strategies that can be adopted today. At the same time, in order to ensure that the internet marketing policies adopted by you are generating optimum results, it is necessary to keep a regular measure of the output that has been achieved. It is also important to upgrade the website from time to time, depending on these assessments.

Even with superior quality products and services on offer, many companies are unable to achieve their expected levels of commercial success due to certain basic misconceptions that they possess. Just like in real world, in cyber space too, advertising and effective marketing of services and products play crucial role in attracting prospective customers and driving the sales. You must make the potential customers aware of what your company has on offer and maintaining a proper, professional website is one of the best ways to achieve this goal. Undoubtedly, a well planned website designed with attractive images, animation and color coordination goes a long way in holding attention of users. However, in addition to a good website design, there should also be relevant content that best expresses your business message and corresponds to the website designs as well. Just like other components of your business enterprise, a commercial website also requires regular maintenance and upgradation. An up to date website indicates professionalism of your business enterprise, along with keeping your clients and prospective customers well informed on the latest services your company has on offer.

Adopting a proper internet marketing strategy from the very beginning is one of the most effective steps that can be taken by an enterprise. Whether you are running a small enterprise or a large scale one, formulating an effective internet marketing strategy, although might seem an expensive affair at first, is one of the most effective measures that can be taken. Along with directing the best quality traffic to your website, your website can effectively lead simple site visitors into exploring different features you have on offer and subsequently, turn them into potential and profitable customers. Your website offers the first impression of your company over the Internet. Therefore the more an organization focuses on its website development, higher are its chances of achieving commercial success at large.


http://www.articleco.com/Article/Capturing-The-Virtual-Market/50715

How To Achieve Higher SE Rankings

If you are brand new to the internet, you perhaps have countless inquiries about Search Engine Optimization and how it works. Search Engine Optimization is a technique used to achieve top results in the search engines anytime anyone is searching for your business or product. Traffic to your online page from the search engines is already targeted. Visitors arriving at your website from search engines have typed in a keyword significant to your web content, as a result they are already interested in your goods or service. This is the very best resource of potential consumers you might experience.

SEO Elite Version 4.0 has gained popularity for giving more features than any other search engine optimization marketing tool. This marketing software program affords swift results, and all those who have paid for this software, have vouched for its performance. While using this marketing software program, it is a guarantee that you can be able to advertise your product or your company to the greatest level on the internet. SEO Elite may conceivably be observed as Brad Callens breakthrough product. Upon its initial release it gave us users the likelihood to climb the rankings of the search engines by the use of a number of crafty techniques. In a number of ways SEO Elite was the ultimate spy marketing tool, the capability to see who is linking to whom and to then get connected with the owners of particular web content all through the application itself was groundbreaking. Use it to identify how to build a subsequent linking structure that nails all the top ten search engine listings. Place that into action and take pleasure in the sales that stream in.

You're about to discover in detail how to obtain and sustain high search engine rankings. In addition, you'll know everything humanly possible concerning your rival's linking lineup and you'll know accurately why they rank so good in major search engines like Google and Yahoo. Most importantly, you'll free up hours your time from doing the labor of handling a link campaign. That's worth more than ten times your investment in SEO Elite Version 4.0. What's more, the explosion in traffic and marketing that'll come in can more than pay for SEO Elite Version 4.0 many, many times over.

SEO Elite Benefits:
Right away decide on which websites you to contact and SEO Elite can assemble their contact information for you!

Directly decide on which online pages you to contact and SEO Elite will gather their contact information for you!

See if you have "disturbed pages" preventing them from ranking successfully.

See which link partners are cheating you and have got rid of your link from their web page without you knowing!

SEO Elite Features (just a few of many):
Realize how any page ranks at the top of the Search Engines. In addition to that works for the the major search engines like Yahoo, Google, MSN, Altavista and Alltheweb. At last, the keys to possess top-10 listings are yours in just a few seconds with SEO Elite Version 4.0!

Analyzes plus compares detailed search commands on Google to the "regular" Google search rankings such as "allinanchor, allintext, as well as allintitle". This will help you grasp which field you really need to better optimize; whether it might be your anchor text surrounding your links, the quantity of times the keyword can be found in your text, or the number of times your keyword could be established in the title of each online page.

I have found that SEO Elite users are some of the most successful people working online. While SEO Elite Version 4.0 offers more features than any other Search Engine Optimization Software product available today, it's not the features that the users are most proud of; its the results that they achieve time and time again. Ive seen these results since my first purchase of SEO Elite and Keyword Elite in March of 2006.

SEO Elite Reviews:
"Brad, SEO Elite is incredible", "Took client's site to a page 1 ranking for many of their selected keywords!", "I am now ranked #1 in Google for the term, only bracelets!", "SEO Elite has helped me to rank #1 for the phrase "business practices"

I think you could believe me when I say; those SEO Elite Version 4.0 reviews genuinely speak for themselves. To take a look at additional customer testimonials, visit http://www.seoelite.com/testimonials.htm.



http://www.articleco.com/Article/How-To-Achieve-Higher-SE-Rankings/51224

Why Choosing The Right SEO Firm Is Crucial To Business Website Success

Choosing the right search engine optimisation (SEO) firm and online marketing company is the most important phase in your business website's existence. It is important to align yourself with a company that are good at selling products and services online in order to ensure you reap the benefits that SEO can truly deliver. Using in house SEO staff is often flawed so when a business makes the decision to choose an external source for their online marketing solution then I always encourage the company to do a lot of research on the potential firms.

As search engine optimisation (SEO) requires expertise the first thing I suggest is searching on Google for "SEO" and "Online Marketing" in your regional index and taking note of the top 5 companies for each search result set. Compare them. Then make a list of the companies that are repeated. The reason I suggest searching on Google is that

- Google holds over 85% of the search market in Australia. I am not sure on other regional areas in the World but as far as I am concerned Google dominate and they have the most advanced search algorithm.

- Any company that can successfully market its own products - SEO and Online Marketing, and be placed in the top 5 results are very good at online marketing and as these terms are very competitive it is the cream of the crop being listed.

So, now you should contact each of the firms that are repeated in the list and ask to make an appointment with them to discuss how SEO can best benefit your business website.

As long as you have done the searches above then there are several questions I like to ask at this point.
1. Where do they place in the search engine results pages for their own products - SEO and Online/Internet Marketing
2. Do they have at least 10 examples of SEO clients in comparable industries (B2B/B2C) that they can show online marketing success with - look for traffic graphs and keywords being searched on to get to the website.
3. How many staff do the SEO firm have
4. Does the SEO company have 24/7 support and phone contact
5. Are they professional and expert in their handling of your questions and delivering clear honest answers
6. Read some of the SEO firm's testimonials.

After these questions have been answered then you will generally have a very good idea of how good the company actually is. What their philosophies are and whether they are a good fit for your business website objectives.

There are several things I would also consider very strongly.
- Never trust a company that is willing to make any kind of guarantees on results. There is no way that an SEO company can know for sure that your website is going to be listed in the top 10 in the search results. If they do make promises then it is likely they will be optimising your website for less than optimal keywords that are uncompetitive. For example you sell "Blue widgets" and you would like to be listed in the top ten for blue widgets but it is very competitive. This dodgy company says they can get you in the top ten, but they don't say for what keywords and they do deliver but its for a keyword phrase like "blue widget with flowers in Melbourne Australia" - this is completely useless and will not sell any more of your products!!
- Never choose an SEO firm on price. Trust me when I say this - You get what you pay for! Aligning your business website with the best SEO firm, which may be more expensive, is going to get you a lot more traffic than a lower ranked SEO company. A more experienced SEO firm is likely to have many, many testimonials and graphs of clients to show you. Align with the best SEO Company and you get the best results it's as simple as that - there is no doubt in my mind on this.

Now that you have narrowed down the list, take a day to go through all of the information gathered. Assess everything on its merits and choose wisely. As I said above, never choose based on price, you pay peanuts and you will get monkeys. Graphic design and coding the building of a website make up about 20% of the success of the website, the other 80% is getting people to come to your website and buy your product or service. A similar comparison is opening a shop. You can make it as plush and nice as you want inside but if no one is coming through the door then it really doesn't matter how nice it is does it You could well have a warehouse and market more and you would likely be far more successful. In summary, align your business website with the best SEO firm that you can find.


http://www.articleco.com/Article/Why-Choosing-The-Right-SEO-Firm-Is-Crucial-To-Business-Website-Success/55562

Done Right And Submitting Articles Will Get Your Website Onto Page One Of The Search Engine Results

The goal for the majority of site owners is to achieve a steady flow of free traffic and that means getting your site listed on the first page of the natural search results for the main search engines, including the big three of Google, Yahoo and MSN.

A few years ago that was relatively easy even in competitive markets however nowadays it has become very much more difficult as the Internet has grown dramatically and the search engines have become much more sophisticated in their assessment of site and their determination of just which sites ought to be given high.

Search engine optimization is a complicated business nowadays and entire books have been written on this subject. One thing, however, which virtually all of the experts agree on is the importance of slowly and steadily building links to your site and one of the best ways to do this is by writing articles and then submitting these to a range of article directory sites. But, there is a right way and a wrong way to do this.

Your starting point is to write a series of articles on various topics related to the theme of your site, with every article being accompanied by a resource box which provides links back to your site. In this short article we are going to assume that you are familiar with article writing and are not going to look at this particular subject. In this article we are going to focus upon how to submit your articles to the article directory sites.

Opinions are mixed here and, as with anything else in the world of SEO, you would be well advised to try out various approaches and to carefully document both what you do and the results you get. Once you have gathered enough statistics you will find that it is a quite simple thing to see just what works and what does not work. An alternative is just to listen to what others are saying on the subject although the problem here is that there is a great deal of misinformation around either from people who have little if any real experience and are just trying to sell you something or from people who want to deliberately mislead you because they view you as their competition.

The first route is to submit your articles by hand. With literally hundreds of article directories at your disposal this is not a viable route, unless you limit yourself to submitting to only the main, well established and highly trafficked article directories. This is possible and indeed there are a lot of people who feel that this is the best route because they argue that the vast majority of article directories have little standing in the eyes of the search engines and so few visitors that they are not going to attract traffic to your articles and not do a great deal to get your articles picked up and distributed to other websites.

The second route is to submit your articles to a large number of article directories which means using a submission service or some form of article submission software.

There are a variety of submission services available, however, only a handful will provide you with a satisfactory service and leave you confident that your articles has been submitted to a specified list of directory sites within a reasonable period of time. The problem with these services is that you have to commit yourself to an ongoing monthly or annual payment and they are often extremely expensive.

TurningWhen it comes to article submission software, there are once again various choices available from the quite costly to the extremely reasonable. If this is a route which appeals to you then you need to check out various options and to look carefully at just what each product will and will not do. For instance, does the software semi-automate or fully automate the submission process How many article directories will the program submit to Are you able to add your own article directories to the submission process Are you provided with a submission log so that you can see at a glance how successful every article submission has been

One final consideration is whether you ought to submit the same article to the article directory sites, or ought to create a number of 'unique' articles from your base article so that every directory gets a different version of your article A lot of people will say that it does not matter and that the current debate over duplicate content is considerably overblown. Other people however will say that, although it might not seem to be important in the short term, in the longer term the search engines will discount many of your article links as they find that they are from identical articles. Once again the answer is to test for yourself and see just what results you get.

If you do decide that submitting unique articles is the right way to go then you should investigate the wide range of article rewriting software available. Again take the time to look at each program very carefully. Most software programs are extremely fast and easy to operate, but also create what are obviously 'machine' written articles. However, there are a few software programs which, despite the fact that they do require a little more work, produce some very good results. There are also some software programs which will not just produce unique articles but also output them for importing into various article submission programs.

Submitting articles does work in terms of building links for your site and will bring you free search engine traffic. You do however need to setup a submission process which fits in with your budget and work routine and that means testing the system until you achieve the results you want.


http://www.articleco.com/Article/Done-Right-And-Submitting-Articles-Will-Get-Your-Website-Onto-Page-One-Of-The-Search-Engine-Results/55585

What are the largest & most lucrative online multilingual markets aside from English?

With Google reporting that over 50% of their traffic comes from multilingual searches, it has become crucial to consider developing a multilingual online presence. However, the question remains the same: Which markets to target? Which ones are the most important in terms of users, etc.?

First of all, let's see which parts of the world feature the most users. Contrary to general belief, it is not North America! With close to 400 million users, Asia definitely takes the lead, followed by Europe with approximately 315 million users, in comparison to 232 million in North America (North America being defined as the U.S., Canada, and Mexico).

In my extensive experience with multilingual online applications, I have learned over the years to differentiate clearly the amount of users versus the market potentiality of a product or a service. For example, the Hispanic online market (between South and Central America, the U.S., the Caribbean and Spain) features slightly more users than the French-speaking market. But when it comes to buying power, countries like France, Belgium, Switzerland and Canada (Quebec) have so much more buying power than Peru, Bolivia or Chile!

More than just buying power, we need to look at the cultural ramifications involved in internet behaviors. In other terms, is a specific market used to ordering & transacting online? For instance, compared to its amount of users, France is extremely active online, while French-speaking countries in Africa are proportionally inactive. The same applies when comparing Spain and some South American countries. If you were to compare the online buying habits between 100,000 users in Spain and the same number of users throughout South America, you would notice that people out of Spain order products and services at least 5 times more than their South American peers.
In many cases, it is not a matter of buying power, but rather mail order habits based on the country's postal delivery system. In fact, in many countries where the postal system is unreliable (not to say flaky!), online users were not "groomed" with mail order habits prior to the internet. As a result, although such markets will look for products and services online, they certainly are not as mail order oriented as other countries featuring more efficient mailing systems.

Therefore, it is impossible to rely solely on the amount of users when considering establishing a multilingual presence online. Another good example to illustrate such fact would be China and Japan. China currently has almost 145 million users and it is one of the fastest growing markets on the internet. Japan, with 86 million users, has nearly reached its maximum potential with almost 70% of its population online. A very small proportion of online users in China own a credit card or even have the right to order what they want, while in Japan it is exactly the reverse.

Once again, no one should confuse the amount of users versus the buying power of a given market.

On the other hand, one needs to consider the worth of Third World markets/economically disadvantaged countries. For instance, countries like Bangladesh, Mozambique, Somalia, etc., might not seem very attractive at first. However, in Third World markets, those online are affluent and wealthy. In those countries, there is no middle class. Basically, you are either dirt poor or filthy rich! Online users in those countries belong to the the second category. Many online gambling portals and entertainment websites of all kinds have found high spenders in economically-disadvantaged-markets. In fact, wealthy individuals in Rwanda or Chad do not have many entertainment outlets in their homeland! Furthermore, most everything is lacking within their country infrastructure: clothing, electronics, etc. Online applications have therefore become a form of "entertainment salvation" for the wealthy minorities of third world markets.

Online multilingual markets are complex, and instead of looking at languages/countries just by their buying power or number of users, one should evaluate what they have to offer and define the marketability of their products and services accordingly.
Are you looking for end users to buy your products? Then look at the buying power of the targeted markets along with the reliability of their postal and transportation services. Are you a manufacturer looking to find more distributors/to increase your exports? Then chances are that the world is your oyster.

I advise you to perform a meticulous evaluation of your market potential when developing a presence on multilingual search engines. So many factors need to be taken into consideration...Do not look at Japanese, French or Spanish just as country specific, but rather online language market shares! Just as an example, aside from all countries where Spanish is spoken, one of the most active Hispanic online markets is in the U.S.!


http://www.articleco.com/Article/What-are-the-largest---most-lucrative-online-multilingual-markets-aside-from-English-/56796