Friday, September 21, 2007

6 SEO Tips to Conserve Time and Balance Your Judgement

If you are performing SEO on Web sites these days, you're likely aware that within the search engine marketing industry,
there are new challenges all the time. While many of us tend to gain a good comfort level with our SEO skills, there are others that are challenged by the frequent changes in the industry. Change does not have to be a bad thing, but if you are just starting out as a search engine marketer, you'll need learn the best ways to conserve your time.

For some people, the quest is to understand the constantly changing algorithms which can feel like an impossibility. And then for others, the quest is more about trying to learn some quick little "tricks" that will magically "fool" or "out-wit" the search engines. (very outdated thinking.) And then there is a group that always wants to believe there is some new hot software tools that will do the whole job for them. So where exactly is the balance and what is the wisest approach for long term success for your Web site or your client's Web sites?

Here is a short list of my thoughts in brief:

1. Stop spending time analyzing something that's designed to continually change.

There is little value in focusing all of your attention on trying to analyze something that is designed for the purpose of constant, continual and nearly perpetual change. Time is precious and there are far wiser (and more profitable) things to be doing than "chasing algorithms." I know that some people will just not understand this, because it is only natural for some people to want to analyze things as analytical thinkers. But the point is that this approach can become all-consuming and litterally eat up chunks of your time which could be spent in far more valuable ways.

2. No need for "tricks" or "short cuts" ever.

There is no value is searching for "tricks" or "short cuts" or "cheats" to try and fool the search engines. (The people who are selling you on these ideas do not make their money in the SEO industry.) They make their money using powerful psychologically crafted sales letters that appeal to very basic instincts in human nature - usually with emphasis on the attributes of "human laziness." Although as human beings, we ALL would love to do something the easiest way, realize that even with the smartest of strategies (in any industry,) is going to require some work. Don't waste your time going on a hunt for some little trick or two that avoids delivering any genuine value. Ultimately, the best approach is to grow your understanding and grow your skill set.

3. There is no software that can match your human skills for doing the job completely.

Think of software more as having a working tool (and there are some excellent tools to know about for sure.)
But realize that the single most important key to understanding SEO in ways that will quickly profit your business, is to focus on skill-building by reason of practice. It's important to gain your SEO skills first, before fiddling with tools. Tools are nice, but there is no tool that can match the human brain for creating and implementing a brilliant and profitable high traffic, high conversion strategy.

4. Learn to focus on making the most of your precious time element - Focus on content for the visitor.

One of the single most important aspects to managing your time well, is to stay focused on creating high value, original content that is useful and engaging to your visitors. With a little bit of the right kind of training, you can become a creator of high ranking, high conversion pages that actually meet your ideal buying audiences need.

What kind of content should your Web site contain?
At Search Engine Workshops you will learn to:

* Create content that serves your customer's needs FIRST and your own needs second.
* Create content that will meet your visitor's exact search query and satisfy it.
* Create content your visitor will be GLAD that they found - something of true merit.
* Create content that is based on real "behaviorally based research" rather than guessing at keywords.
* Create content that is truly relevant (and honestly deserves to be found at the top.)
* Create content that is written for your specific visitor so that it flows smoothly and reads well to them.

* Create content that is original and you can feel proud to have created.
* Create content that has a solid, well written "call to action."
* Create content that is based on what a "search engine understands" through artificial intelligence (AI.)

5. Yes there are smarter ways to work. Here's how to stop repeating mistakes and accelerate your skill level fast.

One of the smartest ways to learn SEO skills for whatever purpose, is to have a mentor or someone who will give you personal guidance and instruction. Preferably you'll want to study under someone who is well experienced and up to date. The key to the quickest learning curve is to find yourself a personal mentor. Nothing beats working in a hands-on study with direct instruction from someone who has had years of success doing the job successfully. If you cannot find a personal mentor, but would like the next best thing, consider coming to a workshop class where you can get private SEO instruction for 5-Days in a small group Workshop - which is then followed by a 6-Month Mentoring Program.

Other options you can consider:

* Consider taking an Instructor led, online SEO study course where you will build your skills from the comfort of home but turn in your lesson assignments to a live Instructor, who will review your work and offer you feedback and answer any of your questions along the way.

* Another option might be to take an SEO home self-study course to get started and you can just work along at your own speed.

6. Finally, never stop growing and advancing your SEO skills.

Once you gain your SEO comfort level, you'll have a wonderful new confidence knowing for a fact that you can do the job. But then remember not to just stay in that "comfort zone" too long, but learn to keep on challenging yourself. Never stop growing and advancing your skills. Challenge yourself and apply your fresh thinking to test all of your ideas.

You are on an SEO journey now, where new challenges are the norm. In an industry where things are constantly changing. But you'll come to find that "change" itself, no longer scares you. Change now becomes something that can actually work for your benefit in the long term and as long as you stay up to date the best is yet to come. Watch and see. Do you need a little help to stay up to date?

http://www.searchengineworkshops.com/articles/conserve-seo-time.html

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Finding a Search Engine Optimization Company

When it comes to business some people like to get their hands dirty and iron out every little detail of every little deal and transaction. Others like to handle the parts of the business that they know and are comfortable with, leaving the bits and pieces they are unsure about to people who know what they are doing.

Before you start looking for a search engine optimization company sit down and consider your situation. What goals do you have for your website? What are your priorities? How much can you afford to spend, remember that you pay for quality, the lowest price isn't always the best deal.

When it is time to submit your web-based business to a search engine their are search engine optimization companies who, for a fee, will be happy to optimize the websites for the business owners who do not feel comfortable doing it themselves.

Search engine optimization is the art and science of making a website attractive to search engines. If you don't know where to find a reputable search engine optimization company try looking in search engine optimization forums, references or articles on reputable websites, ask friends for recommendations, ask other webmasters if they used anyone to optimize their sites and if they did ask which company they used and if the experience was pleasant.

The first thing you have to watch out for when you're selecting a company to handle your search engine optimization is scams. The first thing to do is avoid any search engine optimization companies that are listed in the black hat directory. Black hat search engine optimization is not really optimizing but really just spamdexing, most search engines penalize websites that are caught spamdexing. Also avoid any company who guarantees a ranking before they even look at your site. Make sure the company you are considering is actually going to do something besides add doorway pages and meta tags.

What is spamdexing?

Spamdexing is using methods that manipulate the relevancy or prominence of resources indexed by a search engine, usually in a manner that is inconsistent with the purpose of the indexing system. A lot of times spamdexing is done by stuffing a website full of keywords, web crawlers (the programs search engines use to rank websites) read the web sites they read lots of the same keyword and assume that the sight is content rich. Based on the web crawler's findings the website is given a high rank. Allot of the time the keywords are stuck at the bottom of the document where the internet user can't see them. Keyword stuffing is considered content spam.

The other common type of spamdexing is link spam. Link spam is spamdexing that takes advantage of link ranking algorithms causing search engines to give the guilty website a higher ranking. Link farms, hidden links, Sybil attack, wiki spam, spam blogs (also referred to as splogs), page hijacking, buying expired domains, and referrer log spamming are forms of link spam.

About the Author

Uncover The Brutally Effective SEO Software That "Average Joes and Janes" Are Using To - Quickly and Easily Blow Up Their Bank Accounts, Explode Their Traffic, and Triple Their Sales - With Little Or No Extra Work... Effective SEO Software.

How To Optimize Your Blog For The Search Engines

Now you have your blog set up and ready for a flood of visitors it's time to optimize your blog for the search engines.

You need to do this in two ways. On page optimization and off page optimization. Now the on page optimization is already done if you have posted key phrase specific content to your blogs and added the keyword to the title and description of your blog in the settings.

This leaves you with the off page optimization which is basically the incoming links to your blog. These need to be key phrase specific e.g.

You link should be like below Puppy training

As this is a link to your blog for the phrase you are trying to rank well for in the search engines.

Most people make the mistake of linking to their blogs like below.

http://puppytraining1.blogspot.com

Now this link could be on the exact same page as the key phrase specific one but it is of far less quality as it would be very little good to rank number 1 for your URL.

Now you know how to link to your blog you need to go and get hundreds of backlinks. This will be sure to get your blog ranked high.

Now for your sub blogs it will take less links but in large markets I have seen that it can take thousands of incoming links before ranking on the first page which is why the research phase is so important.

So how do you get hundreds or even thousands of links without using any black hat techniques or risky software.

There are a few white hat ways to get incoming links which are...

1 - Links on your other blogs

By following this system you will have already have links on your blogs to you main blog by posting articles with the keyword in the title field and blog url in the link field.

Now if you want to add links to other blogs you can either use this method or you can place anchor text code in the template code.

You can place this either in the side bar or at the bottom of the blog.

2 - Links from submitting articles

The best way to get outside links from hundreds of different websites is by submitting articles.

Now this can be done manually or semi automatically using software www.articleassistance.com

Using the software allows you to submit to over 150 directories in around an hour which is excellent considering it would take you at least 5 hours to do it manually. Once your article is in the directory people like yourself can place these articles on their blogs or websites for free so long as they keep the links to the author's site or blog.

This means that within a few weeks you can have hundreds of extra links coming into your blog from people who are displaying your content on there sites.

Now writing an article is really easy and it only has to be 350 to 400 words long.

You can simply research and read a couple of articles in around 30 minutes and re word that information into a unique article in another 30 minutes.

Remember to make sure the links in your author box are keyword specific using anchor text like when linking from blog to blog.

3 - Links from link exchanges

Another excellent way to get links from hundreds of on topic websites is by joining link exchange websites. The one I recommend and use is www.linkmetro.com

This has over 20,000 members wanting to exchange links and makes it really easy to exchange links.

You just find a site you want to link to. Place some code they give you on your blog and then that site is notified and asked to link back.

Link metro even has videos showing you step-by-step how to use their free service so even that a total newbie can do this with ease.

Now you have a blog which is optimized for the search engines and you are starting to get incoming links which in turn is moving you up the search engine rankings.

http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=615138

How I doubled my adsense earnings

When I joined the Adsense Program in 2004, I made $0.43 for the first month, $0,91 for the second month and so forth.

Only in September 2006 I joined the $100 group. To be more precise, my first payment was approximately $170. It was then that I realized the potential of Google Adsense. I mean, to wait almost two years to see an income with Google Adsense is a very long time. But it was well worth it. I read posts of other people complaining that they are not making with the Adsense Program, but their website is online for two or three weeks. Yep, the money-makers.

Well, after that first $170 I was really into it, if you know what I mean. I thought to myself, how can I increase my revenue with the Google Adsense Program even more? What is the secret of other people? So started my whole venture. And what did I found out? THE BIG CONTENT IS KING. So I decided that I am going to put more content on my web site. You know, at the time I did not realize that I can write articles myself.

To tell you the truth, at that time I did not know about SEO (did not even know what it meant). I hear that it means SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION. (Now does that not sound very technical? But lets leave SEO for yet another article, shall we?

Anyways, what I noticed was that I was getting more than the $170 each month. The $170 went up to $300, then $350 and so on. Now I average at around $25 a day! And let me tell you, it is not going to stop.

You can even exchange links with other sites to improve you pagerank and google adsense earnings. The more backlinks you have, the more visitors you will get, believe me.

You can send an email to other webmasters asking them to exchange links with your site. The best advise I can give you is to put a backlink to the other site first on your site, then mention in your email to the other webmaster what you did and give him/her the url to your link page. Most will do the same to you.

Something very important is to visit a web site and tell the webmaster what his/her site is about, what your site is about and how it will benefit both of you to exchange links.

One more thing. You are free to use this article on your website provided that it stays unaltered and the links in the resourcebox is live, search-engine friendly links.

DO NOT STEAL. IT IS NOT WORTH IT.

About the Author

Godfrey Philander is the webmaster of A FREE ONLINE LANGUAGE TRANSLATION SERVICE where all the articles can be autotranslated to 17 languages and mowspace.co.za a huge Article Directory.
Submitted by: Super Article Submitter

Blog Optimization 101

Getting your blog out there and seen is the point, right? You want visitors to see your blog so that they can either click on the ads or click through and buy from your site, otherwise whats the point of the blog, right?

So how to get the blog out there. First is to make sure that blog directories and the blog search engines are picking it up. Also link or claim your blog at the social bookmarking sites. To give all fo this a jump start take a look at the following check up list. If your new to blogging and just setting up a blog these are good starting points. if your blog is not performing the ways it should be then the following tips are good for giving your blog a check up.

* It is extremely important that RSS auto-discovery tags be placed in the header of every page within a website that has feeds available. By doing so you will provide users and search engines alike with a simple method of being notified that you have RSS feed(s) and it will allow immediate subscription without fuss. In contrast simply having a RSS logo hyperlinked with a feed provides little or no benefit and does not provide auto-notification that a feed is available.

Furthermore it is recommended to create a unique auto-discovery tag for each available RSS feed and place them all in the header. If you think you have too many then I would recommend choosing the feeds that are most relevant to the page content.

* A WordPress plugin was noted called the "SEO Title Tag Plugin". This plugin really impressed me because it allows WordPress users to see and individually customize the title tags of every post within the associated blog; without a doubt a powerful capability since title tags play a significant role in rankings.

* If you use paid Press Release services to disseminate your latest company news then it also works to your advantage to create a separate blog specifically used for your press releases. In this regard you can use the associated RSS feed to get some free publicity by submitting it to blog directories and other blog-syndicating properties.

* If you are finding it difficult to get the word out about a particular piece of news then Greg Jarboe has a great idea for you: track down the key bloggers that appear to be driving the news in your industry and contact them with your story.

If your story interests even one of the bloggers and gets published then you could get a massive amount of publicity for zero dollars.

During the presentation of this concept Greg Jarboe utilized a powerful online tool called BuzzLogic to identify which people drove the latest news in key topics. Unfortunately BuzzLogic appears to be priced well out of the capabilities of many small businesses (at $12,000/yr minimum) so I will provide a very basic free alternative to determining the leaders of a particular topic.

Step 1) Search in your favorite search engine for the particular topic. Within the results separate the blogs from the other content. If you do not find at least 10 bloggers then try search again with different wording for the same topic.

Step 2) Look at each blog individually and look for indications of readership or popularity. For example perhaps one of the website has a Feedburner subscription counter with the blog's current readership OR take the URL of the blog and conduct a backlink check on Yahoo using "linkdomain:www. .com" (without the quotes) to see which blogs have the most inbound links. Sort these blogs according to their popularity.

Step 3) Find contact information on each site and then contact the writer(s) starting with the most trafficked blogs and pitch your news/idea/story.

Note: I am not saying the steps above have anywhere near the quality of results that a full-fledge program like BuzzLogic has but it is certainly a great place to start.

* Promote your latest blog posting by taking advantage of a popular blogger's vanity. Compliment them within your key article (somehow) using their full name and perhaps provide a link back to their website. Chances are that the blogger often keeps an eye on blog postings or sites that utilize their name. When they visit your posting there is a good chance they will read it.

General Blog and Feed Optimization Tips:

1. Providing full text feeds was noted regularly throughout the presentation as a far superior method for creating backlinks and getting found online.

2. Your blog feed should have 20 or more items never the minimum 10.

3. Provide a feed for every category your site/blog offers.

4. Ensure that you create keyword rich blog posts and ensure that your brand is well represented within the text.

5. Ensure the most important keyword/phrase is listed in the blog title.

Optimize Your Blog's Linking Structure For Best Results

1. Provide a listing of the top 10 posts within your site so the stories do not get buried in archives or category pages. If the articles are performing well it is just logical to keep them in plain view to get more mileage from them.

2. Use Tag Clouds and Tag Pages to increase the possible routes to your valuable past content.

3. If you are using WordPress as your blogging tool it is a great idea to install the "Sticky Posts" plugin which allows you to 'stick' an introduction or key post at the top of each category page.

About the Author

Nick Stamoulis and Brick Marketing provide companies with Internet Marketing Services . He writes daily in his blog the Search Engine Optimization Journal

Buy Keyword Elite - Do You Really Need Keyword Elite?

Keyword Elite is one of many keyword research tools available online for internet marketers but that is where the comparison ends. It is the most powerful keyword marketing tool that I have ever seen and does exactly what you need it to do to help you increase your sales online. When you buy Keyword Elite what you get is basically a keyword research tool that allows you to dig for adsense keywords or google adwords keywords if you are doing PPC.

Keyword Elite is a keyword management and research tool designed to level the field between the major websites and smaller niche sites on the Internet. I find that it is very useful for finding high traffic and low competition keywords,it is really five tools in one,it's like the Swiss Army knife of keyword tools. If you are looking for the answer to all your problems of finding and ranking for those golden, chosen, money making words, then look no further.

When you start using Keyword Elite you will quickly realise it is head and shoulders above Overture's Keyword Selector Tool, and even the venerable Wordtracker,which I personally have a full year's subscription to. This is a revolutionary program that has helped me make a lot of money from Google Adwords,it is not really a Magic Weapon, but almost by using this keyword tool even a novice webmaster has the chance of getting a Top 10 listing in Google Yahoo / MSN.

This is an advanced keyword research software tool that is going to revolutionize the pay per click and search engine optimization market place for ever. Keyword Elite is currently the only program available that is designed to give you the best keywords and keyphrases to make your pay per click search engine marketing a money making success.Even for the novice webmaster,it will supply the information and keywords you need to build targeted traffic to your site.

No doubt,Keyword Elite is a piece of excellent software that can be run on your desktop to help you carry out a more extensive keyword research,it is a time saver and many of it's features make it one of the best keyword research tools currently available. One of the commercial baits that make it very attractive is that it enables you to find Adsense high paying keywords.

One of the things that attracted me about Keyword Elite is the one-off cost, you do get what you pay for and if you rely on keywords for Adsense, Adwords or niche marketing or even for writing articles that get free search engine traffic then not having Keyword Elite is actually costing you money.

So if you are looking to increase your website search result rankings and bring more traffic to your website then Keyword Elite is software product that you need to have in your arsenal. In my opinion, Keyword Elite is one of the best keyword software programs to have.

If you intend to advertise your site using PPC advertising, as well as SEO, then Keyword Elite is truly an excellent software package because it enables you to spy on your competition and analyze the listings you will need to compete with.

Yes this is the ultimate keyword software, if you're serious, you need this tool and while no keyword research tool is perfect, Keyword Elite is as close as it gets. I have bought 3 other keyword tools and Keyword Elite is my favorite. In a nutshell, Keyword Elite is a powerful software that gives you the dominating cutting edge over your competition.

About the Author

Steve Vonner is a full time Internet Marketer specializing in Affiliate Marketing and PPC. For those looking to bring their PPc and marketing knowledge to the next level, Steve highly recommends Keyword Elite at http://www.bestbuyreviews1.com/keywordelite

Search Engine Optimization- The Significance

From a small local business in a town to a big industry playing on an international platform, marketing has been a prime tool for any company or business to succeed. People started with using tools like write-ups, references, pamphlets and much more to convey their means or advertise themselves among a group. But now is a time where everything happens just on the click of your finger. And in this time is required marketing at the speed of light, marketing with niche concepts that are applied even before a common man would think.

With the time we are moving from a physical world to a virtual world. Companies started building up their websites to have a presence in the virtual world. But likewise there are billions of websites. What would be your identity then? In this age of Internet and Technology, getting your business visible to your customer segment is more important and this is where the Search Engine Optimization comes into picture.

Building up a website is like making a saw and optimizing your website is like sharpening that saw to use. And it is quite logical that you cannot take optimum use of your saw without sharpening it.

Search Engines are a system through which one gets the information the later wants. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines through search results. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results, or the higher it "ranks", the more searchers will visit that site. In simple words, Search engine optimization (SEO) just means your site is as accessible as possible to the search engines to improve the chances that they will serve it up when your potential customers type in specific search terms (called keywords). The more easily search engines find your site, the higher up it appears on their results pages.

In this world, SEO is definitely a smart move for any business.

But getting your site ranked for your keywords, there are many aspects that play a key role: a proper site structure, clean coding and necessary keywords, to name a few. This requires the every page of your website to be optimized. Every page should have a proper title, genuine keywords and a perfect description that matches the page. These title, keywords and description have to be relevant for every individual page. Search engines "crawl" the Web looking for the keywords that their users enter, so putting those keywords throughout your site means your pages will be picked up during searches by the search engine. Hence you have to put your foot into your customer's shoe to understand what keywords your customer would use to search for a particular product or service. You have to learn your customers' mind and this will give you the best of Title and meta (Keywords and description) to optimize your website. Also, optimizing your content is equally important as that plays an important role. You may optimize your content with putting keywords in your content, giving the Heading tags to titles, giving bold effects wherever necessary, giving links (to phrases in the content) to internal pages wherever appropriate.

Also, other activities to rank up your website in search engines are submitting your website URL into more and more search engines, adding your website URL into online directories, building up links with other relevant business sites, submitting rich articles into article sites, submitting your blog pages into various blog sites, submitting Press Releases into various Press Release sites. This will both increase the traffic overall to your site and enhance your search engine rankings, since the search engines pick up on the number of times people link to and from your site and rank your website higher accordingly.

People try many techniques to boost up their website ranking in these search engines for the specific keywords. People make researches to add-on their skills to make this task easier, faster and more genuine.

There are companies that provide services for SEO to other companies. We at Semaphore Software (www.semaphore-software.com) have a dedicated team that researches on the SEO and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) activities and undertake projects to upgrade the website ranking for our clients from different businesses.

It has become very important to move ahead with the fast pace if you wish to survive your business in this global competition.

http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=617788