SEO News Blogs, SEO Links, Webmarketing News, SEO Articles, SEO Views, Online Marketing

Yahoo: We're Not Shutting Down Yet! (YHOO)

2008-06-30T02:36:00.000-07:00

Yahoo wants you to know that the company has not, in fact, curled into a fetal position. In particular, it wants you to know that contrary to our reports, it hasn't stopped hiring. Proof? A new ad campaign which leads surfers to a page offering 696 jobs.

Our tipsters tell us that Yahoo (YHOO) isn't likely to actually fill those positions right away -- the almost-total hiring freeze we've been talking about is supposed to be in place through mid-July -- but point taken: The company is not, in fact, shutting down.

In fact, some Yahoos tell us, life at Sunnyvale hasn't changed much for the rank-and-file in the last few weeks. But what about the flood of executives pouring off of campus? Surely that must change your workday, right? "If we didn't read the blogs, we wouldn't know anything unusual was going on," one dutiful engineer tells us.

And while we're playing contrarian for the moment, here's another perspective on the Yahoo mess -- Google execs aren't happy either, a Valley bigwig tells us.

So there you go, Yahoos: Things could be worse. Thus ends our pep talk for the morning.

How to Make Your Content ‘Submit Worthy’

2008-04-07T11:10:00.000-07:00

"Why won't anyone submit my content to Digg? My competitor is always on Reddit but my stuff gets ignored!" Sound familiar? Well here's how to put an end to your woes and ensure your content is submit worthy.

In order to be successful on social media news and bookmarking sites, you have to think like a typical power user. Start by understanding some fundamental truths about the users of these sites. For the most part they are busy. They skim. They want you (the publisher) to do a lot of the work for them. So here's how to cover all of your bases and K.I.S.S.

It all starts with a great title.
In the SEO world most people will tell you that your title is the most important on-page factor. Same thing is true for social media and bookmarketing sites. Your title can make or break your article. On a site like Reddit, there is no description option, so it's all about the title. Take a couple of extra minutes to put some thought into a creative title for your content. You'll be happy you did.

Subheadings are sexy.
You know what your content is about better than anyone. Why not provide a short summary right under your title? This way someone can use that as a description instead of just grabbing the first two sentences (that might be way out of context). Great examples of this can be seen on any story by the BBC.

Pictures are worth a thousand words.
Great imagery can go a long way. On a site like Digg it can mean the difference between success and failure. Digg allows you to have a thumbnail image for any news article that gets submitted. People's eyes are naturally drawn to images. So if users have the choice between a submission with a thumbnail and one without it - well....

Be sure to check this yourself on Digg though to make sure its image spider is finding the correct images. For good examples check out the Wall Street Journal, Divine Caroline, or ReadWriteWeb. Need help? Here's our creative process.

No one wants to flip through 15 pages.
Social media users are a fickle bunch. One thing that most will agree on is that they hate having to read your content spread out onto seven pages. Or check out your slideshow that is on 25 different ones. I know, I know. Each extra page view results in extra ad impressions. Social media users know this too. And they hate it. Would you rather 1,000 people viewing seven pages or 60,000 viewing two?

RSS. It's not just for blogs.
One of the biggest misconceptions I hear in regards to RSS is "My site isn't a blog so I can't have RSS." If you have new content and you want people to be able to find that content easily, put it out in RSS. Make sure people know that you have RSS. Is Time Magazine a blog? Here's a great overview to get you started.

Oh yeah, Pop culture references can also help. Like the one I used as inspiration for this post...

Google 'unfestive' towards paid links

2007-12-13T23:16:00.000-08:00

Christmas is the time of year when search engines such as Google alter the way in which they rank websites, reports the Guardian.

The newspaper claims that search engines change their algorithms in order to weed out the sites which are not organic results and are simply there to increase their search engine optimisation (SEO).

It claims that a drop in Google ranking can possibly have a "fatal" drop in trade as the first site to appear in search listings will attract around half of all clicks, whereas for a site which appears on page two, it can expect less than one per cent.

The newspaper reports James Keehan, SEO expert, as saying: "It's an odd grey area, because it is very happy to take advertising money off the sites that it says other people shouldn't be using to boost their search engine rankings."

A study by Enquiro Research found that search engine users were 220 per cent more likely to remember a brand which appeared highly on a search engine ranking compared to a side advert, reported in Brand Week.

Google finally pushes the PR Export!

2007-12-10T21:39:00.000-08:00

After so many months of speculations on Google PR updates and the doubts that Google will discontinue the PR export in order to fight link sales, today we’ve finally saw the change in the green bar on all websites. Thank you G.

Today’s Google PR Export or Update (its not actually update because Google updates it dynamically every day but only exports the results in few month or sometimes a bit more) was as always one really interesting event. The one of the things that we can quickly realize is that all web directories are will lower page rank than before, but unique content websites are with a bit low amount of links scored higher pagerank than others. This most probably means that the duplicate content algo is somehow modified to capture much more spam than ever before (which is something rather expected)

Also another really interesting and also expected outcome was that due to the progressive expanding of the web, all page rank values require more and more links to be achieved. Now for pr 3 you need more than 2.5k link popularity, pr 4 more than 5 to 20k links and pr 6 > 150k. Note that this is LINK POPULARITY not links only which is relatively the number of actual links since most search engines don’t show the real value.

I’ll update this post as soon as I get more info on the topic as see what my buddies are saying about it.

No truth to LinkedIn rumor

2007-12-10T21:25:00.000-08:00

Reuters is reporting that an anonymous source has squelched the rumor that Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. is holding takeover discussions with LinkedIn.

The rumor first surfaced two weeks ago when TechCrunch reported that Murdoch had taken a fancy to LinkedIn. It was fueled last week when VentureBeat weighed in, reporting that its "well-placed source" has confirmed that News Corp. is in "serious" talks to buy the social network geared to professionals.

Analysts say the deal would make a lot of sense, giving News Corp. the technology and service underpinnings to connect the business world readers of its Dow Jones publications. And Murdoch has been known to exploit fast-moving opportunities before they peak, such as his purchase of MySpace.

But the deal may not be necessary, as News Corp's Fox Interactive Media (FIM) internet division, which oversees MySpace, reportedly may already be moving to serve the business world.

FIM President Peter Levinsohn told Reuters last week that MySpace plans to let its users create different profiles to attract different contacts, such as personal friends, business contacts or family members

Source: www.imediaconnection.com

How to Select a SEO Company

2007-11-22T22:47:00.001-08:00

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is one of the most effective, economical and proven methods of web site promotion on the Internet. SEO is an ideal eMarketing Channel for promoting small to medium size businesses online. Almost all webmasters and eBusiness owners consider SEO as their prime tool for business promotion.

Unfortunately most of eBusiness owners possess very little SEO knowledge and that’s the main reason why they fail to select right SEO Company to optimize their web sites. They are either trapped by Black hat SEO companies who attract them by attractive slogans like “Guaranteed 1st position on Google” or “Guaranteed top ten rankings in Google and Yahoo”. These statements attract eBusiness owners and they outsource their SEO tasks to these companies. These SEO companies (not all) use black hat/ spam SEO techniques to generate results, get payment and run away, leaving web site owner with black listed web site on Google and other Search Engine as a result of using spam SEO techniques.

Another attraction for eBusiness owners is the SEO price; some SEO freelancers offer their services on an unbeatable price. These so called SEO experts know little about SEO and either fail to produce results or by mistake do something which is caught by search engines as spam and end up in getting web site banned or black listed by search engines.

I personally experienced this many times while quoting SEO price to eBusiness owners. I couldn’t get many projects due to price difference between my SEO quote and other SEO freelancers as my SEO price is based on result oriented SEO not just out of the box SEO package which normally includes certain number of optimized web pages and submissions etc.

I conducted a survey of SEO companies offering their SEO service through their web sites and marketing their SEO service on the Internet and able to categorize SEO companies as under:

1- Big and trusted SEO Companies: These SEO companies normally based in US or UK and offer their SEO service worldwide. They are most reliable SEO companies but hardly affordable by small to medium business owner and their SEO price is usually out of marketing budget of a small or medium size business. These SEO companies normally offer fixed SEO packages and customized SEO service/ package. They never use black hat or Spam SEO techniques. They usually have the capability and expertise to work on all type of web sites including static, dynamic, eCommerce etc.

2- Big SEO companies based in countries like India: These are experienced SEO companies and usually reliable. Normally these companies have their representatives in US and UK to coordinate their clients in these countries. They usually offer SEO service on affordable price due to their production offices in countries like India, Pakistan etc. The currency conversion factor is the key to their affordable price. These companies don’t use Black hat or Spam SEO techniques. They usually have the capability and expertise to work on all type of web sites including static, dynamic, eCommerce etc.

3- Small to Medium Size SEO companies: These types of SEO companies based in US or UK are also reliable but have limited capacity. They usually work on static web sites and can handle limited number of clients. They also avoid spam SEO techniques and affordable for small to medium size businesses.

4- SEO Free Lancers and Small to Medium SEO companies: There are many SEO freelancers available on the Net. They offer their SEO service using freelancers’ web sites like guru.com. Some of them are doing good work. Some small to medium size SEO companies based in India Pakistan, Philippines are reliable and know SEO well. They are not only affordable but can work on all types of web sites. You can trust them for your SEO projects. Some of them are new to SEO and are ready to get SEO job on any price. I would call them learners and will never recommend outsourcing you optimization task to them.

5- Black Hat SEO practitioners: These types of SEO companies charge you higher price by giving you guarantees. They usually show you results in a short span of time using Black Hat SEO techniques. Your web site is always at risk of getting banned by search engines.

Now it is important that being a business owner you must know the factors you should consider while selecting a SEO company for your web site optimization needs. You should consider following factors:

1- Your Industry

2- Size of your company/ business

3- Your marketing objectives

4- Your Marketing Budget

5- Type of your web site

If you run a static web site and your industry is not highly competitive industry like Engineering Industry, you can easily find a trusted SEO company on a reasonable price. Its better to hire an overseas SEO company for cost effective and result oriented SEO. You must ask for references before outsourcing. If you run a dynamic web site, specially eCommerce web site, and sell your products online, you need to find an expert and experienced SEO Company. All SEO companies don’t have expertise to perform SEO on dynamic web sites, specially eCommerce web sites developed using some shopping cart software like OSCommerce, ZenCart etc. If your web site is database driven web site with Content Management System (CMS) and other dynamic features, you still need an expert SEO company.

In order to judge competition, you can consider some of the keywords relevant to your business or web site contents and look for their competition on Google and their search counts. You can easily do that by visiting web sites offering free SEO tools.

Just type your keywords one by one and see the number of searches being made every day. You can also get keywords suggestion from this free tool. For competition, you can go directly to Google.com and typing the keyword in the search box. You can find the number of results for that particular keyword. This simple analysis will give you an idea about competition. If the number of results are over 1 million, and per day search count on Overture and Wordtracker is over 10, then it’s a medium keyword and you can get results rather easily with in 3-4 months. Although there are at least 10 more factors which are considered for keyword analysis.

After this simple analysis, you can decide what type of SEO Company you need. If your keywords have high search counts and high competition, you may require customized SEO package and out of the box SEO package will not work. If you have an online store, an eCommerce web site, you may require an experienced and expert SEO.

You may also get assistance in this regard. For free assessment of your web site and free SEO consultation, you may visit and send an online inquiry to SEOGuru4hire.com at:

Get Free SEO Advice

All genuine SEO inquiries are answered within 24 hrs.

You may also ask for Free SEO Quotation using the same Inquiry form.

The eMarketing Consultants is a trusted eMarketing Company offer SEO and other eMarketing Services to companies based in US and UK. For further information

Source: www.promotionworld.com

How to Select a SEO Company

2007-11-22T22:47:00.000-08:00

Source: www.promotionworld.com

What You Need About Page Optimization And SEO

2007-10-01T11:46:00.000-07:00

On page optimization refers to search engine optimization techniques used directly in the construction of web pages.

However, it is important to remember that on page optimization is about more than simply search engine optimization, it should be about optimizing the page for human readers.

When you do this, you generally make the search engines happy as well. It is important to provide visitors to your website with valuable content that makes them want to come back to your site again and again.

As well as ensuring your website is full of valuable content, it is important to pay attention to your use of keywords.

Avoid keyword stuffing as not only does it make your website look unintelligent and unprofessional, search engines have caught on and you will be penalized for over using keywords.

The ideal is to use keywords naturally and sparingly. You want to use the keywords often enough to attract search engine traffic but no more than that.

Although traditional SEO identifies a keyword density of 2-7% as being ideal for on page optimization, changes in Google's search engine operations indicate that a density of only 1-2% may be preferable (and easier to read).

Make a list of commonly used search terms that relate to your subject and subtopics and sprinkle them throughout your site. Google's latent semantic index (LSI) algorithm will also reward you for the use of similar phrases.

Keywords should not be limited to your page content. It is very important to include your keywords in your page titles. Search engines identify the content of your pages largely on the words used in your page titles.

Without the use of keywords in page titles, you will need to have a lot of external links pointed to that page to encourage website traffic.

When including keywords in your titles, place them as close to the beginning of the title as possible but be sure that it is readable. The page title is essential to on page optimization because it shows as the link in search engine results.

Each page of your website should have its own unique,relatively short page title which utilizes the main keywords for that page.

Remember that search engines only allow a certain number of characters to display in search results. Do not use your keywords more than two or three times in your title; for most keyword phrases, once should be enough.

When you read about "on page optimization" strategies, you will often come across the term "meta tags", however because the use of meta tags has been greatly abused by spam the major search engines don't give them much, if any, weight.

Most SEO professionals do not rely on the use of meta tags for on page optimization any more.

Nevertheless, if you choose to do so, only use the meta keyword and meta description tags and make sure that any word or phrase you list is actually included on your page, otherwise it may be interpreted as spam.

On page links to other relevant sites can also add to your search engine popularity. However, it is important that the links you provide are genuine and are directed to sites with related content that adds value to your visitors.

On page optimization is not difficult to implement and provided you offer your visitors high quality, relevant content, will greatly enhance your success with the search engines.

Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/

Blast Negative Publicity off

2007-09-27T01:32:00.000-07:00

Blast Negative Publicity off

Google & Yahoo With These Insider

Somewhere out in cyberspace an unknown or known associate, competitor or just plain slanderously natured individual has written a particularly damning or negative article/blog about yourself or your business and posted it on the internet.
So what happens next? The nature of the beast is that the major search engines will index and crawl all of the content on the internet regardless of whether it is good content, relevant or controversial. The next thing you know when Googling your name up comes the offending article or blog on the first page of search engine results.

Annoying is an 'understatement'. This type of negative publicity has the potential to damage your business reputation and your ability to attract new clients. The bigger problem is that unless the negative article or entry is removed from the site it is posted on it will remain index-able and searchable by the major search engines for as long as the content exists and this could equate to a number of years.

First up, don't panic there are a number of positive SEO remedies that you can employ to counteract the slanderous attempts of these individuals and their effect on the search engines. Unfortunately with the Internet there is limited recourse by a targeted individual or business to defend their reputation especially when articles are written by so called 'consumer advocates' or vigilantes doing the public a 'service' yet able to post anything on their websites regardless of the dire effects it may have on the targeted individual involved and their business.

SEO Remedies to tackle negative internet publicity...

Step 1 - If the article or blog is genuinely slanderous and has no truth or merit, then approach the website owner posting the entry and ask for it to be removed. Legal representation and legal advice may be necessary to protect your business. A well written letter from your lawyer or a threat of legal action may be enough impetus to persuade the website owner to remove the post. However, be aware that if unsuccessful, it may encourage the author of such articles to focus more attention on you so it may be more prudent to try steps 2 to 5 first.

Step 2 - Examine the keywords within the offending article to see what is being picked up by the search engines. This will normally be your name and/or business name. This is easy to find by clicking on the 'cached' entry next to the search engine listing. The keywords indexed by the search engine will be highlighted on the cached page and show you exactly what the search engine is indexing and crawling from the article or blog. These keywords (name or business name or both) will be the focus of your SEO Band-Aid treatment. To push the negative listing off the first page of results on Google and Yahoo you will need to create as many new listings as possible on the Internet to be picked up by the major search engines.

Step 3 - Start with 'free classified ad' listings and post your new ads under the category of business services. Include your name and business name in the body of the free classified ad plus a relevant keyword title specific to your industry or business service provision. Free classified ad listings will show up on search engine results within the first week of posting them on the internet. Complete as many free classified ads as possible and post them for the longest duration possible.

Step 4 - Write some free articles on your area of business or industry expertise remembering to include an eye catching title and your name and business name in the content of the article and author bio. Post these articles on your website and on free article submission sites; the more the better. Make sure you allow your free articles to be syndicated for content to other sites. This improves the opportunities for your article being listed on several internet sites which has a domino effect, boosting your search engine rankings and the positive listings picked up by the major search engines. If this still does not remedy the problem, then proceed to Step 5.

Step 5 - Create as many free directory listings on the internet as possible under your applicable service or product category. Use the same title and keyword text as your free classified ads remembering to mention your business name and name if possible. You can manually find free directories by performing searches on Google and Yahoo or alternatively use a directory submitting tool such as 'Submiteaze' which is reasonably priced.

The results from employing these SEO strategies may be instantaneous unless the offending article or post has been prevalent in the search engine listings for a number of years (2 or more). You can then expect the recovery process to take up to 6 months of concentrated SEO effort to bump this listing off the first page of results on Google and Yahoo.

If all else fails...

Employ Step 1 and, if that fails, then lets hope in the very near future that just like 'spam', slanderous material posted on the internet becomes a reportable offence to the major search engines, government bodies and consumer watch dogs. And, that the consequences for engaging in such underhanded practices results in a site being dropped from the search engines and classified as a 'bad neighborhood site', plus a monetary fine of such magnitude as to deter the practice. If a site can't be indexed or is banned by the search engines, then it effectively becomes 'voiceless' and the power to publicly affect an individual's livelihood or a business's profits, growth and sales is then vastly diminished. Noting, that a banned site would still have the opportunity to remove any offensive or slanderous material and then reapply to be indexed by the search engines.

It may be argued that the search engines are not responsible for this problem. Well as the most influential body on the internet with the most power to help, who else are we to turn to? The print and television media are unable to publicly slander an individual or business without facing retribution via legal action and a public outcry, so why should the Internet be free of the same accountability?

Source: Rank1 Website Marketing

SEO Company India hits the net: WEBSITE ZoOM

2007-09-11T05:07:00.000-07:00

Ahmedabad, India -- A majority of the Internet users browse through search engines to find their respective queries. In fact, the figure shows that almost 1 billion Internet users perform 13 billion searches per month using major search engines and directories. So for this an ethical SEO Company can boost your website ranking, using natural SEO concepts. By just having a website available on the internet is not so satisfactory; the company has to make the website reach out to the targeted people that it serves. And for that, it has to get good rankings in various search engines.

WEBSITE ZoOM is a dedicated SEO Company situated in the western part of India. We have become the first choice for ethical SEO services. We offer an all-inclusive suite of SEO services that includes – Keyword Research and Selection, Content Writing, Organic Search Engine Placement, Pay Per Click Management (PPC), Detailed SEO Reporting and Web Design. We are focused on Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Services, Search Engine Marketing, PPC Management and Affiliate Marketing for all sorts of web sites.WEBSITE ZoOM provides solution to promote your online products or services, etc and drive traffic. We are committed to stay equipped with the latest technological developments so that clients can have those benefits from us. We are using organic SEO tactics to optimize the website for major search engines. We have a dedicated team of SEO professionals.We have only one target – As a Search Engine Optimization/ Marketing Company to improve client’s web placement in major search engines and we do not have “shortcuts” in our dictionary. We go a mile extra, so that you can stay ahead in this online marketing world.Navigate through Websitezoom.com and its SEO Services for better initiative. And also feel free to circulate and share out this as you wish - if you can post it on your own site or email it to your friends, then please do. It’s real time to reproduce the word far and wide amongst the all community across the world.http://www.websitezoom.com/seo-services-india.htm

Internet Marketing SEO Consulting, Is It A Smart Investment for Your Website

2006-12-13T04:58:00.000-08:00

by Wayne Hagerty

The concept of using an expert SEO Consultant company to help rank your website in the major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN definitely has a slight intrigue.

Having a Internet Marketing SEO Consulting service taking care or even training your staff in proper site analysis, keyword research, link building, site optimization as well as putting together an ethical strategy indeed does have a price.

Is this investment into your website or online business worth it to you?

Why would need a SEO Consulting couldn’t you learn this process yourself?

You definitely could learn the process of Internet Marketing SEO. After studying how the process works, implementing the techniques learned, understanding what strategy works best for your industry, testing, and understanding and correcting mistakes made along the way.

Staying on top of the frequent changes in the search industry and realizing that what worked today may not work tomorrow.

How would you like to avoid time consuming and even costly mistakes that slow down your online business growth?

What if you could have the Internet Marketing SEO sides of things taken care of why you concentrate and focus your time on what aspects you know best about your business?

SEO Specialist have already made the mistakes and have the know how to correct errors. They tend to understand Internet Marketing changes and how to counter them. SEO experts also have the experience in putting together as well as implementing what will work right the first time.

SEO Consulting is a type of service that tends to continue to pay for itself long after the techniques, tools, promotion, and overall search engine marketing has been put into place.

The possibility of your website receiving the benefits years after the initial investment is what makes SEO consulting a business decison that prove to be a smart one.

There are things to consider when looking for an SEO Consultant like whether there website ranks for industry terms themselves and whether or not they are employing ethical practices. Spaming may get your site banned so be sure to ask questions before you decide after all this is an investment into your business so you want to be sure that it will benefit you not damage you.

There are low cost SEO Consulting service options you may want to consider like looking for an up and comer into the Search Engine Marketing industry. These young hungry professionals are looking to make a name for themselves and may cost more than half the price of a veteran. Although there are disadvantages when choosing a new comer like experience but there talents should not be overlooked.

You invest in your business every day from your time to the decisions you make to promote your business like platforms such as: Newspapers, Television, Magazines, Radio yet some of the biggest returns on your investment may be still waiting for you on the Internet and in Search Engines.

SEO Book’s New SEM Glossary

2006-10-28T23:14:00.000-07:00

Steven Bradley

Expert Author

Published: 2006-10-26

In case you missed it Aaron Wall added a rather comprehensive search engine marketing glossary to his SEO Book site.

I'd be lying if I told you I read through the whole glossary, but from what I have read it looks to be very useful, particularly to anyone new to search engine optimization and marketing. It's not the kind of thing you'll read in one sitting, though. Aaron was also nice enough to release his glossary under the creative commons license.

You'll find definitions from 200 to Zeal and many more in between. Aaron's even been kind enough to link to more than a dozen other glossaries and dictionaries in case there's something missing here or you're looking for another point of view.

You'll find entries for things you might not have considered in terms of search marketing, though they will often be defined from the perspective of a practicing SEO. Entires such as:

Thesaurus

Synonym directory search engines use to help increase return relevancy.

Thesaurus tools can also be used as a keyword research tool to help search marketers find related keywords to target.

And of course there will be many more entries defining a specific search marketing term like:

Proximity

A measure of how close words are to one another.

A page which has words near one another may be deemed to be more likely to satisfy a search query containing both terms. If keyword phrases are repeated an excessive number of times, and the proximity is close on all the occurrences of both words it may also be a sign of unnatural (and thus potentially low quality) content.

I hope everyone will take a look since there's a lot of information to be learned here as well as a glimpse into how one of the top SEOs thinks and defines many common and not so common search terms. I'll certainly be reading through the search engine marketing glossary more in depth. Probably in chunks as it really is quite a lot of information to try to digest all at once. I'd encourage anyone to take a look and for those new to SEO you can probably learn more from this one very long page than you will in scouring the web for the next couple of months.

Cattledriver.com Gets Personal With Personal SEO

2006-08-24T03:39:00.000-07:00

Cattledriver.com Gets Personal With Personal SEO

SME's find budget relief with low competitive pricing strategies.

For Immediate Release

FT LAUDERDALE, Fla./EWORLDWIRE/Aug. 23, 2006 --- As search engine optimization (SEO) consumes more of a marketing professional's day, the functions it encompasses reach far beyond those of traditional firms that charge upwards of thousands of dollars monthly for services. Top-rated company Cattledriver.com has once again moved ahead of the trend with its new SEO Program - Personal SEO.

"Every company has unique SEO needs. The personalized professional solution offered by Cattledriver offers a better ROI on SEO," said Charlie Artner, managing director. "At our price point of $300 a month, we blow away any semblance of competition."

As SEO grows to incorporate press releases, PPC management, building link partners and Web analytics, Cattledriver covers every spectrum of SEO and let customers design their own programs so they get what they pay for.

Through Cattledriver's Personal SEO program, customers can choose from search engine optimization, paid inclusion feeds, pay per click management, web site interface design,
press releases, link popularity and any other customized
SEO needs.

Cattledriver LLC is a leading provider in performance-based
Web marketing. Since 2000 Cattledriver has created
diverse Web software for Internet vendors to maximize
their Internet stores.

HTML: http://newsroom.eworldwire.com/releases/15342
PDF: http://newsroom.eworldwire.com/pdf/15342.pdf
ONLINE NEWSROOM: http://newsroom.eworldwire.com/305633.htm
NEWSROOM RSS FEED: http://newsroom.eworldwire.com/xml/newsrooms/305633.xml
LOGO: http://newsroom.eworldwire.com/305633.htm

CONTACT:
Charlie Artner
Cattledriver LLC
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33306
PHONE. 800-408-3413
EMAIL: cdriver@cattledriver.com
http://www.cattledriver.com

SOURCE: Cattledriver, LLC

No SEO Without SEM, And Vice Versa

2006-08-03T11:26:00.000-07:00

Today’s MediaPost (reg. req’d) reports on new data from SEM firm 360i, which essentially points out the complex conversion path and symbiotic relationship between paid and unpaid links. This study is a complement to one released in May by the firm that showed the value of branded and generic ads in the purchase cycle.

Both studies show that there are lots of clicks and consumers use branded and non-branded terms, organic and paid links in their process. The “meta-communication” of the research is that marketers must be present at every stage of the buying cycle reflected in search user behavior and must employ a range of strategies to gain consumer awareness and reinforce it.

Another point that both studies make is that marketers give too much credit to the “last click.” I agree. Marketers need to see the entire path online through the “purchase cycle” - really a version of Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride - in order to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of their online campaigns.

Dave Williams, co-founder of 360i, will be among a panel of other illustrious search marketers that I’m moderating at Search Engine Strategies next week. Here’s the line up:

SEO/SEM Journal: Simmons Announces Creation of New Online Research Services Group

2006-06-26T04:09:00.000-07:00

Simmons Online Links Custom Online Research with its National Consumer Study

"Simmons Online will leverage Simmons patented behavioral integration technology and other Experian data assets and tools to combine the speed and agility of online data collection with Simmons high standards and scientific approach to market research," the company says.

"Focusing on its core offerings, Simmons Online will link custom online research with its National Consumer Study (NCS) allowing clients to access proprietary data along with more than 50,000 additional data variables within the NCS. Additionally, Simmons Online is producing a series of syndicated extensions to the NCS with an automotive product introduction this August. Moving forward, linkages to Simmons Hispanic, Youth and Local Market products will be available," the company added.

“Simmons Online initiates a new era for “need-it-yesterday” quality research within Simmons” said Chris Wilson, president and COO of Simmons Research. “Simmons’ experience at conducting high quality tracking panels and custom research is now joined with state-of-the-art online study capabilities that extend our evolution from more then 56 years of research innovation.”

Simmons Online accesses Experian’s pool of over 24 million permission-based on-line responders to create highly targeted online samples with high yields. “With over 4,000 fields of respondent provided information coupled with propensities against Simmons’ 50,000 plus variables, Simmons Online offers online researchers the most intriguing targeting options available in online research,” continued Wilson. “Offering complex sample designs, statistically representative data and “projection models” and the ability to instantly screen panel respondents via Experian’s real time verification system, Simmons Online is setting the standard for high quality online research.”

What's the Difference Between Websites and Weblogs

2006-06-13T11:17:00.000-07:00

More and more, people don't have traditional websites: static things where pages can be added, updated or taken away. Instead, they write new material for their website when they feel like it, and then put it up on one page, with the most recent writing first. These people are running weblogs.

How Did Weblogs Start?

Many people say that there have been weblogs (or blogs, as they're sometimes called) for as long as there has been a web. Back when there were only a few thousand websites, the 'What's New' page that announced each new one (yes, there really was such a thing!) worked in just the same way as blogs do today.

Early weblogs included Scripting News, Robot Wisdom and Camworld, which all started in 1997. To begin with, blogs mostly consisted of often-updated lists of useful and amusing links to other websites, but it gradually became clear that the format was just as good for distributing longer articles. Blog software started to be developed, and their popularity quickly exploded. By 1999, everyone was talking about blogs.

Why are Blogs So Popular?

In recent years, the blog format has very much taken over from the 'personal home page'. People seem to find it much easier to just put a kind of public diary online, instead of putting up a little biography of themselves and a collection of articles. It's more personal, more fun, and more interactive day-to-day.

Businesses have started to open blogs too – in many ways, they're like a replacement for newsletters. A regularly-updated blog gives customers a great sense of what a business is like, while giving the business a great way to keep communicating with its customers and being useful to them, even when they're not buying anything right this minute.

In my opinion, the biggest reason for blogs' popularity is that they make publishing to the web very easy. You don't really have to know anything about what's happening behind the scenes: blogs finally make publishing your thoughts for everyone to see as easy as posting to a forum or sending an email. In a way, blogs fulfil the original promise of the web.

Weblog Software.

Today, there's a lot of blog software out there – if you want a blog, you're spoiled for choice. What you get will depend on how comfortable you are with technical stuff, and whether you want it to be part of your main website or not.

Movable Type. This is software that you install on your web server. You simply log in and type your post, and it creates your pages for you. Movable Type can be a little complex to set up, but you can use a version called Typepad that is hosted by its creators instead of using your server.

Blogger. You don't install Blogger on your server – instead, you give it your FTP password and let it upload files to your web server for you. If you don't have any hosting, you can also host blogs for free at Blogger's Blogspot. Blogger is owned by Google.

WordPress. WordPress is a free alternative to blogging software. It works in basically the same way as Movable Type, but without the restrictive licensing and with nicer-looking default templates. Many people have switched to WordPress out of frustration with Movable Type and not looked back. You have to host it on your own server, but it's very simple to set up – don't be scared!

LiveJournal. LiveJournal is a completely online service, meaning that it has nothing to do with your website, except that you can link to your LiveJournal if you want. LiveJournal is more social than most blogging, allowing you to join communities relating to your interest.

There are plenty of other online services, but they're all pretty much the same: MSN Spaces, AOL Journals, and so on. You're unlikely to get taken very seriously if you have a blog at any of these places, although it'd be easy. In the end, it's all about power versus convenience: the more work you put in to get your blog working, the more likely that it's going to be what you really wanted it to be. If you're creating a website anyway, you'd be silly not to put a blog on it.

E-Commerce Explained

2006-06-01T21:32:00.000-07:00

By: Ken Charnly

E-Commerce is way of doing business transactions electronically. The first wave of doing business was exchange of information. The word electronically here in this context means that in E-Commerce business transactions gets completed via electronic medium. This electronic medium mostly uses computers on Internet. The transaction may also be done through mobile that is mobile then it is mobile commerce. Mobile commerce is a subset of E-Commerce.

Several simple example of E-Commerce includes:
An individual purchases a book on Internet
An individual withdraws funds from ATM
A retailer orders merchandise using an EDI network or suppliers extranet
An individual or business calls a toll free number and orders the requirements using the seller’s interactive telephone system.
A manager orders office supplies for his office using Internet on a commercial website to seller.
An employee reserves a ticket for airline or railways or if he reserves a room in a hotel using the Internet by surfing the related website using a few clicks of mouse.

Complex example may include:
A student visits the website of a bookstore on Internet and makes inquiries about the availability of an out of stock book. The bookstore employee downloads the digital copy of book and prints it along with cover. Until and unless agreement to purchase on this computer mediated network does not occur there is no E-Commerce transaction.

Factors which mainly affect E-Commerce transactions are:
Capital Availability: There should be sufficient source of capital available with Internet based companies so that the can handle their business transactions in a comfortable manner without doing any delay for payments.

Technology: The technology being used by the Internet based companies affects the business. Companies doing E-Commerce transactions should armed themselves with latest and largely acceptable technologies because outdated technologies can bring unpredictable, disastrous and hazardous results and can ruin their businesses. Example:
If a person is doing electronic transactions but the antivirus that he is using is of older version which is neither able to detect nor stop the entry of newest viruses. Now as a result of which it is possible that some virus may creep into local file system of operating system without user knowledge and permission and will look for important account information like username of soma accounts and password etc and then can pass this vital information to the virus creator. This will enable these virus creators to enter into users account without his knowledge and permission and commit thefts like cases. So it is advised to every user involved in electronic transaction to use the latest released versions of antivirus and antivirus should be a reputed one in market like Norton and PC Cillin etc.

Language: Many E-Commerce innovations originate in US and thus language mostly used is English. So people who are not very fluent in English and do not possess good communication skills will not be able to complete E-Commerce transactions comfortably.
Attitude: To facilitate E-Commerce requires possessing of an attitude that is open to change, innovation etc. People should be able to accept E-Commerce transactions over manual handling of transactions.

Building eCommerce Store With Outsourcing Companies

2006-05-26T10:17:00.000-07:00

Each year, more and more people are taking plunge into online purchasing. And more and more businesses are going online also. Why is this so?

Let’s take first the buyers’ perspective. Purchasing through the internet gives buyers the opportunity to buy alternative products, reduced time in sorting out products, and less time in resolving invoice and order discrepancies. Above all, they don’t have to go out of where they are. They just have to wait for their purchased products right at their doorsteps.

For the companies, think about these benefits. Companies who engage in eCommerce have the ability to expand its geographical reach, it can acquire customers from other countries. Being in eCommerce increases visibility for the company also. What more? Your store never closes! Even at 2:00 am, buyers can still go to your site.

One goal of a business organization is to maximize profit at the least cost. Being into eCommerce helps reduce labor costs as this reduces time and number of personnel required for the business to continue its operations, and expenses such as documentation, overtime, mail preparation, among others. Moreover, having an online store helps reduce delivery time resulting to more customer satisfaction.

Now, unless one of you in your company knows how to do this, who will you hire to build an eCommerce store for your company? Going back to the topic of being cost-effective, leasing a webmaster from an outsourcing company would be the most likely alternative for the company.

Hiring a webmaster agent from a staff leasing company gives the company who wants to go online several advantages. The biggest benefit the company could get would be having educated staff to work for it at the least price the company could spend. Most webmaster staffing companies put up their offices in countries with low living costs to be able to reduce also their expenses, thereby, charging low service fees to those who want to get their services. Companies who want to put up an online shop could also have access to the best webmasters as staff leasing companies try to get only the best from the pool of applicants vying for the job.

One more thing. It would also be for your company’s gain if you get a webmaster agent who gets to work for you full time. This way, all his efforts will be for your company’s good. Outsourcing companies like Agents of Value can pull these things off for you. Let us help you build your eCommerce store!

Article Source: http://www.articles-galore.com

All Backlinks Are Not Created Equal

2006-05-10T10:17:00.000-07:00

By: Anthony Kristovich III

Ok, we all know backlinks are a huge part of determining your site worth to most search engines. Each backlink to your site is a vote for it. Backlinks are the building blocks of SEO itself. We'll look into what should be on your mind as you are acquiring backlinks.

The first intuition is to see how many you can get. That's just one piece of the whole backlink pie. Search engines like Googlehave been around time and have a lot of brilliant minds working for them. A higher quality backlink is worth more towards higher search engine rankings.

Some things to consider about backlinks:
1. Age affects all backlinks. Google specifically weighs a backlink more with age. Backlinks gain in weight over time until after around 6 months they reach their full weight. Basically, it means that the effort you do building backlinks will be worth more and more.

2. Anchor text is hugely important. The words on the backlink itself from the other site also play into it appears the other site views your site. When the keywords you are optimizing for are used, the link gains a much higher quality. The thing to watch out for here is that the text is varying. Google picks up on when all of you backlinks have the same exact text.

3. Getting backlinks from sites with the same theme as yours will benefit you much more than non-relevant sites. This makes sense since a link to your health food site from a car site about old Mustangs isn't going to do much for a visitor, so it won't for Google either.

4. The better the reputation or Page Rank of a site that links to you, the higher quality it is. Fairly obvious. If CNN or Slashdot linked to you, that one backlink would likely outweigh all your other backlinks together.

5. The physical location of a backlink on the page can also be a noteable factor for search engines. Google in particular lends more weight to links the higher towards the top of the page. If there is surrounding content the links appear more natural so they are valued higher.

Reciprocal links are always the hot topic when talking SEO. The truth is, reciprocal linksare still alive and going well. Reciprocal links between websites with similar themes is natural and expected. Though I have read many many times of claims that reciprocal linking is dead, rest assured that quality reciprocal links are not going away anytime soon. Google for instance has its sights set on backlinks that were bought, and from link farms where 5 minutes after paying some money you have thousands of sites pointing to yours.

While there are many other factors such as the age of your websiteand how much content is on your website, those will be left to another article.

Backlinks are indeed the cornerstone of getting a websiteestablished on the Internet. Without enough backlinks visitors won't know your site exists, and search engines will put little weight to your website resulting in a further loss of potential traffic, which could make or break your site. The key is to go out knowing what backlinks you want and spend enough time to make your site known. Properly setup, your backlinks will keep your site popular with visitors for a long time to come.

Using Mini Web Sites For Promotions And Profits

2006-05-06T22:47:00.000-07:00

By: Edward Rizzo

If you are looking to earn money working from home, Mini Web Sites are a great way to run your own business. Usually these are simple one or two page sites that are designed for selling a single product. They are a great way to offer a limited time offer and a great way to promote an affiliate program.

A mini site is basically a sales letter that is designed to
convert viewers into buyers, it is not there to provide detailed information about the product. This type of site can attract more viewers, which means more sales and more money for you. The time it takes to set up a mini website is very short. I have created 4 mini websites in one day

You could set up a few at a time with a couple different products. Make it a limited time offer, add a nice complimentary bonus and do a couple of little ads and a mailing to your list. Or, you can use it as a ‘Squeeze Page”. A squeeze page is nothing more than a simple website that has some very useful information directly related to the affiliate program you are promoting.

Use the page as a teaser. Put some very good, very useful information on your ‘squeeze page‘. This will get your readers and potential customers interested. Next, make sure you have a sign up box on the page. A place for your visitor to put there name and email address. They now become your lead. Now, have a report ready relating to the information on your site that you can send your new ‘leads’.

In this report point out all the benefits and features of your product that your promoting. Make sure you have the link to your affiliate program in that report. Try to have the link in there at least twice without making too obvious. Whatever you do, don’t make your report a pushy sales page. This will only scare your potential customer away.

Use these steps to create your mini websites.

- Find a profitable niche.
- Determine the best product to sell for that niche.
- Write a well crafted ad.
- Design a landing page or Squeeze Page

Make sure you do not include banners or other
advertising, these might distract the attention of your visitors, your only focus should be on selling your product.

Design a Mini Web Site
Each site should sell only one product and be optimized for just that product. Select keywords based on your product, that are popular enough to attract the amount of traffic you will need to make your site profitable, and always use your keywords in the title, heading tags, and graphic alt tags. Create an easy to use order form, one that is fast to fill out, you do not want to lose customers because it takes too much time or is too much trouble
to purchase your product.
.
Whatever you sell, start by quickly describing that particular product and keep your focus tight on that product. Try to pre sell your product by including several endorsements from people who are happy about using your product. After the endorsements, include several free bonuses to get your visitors even more excited about buying. Be careful not to have your bonuses over shadow your original product. Bonuses should also compliment your product as mentioned above.

To host your site look for a reliable hosting service, one that has a good track record for minimal down time. Use a host that allows multiple or unlimited sub domains.

Your mini website could actually be a sub domain of your main site. This will save you a good chunk of money in hosting fees. Select a domain name that includes your keywords this will also help your search engine rankings and get you more traffic.

Some benefits of Mini Sites are:
- Easier to optimize for search engine rankings.
- Inbound links to your sites will lead to a higher Google Page Rank.
- You can be an expert at whatever you sell or whatever service you offer.
- Higher traffic generated than regular web sites.

Mini sites are the easiest way to make some quick money because they do not require a large setup cost, and they are easy to design. All you need is a great idea and you are ready to make some money. There are also many software products that can churn out these mini websites very quickly and you don’t have to know html code to build them.

Online Marketing Success Secrets : Online Marketing

2006-05-06T22:44:00.000-07:00

By: jim mack

What if I could show you How To create wealth on-line in the next 24 hours?

Would you be interested?

Of course you would! After all, we'll all aspiring to that end result. However, the point of this article isto show you the advertising power of the word *HOW*.
The first question that you were presented with in this article demonstrates the power of the word *How*. Let's take look another again.

Just think about it for a moment. As on-line marketers we are all searching for answers to our on-line problems/questions. We're all seeking the *How To* to get the solutions to our specific situation.

The words “How To create” taken from that sentence are really what kept you reading. You just can't resist the combination of *How To*. It creates an irresistible trigger in your subconscious mind that you just can't resist.

Here's a little test that you can try out on your spouse. Walk right up to him/her and say "Let me show you *How To* do this.” I'll bet you will get a reaction. Watch out though. It might not be the reaction that you were looking for!

Now here's the *Real Magic*. The word *How* becomes a real trigger when use in combination with other trigger words. The most powerful word in advertising of any kind is the word *you*. Here's the killer combination ("How You"). Man, that's powerful!

I was reading though a business opportunity magazine recently when I came across a full-page ad that caught my eye. Here are the *How* word combinations that were included in this one ad.

"Multi-Millionaire's 7-Step 'How-To' Success System"
"How To Make and Keep $1,000,000!"
"How You can use this proven..."
"How to use the awesome potential..."
"How You can take advantage....."
"How To turn product users......"
"Discover How You can use this...."

I'd bet he received a ton of responses from that ad alone. Power marketing requires powerful words and word combinations to be effective. Why not include these two trigger words in your web page headers, classified ads and headlines?

It's no great secret that you only have a few precious seconds to capture someone's attention with your written ad headlines, web page content or classified ads. As your prospects scan though your materials you must include trigger words or phrases that *catch* their attention. Once the *catch* is accomplished you
are then given an opportunity to drive home your message.

Using the *How You* word combination is perfect *bait* for creating that trigger that you need to hook them and "pull them in". It's personal (You) and also captivating (How). Use *How You* as a building block for creating all of your advertising materials. It's powerful and it works!

They just might increase your on-line profits though the roof!

BTW:

The next time someone ask you a question,
just answer with the word *HOW?*.

The Techniques of Cross Promotion : SEO Techniques

2006-05-06T22:39:00.000-07:00

By: Kathryn Wozniak

Cross promotions are not a new idea. They have been used by businesses for a very long time. For example, a real-estate company may promote a certain lawyer to close a sale, as the lawyer will promote that agency in his firm. A client may receive a booklet for free car washes when they buy a new car and the car wash puts up posters of the new models of cars that dealer has available.

The system is somewhat similar to the primitive barter system, where people traded items rather than using money. How can anything primitive fit into the online world of Internet marketing? Very easily. Cross promotions are, simply stated, a trade of advertising space. Instead of paying for advertising space on a site, you would place their ad on your page and yours on theirs.

There are many ways to use cross promotions in your internet business that can be an effective and cost efficient way to advertise.

One way is to use link exchanges. This is very effective when doing cross promotions with a company that is similar to yours, however you should be sure and never link to a page that is in direct competition with yours.

One of the best things about link exchanges is that some search engines are factoring in hits from the sites that are linked to your page to when determining the ranking. Therefore linking to a more popular site, can not only increase your advertising, and traffic, but also increase your search engine ranking.

When customers or potential customers subscribe to your ezine you can use this as an opportunity to use cross promotions. On the same page that the customer subscribes to your ezine, make available the opportunity to subscribe to another company’s ezine. You can even exchange ad space in ezines, and provide recommendations for those whom you cross promote with. You might even want to exchange column space in one another’s ezines.

Writing free articles that inform customers or potential customers with information that is useful
and accurate can create a reputation for you and your business. Soon readers will come to know you as an expert on the subject. In these articles the author uses a byline to help promote his site. Bylines can be a way to use cross promotions as well. You can use part of the space in your byline to recommend another’s product.

If you have been considering writing an ebook, a joint venture could mean increased profits for you and the person you are partnering with. Cross promotions through ebooks are an excellent way to allow for a wider topic and to promote both your business and your partner’s business. The ebook should contain information that will benefit both businesses and still be helpful to the reader.

A good example of using cross promotions through an ebook is to a site selling used video games partnering with a site selling gaming devices. These are two subjects that would interest the same reader and most likely lead the reader to both sites.

You should keep in mind that the recommendations that you make are a direct reflection of you, so choose your cross promotional businesses carefully. Know the person and the products reputation before you consider putting your company’s good name to theirs.

Also keep in mind that it would be nice as a shopper to be able to link from one site to another as a way to “shop around.“ Since this is usually not beneficial to you, never link or recommend a site that is in direct competition with you. Instead, recommend those who are similar, such as health and life insurance. If you ave a jewelry site you could link with a clothing site.

You can also cross promote yourself if you have several products or services that you offer. For instance you can offer a free ebook when the customer buys your software or service. You could offer an upgrade with the purchase of a certain product.

Remember your goal is to make sales for yourself and the best way to do it is to gain your customers confidence. This will go a long way towards your success.

What's the Difference Between Websites and Weblogs?

2006-05-06T22:33:00.000-07:00

By: Gregg Hall

More and more, people don't have traditional websites: static things where pages can be added, updated or taken away. Instead, they write new material for their website when they feel like it, and then put it up on one page, with the most recent writing first. These people are running weblogs.

How Did Weblogs Start?

Many people say that there have been weblogs (or blogs, as they're sometimes called) for as long as there has been a web. Back when there were only a few thousand websites, the 'What's New' page that announced each new one (yes, there really was such a thing!) worked in just the same way as blogs do today.

Early weblogs included Scripting News, Robot Wisdom and Camworld, which all started in 1997. To begin with, blogs mostly consisted of often-updated lists of useful and amusing links to other websites, but it gradually became clear that the format was just as good for distributing longer articles. Blog software started to be developed, and their popularity quickly exploded. By 1999, everyone was talking about blogs.

Why are Blogs So Popular?

In recent years, the blog format has very much taken over from the 'personal home page'. People seem to find it much easier to just put a kind of public diary online, instead of putting up a little biography of themselves and a collection of articles. It's more personal, more fun, and more interactive day-to-day.

Businesses have started to open blogs too – in many ways, they're like a replacement for newsletters. A regularly-updated blog gives customers a great sense of what a business is like, while giving the business a great way to keep communicating with its customers and being useful to them, even when they're not buying anything right this minute.

In my opinion, the biggest reason for blogs' popularity is that they make publishing to the web very easy. You don't really have to know anything about what's happening behind the scenes: blogs finally make publishing your thoughts for everyone to see as easy as posting to a forum or sending an email. In a way, blogs fulfil the original promise of the web.

Weblog Software.

Today, there's a lot of blog software out there – if you want a blog, you're spoiled for choice. What you get will depend on how comfortable you are with technical stuff, and whether you want it to be part of your main website or not.

Movable Type. This is software that you install on your web server. You simply log in and type your post, and it creates your pages for you. Movable Type can be a little complex to set up, but you can use a version called Typepad that is hosted by its creators instead of using your server.

Blogger. You don't install Blogger on your server – instead, you give it your FTP password and let it upload files to your web server for you. If you don't have any hosting, you can also host blogs for free at Blogger's Blogspot. Blogger is owned by Google.

WordPress. WordPress is a free alternative to blogging software. It works in basically the same way as Movable Type, but without the restrictive licensing and with nicer-looking default templates. Many people have switched to WordPress out of frustration with Movable Type and not looked back. You have to host it on your own server, but it's very simple to set up – don't be scared!

LiveJournal. LiveJournal is a completely online service, meaning that it has nothing to do with your website, except that you can link to your LiveJournal if you want. LiveJournal is more social than most blogging, allowing you to join communities relating to your interest.

There are plenty of other online services, but they're all pretty much the same: MSN Spaces, AOL Journals, and so on. You're unlikely to get taken very seriously if you have a blog at any of these places, although it'd be easy. In the end, it's all about power versus convenience: the more work you put in to get your blog working, the more likely that it's going to be what you really wanted it to be. If you're creating a website anyway, you'd be silly not to put a blog on it.

Article Source: http://www.articles-galore.com

What You Did Wrong With Your Domain Names!

2006-05-03T10:36:00.000-07:00

Author: Mark Kessler

Trying to improve search engine rankings is just like a rubics cube. A puzzle that can keep you occupied for hours. How many times have you heard "They keep changing the rules?," and the frustrating part is...they don't even tell you what the rules are in the first place!

It's a proven fact, in trying to improve search engine rankings, that growing your site thru link popularity, by slowly acquiring incoming quality links, adding small amounts of fresh relevant content on a regular basis, using proper keyword density and placement, along with making your site "sticky" so your visitor's stay longer.

But now, there's something else that you have to know about! (and this is a big but!)

Google is starting to weigh in heavy on domain names. Not what your domain is, or how long you've had it. Google wants to know how long you plan on keeping it, as in, how long is it registered for!

They've begun NOT giving as much consideration to domains registered for just a year, thinking they might be spammers, making a quick hit and then they're out of here. If they see you're registered for 5 years, then you must be a serious business that has planned on being around for quite a long time.

I live about a five iron outside of DC and made my living on the radio. Helen Thomas, one of the all-time great White House correspondents, would always be chosen by President Reagan to ask questions at press conferences. Here's why:..She found out that the President had a fondness for the color red. So, Helen started wearing a red blazer to press conferences and he would always pick her out of a press room packed with other reporters.

So, in other words... put a red blazer on your web site, drop 50 bucks registering your domain name for several years and show Google, along with other search engines, you are serious about sticking around and wanting to improve search engine rankings.

Mark Kessler is the author of "Search Engine Tantra - The Path To Heightened Rankings!" A 7 part FREE mini-course. His web site, http://www.toptenoptimizer.com provides a wealth of information and resources to increase link popularity and improve search engine rankings.

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Establishing Web Credibility:Stoney deGeyter

2006-04-25T03:03:00.000-07:00

When doing business online your credibility will play a significant role in how much business you can get and how successful you can be. Just like any brick and mortar store, losing credibility with your online business can be disastrous for business.

In general, people are even more skeptical when it comes to doing business online. Perhaps it’s because you don’t have the face-to-face contact that shoppers are accustomed to when buying offline. Or it might be due to a distrust of what will happen once you punch in your credit card information and hit the “send” button.

There are a number of reasons why people are distrustful of stores offline and online, but that sense is often heightened when shopping on the web. That makes it ever more important to go out of your way to create a sense of trust and credibility to your online visitors.

Recently, Stanford published their top 10 guidelines to establishing web credibility. While the official lock of credibility won’t occur in your visitor’s minds until they have successfully performed a business transaction, there are several things that you can do to bolster your credibility to get your visitors to take that first step at becoming a long-term customer.

Make it easy to verify the accuracy of the information on your site.

"You can build web site credibility by providing third-party support (citations, references, source material) for information you present, especially if you link to this evidence. Even if people don’t follow these links, you’ve shown confidence in your material."

Aside from typical marketing jargon such as “We offer the most effective” or “We provide the highest quality…”, which are often subjective, citing references and resources backing up any statistics or claims you’re making is extremely important. If you can back up your marketing jargon with a third party source that confirms what you claim, all the better, but if you’re going to cite a statistic or quote an authority, you’ll enhance your credibility if you link to another published account of what it is you are referring to.

But be careful which sources you site or link to. Many times you’ll find sources that are merely quoting other sources, who might also be two or three tiers away from the original source. By then, something might have gotten lost in the translation. Do your best to go back and find the original source of the material.

Short of finding that original source, find the one that is most credible. Don’t link to some Joe’s website that cited a source from someone else, when you can link to a more authoritative source, even if they are merely repeating information themselves.

Don’t forget that often times you can be your own best source. If you are talking about how satisfied your customers are, link to a testimonial page on your site. If you make the point of how well your product or service does, link to another page that backs that up with your own research. Whatever you do, don’t make up your testimonials or research. Most visitors can see right through that. It’s also not a good idea to try to convince shoppers how good your product or service is without being able to provide actual references to back up your claims. Using the guise of confidentiality or anonymity is weak at best and transparent at worst. Again, you either have people and results that will back up your claims or you don’t.

The more of this evidence you can provide the better and more credible you will be in the eyes of your visitors. But don’t go overboard either, by thinking you have to link to every possible resource that you mention. This can lead to a convoluted site that loses its focus and ability to sell. Make sure your references help you make the sale, not hinder it.

Show that there’s a real organization behind your site.

"Showing that your web site is for a legitimate organization will boost the site’s credibility. The easiest way to do this is by listing a physical address. Other features can also help, such as posting a photo of your offices or listing a membership with the chamber of commerce."

Showing that your organization is legitimate goes right to credibility. There are several things that you can do to establish the legitimacy of your company.

Posting Contact Information: Make sure your site contains as much contact information you can provide. Phone, email, physical address, fax, etc. Many businesses rely on contact forms and forgo the written contact information. This is a mistake. They more ways a visitor can contact you the better off you’ll be in establishing that you are a legitimate company. On the flip side of that, don’t post personal addresses, phone numbers or cell phone numbers, as that will give the impression that you’re a mom and pop shop that might not be able to be reached during normal business hours. Even if you can’t, you don’t want to advertise that fact.

Professional Affiliations: Letting people know of the organizations you belong to such as Chamber of Commerce or Better Business Bureau can go a long way to giving your visitors comfort about your business. If you’re not a member of either, I recommend that you become one. The BBB in particular allows you to place a logo and link on your site so visitors can view your BBB profile. People trust the BBB, and while membership has its price, the credibility it provides your business is definitely worth the fee.

Articles: Writing and distributing articles about your industry on line (and including a link to your website) is a great confidence builder. If your visitors see that your information has been published in online ezines and other industry news or information sources, they can see that your accepted expertise extends to others in the industry, and is not just part of an on-site smoke and mirrors campaign.

Answering Phones and E-Mail: Nothing destroys credibility faster than phone messages or emails going un-returned. If you wait even a day to respond to a phone call or email chances are the inquiry has already been answered by a competitor and the sale decision already sealed. Having a live person answer the phone does wonders as well, rather than allowing the phone to go to voice mail. Even one-man, part time businesses can portray a significant amount of credibility along these lines by hiring an answering service to take messages. But again, every chance you get, return those calls.

The first step to making a sale is to convey confidence in your organization. Let people know you are a legitimate business intent on meeting their every need quickly, efficiently and professionally.

Highlight the expertise in your organization and in the content and services you provide.

"Do you have experts on your team? Are your contributors or service providers authorities? Be sure to give their credentials. Are you affiliated with a respected organization? Make that clear. Conversely, don’t link to outside sites that are not credible. Your site becomes less credible by association."

What makes you different from your competitors? Is it just lower prices, or do you have something substantially unique to offer? Experience and knowledge often translates to additional value for your customers. If you got it, flaunt it! Let your visitors know why they should do business with you rather than your competition.

It’s important to allow your visitors to get comfortable with you and your team. People are more apt to buy from those whom they are more familiar with, even if a competitor seems to have a better offering. You can build this kind of trust by adding bios to your about us pages, talking about your self and your interests and pointing out the organizations you belong or participate in. You can also talk about your particular experience in your industry, detailing where you have particular expertise and demonstrating your accomplishments.

Be careful who you link out to. While linking to other reputable sites and services is a positive, linking out to non-credible websites can easily destroy the perception of credibility. You should only link out to sites that you feel provide a substantial benefit to your visitors. If you’re just building a link directory for the sake of a link directory, reconsider. Your reputation can be at stake.

In all, you want to “put your best face forward”, showing your visitors you have the knowledge and credentials to provide them the quality and results they expect.

Show that honest and trustworthy people stand behind your site.

"The first part of this guideline is to show there are real people behind the site and in the organization. Next, find a way to convey their trustworthiness through images or text. For example, some sites post employee bios that tell about family or hobbies."

This is probably one of the most difficult tasks in establishing credibility. Anybody can talk a good game and even be knowledgeable in the product or service, but actions–and results–speak a lot louder than words on the web. Unfortunately, new visitors to your site do not have your past actions to take into account, only what you tell them about your past actions.

This is where you need to humanize yourself and your staff. I’m not going to tell you to take a staff picture with a dog and put that on your website, but there is a reason why companies do this. People like dogs and the dog humanizes the staff and makes them appear to be kinder, gentler, and more genuine.

People want to feel a connection in order to do business. Without getting into the realm of unprofessional, you can use bios to talk briefly about your family, your interests and your hobbies, but use that information to bring people back to why you do what you do.

Your readers may find that they have something in common with you such as number of kids, enjoyments, interests or hobbies. This can help them make that connection to you in that there is something more here than a person out to make a quick buck at their expense. If your visitors can be made to feel like you’re like them, then they are more apt to spend their money with you than some other faceless, nameless person or organization.

Make it easy to contact you.

"A simple way to boost your site’s credibility is by making your contact information clear: phone number, physical address, and email address."

This is a pet peeve of mine: going to a website and not finding usable contact information. Using web forms on your site is a great way to gather information, but you really need more than that to be credible. You should give your visitors multiple ways to contact you. Phone number, physical address and email address are all necessary. I suggest that you make your phone number visible on every page. Getting a toll free number is a great help at looking legit as well as it let’s visitors know that you’re willing to give a little to get a little.

When it comes to ecommerce sites, I personally won’t buy from a store that does not have visible contact information. With so many less than reputable stores on the internet, I often won’t purchase from a store until I have talked with someone via email or phone. If this information isn’t readily available, many purchases will be made elsewhere.

Design your site so it looks professional (or is appropriate for your purpose).

"We find that people quickly evaluate a site by visual design alone. When designing your site, pay attention to layout, typography, images, consistency issues, and more. Of course, not all sites gain credibility by looking like IBM.com. The visual design should match the site’s purpose."

I’ve written about this extensively in my EMP Book. For many industries, it’s OK to have a mom and pop feel to your website, but in no case should you have a website that looks circa 1992. As the look of the average website has improved significantly over the past few years, web users are expecting more from site’s they do business with. If your site looks like something that was thrown up on a shoestring budget, you’re not giving your visitors much confidence in how you run your business.

You need to look at your competitor’s websites. If your site cannot match or surpass them in appearance then you need to consider a re-design. It’s tricky though, because much of that is subjective. Usually, though, you can easily tell when not much effort, or thought, was put into the design of a website.

While a more professional looking site may be in order, don’t go overboard. Different industries require different styles. Again, check out what your competitors are doing and if there is an overall consistency of tone, you might want to try to find a similar tone with your site. In other words, don’t go corporate when your competitors are going artsy. Don’t go mom and pop when your competitors are going high tech. Don’t create an overly busy website when your competitors have opted for simplicity. But also, don’t trust your competitors to always make the best decisions.

You know your audience, do what is right for them, but by all means, give them a site worth looking at and doing business with. If your site has not undergone a major re-design in the past few years, it’s probably time to get one underway. Even a minor facelift can do wonders to improving the appearance of your site.

Make your site easy to use — and useful.

"We’re squeezing two guidelines into one here. Our research shows that sites win credibility points by being both easy to use and useful. Some site operators forget about users when they cater to their own company’s ego or try to show the dazzling things they can do with web technology."

How do you make your site easy to use? Clear, concise and consistent navigational elements.

It is important to let your visitors know where they are on your site and how to quickly navigate to where they want to be, or where they need to click to get what they want. There are a few very easy things you can do to accomplish this:

Breadcrumbs: While most users do not utilize breadcrumbs as a navigational element, the simple presence of these allows the visitor to know exactly what page they are on and how deep into the site. They also provide a one click option to get to each backward level of your site.

Contextual Links: Don’t rely on your main right, left or top navigation to get your visitors from point A to point B. While these are an important part of your site, using links within the text body of your website helps drive visitors to areas of the site which interest them, or to take the course of action you desire.

Calls to Action: Whether it be contextual links or obvious image that say “click here to…”, calls to action let your visitors know where they need to go to get the information they need.

Consistent Navigation: Sites where the main navigation changes location from page to page often confuse their visitors. Confused visitors leave. They don’t have time to “figure out” your site, they can just as easily find another site where the navigation is intuitive to helping them find what they need. Make it easy for your visitors as they flow from one page to the next.

The other issue here is to make your site useful. This is relatively easy to accomplish, especially for those who know their stuff. If you’re trying to sell a product, don’t just offer that product, but provide information that will help the visitor see why they should purchase this product, and why they should purchase it from you.

Providing extra information including features and benefits of your product will help users make the decision to buy. Adding information such as pricing comparisons, warranties, and quality customer service helps users realize why they should purchase from you.

A useful site is a site buyers will return to time and time again. Maybe you attract them with the information as they do their research. Maybe they don’t buy from you today, but if your site is one that provides them information that helps them make their decision, you’ll be the first site on their mind when they are ready to purchase.

Update your site’s content often (at least show it’s been reviewed recently).

"People assign more credibility to sites that show they have been recently updated or reviewed."

Have you ever been to a website and you could tell the content was old and stale? Maybe it wasn’t obvious right away, but as you browse through the site you begin to see things that perhaps don’t align with other things touted on the website. Or maybe you see a “Valentine’s Day Special” still hanging around a weeks after Valentine’s Day.

Small thinks like this can really turn visitors off. On the less obvious stuff you have a bit more leeway–until someone actually recognizes the contradictions–but on the obvious stuff, it can be a clear sign that you’re not paying attention, leaving a potential customer wondering what kind of care or service they’ll get from you.

Sure, you can make the argument that you’re too busy working for your customers to worry about the small details on your own site like that, but then that’s assuming you get the opportunity to make that argument. The potential customer might have already bolted from your site.

Something else you often see on sites is a “page last updated” blurb with the date. Things like these tend only to be important for sites where information frequently gets dated fast. For commercial sites this can be handy if you need to highlight new products added, but generally there are better ways to do that. The best thing to do is to simply make sure that your content remains current and relevant to your products or services.

Use restraint with any promotional content (e.g., ads, offers).

"If possible, avoid having ads on your site. If you must have ads, clearly distinguish the sponsored content from your own. Avoid pop-up ads, unless you don’t mind annoying users and losing credibility. As for writing style, try to be clear, direct, and sincere."

Let’s set the distinction here between commercial sites and informational sites. Ads on informational sites and blogs are fine and a great way to create an additional source of income. Of course, this only goes so far. Even informational sites can lose their credibility if you have too many ads or utilize annoying popup/popunder windows.

On commercial sites, displaying ads that sell similar or competing products/services or directs visitors elsewhere to get what they came looking for, is just plain silly and a terrible marketing strategy. You might get a small stream of “additional” income from these ads, but undoubtedly it will be at your own expense in the long run.

Commercial sites should be focused on selling one thing… your own products or services. Anything on the site that pulls visitors away or interferes with that selling process is a bad marketing strategy that will inhibit your own ability to “sell” your visitors on what you offer.

When writing content for your site, be sure to keep your target audience in mind. If you customers are more technologically savvy or highly educated, then write accordingly. If your audience is the average John or Jane Doe Consumer, then write toward them. Whatever you do, don’t write above your audiences head, and don’t talk down to them either. While you won’t be able to please everybody, knowing your primary target audience will ensure that you are not insulting the larger percentage of your audience.

You also want to be clear about what you offer. Don’t write to try and keep your visitors in suspense about what your product or service is. If it’s appropriate, you can use sales jargon that enhances the anticipation, but don’t string it out for too long, otherwise your visitors will tire of seeking the payoff and go look for your product or service somewhere else.

The best sites are those that are informative, professional and don’t resort to gimmicky content or designs. The bottom line is that you should treat your visitors as you would want to be treated.

Avoid errors of all types, no matter how small they seem.

"Typographical errors and broken links hurt a site’s credibility more than most people imagine. It’s also important to keep your site up and running."

We all make mistakes. The worst are the little things that are often overlooked but easily correctable. Before publishing new content on your website, take a few extra minutes to run the content through a spell check program. Even if you’ve made only a few minor edits, don’t assume that you don’t need to double check your work.

Just like any other form of medium, it’s best to get a third party to proof read your site’s content. Undoubtedly, they’ll find something you missed even after several proof reads of your own.

Aside from spelling and grammar, you should check your site regularly for broken links. Allowing visitors to find broken links on your site is just another way of letting them know that your site is outdated or that you might not have the proper infrastructure to handle their needs. This is as good of a reason as any to leave and purchase from a competitor instead.

Regularly check your site for broken links. There are plenty of online tools that will spider your site and give you a broken link report quickly. Even if you have not made changes to your site in a while, running a broken link check will identify links to external pages which may have changed or been relocated. Regular checks will ensure that all links, both internal and external, are completely functional.

When it comes to credibility, you can’t have too much of it. Like trust, credibility takes time to earn but can be lost with the smallest of errors. Do your best to create a website that speaks to your visitor’s needs and gives them a good user experience. Credibility won’t come instantaneously, but the more you provide to enhance that the more business you’ll be able to generate.

Wholesale Drop Shipping

2006-04-24T02:48:00.000-07:00

Hard facts and insights from an experienced drop shipper that will help any entrepreneur whether they are just beginning or a seasoned veteran.

True drop shipping is defined by only three (3) players.

1- The CONSUMER who is the final purchaser of the product

2- The RETAILER who markets, advertises and accepts payment for the product from the consumer.

3- The DROP SHIPPER who ships the product for the retailer to the consumer.

Let's look at each player. We will assume that we all know the consumer but retailers take many forms. Some are brick and mortar stores or catalog companies and others are internet based.

Retailers bear the expense, time and creativity to show, market, advertise, price, sell and collect payment for a product. Upon selling and collecting payment for an item, the retailer then sends an order for the item to the drop shipper and the drop shipper ships the item to the consumer. The drop shipper collects the wholesale price payment from the retailer.

Drop shippers generally have no relationship or contact with the consumer other than shipping the merchandise. Sometimes a product may be shipped with the retailers name on it. This is called private labeling. There can be numerous variables and special arrangements between the retailer and the drop shipper. Visually the basic relationship in drop shipping is a triangular one.

Retailers should look for products to sell that are direct from the factory or as close to factory direct as they can possibly get. Just one middleman can cause the final retail price to be too high. Today the consumer is able to price compare with great efficiency and speed. The retail price can make or break the retailer with that same speed and efficiency.

Retailers should most definitely look for products that are unique. Not cutesy unique but truly unique as in rare or 1 of a kind. This sets you apart from other retailers and allows you to markup your item for a greater profit. I know this is a tough one to research but it is the most important part of retailing today. Just look around you, everyone seems to be selling the same things ! You may spend more time on this than any other aspect of drop shipping but you are mining for gold. When you find that unique manufacturer with truly unique products then you can begin to file your gold claim.

Look for drop shippers who have a 100% satisfaction guarantee with money back. Look for drop shippers who are comfortable working with a retailer of your size and position. Look for drop shippers who have a firm grasp of their inventory and who can always ship what you sell. Look for drop shippers who are responsive and eager to work with you.

Look out for drop shippers that pass themselves off as manufacturers when they are a 2nd or 3rd tier middleman. Do some research about the company and know with whom you are dealing. Markets are too efficient to support many markups and you will not be competitive with your prices. Look out for drop shippers who are vague about inventory and shipping times.

Finding a good drop shipper is a lot like finding a marriage partner. You need good compatibility, good communications and someone who cares about you.

Good luck !

Wholesale Drop Shipping : Biz online

2006-04-24T02:37:00.000-07:00

By: jim hoyle

Hard facts and insights from an experienced drop shipper that will help any entrepreneur whether they are just beginning or a seasoned veteran.

True drop shipping is defined by only three (3) players.

1- The CONSUMER who is the final purchaser of the product

2- The RETAILER who markets, advertises and accepts payment for the product from the consumer.

3- The DROP SHIPPER who ships the product for the retailer to the consumer.

Let's look at each player. We will assume that we all know the consumer but retailers take many forms. Some are brick and mortar stores or catalog companies and others are internet based.

Retailers bear the expense, time and creativity to show, market, advertise, price, sell and collect payment for a product. Upon selling and collecting payment for an item, the retailer then sends an order for the item to the drop shipper and the drop shipper ships the item to the consumer. The drop shipper collects the wholesale price payment from the retailer.

Drop shippers generally have no relationship or contact with the consumer other than shipping the merchandise. Sometimes a product may be shipped with the retailers name on it. This is called private labeling. There can be numerous variables and special arrangements between the retailer and the drop shipper. Visually the basic relationship in drop shipping is a triangular one.

Retailers should look for products to sell that are direct from the factory or as close to factory direct as they can possibly get. Just one middleman can cause the final retail price to be too high. Today the consumer is able to price compare with great efficiency and speed. The retail price can make or break the retailer with that same speed and efficiency.

Retailers should most definitely look for products that are unique. Not cutesy unique but truly unique as in rare or 1 of a kind. This sets you apart from other retailers and allows you to markup your item for a greater profit. I know this is a tough one to research but it is the most important part of retailing today. Just look around you, everyone seems to be selling the same things ! You may spend more time on this than any other aspect of drop shipping but you are mining for gold. When you find that unique manufacturer with truly unique products then you can begin to file your gold claim.

Look for drop shippers who have a 100% satisfaction guarantee with money back. Look for drop shippers who are comfortable working with a retailer of your size and position. Look for drop shippers who have a firm grasp of their inventory and who can always ship what you sell. Look for drop shippers who are responsive and eager to work with you.

Look out for drop shippers that pass themselves off as manufacturers when they are a 2nd or 3rd tier middleman. Do some research about the company and know with whom you are dealing. Markets are too efficient to support many markups and you will not be competitive with your prices. Look out for drop shippers who are vague about inventory and shipping times.

Finding a good drop shipper is a lot like finding a marriage partner. You need good compatibility, good communications and someone who cares about you.

Good luck !

- Jim Hoyle

Article Source: http://www.articles-galore.com

Pick The Right E-Commerce Pack And Put Your Business On Fire

2006-04-19T23:42:00.000-07:00

By: Juhani Tontti

1. Businesses need powerful and quick technology and marketing in order for e-commerce to be successful. The objective is to grow your business by making it easier for customers to shop, and if your website’s lack of technology and marketing make it difficult for them, they may as well drive to the supermarket.

2. Before looking at e-commerce solutions, we must first speak about some typical problems of e-commerce. There are many complaints from customers, who have purchased articles online.

There are disorganized sites that are difficult and confusing to navigate; lack of information on the websites including failure to tell customers about special deals or prices.

The inability to pay with the customer’s own currency or payment processor, the inability for the customer to even understand the language in which the websiteis written; and frustrating and confusing shopping carts and check out procedures.

3. What are some e-commerce solutions? Having a professional looking website will attract customers and make them feel confident in buying.

You want your websiteto be organized, quick and easy to navigate, and if you have an informational website, which is search engine friendly; presents special deals; encourages up selling in a customer-friendly way (such as showing related items or showing items that customers purchased, who also purchased the item you are purchasing); is accessible in the major languages and accepts major currencies; has a user friendly shopping cart and single page checkout, then you won’t need many e-commerce solutions!

Remember, when your business is e-commerce, you want to take all possible steps to make sure you and your product are presented professionally, friendly, and easily accessible.

4. Recovering from the dot com crash in 2000, e-commerce is rising strongly. Stay in the comfort of your home. Spend more time with your family. Be your own boss. The benefits of having a home business are numerous. These are familiar slogans.

That is why so many people try to run their own home business. Being enthusiastic about earning their own income online, these people search to find how they can create their own business. And their own diciplines.

Then they understand that there are so many options for them to choose from. So, what is the best e-commerce package for you?
Talking about e-commerce packages, most online merchants
have the same basic needs. The trick is to make sure an e-commerce package matches your needs. Causing less frustration, you should also try to find something that will be easy to use.

5. Some important things to look for in an e-commerce package are:

A. Select a provider that will give you a site and hosting company.

Selecting a provider that helps you set up a website and hosts it for you can save you from a lot of frustration. By choosing a website and hosting combination, you are sure that your e-commerce package will not have to be manually altered.

B. A lot of templates

While all templates can be customized, sometimes that just does not work for every business. If there is a large amount of templates to pick from, there is bound to be template for your business.

C. Payments

You need to make sure that the payment options that your e-commerce package uses will match your customers needs. For example if your e-commerce package only accepts Paypal, you will miss out on the customers that do not use Paypal but want to pay with credit card. This will decrease your earnings.

D. Shopping cart

Most people like to see what they have picked into the shopping cart. Customers may also want to change what they want to buy. Perhaps they found something better.

E. Calculation of tax and shipping costs

While most of the customers are not from your own state, tax is not a major problem. Shipping is a different matter. Shipping and shipping time must be calculated for all customers. Customers also want to see what their shipping costs will be.

F. Customer reports

While reports are not useful to customers, they are useful for you. E-commerce packages that offer reports help you track of your costs and earnings. They save a lot of frustration.

Search Engines and Consumer Behavior

2006-04-17T04:21:00.000-07:00

"Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit."
- Napoleon Hill

When web sites are developed with an e-commerce system they typically do not have unique names for each page, if they are using dynamic solutions. Other solutions require creating web pages that promote the products placed on that page; and, again they don't have the name of the individual products. These solutions don't help much for various reasons.

Search Engine Results

When people begin searching, they typically start with broad scopes such as televisions. On Google alone there are 2,490,000 returned results. As the searcher begins to focus upon the product they want, the result list dwindles. For example, the search for plasma televisions returns 658,000. Now, we add RCA to the mix and the list becomes more reasonable with 89,600 results.

Now, some exciting things begin to happen as we improve our search. Using rca plasma televisions PHD50500 the list is now down to 246. There are five page titles returned that include the model number in their title. That announces those sites offer exactly what we're looking for.

As you notice the number of returned sites became much more manageable and easier to compete with. Individuals seeking your products by name, model number, or other specifics your chance of being on the first page increases. You can't afford to have a less performing site.

Consumer Behavior During Searching

When searchers begin to search they often start as we did above. They typically click on the top three listings, but more often than not don't purchase from those results. As searchers improve their likelihood of purchasing increases and the number of links they click through increases.

By acquiring more results on the first page of the search engine results are owned by a single site the searcher begins to realize the company actually offers what they seek. This improves your chances of connecting with the consumer. Not all e-commerce solutions can achieve this.

When sites are limited to a short list of possible keywords, the likelihood of the site being visited decreases. If a small set of keywords generates a 1000 visits with no purchases there is something definitely wrong. Some think it is the list of keywords chosen. That can be part of the problem, but as the number of possible searches increases the chances of purchases increases.

Since some businesses do not have the capital to have a properly developed e-commerce solution, their chances of competing with the companies that have those deep pockets. Instead of letting the small business be pushed off the Internet the Apple Pie Shopping Cart was developed to meet the demand and help small business owners compete.

The Techniques of Cross Promotion : Site Promotion

2006-04-11T04:30:00.000-07:00

Cross promotions are not a new idea. They have been used by businesses for a very long time. For example, a real-estate company may promote a certain lawyer to close a sale, as the lawyer will promote that agency in his firm. A client may receive a booklet for free carwashes when they buy a new car and the car wash puts up posters of the new models of cars that dealer has available.

The system is somewhat similar to the primitive barter system, where people traded items rather than using money. How can anything primitive fit into the online world of Internet marketing? Very easily. Cross promotions are, simply stated, a trade of advertisingspace. Instead of paying for advertising space on a site, you would place their ad on your page and yours on theirs.

There are many ways to use cross promotions in your internet business that can be an effective and cost efficient way to advertise.

One way is to use link exchanges. This is very effective when doing cross promotions with a company that is similar to yours, however you should be sure and never link to a page that is in direct competition with yours.

One of the best things about link exchanges is that some search engines are factoring in hits from the sites that are linked to your page to when determining the ranking. Therefore linking to a more popular site, can not only increase your advertising, and traffic, but also increase your search engine ranking.

When customers or potential customers subscribe to your ezineyou can use this as an opportunity to use cross promotions. On the same page that the customer subscribes to your ezine, make available the opportunity to subscribe to another company’s ezine. You can even exchange ad space in ezines, and provide recommendations for those whom you cross promote with. You might even want to exchange column space in one another’s ezines.

Writing free articles that inform customers or potential customers with information that is useful
and accurate can create a reputation for you and your business. Soon readers will come to know you as an expert on the subject. In these articles the author uses a byline to help promote his site. Bylines can be a way to use cross promotions as well. You can use part of the space in your byline to recommend another’s product.

If you have been considering writing an ebook, a joint venture could mean increased profits for you and the person you are partnering with. Cross promotions through ebooks are an excellent way to allow for a wider topic and to promote both your business and your partner’s business. The ebook should contain information that will benefit both businesses and still be helpful to the reader.

A good example of using cross promotions through an ebook is to a site selling used video games partnering with a site selling gaming devices. These are two subjects that would interest the same reader and most likely lead the reader to both sites.

You should keep in mind that the recommendations that you make are a direct reflection of you, so choose your cross promotional businesses carefully. Know the person and the products reputation before you consider putting your company’s good name to theirs.

Also keep in mind that it would be nice as a shopper to be able to link from one site to another as a way to “shop around.“ Since this is usually not beneficial to you, never link or recommend a site that is in direct competition with you. Instead, recommend those who are similar, such as health and life insurance. If you ave a jewelry site you could link with a clothing site.

You can also cross promote yourself if you have several products or services that you offer. For instance you can offer a free ebook when the customer buys your software or service. You could offer an upgrade with the purchase of a certain product.

Remember your goal is to make sales for yourself and the best way to do it is to gain your customers confidence. This will go a long way towards your success.

SEO-Tutorial : Where can I place keywords in an all-graphical page?

2006-04-10T04:26:00.000-07:00

Q. My boss has a gigantic head and has spent $50,000 for an all-graphical home page. Will it help if we place keyword phrases in [alt tags] [comments tags] [a hidden layer] [text the same color as the background at the bottom of the page]?

A. I'm afraid that using keyword phrases in any of those places won't help get your home page found in the search engines. Alt attributes (alt tags) are ignored on images that are not clickable, o those won't help. Comment tags have nothing to do with search engine optimization, and are not indexed by the spiders, so don't bother with those either.

Hidden layers may actually help, but would most likely be considered spam by the search engines unless the content in them is exactly the same as on the graphical images on the site. If you simply hide keyword phrases in a hidden layer, be sure to look over your shoulder constantly, because your paranoia about one day getting penalized isn't all that paranoid; it could very well happen! If you like to sleep at night, this may not be the best route for you to take.

Your alternatives are to simply use the power of your Title tag and the power of the links pointing to your home page. You could also concentrate more on the inner pages (assuming they are not all graphical) and optimize them for the keyword phrases that are important to you.

Don't forget that you can always just use PPC ads and not worry about the organic/natural results. That is a very real option these days, and for those not willing to compromise a wee bit to gain natural rankings, it's probably the best one.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION: 6 Most Important Steps:

2006-04-10T01:15:00.000-07:00

Here are 6 most important in Search Engine Optimization, Ranking, Placement and Promotion...

Evaluation of existing website: We will evaluate your existing site for content and programming changes and will run a report of your existing search engine placement and ranking.
Choose keywords and phrases: Once you decide on a web promotion package, we will work with you to determine the one or two phrases that we will focus on in order to effectively optimize your website. Through careful research, we have discovered that the "number" of keywords isn't nearly as essential as "which" keywords are focused on. Our services include determining the best combination of keywords and phrases that are true for your company, are attainable based on the volume of competition in your industry and will result in an increase in your ranking with the search engines. Broad, general keywords do not work well. They give a vague idea of what you're promoting, but they don't tell the visitor why your site is better than your competitors'. Using concise, specific keywords are more likely to bring the type of visitors you want.

We have found that one or two specific keywords or phrases are the limit to properly optimize the focus of your site. If there is a broad, general nature to your site that can't be summarized in only two keywords or phrases, we do have other options to explore, however, these options are not as effective as choosing one or two keyword phrases and will be much more expensive.
Optimization of the web site: Once your keywords and phrases have been agreed upon, we will optimize your website around those phrases.
Submission to search engines: Included with your package, we will submit your website to over 20,000 websites including search engines, directories and link programs, banner exchange for 3 months.
Follow-up Reports: After 3 months, we will run reports of your current search engine placement and ranking to demonstrate improvement. Most people will see search engine placement and ranking increases within two weeks of implementation, some take up to 10 weeks. It depends on how often the various search engines index their requests. Some search engines index only once every two months, while others index every couple of days or
weeks.
Maintenance: We conduct on-going research to determine the best way to get top search engine placement and ranking before presenting options to you. We want to assure that you are getting the most for your money. As the search engines change their criteria for placement, it may be necessary to update your site to meet these new requirements. Should this happen, we will update your site for $200.00. You will be notified as we discover any such changes

Warning About Frames and Flash

Keep in mind when creating your website that search engines have a difficult time indexing webpages with frames. Stay away from frames if at all possible. If you are determined to use frames, Do not use them on your home page, and if possible, leave some other web pages frameless so that they are easy for the search engines to index.
If your site has a Flash splash screen or Flash on your Home Page, we will need to do additional work to circumvent that at an additional cost. We will inform you of these costs before we begin our website optimization process.

If you are interested in Search Engine Optimization -SEO for your website, please send an email to us for more information. Or use our contact form

Aiming for a mere $100,000 per year income

2006-04-06T00:19:00.000-07:00

By: James Little

You have a good business concept. You know very well that there were many people online wanting to get something that you could offer. And you have a well-design setup websitejust nice for these potential customers. You see the potential of your business site as a great way to profits. You too had a well-designed business sales page, and subscription page too. You are confident your business is going to growing well.

Nevertheless, several months later, you were struggling to maintain just a small base of paying customers. It’s time you ask for help for your online business!

What should you do to revive your business? Any strategic business’s plan? Ideas? Suggestion? Are you getting lost? Here are some of the small little changes that I believe if it’s implemented properly, your business would be able to fire-off:
1. Set your landing page as main priority. Don’t keep sending visitors directly to a sales page. Land them to your subscription page instead.

Don’t get into the belief that you will be losing more sales by doing this. The reality is exactly the opposite. You’ll end-up gaining more business leads! Because you are building a long-term business relationship with your potential customers whom just pop by your site.
2. Don’t be stingy, offer goodies. Give your visitors a free trial.
And then, it could be designed that these free trial membership sign-up be automatically converts into a paid membership if not cancelled. That’s how your business will start to pick up.

This would help you to begin closing far more sales which means more business. Remember this hard, make the payment mode super easy! If they can’t pay you in their convenience, they’ll go somewhere else! It’s true! Even though they might be very eager to get what you got to offer, but if they find it hard to made payment….next minute they’ll go find for substitute.
There are several payment processors who will gladly set this up free for you, or you could just set it up thru DIY! As simple as plug and play. You should try it out with Paypal.
3. Use a strategic follow-up series.

Like most people who had been trying to make a living on the net, you had heard you should have a series “emailcourse” to get people t keep signing up for newsletters. But, did you place within your emailor newsletter with follow-up message in getting turning them into paying customers? Ultimately, what you want is to convert visitors into buyers. That’s your business goal isn’t it?
4. Business Retention Strategy.

I bet YOU! This is one of the most overlooked areas! Yet it’s one of the most important business aspects on your quest in making a living on the net. Once you get a paying customer, it is much easier to keep him than to find a new one to replace him. You have to encourage you own paying customers to hang around for the months to come.

By applying these four little tips which are often overlooked, you are progressing one step forward to reach the mere $100K per year on the net.

Not bad right? You are on the way to defining your own destiny. Kick your boss butt? Not yet, not now yet, only until you reach UP THERE!

Build your business up today.

Article Source: http://www.articles-galore.com

Seo News :What is Myspace and Why is it so Popular

2006-04-06T00:08:00.000-07:00

We see it on TVeveryday. On CNN, NBC, every news channel, even on Martha Stewarts show -yes, she is on Myspace also. Hundreds of thousands of bands from Kid Rock and Uncle Cracker to 50 Cent, Jessica Simpson, etc... all have their own Myspace pages. Myspace has grown in the past 2-3 years to over 66 million users and is growing at a rate of 2-10K per hour and several million per month. There are now more people on Myspace then there are searches per day on Google - the largest internet search engine. Comedian Dane Cook has over 900,000 friends on Myspace now and it helped promote him from nothing to on Saturday Night Live and a nationwide tour under his name with many top comedians.

Myspace doesn't charge a penny and doesn't bombard you with ads like other free services in the paste (Kazaa, ICQ, etc...). You can advertise for free, start a blog, start a romance, build friends, network, etc... With over 65 million users the possibilities are endless. Its also very easy to use - It doesn't take a manual or a learning timeframe like AOL in the past. This free service has attracted bands in droves. There are over 100,000 bands, artists and similar on Myspace with pages showing tour schedules, factoids, etc... Many of these bands are using Myspace for free publicity and to grow their fanbase and popularity. They can release videos, excerpts, free songs, etc... It all works - just look at some of the bands and their numbers of page views and friends - Jessica Simpson has over 200,000 friends - that is over 200,000 people that get free updates and info from Jessica.

Relatively unknown websites and artists can now get free publicity and get heard. To test this we started a Myspace page 1 week ago and today have over 1,000 page views and over 700 friends. We receive over 70 bulletins per day with announcements on everything from band tour dates to concerts, special invites, offer for a date, business websites, etc... The majority of users are teens and young (under 38) adults. It seems this age group has grown tired of VH1 and MTV reality shows and the lack of musicand information that is tailored to their desires. This is what Myspace provides. You control who is in your network and what information, music videos, news, etc... you receive and subscribe to.

Myspace is the next AOL, and the sky is the limit. It is rumored that a lot of programming will soon be live off websites like Myspace. Maybe Myspace will become like XM radio - no or little commercials, choose your own programming 24 hours a day. No need to pay for cable TV, or movies. You will just pay a flat monthly fee. What ever Myspace's future holds, it is sure to change TV, radio, and our world or our space for ever. It certainly had a profound effect on Dane Cook and his future is looking brighter and brighter. Myspace has left its mark and is here to stay.

Article Source: http://www.articles-galore.com

Reaching to a Top Ten Placement

2006-03-30T23:02:00.000-08:00

articles » search engine optimization

Achieving a top ten placement in the search engines can be compared to being invited to a party for the elite. Only the best of the best optimized web sites get to be in the top ten. While many may still agree that this is the truth, one needs to understand the entire picture. How much does Page Rank or Site Rank have to play in the picture of getting invited to the Search Engine's Top Ten party?

A few years back, Bob Massa of Search King created a program that exploited Google's Page Rank formula. Massa created a network of sites and charged a monthly fee to have sites link to each other. The advantage of Massa's network was based upon the fact that it was a lot easier to find high Page Rank sites to purchase links from and increase the Page Rank of one's web site. Google didn't like this idea too much and penalized Massa's group and clients. Massa, of course, attempted to sue Google but lost because the US Court of Appeals ruled that Page Rank was an opinion and was entitled to the protections of the First Amendment.

Now, Google has decided to employ a Topical Match program where they match one's site to a particular topic based upon how their system reads the site. In order to be matched to the proper topic Google now requires that sites get links from other sites and use link text that defines the topic of one's site. Depending upon which sites are linking to one's site, the Page Rank of one's site could improve. This helps with positioning with Google as Page Rank plays an important part.

In order to achieve an invitation to the party for the elite, you need to have a popularity level that warrants a look. But, the question is how do you get the required level of popularity?

Keys to Achieving a Top Ten Placement

Many will say the following steps are required to meet the requirements of the highly sought party invitations.

Develop your site in a search engine friendly manner.

This requires ensuring your content is as close to the top of the HTML Body as possible.

Use acceptable HTML Standards.

By developing the site using acceptable HTML Standards many features are made available that are otherwise ignored. ALT attributes would be part of the HTML Standards.

Develop your content so that it is optimized in an ethical manner.

Use proper Heading elements and ensure the content includes your most important keywords.

Submit your site to the major search engines.

Submitting to the major search engines could be by using Paid Inclusion, Paid Submission or Pay-Per-Click.

Start your site on the right foot by getting links from other similar sites.

There are many sources available to start this path. Smartads.info, Linkpartners.com and Linksmanager.com are three sources for link building assistance. Ensure your incoming link text represent your subject matter rather than your URL/domain name or name of your company.

Submit your site to as many associated directories as possible.

There are many directories, but not all directories are useful. b. Do not submit to Free-for-All or classified ads sites.

Write articles covering subjects related to topic of your site.

Two places you can have them published through are knowledge-finder.com and thephantomwriters.com. Ensure your incoming link text represent your subject matter rather than your URL/domain name or name of your company.

While some of theses steps are required, they are not all required.

There are many parties for the elite. Some require being more popular than others. For instance, if a site is about televisions the potential list for the party could exceed 8,000,000 depending upon the search engine holding the party. However, these parties don't always carry the clout they do in Hollywood or Uptown New York in the Diamond District.

The more elite parties that bring higher conversions and greater returns are the more targeted parties. Examples of these higher would be RCA Plasma Televisions, cat urinary tract, pet scrapbook themes. These are examples of highly targeted keyword phrases.

Highly targeted keywords and phrases pull the better conversion rates simply because of a single undeniable factor; that factor is people who seek a particular product are the most likely to purchase. Generic or broad-based searches could result in the person looking for educational information, product reviews, or any number of other concepts available on the Internet.

The question now becomes, what phrases should a site focus upon? That's a tough question, but fortunately there is an easy answer. The products will define themselves and their appropriate categories. Like with RCA Plasma Televisions, the two or three related categories could be RCA televisions, Plasma televisions or even RCA Plasma televisions.

Without following the above steps a site will perform poorly in the search engines. It is highly recommended that a site owner have their site evaluated for the most profitable keywords and phrases available. There are a number of tools available for this. One of those tools is Digital Point's Keyword Suggestion Tool.

You, the web site owner, want your web site to perform extremely well in the search engines. Using the above discussed techniques can help you achieve a top ten placement in the search engines

The Secret Benefit Of Search Engine Optimisation: Increased Usability

2006-03-29T23:11:00.000-08:00

By Trenton Moss

A higher search ranking is what many website owners dream of. What they don't realise is that by optimising their site for the search engines, if done correctly, they can also optimise it for their site visitors.

Ultimately this means more people finding your website and increased sales and lead generation. But are search engine optimisation and usability compatible? Aren't there trade-offs that need to be made between giving search engines what they want and giving people what they want? Read on and find out (although I'm sure you can guess the answer!)...

1. Keyword research carried out

Before you even begin building your website, you should carry out keyword research to identify which keyword phrases your site should target. Using publicly available tools such as Wordtracker (http://www.wordtracker.com), you can discover which keywords are searched for the most frequently and then specifically target those phrases.

Doing keyword research is also crucial for your site's usability. By using the same keywords in your website that web users are searching for in search engines, you'll literally be speaking the same language as your site visitors.

For example, you might decide to target the phrase, "sell toys", as your website does in fact sell toys. Keyword research would undoubtedly show you that web users are actually searching for, “buy toys” (think about it - have you ever searched using the word, “sell”, when you want to buy something?). By placing the phrase, “buy toys” on to the pages on your website, you'll be using the same words as your site visitors and they'll be able to find what they're looking for more easily.

2. 200 word minimum per page

Quite simply, search engines love content - the more content there is on a page the easier it is for search engines to work out what the page is actually about. Search engines may struggle to work out the point of a web page with less than 200 words, ultimately penalising that page in the search rankings.

In terms of usability, it's also good to avoid pages with very little content. A page with less than 200 words is unlikely to contain a large amount of information, so site visitors will undoubtedly need to click elsewhere to find more detailed information. Don't be afraid to put a reasonably large amount of information on to a page. Web users generally don't mind scrolling down anymore, and provided the page provides mechanisms to aid scanning (such as employing sub-headings - see point 6 below) it shouldn't be too difficult for site visitors to locate the information that they're after.

3. 100kb maximum HMTL size

If 200 words is the minimum page content size, then 100kb is the maximum, at least in terms of HMTL file size. Anything more than this and search engines may give up on the page as it's simply too big for them.

A 100kb HMTL file will take 20 seconds to download on a 56k dial up modem, used by three in four UK web users as of March 2004 (source: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/intc0504.pdf). Add on the time it takes for all the other parts of the page to download, such as images and JavaScript files, and you're looking at a highly un-user-friendly download time!

4. CSS used for layout

The website of Juicy Studios (http://www.juicystudio.com) saw a six-fold increase in site visitors after switching from a table-based layout to a CSS layout. Search prefer CSS-based sites and are likely to score them higher in the search rankings because:

- The code is cleaner and therefore more accessible to search engines

- Important content can be placed at the top of the HTML document

- There is a greater density of content compared to coding

Using CSS for layout is also highly advantageous for usability, as it leads to significantly faster download times.

5. Meaningful page title

If you know anything about search engine optimisation you'll know that search engines place more importance on the page title than any other attribute on the page. If the title adequately describes the content of that page then search engines will be able to more accurately guess what that page is about.

A meaningful page title also helps site visitors work out where they are, both within the site and the web as a whole. The page title is the first thing that loads up, often quite a few seconds before the content, so a descriptive, keyword-rich page title can be a real aid to help users orientate themselves.

6. Headings and sub-headings used

Search engines assume that the text contained in heading tags is more important than the rest of the document text, as headings (in theory at least) summarise the content immediately below them.

Headings are also incredibly useful for your human site visitors, as they greatly aid scanning. Generally speaking, we don't read on the web, we scan, looking for the information that we're after. By breaking up page sections with sub-headings that effectively describe the content beneath them, scanning becomes significantly easier.

Do be sure not to abuse heading tags though. The more text you have contained in heading tags within the page, the less importance search engines assign to them.

7. Opening paragraph describes page content

We've already established that search engines love content, but they especially love the first 25 words or so on each page. By providing an opening paragraph that adequately describes the content of the rest of the page (or the site if it's the homepage), you should be able to include your important keyword phrases in this crucial area.

As web users, whenever we arrive at a web page the first thing we need to know is whether this page has the information that we're after. A great way to find this out is to scan through the first paragraph, which, if it sufficiently describes the page content, should help us out.

8. Descriptive link text

Search engines place a lot of importance on link text. They assume that link text will be descriptive of its destination and as such examine link text for all links pointing to any page. If all the links pointing to a page about widgets say 'click here', search engines can't gain any information about that page without visiting it. If on the other hand, all the links say, 'widgets' then search engines can easily guess what that page is about.

One of the best examples of this in action is for the search term, 'miserable failure'. So many people have linked to George Bush's bio using this phrase as the link text, that now when miserable failure is searched for in Google, George Bush's bio appears top of the search rankings!

As web users, we don't generally read web pages word-for-word - we scan them looking for the information that we're after. When you scan through text you can't take any meaning from the word 'click here'. Link text that effectively describes its destination is far easier to scan and you can understand the destination of the link without having to read its surrounding words.

9. Frames avoided

Frames are quite an old-school technique, and although aren't as commonplace as they once were, do still rear up their ugly head from time to time. Using frames is one of the worst possible things you could do for your search engine ranking, as most search engines can't follow links between frames.

Even if a search engine does index your pages and web users find you through a search engine, they'll be taken to one of the pages within the frame. This page will probably be a content page with no navigation (navigation is normally contained in a separate frame) and therefore no way to navigate to any other page on the site!

Frames are also disadvantageous for usability as they can cause problems with the back button, printing, history and bookmarking. Put simply, say no to frames!

10. Quality content provided

This may seem like a strange characteristic of a search engine optimised website, but it's actually crucial. Search engines, in addition to looking at page content, look at the number of links pointing in to web pages. The more inbound links a website has, all other things being equal, the higher in the search rankings it will appear.

By providing creative, unique and regularly updated content on your website, webmasters will want to link to you as doing so will add value to their site visitors. You will also be adding value to your site visitors.

Conclusion

Optimising your website for both search engines and people needn't be a trade-off. With this much overlap between the two areas, you should easily be able to have a website that web users can find in the search engines, and when they do find it, they can find what they're looking for quickly and efficiently.

About the Author: This article was written by Trenton Moss. He's crazy about web usability and cessibility so crazy that he went and started his own web usability and accessibility consultancy ( Webcredible - http://www.webcredible.co.uk ) to help make the Internet a better place for everyone.

SEO HELP: Why Do Web Sites Fail?

2006-03-29T03:36:00.000-08:00

Nearly 80% of all web sites fail. They fail because business owners do not have all the correct information they need. You fail when you don't get what you need, fail to spend the needed time or simply don't know what to do with your web site.

As people in general you're taught to find the least expensive options available. You're also taught you need to live up to the standards of the Joneses. As a business owner you can't have the best of both worlds.

Your business is important to you. And, you are important to your business. You want the best from your business. Your business deserves the best.

Buying a three or five page web site is like buying a 10-second advertisement on radio or television. The 10-second advertisement might sound like a great investment because of the low price . so you buy it. Regrettably, later you find you didn't have enough time to tell your potential customer what they really need to know. The three of five page web site is just like that.

Your web site should promote your business and provide your potential customers with enough information to make an educated decision ... and do business with you. Before buying a three or five page web site examine your competitors' web sites. Do they have a three or five page web site? Does it provide you enough information? Would you do business with them?

Your web site is either an extension of your business or your only business. As such, it is a salesperson that works 24-hours per day and never takes a vacation. You must spend the time to train it and give it the same information you would a salesperson.

Providing your web site with the tools for success helps it succeed. Your web site must know as much as you do about your products and services. It must answer the question - why should I do business with you? If you don't answer that question, your potential customers will go to your competition.

You're a business owner. You don't have time to learn a new marketing channel ... or do you?

Taking the time to learn how to use your new marketing tool will help you succeed. A web site is a dynamic entity that has direct interaction with your customers. Web sites are not passive advertisements.

Print, television and radio advertisements are passive. They do not interact with the customer. They sit there waiting for the customer to pay attention or they lose the customer.

Web sites are interactive. Your customer can visit different pages and learn additional information. Your customer can revisit sections ... they can go to new sections. Your customer is just like you ... she wants to enjoy the experience.

But how do you get your customer to your site?

Forty-six percent of a web site's visitors come through the search engines. Limiting your web site to three or five pages limits the number of ways your customers can find you. This web site has over 20 pages ... that's more than 20 ways the site can be found in the search engines.

Successful web sites have three things in common. They have more than five web pages. The business owner spent enough time providing the web site with the needed information for it to succeed. And, finally the business owner learned how to market with their web site.

You want your web site to be successful. Invest in it properly and it can succeed.

SEO NEWS: The Power of Newsletters

2006-03-29T03:24:00.000-08:00

Newsletters can be powerful tools in getting your messages out. With the Can-Spam Act of 2003 some changes have occurred that affect unsolicited commercial email. Unsolicited commercial email is defined as email from businesses that have not previously been subscribed to. That is different than newsletters.

Newsletters are information a customer requested. Permission has been granted to the site owner to contact the subscriber about new products, services, and any other relevant information. This is where the power begins.

Email marketers cite numerous problems with delivery of their email notifications. These issues are a direct result of people and businesses misusing the powerful tool of email notifications. Email addresses were sold by unethical businesses and email addresses have been harvested by unethical marketers. The Can-Spam act, as week as it may be, prohibits the exercise of harvesting email addresses off web sites. Yet, the act is still performed.

Due to the fact that unethical business people have ruined a worthy tool, there are still things that are important in measuring the success rates of newsletters. First, as I mentioned a few weeks ago the best days to send out newsletters are Wednesday and Thursday. This has nothing to do with less spam being sent out on those days. It primarily relies upon the fact that people's work weeks are coming to an end and the beginning of the week with all its headaches are nearly over. Receiving newsletters from favorite companies can be refreshing if the content is compelling and interesting.

Each newsletter a business creates must be interesting to the subscriber. By providing information about your products and services with a mixture of interesting and educational material will always come over with the best reception. Including a call to action can assist in measuring the successfulness of your newsletters.

Email marketers have focused upon the metrics of opened newsletters while they were limited to the ability to measure click-thru rates. Those companies that could afford high-end newsletter programs capable of reading the log files from the web server were able to measure this all important metric.

As a business owner your goal is to know how to interpret the statistics available on the web server. Since many business owners do not understand how to interpret these important elements, their success rates are extremely small. Open rates are a result of two elements only. First, the sender's company name or email address and second, the subject line. My advice is to use your company name in the sender's address. Second, use subject lines that identify the purpose of the newsletter. Below is an example of both:

Sender's Address:
If you look at my sender's information you'll notice it says Apple Pie Shopping Cart. You are assured that any email from with that sender's information would be from me.

Subject Line:
My newsletter subject line is always "Apple Pie Recipes of Success". This identifies the subject of my message and assures the subscriber that they are about to read my newsletter.
The most important metric is not the number of subscribers the newsletter was sent to or the number of subscribers that opened the newsletter. In fact, it is the click-thru rate that becomes the one most important element and above all the most successful marketing statistic available. That number tells me how successful my message and call to action were.

As mentioned above, many business owners pay third-parties to provide these statistics. Or, they have to decipher the server logs. Attempting to do either can be either overly burdensome due to cost or simply due to time constraints. In order to assist clients the Apple Pie Shopping Cart includes this high level of measurement.

How to Improve your Click Through Rate in Google AdWords

2006-03-24T03:37:00.000-08:00

By Kalena Jordan

Like many people who earn their income via the Internet, I use affiliate programs to supplement my income. One of the affiliate products I promote (Proposal Kit) had been performing particularly well for me recently and I decided to help things along by creating a Google AdWords campaign based around my reviews of the product.

After one month, the campaign was going ok, I was getting a few sales here and there and certainly making a good ROI on the promotion. However, although my Click Through Rate (CTR) was pretty good (1.2%), it was starting to slide backwards and I thought I could do better. As you probably know, your ad position in Google relies heavily on your CTR compared to your competitors, so I was keen to turn things around and keep my high ad positions.

Around this time, I bought Nick Usborne's book Net Words and started to read it, taking notes as I went. I realized that according to Nick's philosophy, my AdWords ads were flat and boring. They were just not appealing enough to entice people to click on them. As Nick explains in his book, "Being blah guarantees you'll never be heard".

So I set about re-writing some of my ad text to speak more directly to my audience and ask them a question that required a response. Below is an example of an ad targeting the search query "business proposal before I changed the text:

Business Proposal Kit
Close the sale with a professional
business proposal template kit. And here is the text I replaced it with:

Need a business proposal?

Create your own professional
proposal with our template kit

The aim was to get my average CTR for the entire campaign up to around 2% from the existing 1.2% it was sitting at.

I logged off for the evening and went to bed, not expecting too much. The next morning, I had messages in my email in-box advising me that I had made 3 sales overnight! I was quite excited and logged into AdWords to see how things were going. Sure enough, my clicks were way up and two of the three AdGroups I had edited were showing an average 33% CTR! My overall campaign CTR had risen from 1.2% to 2.4%. I had never experienced CTR that high before. The ad I had changed used to show a 2.5% CTR and after a few days the changed ad displayed a 4.3% CTR.

Taking note of the ads that had attracted the most clicks, I created more around related keywords and phrases, using similar headlines to the ads that were performing the best. This time, I incorporated Nick's advice to use short and punchy copy.

Below is an example of an ad I was using to target the search query "seo contract" before I changed the text:

Sample SEO contract

Proposal Kit provides a perfect SEO

contract template. Read our review. And here is the text I replaced it with:

Need an SEO contract?

Create yours.Today.

After another week, my average CTR for the whole campaign jumped from 2.4% to 4% and I had a couple of ads showing 100% CTR! You can imagine how excited I was. Of course the high CTR builds on itself because the higher your CTR, the higher your ad position and the higher your ad position, the more clicks it is likely to attract. So my campaign had jumped from 1.3% in the first month, to 2.4% in the second month and after my fine-tuning, it's now showing a 4% CTR consistently. And the sales? Well I now average at least seven sales per week, up from two per week over the past 6 months and my affiliate commission is at an all time record.

The exercise just goes to show that a few thoughtful tweaks to your ad copy can make a HUGE difference to your bottom line. So what are you waiting for? Go tweak that copy in your own campaigns...

The Benefits of Black Hat Techniques :SEO Articles

2006-03-23T03:25:00.000-08:00

Yes, you read that correctly. There are benefits of "black hat" techniques used to manipulate rankings in the search engines.

If you work within the search engine optimization industry, or you are a webmaster, you have most likely already encountered some black hat techniques in play. As someone who does SEO for a living, it's in my best interests to know what the techniques are in order to combat them.

Problem is, to a black hat, it's all worth it. While the majority of us sweat and labor and obsess on getting top rankings in Google and other search engines, the black hatters sit back and laugh at our efforts.

The elite hatters will "churn-and-burn" websites, but in the three months of that website's existance, the black hatter can easily make over 100k from each site.

That's why they continue to employ their techniques, all the while raking in the cash. This is also the same reason why spammers continue to do what they do - out of the millions of emails sent, there are enough people clicking on the advertisement to make them money.

So, now that we know the motivation of the black hat, where is the benefit?

The black hatters keep the search engines on their toes by constantly pushing the boundries of manipulating data and information on the web. If the Googles of the world could just sit back and never apply any new thoughts to their algorithms, the "Average Joe" would never have a shot at getting a top spot in the search engines.

All of the top spots would be owned by the players with the most money to spend.

But, since the black hats continually look for loopholes in the algorithms, it forces the search engines to continually re-think their apporach on how to rank the content found on the Internet.

While I admit that it can be frustrating to see a site above yours in the search engine results that is employing these techniques, you must keep in mind that you have a chance to achieve top rankings because of their techniques.

While the black hatter relies on automation to obtain their goals, the rest of us have to do it with effort. That is the kryptonite of the black hatters. Eventually, your site should have better, original content and more relevant links pointing to your site, and that will drive the black hatters away.

The goal of the black hat is to make money as quickly as possible. The elite black hatters are smart enough to know when they have been beaten in a specific area, and will simply turn their focus to another topic.

You can beat the black hat. But it will take time, and it will take resolve. Consider it a battle - because they do.

-To your online success!

Paul Bliss

Free Online SEO Tools Review :Seo Tools

2006-03-21T23:04:00.000-08:00

Here's my favorite free online seo tools ....They each have a distinguishing or unique feature to make this list....

1. Find out the number of searches on a keyphrase - Yahoo-Overture Tool

2. Find out how a page does for a certain keyphrase. Plus who is doing well and why. Amazing!!!!! http://www.webuildpages.com/cool-seo-tool . Jim's company has the BEST free tools. For instance: see the list of backlinks with anchor text

3. Tells you how many links a domain has totalling the different engines. Has the additive feature of tracking history and "categorizing you" (unknown vs 900 lb gorilla - great marketing!) http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop

4. Start with a phrase and find out which pages on your website are doing the best: http://tools.morevisibility.com/ranking/index.php

5. A range of tools that highlight the source of page rank and how its "used" across the number of outgoing links http://www.rustybrick.com/tools.php

6. A great tool that reminds you of your outgoing (and internal) links - http://www.dead-links.com/ . My new favorite link/html checker is: http://www.elsop.com/quick/

7. Find out the number of .edu or .gov links (considered to be "authority" sites) . go to yahoo search - http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=linkdomain%3Ahomeschoolfun.com+site%3A.edu&ei=UTF-8&fr=slv1-&x=wrt and search for: linkdomain:webdomain.com site:.edu

8. Want some keywords to consider? Put in your phrase and get a list of choices: https://adwords.google.com/select/main?cmd=KeywordSandbox

Note that the google search engine - www.google.com - itself is perhaps the greatest free seo tool. To find out how recently google spidered a site, search on google in a way that finds the site if you must, you can always put the url into google) and then clicked on "cached" to see when it was last spidered. Do this regularly and see what schedule you are on. To see how google is viewing your keywords on a page, search with those keywords so that it comes up and look at the cached version for the highlighting (example: to see whether google recognizes homeschool on a search for home school, type into google: home school domain name and look at the results. Lastly, the "similiar sites" choice in google reveals google's concept of relevance.

-------------------------------
Below - some details & feedback on a few of these tools and some other near-favorites:

2. Find out how a page does for a certain keyphrase. Plus who is doing well and why. Amazing!!!!! http://www.webuildpages.com/cool-seo-tool

- enter a page and a keyphrase to find out how and why that page does well on the phrase.
- On a single chart, you get the top 10 sites for that phrase for google, msn, yahoo compaged with your page in terms of:
- rank, Pages Indexed (google/yahoo), Backlinks to that page, backlinks to the domain, Allinanchor rank, Domain Age, & Phrase count
- Desired features: add in the Yahoo analysis of number of searches for that term last month

3. http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop

- Provides for up to 3 domains at once, a "total" count of links from google, msn, yahoo, hotbot.

- Has the very addictive feature of maintaining your history of searches so you can see progress.
- Also a very motivating but silly set of categories: Limited, average, above average, contender, player, 900 pound gorilla.

Should I admist that I celebrated when I became "average" and then "above average"

4. http://tools.morevisibility.com/ranking/index.php

- For a single word or phrase at time, provides which page (or pages) on your site are in the top 50
- the good feature is finding multiple pages which are doing well for a given term
- Request: it would be great if we could submit multiple phrases at once

6. I started with this tool while I was checking my site for dead links. Amongst other great features, for SEO purposes, it analyses the links out of each page. http://www.dead-links.com/Theres also a reciprocal link checker.

What other free tools do you find useful?

WOW - jsut found the motherload - try a google search on free seo tools.....

Also of note:http://www.dnsstuff.com/ This is a great collection of cool stuff, some too sophisticated for me to appreciate yet. I did find out how to get my dns number and other useful
free info.....

Heres one that evaluates the "quality" of your links - http://198.68.180.60/cgi-bin/link-eputation-tool.cgi
http://www.mcdar.net/KeywordTool/keywordtool.asp

- another link popularity check. this one gives, for a keyphrase, your rank on google, the leaders, plus the link count (G&Y), Google PR, and allinanchor for you and the leaders...Not as good as cooloh

www.globalpromoter.com has a buncho tools but nothing special has jumped out at me... they have a tool which searches the Yahoo tool and another which supposedly will run a batch thru yahoo...but it didn't work for me.

The Big Website Question: If You Build It, Will They Visit?

2006-03-09T22:56:00.000-08:00

Q: I recently launched a websitefor my sporting goods business. Do I need to do anything special to attract customers to my website? I know nothing about search engines and marketing as such. Please tell me where to begin.

A: That is a question that has been asked by every business person who has ever launched a website. If I build it, will they come? Of course they will -- if you've built a website that appeals to dead baseball players.

For those of you who didn't get the "Field of Dreams" reference, let me put it this way: No, Sean, if you build it they will not come, at least not without some effort on your part.

Assuming that a website will automatically attract customers is the single biggest mistake that many business owners make. It is this mistake that eventually leads them to dismiss their website as a failure and abandon their online sales efforts.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard a client say, "Well, I threw up a website, but nobody ever came to it and I didn't sell a single thing from it! Dang thing was a waste of time, if you ask me …"

Forgive me, but "threw up" is the operative term there. These short-sighted entrepreneurs (God love them) mistakenly think that all they have to do is throw up a website and that their business will automatically double overnight. And when nothing happens they blame it on the infallibility of the Internet, on El Nino, on the Bosa Nova, on their customers… everything but their own lack of marketing efforts.

If you build it, will they come? That, Sean, depends totally on you.

When it comes to attracting customers, opening an online business(or an online branch of an existing business) is no different from opening a traditional brick and mortar shop. Without a little fanfare and a well-devised marketing plan, chances are your website will become just another spot of roadkill on the Information Superhighway.

The first step in devising your marketingplan is to ask yourself this question: Who is my customer? Who is it that I want to attract to my website? Believe it or not, this is a question many entrepreneurs fail to ask. The identity of your customer is incredibly important because if you don't know who your customer is, how can you expect to market to them?

The next question concerns the locality of your customer. Do you want to attract a local or global clientele to your website? If the answer is local, then you will gear your marketing efforts toward customers in your own backyard, which means incorporating your website launch with your offline marketing efforts.

If the website is the online branch of a brick and mortar business, include the website URL in all your print materials and advertising campaigns. Consider running ads in the local paper, on radio or TV announcing the launch of your site. Use direct mail or in-store posters to announce the site launch to your existing customer base.

In short, keep doing what you're doing to attract customers to your physical store, just add your website address to the mix.

Just remember, it's important to consider your website a branch of your brick and mortar business because that's exactly what it is. A good business website will help you sell more products, widen your range of clientele, and increase your revenue without adding overhead. Don't sell your website short. Make it work for you.

If you are seeking a global audience, your marketing efforts will be quite different. Attracting customers from around the world is a more difficult task than attracting customers from around the block. Fortunately, the task is not impossible. The Internet has leveled the playing field in many ways. Now every business, no matter how large or small, has the ability to do business internationally.

In the most basic sense, an online marketing campaign to attract global customers should include the following efforts.

Register With Search Engines There's not enough room in this newspaper for a thorough discussion of search engines and their effectiveness (or lack thereof) in driving traffic to a website. Suffice it to say that 95% of search engine traffic comes from Google and Yahoo, so start there. It's also important to realize that just registering with search engines does not guarantee you traffic, but it certainly can't hurt.

Unfortunately, the free search engine lunch ran out a couple of years ago when search engines figured out that people would actually pay for listings and higher placement. Since that time the only way to guarantee a high (or at least higher than others) rankingis to pay for it. The two most popular pay-for-placement programs are Yahoo's "Yahoo Express" and Google's "Adwords." Visit their respective websites for details on these programs. Be prepared to spend several hundred dollars at a minimum to get your site listed.

Exchange Links With Similar Sites One free - and potentially effective - way to drive customers to your website is through link exchanges with sites of similar interest. Locate sites that make a good match to your own and contact the owner to ask if they will link to your site in exchange for you linking to theirs. If you sell golf balls on your website, set up a link exchangewith another website that sells golfclubs. You post a link to them and they post a link to you. It's called digital back scratching, and if done properly, can work well to drive traffic your way.

Go To Where The Customers Are If the mountain won't come to Mohammed, then Mohammed must go to the mountain. One little known way to attract customers to your website is to market your products on a mega-site like eBay. There are thousands and thousands of people on eBay at any given time and each one is potentially your customer, so it's a great place to drum up business.

Your goal is not to make a living selling on eBay, but to use eBay as a marketing tool to drive traffic back to your website. Go to where the customers are, then bring them back home with you.

Let's use our golf ball example. Post a few auctionson eBay selling your golf balls at a ridiculously low price so your auction attracts plenty of attention. When customers make a purchase, add them to your client list and send them an email inviting them to visit your website for more great products. eBay also lets you create your own "About Me" page that you can use to advertise your business.

We have just scratched the surface, but hopefully this is enough to get you started. I wish I could tell you that attracting customers to your website is easy, but the truth is, it's anything but. It takes hard work, creativity and above all, perseverance.

Here's to your success!

How to make a link page and outbound link structure?

2006-03-09T22:55:00.000-08:00

This is a major question, which comes in mind of every SEO, link building company and webmaster's that what kind of link page should be on their site or what is the best way of giving outbound link. Every body need links and to get it one has to give back some thing in return unless your contents are so good that the site is voluntarily linked by others. To give back link you need some link page or some other way of giving outbound links. What method should be adopted for outbound links structuring. In my opinion you can adopt following :

1. The best way to give outbound link is to give links within the content page as it is most useful for users who read your site contents. This method of linking is natural and long lasting as search engines want that the pages should be made for users and not for the search engines

2. You can make 4 to 6 resources pages but each page should be on particular theme and object of the page should match the theme of your site. In such a way you will provide the users more related resources on same topic at one place. It will help you in making an authority page.

3. You can also adopt the traditional style which is used in research papers as well as books also where links are given at the end of the page referred to as more references and resources. It gives more information to the users about any particular topic thus enriching their knowledge more. There are many other ways of making link page but the most common is to have a long page with huge list of sites on one single page and linking each site with its title or optimized anchor text without having any relevance between the sites. Such pages never bring traffic rather we just make it only for search engines, which is no doubt a Spam. Googlementioned in its SEOguidelines "Make pages for users, not for search engines ". Search engines are well aware of such kind of link pages and are definitely to be treated by search engines as "Link Farm" and will be penalized.

So in order to have the maximum benefit along with increasing traffic and giving the best to your site users make relevant, authority based link resources which would be beneficial for both your site as well as for the users.

Article Source: http://www.articles-galore.com

Improve the Sales of Your Internet Marketing

2006-03-06T03:43:00.000-08:00

When you put your all into learning something that you need to know, you can bet that other people can benefit from what you have learned. Internet marketing is one of those topics that lots of people need help with. So once you've gained knowledge and experience writingand selling an internet marketing ebook might be a good opportunity for you.

In order to make money in ebookpublishing, you have to have a product that people want. How-to books that fill a need are undoubtedly best-selling ebooks. An internet marketing ebook falls into that category.

There is nothing worse than an internet marketing ebook or how-to ebook that is filled with junk. Thus, in order for your internet marketing ebook to be a best seller, it has to offer useful information. If it doesn't, you'll get return requests and charge-backs left and right. Besides, if you don't have quality content in your internet marketing ebook, you can't comfortably offer a money back guarantee which is actually a vital aspect of marketing ebooks for profit.

Every ebook, especially an internet marketing ebook, needs to have a clear purpose before you begin to write it. Decide who your target audience will be - who will buy your book? Selecting a niche market to sell your internet marketing ebook to is half the battle. When you narrow your market rather than trying to satisfy the masses, you will have a much higher quality product and less competition. The trick to producing a best seller is to provide a solution to an existing problem that isn't effectively solved by numerous competitors.

Add value to your internet marketing ebook by offering freebies as bonuses for buying the ebook right away. A customer's perceived value is very important. Examples of bonuses might include things like a report on how to set up an affiliate program for an ebook, how to manage a pay-per-click campaign, or how to write results-oriented sales copy for an internet marketing website.

Realize that if your internet marketing ebook is going to make money, you've got to apply the internet marketing principles that will get your ebook noticed, walk the prospect through the sales process and close the sale. The first principle is driving traffic to your website. Whatever internet marketing techniques you use to accomplish that, targeted trafficis vital. Once you have visitors at your website the sales process kicks in.

Long-copy sales letters are undoubtedly best for selling an internet marketing ebook or any other ebook for that matter. Short copy just doesn't cut it. You see, when you are selling information products online, like an internet marketing ebook, you don't have the advantage of a face-to-face sales opportunity. Your web copy has to accomplish the sales for you.

To close the sale, the copy must convey a unique selling proposition - one or more things that stand out apart from your competition. It has to be attractive and compelling to your well-defined target market with headlines and subheads that grab attention by stating the product's benefit or solution, or invoking curiosity. Your pricing strategy and relative bonuses must give readers a high perceived value so they feel they are getting an internet marketing ebook and additional information or products that are worth what they are paying.

The sales copy also has to build credibility either by stating the author's credentials, using testimonials, or both. The reader's objections also have to be countered by the sales copy. This can be accomplished by addressing them directly and by offering a money back guarantee.

A long-copy sales letter for selling an internet marketing ebook or another "how to" ebook that creates a sense of urgency can result in immediate sales. People have a tendency to be impulse shoppers so creating urgency by offering a "limited time" price or bonuses or making the product available only for a limited time will prompt the close of the sale.

Another factor to consider when writing sales copy for your internet marketing ebook is, buyers want to know they can contact you. When you provide valid, easy-to-find contact information your credibility increases tremendously and as a result so will your sales for your internet marketing ebook or any ebook you choose to publish.

Article Distribution Service by rcplinks.com.

Article Source: http://www.articles-galore.com

Internet marketing complete simple for the trainee

2006-03-02T23:09:00.000-08:00

By: Christopher Enders

There are so many internet marketingpossibilities for promoting an online business, or even a traditional business. The ability to engage in internet marketing has truly opened the door for women in business and has made working from home a lot easier than it used to be.

Internet marketingcan be much less expensive than traditional marketingand it can reach a huge, precisely targeted audience. Because there are no geographic barriers in internet marketing, it is truly possible to do business worldwide and to sell anything from anywhere, even from the comfort of your own home. Following is a simple explanation of some of the most common internet marketing options that you can use to promote your business.

Article Distribution

Distributing professional articles with a resource box that directs readers to your websiteis a very valuable and effective method of internet marketing. The articles can be given away with permission to reprint at-will under the terms that the article content and resource box cannot be changed. Many websiteoperators will post these articles on their websites which will direct visitors to your website
as well as enhancing your internet marketing link campaigns.

Directory Listings

Directory listings are a form of internet marketing that can be very useful. Directories are a lot like search engines, only listings in the directories are anaged and ranked by people rather than by automated, electronic means. Many directories accept directory listings free of charge, so they can be an inexpensive and effective form of internet marketing.

Email Marketing

Email marketingis a viable internet marketing technique that is very similar to direct mail. Generally, it is best for internet marketing messages sent via email to be sent to opt-in or subscriber lists. However, third party lists can be purchased for the purpose of email marketing.

If using third-party lists, check into how the emailaddresses were collected and make sure that they are truly targeted lists with content gathered from individual who opted to receive information relevant to what you are sending.

Ezine Advertising

Ezine advertising, as an internet marketing option, is a lot like advertisingin a magazine; only the "magazine" is delivered to subscribers electronically rather than through the mail. Companies that distribute online newsletters often sale advertising in their newsletters as well, and some may even trade out for an advertisement in your newsletter.

Link Campaigns

Building links to your website from other websitesthat have information relevant to your target market should be a part of your internet marketing plan. Link popularity, the number of links coming in to your website, and link relevancy, the relevance of the website that is linking to you, can improve your website ranking in the search engines as well as directing targeted traffic to your site.

Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Marketing

Pay-per-click search engine marketing is one of the most successful forms of internet arketing.
Basically, pay-per-click search engine advertising is a process whereby you bid on specific keywordsthat will direct targeted trafficto your website. You are listed in the search engines based upon the amount you bid for the keyword. You are charged the bid price each time a visitor clicks on the search engine listing, through to your website. This is a good internet
marketing option because you only pay for successful click-throughs which result in traffic
to your website.

Portal Listings

Portals are similar to directories but are generally specific to a topic or industry. Because visitors to portals have interest in the topic, getting listed in a portal that is relevant to your business can be a very effective internet marketing technique for driving targeted, qualified traffic to your website.

Search Engine Marketing

Search engine marketing is a much preferred internet marketing option because the majority of visitors to just about any website come via the use of a search engine. Search engines use what is called spiders or crawlers which are really just software programs that index websites and determine their relevance, based on the search engine's rules, to the information a person using an internet browser is looking for.

There are also meta search engines that draw from the results of other search engines, and specialty search engines that are geared to a particular topic or industry. To get listed in search engines, a website needs to be optimized and submitted to the search engines. Major search engines include Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Alta Vista and others.

Seo Article :"Getting Started" Business Plan for Successful Internet Marketing

2006-02-27T03:45:00.000-08:00

By: Tun Keng Boo

You've just had a spark. A great idea came to you. Its a brilliant idea for a profitable online business. Maybe it is an original idea that has not been marketed online before. Maybe you have come up with a new spin on the ordinary. Whatever it is that has influenced you to start your online business, be sure that you have a plan before you begin. This is not the time to "pick it up as you go". These are some basic things that should be included in your business plan.

The business summary should give a brief description of the entire business and is an integral part of the overall business plan. After you have completed the business summary you should begin to list the objectives or the goalsthat you want to accomplish through the business. Next and perhaps most importantly, you should develop your marketingplan. The marketingplan will address all the specifics of the business. When developing the marketing strategy you should consider the following:

The target market. The target market is the customers that you expect to see visiting your site. For example will your product be more appealing to college students or those who are in retirement?

Consider the competition for your product when determining the marketingstrategy. Choose a product that will be seen as unique and useful. Visit sites that are offering the same or similar products. Find out the cost, and how they are marketing their product. Finds out the pros and cons of their business and try to improve your product based on their flaws.

Research the various methods for advertisingonline. You should become educated about search engines and how they work since each one is different. Also be sure that you know how to submit your site to search engines. You should be prepared to spend a small amount of money on advertising, but the profits that you will gain from the advertisements will prove to be money well spent.

Think about pricing. Again, look at the competition and see what similar products are selling for. Pricing can play a big role in the success of your product since selling a product well below the average price may lead customer to think that there is a problem with the product or that it is not of the best quality. However, pricing items too high could also detour customers.

Determine the shipping method. Be sure that you know how products will be shipped so that you can have shipping details clearly posted on your site. If you are shipping things of great value, you should consider providing shipping insurance. Also think about shipping outside the country that you live in.

Think about the different methods of payment that you will accept. If your business does not accept credit cards, you should be ready to give up half if not more of your sales. If you decide to accept credit cards will you use a merchant account or will you use a third party credit card processing center? Both will help you get started and the third party processing center will handle all of the business so you don't have to. You should decide which you will use and also if you will accept checks or money orders. It is essential to have a secure server when taking credit cards.

Developing a business plan and summary, identifying the target market, researching and developing a marketing strategy are all key points to a successful internet business. These few things will help your online businessto become a great success and also provide you with peace of mind knowing that you have thoroughly thought about and planned for the opening of your online business.

Article Source: http://www.articles-galore.com

Seo India: Website Content Say About Your Business?

2006-02-24T03:34:00.000-08:00

Q: I started my business about a year ago and everything is going fine. We're growing and making a profit, but the stress of running the business is really starting to get to me. I spend more time worrying than working. Sometimes the pressure is almost more than I can take. I'm starting to think that I'm not cut out to run my own business. Do you have any advice that might help me decide what to do?
-- Steven S.

A: I'm full of advice, Steven, and it's totally free. Just remember, you get what you pay for and I can't be held legally or morally responsible if my advice somehow lands you behind the counter at McDonalds. I'm not Dr. Phil, for petesake. I'm shorter and have more hair and less money.

Seriously, the first thing you need to do is take a few deep breaths and take comfort in the fact that you are not the first entrepreneur to feel the weight of the business world on your shoulders. Every business person, including yours truly, has felt the way you do at one time or another. For some, it's a feeling that occurs daily, especially when things aren't going as well as we'd like them to. And don't think the stress will magically disappear if your business takes off. I know people who run multimillion dollar corporations and they will tell you that the stress level goes up in proportion to the size of the business. These same people will also tell you they love what they do and would never consider doing anything else.

The difference between these entrepreneurs and you, Steven, is that they have been in business longer and have learned to not only handle stress, but to take stress and transform it into a driving force. They feed off the stress. It fuels their creativity and innovation. Stress challenges them, it makes them think, makes them better entrepreneurs.

I think the real question isn't whether or not you have what it takes to run a business. The real question is do you have what it takes to handle the stress of running a business. These are two very different questions and the answers depend totally on you.

Even on the best of days running a business can be incredibly stressful, not to mention overwhelming and exhausting. It's only natural that there will be times when you wonder if it's really worth it. Asking yourself the "should I just get a real job" question simply means that your human side is showing. And as a human you have a limited tolerance for things you can not control. And that's really where the stress of being an entrepreneur comes from. We worry about things we can't control. Things like finding new customers, paying the bills, making payroll, and a thousand other things. Sure, we can put forth our best efforts to make these things turn out in our favor, but we really can't control the outcome.

So we worry. And worry breeds stress and stress breeds doubt and doubt breeds the feeling that an 800 pound gorilla is using your chest for a lawn chair. It's only natural that you being to wonder, "Is this what I really want to do? Do I have what it takes to run my own business?"

I remember once complaining about the stress of running my business to an elder entrepreneur. He waved at me like he was swatting a fly and said, "Son, if it was easy, everybody would do it. Now suck it up and move on."

Suck it up and move on… probably the best business advice I've ever gotten. No fortune cookie was ever so on the money.

My mentor's eloquent point was this: running a business is never easy and always stressful, but that's what makes it so dang exciting. Running a business is like walking a tight rope… backward… with your eyes shut… and your pants on fire… Man, sure beats working for a living, huh.

Steven, it sounds to me like you're having what I call a "garbage truck moment." That's when the pressure of running your business starts getting to you and you begin to question whether the entrepreneurial life is right for you. The debts are mounting, your staff is shrinking (or growing), you get that nauseous feeling in the pit of your stomach and you find yourself longing for the apparent simplicity of driving a garbage truck.

Note to garbage truck drivers: save your hate mail, boys. I know you work very hard and I respect what you do. Without you the world would be a very different, very smelly place, indeed.

What's happening to you, Steven, has happened to us all. The stress is causing you to doubt not only your decision to start your own business, but your ability to run it, as well. There's no magic bullet for dealing with stress and you certainly can't eliminate it totally, so you must learn to handle it.

I believe the key to handling stress is to first identify the source of the stress, then formulate a plan to deal with it.

Here's what I do. Take a pencil and paper and list all the things that are causing you stress. For each item listed ask yourself: Is there anything I can do about this? Is there anything I can do to change this from being a point of stress to a point of accomplishment? In other words, is this something I have control over?

Stressing over things you can't control is a total waste of time. Tell yourself that you're burning brain cells in vain and mark that item off your list. Some people don't have this ability. Some people are just natural born worriers who are not happy unless they have something to worry about. They revel in worry. They work in worry like a great artist works in paint. Even when things are going great they worry that the sky is about to fall. If you are a natural born worrier, Steven, nothing I say will help you handle stress.

Great, now you have something else to worry about.

Next , determine if each point of stress is something that has happened in the past, is currently happening, or has not yet - or may never - happen. If the stress point is the past, there's not much you can do but attempt to rectify the situation causing the stress. If it's a current problem, formulate a plan to deal with the problem and eliminate the stress it's causing. And if you're stressing over things that may never happen, remember what Mark Twain said: "I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened."

Finally, Steven, it's important to remember that working for someone else can be just as stressful as working for yourself. Sure, you don't have the stress (and responsibility) associated with running a business, but you will have other stresses that can be far worse; like impossible work deadlines, sales quotas you can't meet, a boss that learned his management skills on a chain gang, coworkers who don't pull their own weight, possible layoffs, etc.

Very few things in life are without stress. Just ask any garbage truck driver.

Here's to your success!

SEO India: Link Populariy & Submission

2006-02-17T03:49:00.000-08:00

All Links Matter

Many times when webmaster embark on a link campaign, they obsess on the vaunted Google PageRank that the linking page has.

What a waste of time.

Today's site with a PageRank of 0 could have a PageRank of 6 tomorrow. I've seen this myself on 2 separate sites - as they come out of the gate, they are graced with a PageRank of 6. Now, prior to that, any webmaster who was obsessed with PageRank would never link to that site.

While the above mentioned scenario is probably not very common, the point is that while a site may be ranking low today, unless you know the webmaster personally, you don't know what other efforts that person is putting in to get that site ranked.

Furthermore, a site may have little or no PageRank but still receive tons of traffic. So, would you pass up a page that was getting 11k visitors a day just because it has a Google PageRank of 0?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

Another key element in consideration is that every unique link you get from a site counts. Whether it's from Joe's Pizza shop, or Pizza hut directly, to the search engine, they still count as two "votes" for your site.

Now, each link would carry different levels of weight in regards to relevancy, but if you can't get a link from Pizza Hut, you could get about 1,200 links from the various Joe's Pizza Shops located on the web to make up for it.

There is a current backlash of directory bashing. True, there are many directories that exist for the sole purpose of making money off of Google AdSense, and those directories should be punished accordingly.

But, there are many directory owners who are dedicated to having highly targeted and specific category related listings to provide for their visitors. These directories are a great resource for search engines as they help categorize the Internet - that's why directories will always be important on the Web.

So, always get a link from any relevant site whenever you can - regardless of Google PageRank or any other factor. Even Google was an unknown when they first appeared on the Internet.

Paul Bliss
www.SEOforGoogle.com

How To Ensure The Search Engines Find Your Website

2006-02-15T03:47:00.000-08:00

One of the most fundamental aspects of search engine optimisation (SEO) is ensuring that the pages within your website are as accessible as possible to the search engines. It's not only the homepage of a website that can be indexed, but also the internal pages within a site's structure. The internal pages of a site often contain important content such as products, services or general information, and therefore can be uniquely optimised for related terms. As a result, easy access to these pages is vital.

There are many do's and don'ts involved in ensuring all of your pages can be found by search engines. However, it is important to first establish how the search engines find and index web pages.

Search engines use "robots" (also known as "bots" or "spiders") to find content on the web for inclusion in their index. A robot is a computer programme that can follow the hyperlinks on a web page, which is known as "crawling". When a robot finds a document it includes the contents within the search engine's index, then follows the next links it can find and continues the process of crawling and indexing. With this in mind, it becomes apparent that the navigational structure of a website is important in getting as many pages as possible indexed.

When considering the navigational structure of your site, the hierarchy of content should be considered. Search engines judge what they feel to be the most important pages of a site when considering rankings and a page's position in the site structure can influence this. The homepage is generally considered the most important page of a site - it is the top level document and usually attracts the most inbound links. From here, search engine robots can normally reach pages that are within three clicks of the homepage. Therefore, your most important pages should be one click away, the next important two clicks away and so forth.

The next thing to consider is how to link the pages together. Search engine robots can only follow generic HTML href links, meaning Flash links, JavaScript links, dropdown menus and submit buttons will all be inaccessible to robots. Links with query strings that have two or more parameters are also typically ignored, so be aware of this if you run a dynamically generated website.

The best links to use from an SEO perspective are generic HTML text links, as not only can they be followed by robots but the text contained in the anchor can also be used to describe the destination page - an optimisation plus point. Image links are also acceptable but the ability to describe the destination page is diminished, as the alt attribute is not given as much ranking weight as anchor text.

The most natural way to organise content on a website is to categorise it. Break down your products, services or information into related categories and then structure this so that the most important aspects are linked to from the homepage. If you have a vast amount of information for each category then again you will want to narrow your content down further. This could involve having articles on a similar topic, different types of product for sale, or content that can be broken down geographically. Categorisation is natural optimisation - the further you break down your information the more content you can provide and the more niche key phrases there are that can be targeted.

If you are still concerned that your important pages may not get indexed, then you can consider adding a sitemap to your website. A sitemap can be best described as an index page - it is a list of links to all of the pages within a site contained on one page. If you link to a sitemap from your homepage then it gives a robot easy access to all of the pages within your site. Just remember - robots typically can't follow more than 100 links from one page, so if your site is larger than this you may want to consider spreading your sitemap across several pages.

There are many considerations to make when optimising your site for search engines, and making your pages accessible to search engine robots should be the first step of your optimisation process. Following the advice above will help you make your entire site accessible and aid you in gaining multiple rankings and extra traffic.

SEO Advice: For Your Website Content

2006-02-10T03:34:00.000-08:00

The web pages actually at the top of Google have only one thing clearly in common: good writing. Don't get so caught up in the usual SEO sacred cows and bugbears, such as PageRank, frames, and JavaScrïpt, that you forget your site's content.

I was recently struck by the fact that the top-ranking web pages on Google are consistently much better written than the vast majority of what one reads on the web.

Of course, that shouldn't be a surprise, considering how often officials at Google proclaim the importance of good content. Yet traditional SEO wisdom has little to say about good writing

Does Google, the world's wealthiest media company, really ignore traditional standards of quality in the publishing world? Does Google, like so many website owners, really get so caught up in the process of the algorithm that it misses the whole point?

Apparently not.

Most Common On-the-Page Website Content Success Features

Whatever the technical mechanism, Google is doing a pretty good job of identifying websites with good content and rewarding them with high rankings.

I looked at Google's top five pages for the five most searched-on keywords, as identified by WordTracker on June 27, 2005. Typically, the top five pages receive an overwhelming majority of the traffïc delivered by Google.

The web pages that contained written content (a small but significant portion were image galleries) all shared the following features:

• Updating : frequent updating of content, at least once every few weeks, and more often, once a week or more.

• Spelling and grammar : few or no errors. No page had more than three misspelled words or four grammatical errors. Note : spelling and grammar errors were identified by using Microsoft Word's chëck feature, and then ruling out words marked as misspellings that are either proper names or new words that are simply not in the dictionary. Does Google use SpellCheck? I can already hear the scoffing on the other side of this computer screen. Before you dismiss the idea completely, keep in mind that no one really does know what the 100 factors in Google's algorithm are. But whether the mechanism is SpellCheck or a better shot at link popularity thanks to great credibility, or something else entirely, the results remain the same.

• Paragraphs : primarily brief (1-4 sentences). Few or no long blocks of text.

• Lists : both bulleted and numbered, form a large part of the text.

• Sentence length : mostly brief (10 words or fewer). Medium-length and long sentences are sprinkled throughout the text rather than clumped together.

• Contextual relevance : text contains numerous terms related to the keyword, as well as stem variations of the keyword.

SEO Bugbears and Sacred Cows

A hard look at the results shows that, practically speaking, a number of SEO bugbears and sacred cows may matter less to ranking than good content.

• PageRank . The median PageRank was 4. One page had a PageRank of 0. Of course, this might simply be yet another demonstration that the little PageRank number you get in your browser window is not what Google's algo is using. But if you're one of those people who attaches an overriding value to that little number, this is food for thought.

• Frames . The top two web pages listed for the most searched-on keyword employ frames. Frames may still be a bad web design idea from a usability standpoint, and they may ruin your search engine rankings if your site's linking system depends on them. But there are worse ways you could shoot yourself in the foot.

• JavaScript-formatted internal links . Most of the websites use JavaScrïpt for their internal page links. Again, that's not the best web design practice, but there are worse things you could do.

• Links : Most of the web pages contained ten or more links; many contained over 30, in defiance of the SEO bugbears about "link popularity bleeding." Moreover, nearly all the pages contained a significant number of non-relevant links. On many pages, non-relevant links outnumbered relevant ones. Of course, it's not clear what benefit the website owners hope to get from placing irrelevant links on pages. It has been a proven way of lowering conversion rates and losing visitors. But Google doesn't seem to care if your website makes monëy.

• Originality : a significant number of pages contained content copied from other websites. In all cases, the content was professionally written content apparently distributed on a free-reprint basis. Note: the reprint content did not consist of content feeds. However, no website consisted solely of free-reprint content. There was always at least a significant portion of original content, usually the majority of the page.

Recommendations

•• Make sure a professional writer, or at least someone who can tell good writing from bad, is creating your site's content, particularly in the case of a search-engine optimization campaign. If you are an SEO, make sure you get a pro to do the content. A shocking number of SEOs write incredibly badly. I've even had clients whose websites got fewer conversions or page views after their SEOs got through with them, even when they got a sharp uptick in unique visitors. Most visitors simply hit the "back" button when confronted with the unpalatable text, so the increased traffïc is just wasted bandwidth.

• • If you write your own content, make sure that it passes through the hands of a skilled copyeditor or writer before going online.

• • Update your content often. It's important both to add new pages and update existing pages. If you can't afford original content, use free-reprint content.

• • Distribute your content to other websites on a free-reprint basis. This will help your website get links in exchange for the right to publish the content. It will also help spread your message and enhance your visibility. Fears of a "duplicate content penalty" for free-reprint content (as opposed to duplication of content within a single website) are unjustified.

In short, if you have a mature website that is already indexed and getting traffïc, you should consider making sure the bulk of your investmënt in your website is devoted to its content, rather than graphic design, old-school search-engine optimization, or linking campaigns.

How to Profit From Your Free Reprint Articles

2006-01-30T05:55:00.000-08:00

I came across a very clever tactic by an article author the other day. I was reading one of his free reprint articles and when I finished it, I realized just how smart he really was. Not simply for the content of the article, which contained very timely and useful information, but for the way he managed to hook the reader in and possibly profit from them. Let me explain:

Like me and other article writers, this author circulates his articles to hundreds of article distribution lists on a regular basis. His articles contain a link back to his web site, which is an ideal way to boost his site's link popularity on the search engines. Like other authors, he writes about hot topics and current events in his particular industry. Like most article authors, he writes in a casual, relaxed style that engages the reader quickly and earns their trust. BUT, (here comes the clever part), unlike most article marketers, this author always divides his articles into two or more parts.

The first part of the article is circulated as a stand-alone free reprint article via traditional distribution methods. But at the end of the article and in his Author Resource Box, he adds a link to invite the reader to view "a continuation of the article" on his web site. The link is described as either part two of the first article, or a related article with more detailed information or a specific tutorial on how to implement what was discussed in part one.

Why does he do this? Because most people reading the first article will naturally click on the link leading to the next. Once they are at his web site, he has much more control over how the rest of the article/tutorial is presented. If the article is a tutorial about an aspect of web design or search engine marketing, it generally includes software recommendations that integrate his affiliate links. He also manages to weave in Google AdSense ads at convenient points between the article paragraphs. And of course, by the time readers arrive at his site, he has engaged the reader and gained enough of their trust for them to take his recommendations and click on his affiliate and AdSense links so he earns commission from them. Very clever, don't you think?

You too can use this tactic to profit from your own free reprint articles, by doing the following:

1) Write articles that solve a problem for the reader, like a "how to" article or a basic tutorial.

2) Write about hot or new topics in your industry that people are likely to be searching for.

3) Write the article in two or more segments and save the key instructions for part two.

4) Design a landing page for the later part/s of your article that naturally weaves in your affiliate links and/or AdSense ads.

5) Create a text link "hook" to the continuation of your article, (your landing page), from the bottom of part one.

6) Make sure the first part of your article is well-written and contains useful information as a stand-alone article. The key is to provide a relevant, interesting article with a link to another relevant, interesting article. No-one wants to read a poorly-disguised ad for your affiliate products.

7) Submit part one of your article to free distribution lists.

8) Observe the increased link popularity your site attains and the resulting increase in search engine traffic.

9) Enjoy the benefits and potential profits from your article marketing efforts!

Third Screen SEO

2006-01-24T05:49:00.000-08:00

Yes, you read that correctly.

Third screen seo is well on it's way.

What is third screen seo?

Well, the Television is the "First" screen, the PC is the "Second" screen, and next up: The Cell phone, PDA and Blackberry.

These are the hand-held devices that almost everyone in the world has, and since they are portable, they can become more important than the TV and PC.

Why should you be concerned?

Coding for third screen is a different monster to tackle for developers - unless they build the entire site in CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) - then the screen size doesn't matter, since the technology will automatically adjust to the screen size.

So how can you possibly "optimize" for third screen?

As any technology emerges, there are many players who try to define the industry by taking the lead by providing better service, results or products. There will be sites that will house content where third screen viewers will visit to get their content.

Whether it's from Yahoo or some newly created portal site that becomes a leader, getting third screeners to those sites will be a new challenge that will have tremendous payoffs.

Besides making content easily accessible, but buidling site functionality that functions on a cell phone will determine the life and death of the next Amazon.

Have you ever tried to look for anything on the Internet through your cell phone? The easier a user can find what they want, the more likely they will return to your service to re-use it.

Third screeners who find valuable sites will gladly enter their cell number to get updates from trusted sources.

By ignoring the third screen, you could potentially be ignoring billions of potential buyers of your product or services.

-To your online success!

Paul Bliss
www.SEOforGoogle.com

Search Engine Optimization for Google

2006-01-19T09:27:00.000-08:00

With the recent Jagger update settling, many people find their sites no longer have the high rankings they had for so long enjoyed prior to the latest Google update.

So, the sites that lost these rankings are scrambling to find some answers as to why their site dropped. While it's my business to know the intricacies of how this particular update impacted the search algorithm, there are some common ground starting points that if you apply these to all of your sites, you should be able to survive any update intact.

-Proper naming structure
-Name your page titles with your keywords if possible
-Always have a sitemap
-Always include a robots.txt file
-If you must use a re-direct, be sure it's server side, not with a meta refresh tag
-Don't use hidden text
-Make sure your keyword phrase is included in your H1 tags
-Don't optimize for more than 2 keywords per page
-Use text links where possible
-In any product image, be sure to use the alt tag
-Use hyphens, not underscores when you name a page file
-Make sure your site has an error handling page
-Create a Google Sitemap and submit it to them (This is in addition to a typical sitemap)
-Offload all your js and css code
-Don't forget about meta tags

Be sure to follow these simple guidelines and you won't need to worry too much anytime Google has an update - your site will not be impacted by any filters that are checking for spamming, hidden text, or anything that resembles cloaking.

How Google Indexes Your Site

2006-01-19T09:24:00.000-08:00

Many of us have a question about google indexing , so I figured since so many are asking, it would make for a great article.

First off, let's describe what we are talking about. A "bot" is a piece of software from a search engine that is built to go through every page of your site, categorize it, and place it into a database.

Google has three well known bots: The Adsense bot, the Freshbot and the DeepCrawl.

The Adsense bot, as you could probably guess, is used for publishers who have Adsense on their sites. As soon as a new page is created, the JavaScript within the Adsense code sends a message to the Adsense bot, and it will come within 15 minutes to index the page so that it can serve up the most relevant ads.

But, for this conversation we are only concerned about the DeepCrawl and the Freshbot.

The Freshbot crawls the most popular pages on your website. It doesn't matter if that is one page or thousands. Sites like Amazon.com and CNN.com have pages that are crawled every ten minutes, since Google has learned that those pages have that amount of frequent changes. A typical site should expect to have a freshbot visit every 1 to 14 days, depending on how popular those pages are.

What happens to your site on a Freshbot visit is that it finds all of the deeper links in your site. It places those links into a database so that when the DeepCrawl occurs, it has a reference.

Once a month, the DeepCrawl bot visits your site and goes over all the links found by the Freshbot. This is the reason why it can take up to a month for your entire site to be indexed in Google - even with the addition of a Google Sitemap.

So, be patient and keep on adding content to your site, and work on getting valuable in-bound links to your site - Google will reward you for it.

-To your online success!

SEO Article - How to write an effective Title tag

2006-01-18T03:54:00.000-08:00

Making the following changes to your title tag can help improve ranking and increase targeted traffic to your website:

Include keyword phrases in your title tag
Order keyword phrases effectively within the title tag
Make the title tag appealing to the eye
Try to keep title tags as unique as possible
Avoid the list of common title tag mistakes

Include keyword phrases in your title tag:

Think of a title tag as the name above a shop. Imagine you are walking down a busy street with shops on either side of you. However every shop window is boarded up and all that is visible is its name. You mean to purchase a new Hi-Fi system and need to locate a suitable store. You look at all the names but are getting confused as to which one is for you. All of a sudden you see a store with 'Hi-Fi and Electrical' in its name. You enter and purchase your spanking new Hi-Fi system, but it is a bit expensive. And little did you know but the store next door also sold Hi-Fi systems but for a lot cheaper. However its name did not indicate this. In fact its name sounded more like a jewellery shop than an electrical store.

A search engine is rather like the shopper in the above example. It sees the title on each web page and determines whether this would be a good result to return based on its text. If you search for 'Hi-Fi' it is highly likely that some of the results returned will have 'Hi-Fi' in their title.

To be found using the search engines you should optimize your website for a set of keyword phrases. These keyword phrases should be included in your title tag. Suppose I was a website selling Hi-Fi systems, then I would like my website to appear in search engine results when searching with the phrase 'Hi-Fi systems'. If I include 'Hi-Fi systems' in my title tag I will increase the chances that the search engines will find the page and my ranking will be higher. Of course you are not limited to adding only one keyword phrase to your title, I would recommend two perhaps three but be careful not to make it too long. Also remember make it easy to understand and descriptive for a human.

Order these keyword phrases effectively:

Placing a keyword phrase at the start of the title tag allows it to be seen better by the search engines. Look at the following examples:

ABCDEF Electrical - Hi-Fi Systems
Hi-Fi Systems - ABCDEF Electrical
Both of these two examples are acceptable to human eyes but in the eyes of the search engines the second is see as more relevant if 'Hi-Fi Systems' is searched for because it appears at the start of the title. Generally it is best to place company name or the name of website to the end of your title tag.

Make your title enticing to the eye:

Although this point does not make a lot of difference to the search engines it can help to get people to click on your link in search results.
Which is easier on the eye?

XYZ COMPUTER HARDWARE
XYZ CoMpUtEr HaRdWaRe
XYZ Computer Hardware
I imagine that most people would say that (3) is the most pleasing. (1) and (2) are harder to read because of improper captilization. In (1) you see that using all capitals detracts the importance of any words you actually want to draw attention to and also some search engines may penalise this practice. (2) is simply a nightmare to read.

Try to keep title tags as unique as possible:

As each page on your site should be unique so should your title tags. Not only do unique title tags make the site more descriptive and navigable to a person they help search engines answer queries more accurately and allow more penetration of your site's pages in their databases.

Common title tags mistakes:

Do not leave your title tag blank, ever!
Do not use 'Untitled' or default text in your title tag.
If you are using a web page editing application it may place some default text in the title tag. Make sure you always check your title to make sure this doesn't happen.
Do not write title tags that are not relevant to the content on the page.
Search engines compare text in the title tag against actual textual content on your page to rate relevancy. If the two are not related this will decrease your ranking. Also it is annoying to a person who visits your page when the title tag they saw going into your page does not relate to the content on the page. This will ensure that this person leaves your site and maybe never comes back.
Do not stuff your title tag with repeating keyword phrases.
This may be looked upon by search engines as spamming and they may penalise your ranking.

Summary:

Ignoring title tags is definitely a mistake if you aim to achieve high rankings. Although it takes a lot more than the title tag to propel you to the top of the search engines it can be very effective in making a search engine more secure that your site's content is more relevant than a competitor's.

SEO Article - SEO deadly sins - mistakes that reduce web page ranking

2006-01-18T03:44:00.001-08:00

The following are a list of SEO mistakes can ensure that your site maintains a low ranking with the search engines. Avoid at all costs.

Specifying no title for your page
Excessive use of images or Flash animation on a page
Complicated menu systems

Specifying no title for your page:

I cannot stress how important the title of a web page is. Failing to specify a descriptive, keyword optimized title will do untold damage to your ranking with the search engines. It is the equivalent to owning a shop and boarding up its windows. Ideally each page on your site should have a unique, content-specific title following the guidelines specified in the Title Tag Optimization article.

Excessive use of images or Flash animation on a page:

If your web page has plenty of nice-looking graphics and eye-popping Flash animation and not a lot of textual content it may indeed look nice but have you ever considered what how the search engines might see it. Search engines thrive on textual content, scavenging as much text as they can but unfortunately they cannot understand images or Flash animations like we can and so will find nothing of real value on your page. Try to balance your page so that the textual content is given priority and that any images or animations are used only when needed. Also it is a good idea to attach some text to an image by using its ALT tag as search engines use this text when determining rank.

Complicated menu systems:

Search engines spiders that crawl through our pages are a relatively primitive bunch. They find in hard to navigate complicated menu systems implemented for example in JavaScript or as a Java applet. Just because it is easy for a human to navigate through the site never assume it will be as easy for a search engine spider. A menu system using simple textual links will be easier for a spider to understand and it will be able to successfully navigate your site. A lot of the time complicated menu systems can be replicated using textual links and CSS.

If you must use a complicated menu system be sure to provide a site map that is clearly accessible from the homepage of your site and contains only textual links to your pages. This ensures that even if the spider cannot understand your menu system that it will be able to find the pages on your site.

SEO Article -Link Popularity, the make or break element for Search Engine Rankings

2006-01-18T03:44:00.000-08:00

Link popularity is the single most influential factor for determining how well a web site will perform in search engine rankings. A web site's link popularity is computed from the number and more importantly, the quality of links pointing to a web site.

Link Popularity history
Main classes of links
How to build link popularity

Link Popularity history:

To gain a better understanding of link popularity it is useful to know why it became so crucial for search engine rankings. In the past a web page's ranking was determined, amongst other factors, by the number of keyword occurences within 'on-page' elements i.e. in page text, META tags, title tag. When web developers learned that they could trick a search engine to return their web pages by cramming keywords into their pages the search engines had to get a bit smarter. They were using 'on-page' elements to determine relevance so it was only natural that they would look to elements out of direct control of the web page creator i.e. 'off-page' elements. Search engines made the assumption that the greater the number of links from other sites pointing to a web site, the more popular the web site is and therefore a more quality resource. This worked nicely in theory but in practice it was also to be abused.

Web site owners figured out many ways to get links pointing to their web sites one example of which was through the use of link farms, pages the contained nothing more than a collection of links, Quantity of links was being abused so the search engines made use of the old saying "quality not quantity" and began to assign a quality factor to each of the links pointing to a web site. Now web sites that had a higher number of high quality links were looked upon favourably by the search engines. Building link popularity became a science in itself and today is still the most time-consuming and frustrating activity for a search engine optimizer.

Main classes of links:

Note: In the following examples SiteA is our web site and SiteB is an outside site (i.e. a web site under a different domain name than SiteA).

Inbound links:
Inbound links to a web site are links that originate from an outside web site . An example would be a link on SiteB pointing into a page on SiteA.

SiteA <----- SiteB

Outbound links:
Outbound links from a web site are links pointing to a page on an outside web site. An example would be a link on SiteA pointing out to a page on SiteB.

SiteA -----> SiteB

There are two further classifications of links:

Reciprocal links:
An example of a reciprocal link is when SiteA links to SiteB AND SiteB links to SiteA, the link is reciprocated by both parties.

SiteA -----> SiteB
AND
SiteA <----- SiteB

One-way links:
An example of a one-way link is when either SiteA links to SiteB OR SiteB links to SiteA, it is one-way only.

SiteA <----- SiteB
OR
SiteA -----> SiteB

To achieve a high link popularity the type of links to build are inbound one-way links. This simulates how natural links are created i.e. links that people create to point to your site because they found it worth linking to.

For outbound links it is natural to assume that they might decrease link popularity of a web site but this is not true. You do not give away your link popularity when you link to another site. They do not add to your link popularity though.

Reciprocal links can add to your link popularity if the web site that you exchange links with has a higher link popularity than your site. However they are not as powerful as inbound, one-way links as they are quite artificial in nature i.e. most probably created by communication between the owners of both sites.

How to build link popularity:

So it is quite obvious that to help build up a nice link popularity many inbound, one-way links need to be created. This can be achieved in a number of different (and most importantly, legal) ways:

Directories:
Directories are categorized listings of links from around the web. Many, many directories exist and vary in their methods of getting your link posted on them. They provide a great source of quality inbound, one-way links. Getting listed in quality directories such as DMOZ or Yahoo can be more beneficial for your link popularity than a lot of links from smaller, newer directories. Directories are discussed in my Directories article

Great site content:
The most powerful way to get inbound, one-way links is to have great site content that other web sites will want to link to. This allows you to get links from sites other than directories, which can definitely be better. The best thing about this is that it requires no communication on your part, it just happens naturally. If your site has poor content then others sites may not link, including the directories. Most of the top ranking web sites today got to the top because of great content. Writing interesting and informative articles for your web site is a good way of getting these kind of links.

Emailing web site owners:
If you come across a listing of links on a web site other than a directory e.g. a links page on a somebody's personal web site, it can do no harm to write the web site owner a polite email requesting a link to your site from their page. They may request a reciprocal link in return but sometimes they do not and you can get a quality inbound, one-way link for your efforts. I have got many links in the past using this method. In my email I always ask them to visit my site first before making a decision to link and I personalise each email with a comment or two about their site.

Summary:

The best and most effective way of increasing your search engine rankings is working to improve your web site's link popularity. This can be achieved by getting as many inbound, one-way links as you can from quality sites such as directories. Other ways to get these links are having great content on your site and requesting a link to your site from other web sites.

Increasing link popularity is a time-consuming and sometimes frustrating process but is definitely worth the time and effort when you see a dramatic increase in traffic.

Why are Some E-commerce Solutions Not Search Engine Friendly?

2006-01-12T23:18:00.001-08:00

There are many factors that come into play when attempting to determine if an e-commerce system is not search engine friendly. These factors are important to understand and can help you determine if the system is right for you.

CGI-BIN and Scripting Languages

Shopping Carts or e-commerce systems using the CGI-BIN format typically utilize the PERL scripting language. When a search engine finds /cgi-bin/ in a URL it typically ignores it. There are however some search engines that can index beyond the /cgi-bin/ element of the URL. However, there are many that cannot and do not index beyond the /cgi-bin/ element.

Then we have the database driven shopping cart or e-commerce system that operates on one of the more advanced Object Oriented Event Driven (OOED) languages such as PHP, ASP, .NET, .JSP, or Cold Fusion (just to name a few). These advanced languages utilize the question mark (?) and ampersand (&) in the URL to identify the variables required to pull the information out of the database and into the dynamically generated page. Not all search engines are able to index beyond the question mark (?) or the ampersand (&) making it difficult to be indexed by all search engines.

Meta Data

Shopping carts or e-commerce systems typically re-use the same set of Meta keywords and Meta descriptions throughout the dynamically generated pages. This simply means that an orange would have the same Meta keywords and Meta description as an apple. Obviously this does not work very well for search engines that utilize the Meta keywords and Meta descriptions. The Meta keywords and Meta descriptions should be based upon the product or the category.

Page Titles

Page titles are one of the most important elements in search engine optimization. Page titles inform the purchaser that your page offers exactly what they are looking for. Since many e-commerce solutions re-use the same page title which is typically the company name or the site URL that it can prevent your site from moving to the top of the search engine results. Each page should stand on its own.

URL Rewrites

Many programmers use URL rewrite technologies to make the URL's friendly to the search engines. However, not all rewritten URL's are created equal. Some people rewrite URL's to simply remove the question mark (?) and ampersand (&) from the resulting URL. However, this does not provide the best form of rewritten URL.

Hidden Session ID's

Hidden session id's are session id's that are placed in the link, but not in the resulting URL. Because session id's use the question mark (?) or ampersand (&) in the link, this causes many search engines to cease attempting to index the site.

Session id's are used to keep track of the visitor as they add items to their cart for purchase. Not all shopping carts utilize session id's, but those that do can cause problems if not properly programmed to keep the session id's out of the links. Some programmers use cookies, but those can also be problematic if the shopper turns cookies off like so many people do.

Heading Tags

Heading tags are those tags that identify the importance of a piece of content and elevate it above the remaining content. For example, an

heading tag is the most important of all heading tags. When a page uses the

tag it announces to the search engines that the enclosed text is of vital importance and it is usually the topic of the page.

For example, a page about Mandarin Oranges that uses an

tag enclosing the words Mandarin Oranges identifies to the search engine that the main topic of the page is, in fact, Mandarin Oranges. This can elevate your page above all others that talk about Mandarin Oranges if they do not utilize the

tag.

Over use of the

tag on a single page can be considered "spam" by the search engines. This can get the page banned and may even get the site banned for "spamming".

ALT Attributes

ALT attributes are typically ignored in the majority of CGI-BIN and scripting language e-commerce solutions for various reasons. These reasons could be as simple as the belief that the site owner or webmanager doesn't understand the value of these fine attributes to the programmers didn't understand their value and though the exercise of adding extraneous information was not worth the effort. However, they are just as important as the other content describing the item or product.
Flash Navigation

Some programmers feel it is important to utilize Flash to enhance the site presentation. Unfortunately, this hinders the search engines from navigating through the site because Flash does not utilize standards linking technologies.

JavaScript Navigation

JavaScript is an executable script residing on either the client-side or the server-side. This technology allows for the use of "eye candy" and is does not allow navigation through the entire site by some search engines because they cannot execute or parse the codes to perform the navigation required to reach the other pages.

Frames

Frames provide an easy way to manage navigation in one window while providing the content in another window. While this may sound good, but the problem with this situation is the internal pages get indexed without the frameset. That means if a person finds that page, they can't navigate to the other sections of the site.

Coding to Standards

Many times when a site is developed the programmer writes codes that are not standards compliant. This can create problems in many of the browsers available and mean that the visitor isn't able to utilize the site. If the visitor isn't able to use the site, the visitor isn't able to shop.

Why are Search Engine Friendly Shopping Carts Needed?

2006-01-12T23:18:00.000-08:00

The objective of any shopping cart or e-commerce system is to allow visitors to shop on a business site for products they want. Not all search engines are created equal with equal capabilities. Some search engines are able to navigate through dynamic sites while others are not. Sometimes the search engines that are able to navigate through dynamic sites have problems indexing and navigating through the entire site.

These factors eliminate many e-commerce sites from the search engine result pages or hamper their advancement to the top of the search engine result pages. For a business to be competitive on the World Wide Web, all of its pages need to be indexed and developed correctly.

For the past 10 years programmers have been developing e-commerce systems that required the sites to compete at the site level. This required many site owners to find a company that could optimize their sites, create doorway or landing pages that focused upon a product or category, or use any number of other means to elevate the e-commerce site in the search engines. These tactics have worked successfully, but the search engines want pages that are of unique value to present to their clients. Dynamic sites hamper the model search engines desire.

In order to meet the demands of the search engines and be indexed by all search engines new techniques must be employed. These new techniques can make an e-commerce system more search engine friendly if they are developed correctly. Some systems will never be search engine friendly and result in less than adequate placement in the search

SEO is part of SEM

2006-01-12T23:07:00.001-08:00

Time and again I see people getting upset because their pages don’t rank as high as they want them to rank on the few words or phrases they try to optimize them for. But what makes an SEO consultant successful? Is it the ability to make a web site rank high on certain words or phrases?

The answer is plain and simple: “No!”SEO is part of a bigger thing called “Search Engine Marketing”. Any SEO consultant needs to know at least a bit about Search Engine Marketing (SEM). A few things are important and at the same time very helpful for getting those pages rank high in the Search Engines:

What is your targeted audience?

Which people are interested to visit your web site? “The people that look for my keywords.” is the easy answer, and of course you reach a big group with that logic. But there are so many more people that are interested as well; they just need to be confronted with your web site. Example, somebody that is interested in vacations in the south of France , may very well be looking for sun vacations or warm water beaches.

So look for who is interested as well. A good way to do this is to just do a search on your existing search term, and open some of the results in the range of rank 20 to 100. Just quickly look over those sites and you will

definitely find some words you never thought of before. Of course using WordTracker is also a good way. But some alternative ways definitely work too.

Write good copy

Good copy writing is very important. Writing copy that makes the search engines rank your pages higher does not necessarily change those visitors into buyers. The search engines think different from your visitors. Even though the web crawlers do try to look at it in the same way, they are not human beings. Web crawlers are not sensitive to the feeling that a text creates while reading it. So often, when writing for the search engines, the writer switches off his/her own feelings as well and starts to think like a web crawler.

Combining the 2, writing for the search engines and your visitors, is almost a form of art. But it is not as difficult as you may think. Just write for your visitors and edit the text afterwards so that the search engines like it also. It really is as simple as that. And if you can not manage to get your key words in, you may need to consider choosing other key words. If you can not come up with your pre-chosen key words, then how do you expect people to use them when while looking for what your web site has to offer?

So basically it comes down to 2 things: Knowing your audience and knowing how to write for them. Once you know these 2 things, the SEO work will be easier and more effective.

Home business – Making money with your web site

2006-01-12T23:07:00.000-08:00

With the Internet it is so easy to start a home business. Just set up a web site and start selling. You can sell your own products, practically to the whole world, or be an affiliate for a bigger company and sell their products online.

Many people started their home business like this. Just throw in a couple of bugs to register a web site and get a host and the money will start to roll in, right?
Bad luck, it doesn’t work like that. Most home business owners come to this conclusion after a couple of months and some just forget about it. Others realize that marketing is the next step and start spending some money on marketing.
New as they are to the world of internet marketing, they spend some money on pay-per-click campaigns, try to get some banners flying around on the internet, but it’s all in vain. Often the costs are so high that the net result is negative, zero or not worth all the trouble.

I’ve been there, it is a lot of work and not much results. Then I found something interesting: “search engine optimization”. It is possible to get high rankings in the search engines, simply by optimizing your web site for the search engines. And with high rankings come visitors that are looking for what your web site has to offer.

After studying search engine optimization I decided to make it my own home business. I love SEO and am now delivering my services just like any other home business owner.
With your home business you can make money, if you get your internet marketing organized. A simple list of products in a web site won’t do it. You need to give your visitors something to come for. A shop owner with just products on the floor of his shops and a counter where you can pay won’t sell much. A shop needs to have the right atmosphere, nice lights, etc. The products need to be presented in the right way. The same thing goes for a web site.

You need to present your home business in the right way. Then people will like your web site and start surfing around on it and maybe even buy something. Also they need to find your web site.

So, your web site needs to be good looking and findable, findable through the search engines. If you are a web master with good html knowledge, all you need is for your web site to be analyzed and you can implement the optimizations your self. If you do not have that much knowledge about html, there are many resources available.

Everybody can make money with a home business. But setting up a web site and waiting for the money to roll in, is not an option. As with all things, you need to work for your money.

The Don'ts of Directory Development

2006-01-03T06:19:00.000-08:00

Article posted by Edward Lewis, aka pageoneresults™
SEO Consultants Directory System Administrator
Orange, California United States

Over the years I've been involved in quite few topics concerning various directories that appear to have been manually removed and/or penalized by various search engines. From those discussions and my research over those years, I've put together a list of Basic Don'ts when developing a directory. Remember, these are just the basics...

Don't launch prematurely

Sure, it's okay to alert members within a community where you are known to get some initial feedback but, do not make any public announcements until you've really looked things over. And, I do mean look them over. From top to bottom and left to right, make sure you've got it covered.

Don't use an off the shelf directory script

Unless of course you've changed every footprint that the script may leave. Sorry Script Makers, there are too many abusers of your scripts out there and the footprints your users leave are very easy to track, even by the most unsophisticated types. If I were a search quality engineer and noticed these footprints were abusive in nature on a large scale, I'm going to take out your entire user base, no questions asked and no explanations given.

See additional information on off the shelf directory scripts below.

Don't generate a directory based on your entire taxonomy

Sorry all you "my site has over a million pages indexed" types. I've seen what you have indexed and you've made a major mistake in your strategy. Filling the search indices with empty categories is not a valid strategy. You do realize that the search engines will index just about anything first time around, right? That is not what counts. It's what happens after the fact that counts.

Sure, Googlebot will ferociously attack a dynamic directory and index thousands, hundreds of thousands and even millions of pages. Even if those pages are void of any real content. It is unfortunate that this happens, but it is the nature of the beast. You can be assured that if you are filling Google's index, or any SE's index with that many pages, a search quality engineer is going to be on top of things. And you can also be assured that your competitors will be too!

Don't use deprecated markup in your development process

Sorry all of you "it has to be in tables types" or, "you don't need to validate types". These days, if you plan to make an entrance, you need to do it in a way that sets the next level of standards in your chosen space. Keep it simple. You're a directory and that should be your main focus. You are presenting information for the user, present it professionally both visually and semantically.

Don't run AdSense

Sorry Google, but I think this is a mistake for any directory launching these days that is serious about establishing their initial brand in the marketplace. There are plenty of AdSense Directories out there already, no need to continue adding more. Once a directory becomes established, advertising of this nature may be an option, but not at launch or, anytime shortly thereafter.

For those of you running AdSense, don't put it above your directory results. Don't blend the AdSense in with your directory results. Don't trick the user into clicking your AdSense listings. This is becoming common practice with many directories I see occupying the space. Sure, trick your users into clicking your AdSense ads. Eventually this strategy will backfire. Or, maybe it won't. Either way, "I feel it is a short term deceptive strategy and very unprofessional."

Don't buy links

Sorry Link Brokers, but I think this is a mistake too. You, as the directory owner/administrator may want to invest some time in seeking quality link partners and, there may be a monetary investment involved. But, those high quality link partners are going to be your bread and butter as they say. Forget about the numbers! Focus on the quality of the link, not the quantity of links. This is another major mistake I see being made by today's directory promoter.

Don't brag about anything

Sorry all you Egomaniacs, but this is definitely a mistake and one that search engine representatives don't take kindly to. I know how good it feels to reach certain goals and I too like to brag every now and then. But, when it comes to promoting a directory these days, keep your mouth shut. Sorry to be so blunt, but this is a major downfall for many. The search engine representatives do read the forums and blogs. Many SEO's snitch on themselves and then blame it on an algo. In all probability it was a manual ban because they were touting 500,000 or 1,000,000 pages indexed by Google, most of them void of any content other than standard includes.

Don't get involved with rings of any kind

Sorry all of you "friends" out there who decided to develop a network of directories that are basically self-promotional outlets for your products and services and/or those of your friends. This is not about promoting yourselves, this is about providing quality information for your visitors. Wow, what a concept that is huh? One that I see many have forgotten.

Don't expect to get rich overnight

What a flawed concept that is these days, especially when it comes to developing a directory. Sure, some of you guys/gals have made some decent numbers but, it didn't come overnight, did it? It takes dedication, loyalty, devotion, integrity and, a sincere passion for whatever niche you may be targeting.

Last but not least, don't let "them" get you down

If you find yourself involved in discussions concerning your directory, do not, I repeat, do not talk down to your prospective client base. If you as the directory administrator are not adept at discussion in a professional community environment, then don't do it. Have your senior editor or whomever else has the marketing skills required to address any issues about your directory at the public level. Hire someone if you have to.

Don't forget, you are representing your directory, first impressions are lasting impressions. Word of mouth is a very powerful tool. Leave a strong first impression and watch how quickly the word spreads.

SEO Spending - Rising Budgets for Search Engine Optimization

2006-01-03T06:12:00.000-08:00

SEO Spending - A Smart Approach

Spending on SEO services is on the rise and there are good reasons for that trend. The first is that search engines are an increasingly pivotal online location for consumers and B2B buyers and this is where businesses have to show up to access consumers. The second is that marketers are putting more of their marketing budgets into search engine marketing. That would include paid ads, text link purchases and optimization of websites. This competitiveness means you need to plan better and invest more.

According to a recent study by Credit Suisse, the market for online ads will increase 32 percent to $16.6 billion in 2006. They suggest that Yahoo, the most visited website, and number one search engine Google will win new advertising business at the expense of publishers and broadcasters. That estimate includes paid advertising but research shows people are not clicking on ads and that advertisers have given up on clickthroughs, and instead are looking for branding benefits. If you spend smartly and hire the best SEO firm, you won't have to rely on branding alone and forego real clickthroughs from real paying customers.

In the eight years I've been an SEO specialist, I've noticed that those who spend the most on SEO get better returns on that investment. That seems like a no brainer, but you really need to think about search engine results for a moment. The top ranking sites get all the clicks, so unless your SEO expenditure can get you into those top rankings, your performance will lag. Estimates are that the top ranking listing gets 40% of clicks, the second spot 20% and the third captures 10% of all viewers. The rest get a few percent each.

The number one problem of most search engine optimization campaigns is under funding. Even after getting outstanding results, companies still hold back on SEO spending. The bar is being raised on competition as big money invades the search engine arena the
"no spend" policy of some companies will result in continual disappointment with their SEO providers and the value of SEO. Failure to build a good case for growing SEO budgets could result in substantial losses for some companies.

Intense Competition Because It's Valuable Real Estate

Consider Google's dominating market share of searches (Hitwise just reported Google has a 42% market share and visitors spend two to three times longer session times than other search engines.). For SEO, Google is everything. In essence, they control access to consumers with their algorithm. Google rankings are very competitive. Everyone wants that same piece of real estate. Companies will need to spend money to capture top rankings in the free organic search results.

SEO is still a mystery to most marketing managers and it's only going to get worse. Google's algorithm will become more complex as they try to defy all attempts at manipulation of rankings. Don't expect too many non-information science people to explain it well. You need to consider the depth of the SEO's knowledge when planning SEO. They're a lot of web design firms trying to hang out an SEO consultant shingle. Some may have a good SEO expert working for them, but you'll want assess the ability and skill of the specific person working on your project. Watch out for outsourced work. It may be cheaper but you get what you pay for.

Google is getting much better at detecting and filtering out paid links, so don't expect that approach to continue working. In the end, it's the optimized development of your site that will provide good rankings, along with some good links from on-topic sites!

Getting Quotes

You might get quotes varying from $3000.00 to $30,000.00+ for your SEO campaign and your return will depend on what you spend and on the skill of the search engine optimizer and the complete range of services offered. Stay focused on what you need to achieve. That approach will ensure the long term development of your search engine presence.

Don't ask for guarantees on keyword phrases. Keyword guarantees are unethical. The fact that you're asking for guarantees means you have no confidence in the SEO provider. Guarantees lead to spam because the guarantor will take desperate measures to get that ranking and when you get aggressive with search engines, they will take action.
Hire a consultant/service provider that you can see is a master in SEO work. That is your guarantee.

The key here is that your SEO investment has to be sufficient to get your site to the top three ranks. Any investment below that is bound to be disappointing for most companies. It's the same in any area of promotion really. Always keep in mind how highly targeted and often highly qualified the visitors to your site will be. Many require minimal sales effort. They're ready to buy and all you have to do is show up.

Make 2006 a successful year for your company!

Gord Collins is SEO Director at Bay Street SEO. Gord writes frequently in magazines, blogs, and forums on new trends in search engine optimization and search engine marketing. He provides SEO services to numerous major U.S. companies and other SEO companies.

Submit your Website

2005-12-30T23:17:00.000-08:00

In order to increase link popularity and search engine awareness of your site, it is important to submit your site to different directories. There are many directories, some general, others specific and your site has to “fit in”.

Why should you submit your site to directories?
Directories are not search engines. Unlike search engines, directories manually check each and every site that is submitted to them. The human factor is important to make sure that real web sites only are published in the directory and that all these web sites comply with the rules that the directory has set.

Search engines use directories as sources for web sites because the data within a directory is, due to the human factor, of the highest quality.

The single most important directory is the Open Directory Project. This directory has over 7 million web sites filed and is one of the sources for many search engines (Google being the biggest.) Besides the Open Directory Project, there are many directories that you can submit your site to. Below this article you will find a list of directories that you can use.

Do NOT submit your site to thousands of search engines!
Many people believe that, in order to maintain (high) rankings, they have to submit their site to all search engines over and over again. This is absolutely not true. You need to submit your site only once to a search engine and even if you don’t your web site will probably be found through the directories. Once a search engine has found your site, it will keep it in its index and re-crawl the site every now and then until you take your site of line or disallow it through the robots.txt file on your server.

Google
Yahoo: First go to the category you want to submit to and then click on "suggest a site".

Teoma: Click on "Submit your site"
Overture

Don't forget to get links from other web sites as well. With the link popularity from the directories you´re not done yet. The more links that point at your web site, the more popular your site is for the search engines and the higher your rankings.

The Importance of the Page Title - By Indian SEO.

2005-12-30T03:52:00.000-08:00

The title tag is one of the more important tags in a page. The title gives information about the contents of the page and the search engines use it in a great deal to determine relevance to a search query.

The title is important for the search engines to rank high and it tells your visitors what the page is about. Let’s first look at which rules to follow when writing a title for a page:

Use about 60 to 70 characters
Make sure your keywords are in the title
Make it attractive

The title is meant to show up in the bar at the top of the window. So the length is important. If it is too long, only the first part will be visible. Higher resolution screen can show more characters but first of all, not everybody has a high resolution screen and second: Search engines won’t show more than the first 60 to 70 characters in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). Making them much longer just doesn’t have any purpose. You can leave them shorter of course, depending on the content of the page.

For good rankings in the search engines it is wise to include the phrase(s) that you want to rank high on. There are many opinions on the necessity of repeating keywords in the title, but I would advise not to repeat it more than once. Of course it depends a lot as well on the phrase it self. 2 short words can be repeated, while a phrase of 3 long words is difficult to repeat. First thing to ask your self is if the title makes sense to the visitor. If it does, you’re doing fine.

The last rule is probably the most important rule. Make the title as attractive as it can be. There is a property of a title that is often forgotten and that is its click through rate.

Click Through Rate? Isn’t that something that applies to PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising and similar things? Yes it is, but it also applies to the titles of your pages. Suppose your page shows up in the SERPs on average 100 times per day, and as a result you get 1 visitor per day. Then the click through rate of the title is 1 %. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could get that up to 25% or 50% or even more perhaps?

In the SERPs, the title is the face of your page. It needs to be attractive enough and stand out between the other 9 titles. So take a look at the SERP you want to rank high in and look at those titles. While designing the titles for your pages, compare them with the other titles in the SERPs. Make your titles stand out and receive even more visitors. SEO is about more than just high rankings.

Making the Title Attractive

So how do we do make the title attractive? There are a couple of things that are important to know.

The title needs to "stand out" between the other 9 titles in the SERP
The title should address the action the searcher has in mind (while still being related to the search phrase) Address the searcher personally

Title stands out

The Goal here is to make your title be the first thing people look at. In order to know how to make the title stand out, you need to do a search for your main keyword phrase for that page.

Are most titles long? -> Make your title short
Are most titles short? -> Make your title long
Use a short start phrase (the main keyword phrase) followed by a “ – “ Etc.

There are so many SERPs, it is difficult to set a simple set of rules. But one thing you can do is to copy all titles into a word document (just the titles, not the snippets) so you can look at them line after line. Does any title stand out? Add your own title to it, and look at it again. Ask other people to look at that list and ask them to tell you which title draws their attention. This may be something you don’t do in 5 minutes, but it may very well be worth the time spent.

Title addresses the action the search has in mind

This one is very important. After attracting peoples attention, the title needs to address the action they have in mind. A few examples:

Widget Paint – Your widgets look better with Widget Paint
2 Widgets – Connecting 2 Widgets
Widget manufacturers – Widget reviews Etc.

Title addresses the searcher personally

Also important. An action that a searcher has in mind is often personal. This does not mean every action has a personal goal, but still it is often possible to be personal, using words like "you" and "your".

A title doesn’t have to follow all things above, often 1 or 2 is enough! It depends of course very much on the subject. Some subjects are easier than others. Do follow your instincts, they’re often the best guide, if you just would allow them and listen to them.

Search Engine Optimization & Marketing from SEO India

2005-12-28T20:11:00.000-08:00

Search Engine Optimization helps home businesses

By Peter Faber

The relative unknown business of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is growing now that so many people are trying to create new income sources online. Home based businesses, generally selling through a web site, find that it is not at all as easy as it may seem and many fail to ever make any money. Those who find a good SEO company see their chances of success increase.
Search Engine Optimization or SEO as it is generally named, helps web masters to increase the number of visitors to their web site. They optimize a web site in order to have it positioned in the top 10 of a search engine result page.

“The logic is simple,” says Peter Faber of www.seo-works.com: “A web site that ranks in the top 10 for its important keyword phrases, receives many visitors per day, a web site that doesn’t rank high, struggles to make money.”

According to Mike Pass of www.increaseranking.com SEO is an essential part of any home business: “With the search engines being one of primary sources of targeted traffic on the internet, search engine optimization should be an essential part of any home based internet marketing strategy. A knowledgeable search engine optimizer can be your best source of a positive ROI.” (Return On Investment)

Good SEO firms and consultants know that just high rankings isn’t enough to be successful on the internet and will often advise web masters to improve their web sites as a total, and to go for more than just for the good positions in the search engines. Leann Pass of www.leannsdesigns.com explains: “Targeted traffic that doesn't convert to sales is worthless. Website design can literally make or break a sale. Visual appeal and ease of navigation are necessities. Present a poorly designed site and your targeted traffic will become your competitor's customer.”

There are many SEO firms and consultants that practice unethical SEO. Methods that are against the Terms Of Service (TOS) of most of the major search engines like Google are not appreciated because they reduce the quality of the results of a search engine. Something that is very important for every search engine.Google's TOS for instance, shows that unethical SEO practices are not allowed. Their systems try to identify web sites that do make use of unethical practices and punishment in the form of lower positions or even being banned are a risk that every web master takes with these practices.

Ethical SEO takes a bit more time but can give great ROI.

Source:www.seo-works.com

The Basics of Search Engine Optimization - Some FAQs

2005-12-27T03:09:00.000-08:00

By Glenn Murray

Editorial Note: SEO-News will not be published next week but will re-commence the first week of January, 2006.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a foreign field to a lot of people. Rarely does a day go by when I don't get asked a few questions on the subject. So I've decided to post this FAQ article in the hopes that it will help people understand the basics, and make them a little more comfortable with the whole domain.

Q: Why are Search Engines Important To Me?

A: 85% of all website traffic is driven by search engines. The only online activity more popular than search is email. 79.2% of US users don't go to page 2 of search results. 42% of users click on the no.1 result. For the under-40 age-group, the Internet will become the most used media in the next 2-3 years.

Q: How Do Search Engines Decide on Their Rankings?

A: IMPORTANT: You cannot pay a search engine in return for a high ranking in the natural results. You can only get a high ranking if your content is seen as relevant by the search engines. Search engines identify relevant content for their search results by sending out 'spiders' or 'robots' which 'crawl' (analyze) your site and 'index' (record) its details. Complex algorithms are then employed to determine whether your site is useful and should be included in the search engine's search results.

Q: Can't I Just Pay for a High Ranking?

A: No. The biggest concern for search engine companies like Google and Yahoo is finding content that will bring them more traffic (and thus more advertising revenue). In other words, their results must be relevant. Relevant results makes for a good search engine; irrelevant results makes for a short-lived search engine.

Most search engines these days return two types of results whenever you click Search:

Natural/Organic - The 'real' search results. The results that most users are looking for and which take up most of the window. For most searches, the search engine displays a long list of links to sites with content which is related to the word you searched for. These results are ranked according to how relevant and important they are.

Paid - Pure advertising. This is how the search engines make their money. Advertisers pay the search engines to display their ad whenever someone searches for a word which is related to their product or service. These ads look similar to the natural search results, but are normally labeled "Sponsored Links", and normally take up a smaller portion of the window.

Q: How Do I Get a High Ranking?

A: There are four main steps:

Step 1 - Use the right words on your website.
Step 2 - Get lots of relevant sites to link to yours.
Step 3 - Use the right words in those links.
Step 4 - Have lots of content on your site & add more regularly.

Q: What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

A: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the art of creating a website which is search engine-friendly. This means:

Using the right words in your copy.
Using the right words in your HTML code.
Structuring your site properly.
designing your site properly.

For more information on these 4 elements, download our free SEO Secrets eBook .

Many people use SEO to also describe the other ingredient in a high ranking, 'Link Popularity'.

Q: What is Link Popularity?

A: Think of the search engines as a big election. All the websites in the world are candidates. The links to your website are votes. The more votes (links) a candidate (website) has, the more important it is, and the higher its ranking. Link popularity is all about how many links you have, and how you can get more.

Links to your site tell the search engines how important your site is. They assume that if it's important enough for a lot of other sites to link to, it's important enough for them to display at the top of the rankings. Links are the single most important factor in ranking. Generally speaking, the more links you have to your site from other sites, the better your ranking.

Q: Are Some Links Better Than Others?

A: Yes! The ideal kind of links are those that:

come from relevant sites (sites which use the same keywords);
come from important sites (have a high ranking);
include your keyword as part of the visible link text
include varying link text (not the same link text each time); and
come from a page that links to few other sites.

When a search engine sees a link which satisfies most or all of these conditions, it says, "Hey, this site must be credible and important, because others in the same industry are pointing to it."

Q: How Do I Get Lots of Links Back to My Site?

A: There are many possible ways to generate links. Some are dubious (like auto-generation software, and sites set up by webmasters simply to host links to their other sites) and I won't be discussing them here. Others, like those discussed below, are legitimate.

Add your site to DMOZ & Yahoo Directories (and other free directories)
Check where your competitors' links are coming from
Article PR - Write and submit articles for Internet publication
Swap links
Partner websites
Pay for links

For more information on these methods, download our free SEO Secrets eBook.

Q: What Do You Think is the Best Way to Get Lots of links?

A: Article PR. Write helpful articles and let other webmasters publish them for free in exchange for a link in the byline. With article PR, you don't have to pay for the link, you determine the content of the page containing the link, you determine the link text, and the link is more or less permanent. A single article can be reprinted hundreds of times, and each time is another link back to your site!

For more information, read How to Top Google with Article PR or visit ArticlePR.com.

Q: How Do I Write a Good Article PR Piece?

A: See - How to Top Google with Article PR.

Q: How Do I Get a High Ranking Using Free Reprint Content?

A: See - Get a top 10 ranking without paying a cent.

Q: How Long Does It Take to Get a High Search Engine Ranking?

A: A long time! It's impossible to say how much time you'll need to spend generating links, but you can be sure it'll be a while no matter which method of link generation you use. You just have to keep at it until you have achieved a high ranking. Even then, you'll still need to dedicate some ongoing time to the task, otherwise your ranking will drop.

Q: What is the Google Sandbox, and is It Real?

A: The Google Sandbox theory suggests that whenever Google detects a new website, it withholds its rightful ranking for a period while it determines whether your site is a genuine, credible, long term site. It does this to discourage the creation of SPAM websites (sites which serve no useful purpose other than to boost the ranking of some other site).

There is a lot of anecdotal evidence supporting the theory, but there is also a lot discounting it. No one has categorically proven its existence.

Q: What is the Google Dampening Link Filter, and is It Real?

A: The Google Dampening Link Filter theory suggests that if Google detects a sudden increase (i.e. many hundreds or thousands) in the number of links back to your site, it may sandbox them for a period (or in fact penalize you by lowering your ranking or blacklisting your site altogether).

There is a lot of anecdotal evidence supporting the theory, but there is also a lot discounting it. No one has categorically proven its existence.

Q: What SEO companies Should I be Wary of?

A: Be wary of SEO companies that promise or guarantee results in a given timeframe, especially if they won't expand on their methods for generating links back to your site.

Q: What Tools Can You Recommend?

A: There are many very useful tools to help with your SEO. The following are just selection. All tools are free unless otherwise indicated.

* Backlink checker
* Backlinks by IP address
* Link Popularity Tool
* Number of links required to rank
* Google Alert
* Google Sitemaps
* Google Sitemap Generator
* Google Toolbar
* Indexed Pages
* Keyword Analysis (Nichebot)
* Keyword Analysis (Overture)
* Keyword Analysis (WordTracker - Paid)
* Keyword Difficulty
* Keyword Identifier
* Keyword Density Measurement (Simple)
* Keyword Density Measurement (Complex)
* Plagiarized Copy Search
* Traffic Rank
* Search Engine Rank
* SEO Report
* Top 10 sites for a keyword by no. of backlinks and age
* Top 10 sites for a keyword
* Spider Simulator

Q: I'm Confused About All the Terms Used in SEO, Can You Help?

A: See our - SEO Glossary.

Q: What is Keyword Analysis?

A: The first thing you need to do when you begin chasing a good search engine ranking is decide which words you want to rank well for. This is called performing a keyword analysis. Keyword analysis involves a bit of research and a good knowledge of your business and the benefits you offer your customers.

For more information, download our free SEO Secrets eBook.

Q: Do I need to submit my site to the search engines?

A: Theoretically, no. But I wouldn't risk not doing it - especially as it's free. As soon as you register your domain name, submit
it to Google! Even if you haven't built your site, or thought about your content, submit your domain name to Google. In fact, even if you haven't fully articulated your business plan and marketing plan, submit your domain name to Google.

For more information, download our free SEO Secrets eBook.

Q: Should I submit my site to the search engines more than once?

A: No need. Although some of the search engines allow you to do this, there's really no need.

Q: What are directories and should I submit my site to them?

A: Directories are websites (or web pages) which simply list lots of websites and give a quick description of the website. Some are free and some require you to pay for a listing. Free directories are useful because you get a free link. However, the links aren't worth that much. Paid directories can be good if they're relevant, but they can cost a lot in the long term, so choose wisely.

One essential directory for any website is the DMOZ Open Directory Project.

About The Author

Glenn Murray is an SEO copywriter and article submission specialist. He is a director of article PR company Article PR and also of copywriting studio Divine Write.

Source:www.seo-news.com

Google launches online free classifieds

2005-12-20T02:40:00.002-08:00

IN A MOVE THAT POTENTIALLY threatens online classified providers like eBay and Craig list, Google Wednesday announced the release of Google Base, a service that allows users to post free classified listings.

"Google Base enables content owners to easily make their information searchable online. Anyone, from large companies to website owners and individuals, can use it to submit their content in the form of data items," Bindu Reddy, a Google product manager, wrote on the company blog.

The service isn't limited to classified listings. Rather, it allows users to post any sort of information--recipes, course curricula, people profiles, reference articles, and reviews are all mentioned on the company blog as possible database entries.

But Google Base likely will have the biggest impact on classified listings, said industry experts. "It certainly is a shot right at those guys," said Jupiter Research Analyst Gary Stein, referring to online classified services like eBay and Craigslist. He added that some users might want to post information just for the sake of sharing it, but that for most users, "the primary reason you'll want to put it up there is to sell it."

Piper Jaffray analyst Safa Rashtchy predicted that most people trying to sell items on Google Base will be small, local merchants--the Craigslist crowd, rather than the eBay retailers. "Craigslist was a great idea because it allowed people to find things locally, and it succeeded because it was a very simple platform to use," he said. "What Craigslist doesn't have--and will be its limitation--is a robust search capability," he said, adding that it's difficult to find information in Craigslist sites for large cities like New York and San Francisco.

But search is what Google does, Rashtchy said, and that will help it compete. "That's really where Google Base comes in," he said. "With much more sophisticated search, it can pinpoint the product you want."

Plus, if Google goes into the classifieds business, it could easily bundle the sale of AdWords--the company's essential source of revenue--to the listings. "That's the one killer thing that could happen," said Stein. "Put a little box on the bottom and say 'would you like to bid on an AdWord?' ... That's an interesting play they could make, and they would open up a new potential source for advertisers on AdWords."

New SEO Tools Announce by Dipsie

2005-12-20T02:40:00.001-08:00

SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING FIRM DIPSIE, Inc., today will release Dcloak, a product designed to optimize Web sites by helping search engines index "hidden" content on the sites.

"We're looking to solve the problem of exposing Web sites that weren't exposed to Yahoo! and Google in the past," said Dipsie CEO Jason Wiener. "Dcloak beta allows Web site publishers who don't currently have the ability... to now render out the pages that they have published on their site, and have the ability to have the best practices and search engine grading techniques to make sure those pages go to the top of search engine results."

Wiener said search engine crawlers often have trouble indexing pages that have flash animation or JavaScript coding. Dcloak automatically renders those pages in HTML, so that the bots can more easily crawl them--then publishes the pages to the Web.

When users find the "cloaked" pages using a search engine, they're directed to a landing page that states it has been re-rendered by Dcloak; that page contains a link to the original page, with all of the non-HTML elements intact.

In addition to the main function, Dcloak also provides a pair of services for paid search advertising. In addition to rendering pages into easily indexable versions, it can also suggest possible keywords for paid search campaigns. The bot also can visit competitors' Web sites to analyze their pages, and suggest keywords that the competitors might bid on.

Dcloak will begin in the market as a public beta, meaning that anyone who wants to try the product can do so for free, said Wiener. Starting in the first quarter of 2006, Dipsie will end the beta and begin to charge for the product.

Keyword research is the most important in internet marketing.

2005-12-20T02:40:00.000-08:00

Optimize wrong keywords and You’ll likely never see results. A well planned website ranking strategy identifies your most valuable search terms. Keyword analysis actually begins before the promotion process, before even an Internet web site promotion transaction is completed. Keyword selection is the base.

Keyword Research that identifies new opportunities to leverage.

Keywords or “search words” are the terms or combinations of terms customers enter when shopping for products and services using search engines and directories such as Google, Yahoo and MSN. Keyword analysis and research enables us to pinpoint the most popular keyword phrases used by your target market. Knowing which keyword phrases to use is the foundation of successful website promotion through optimization or pay-per-click campaigns and is vital to your online success.

Content-Based Ranking

2005-12-16T21:19:00.000-08:00

SEO has changed drastically over the past few years. 10 years ago you could get your website ranked on the first page of Yahoo! simply by optimizing your meta tags, nowadays meta tags count for nothing. Is it possible that something we regard just as highly today, such as anchor text, might also count for nothing in 10 years time?

In this article I will explore a few of the possible methods that search engines might use in the future, based on website content and using visitor patterns to your website to assess your
website’s usefulness.

Monitoring The Number Of People Viewing The Websites

A shop is similar to a website in many respects; it must attract visitors to browse it’s products, it must provide customers with information about the products it sells, and it must retain customers to make them come back. So, how can we determine how popular a particular shop is? The two main factors are: -

- The number of shoppers that walk through the doors.
- How many people are in the shop at any given time.

The same concepts that determine how popular a shop is can also be applied to a website. You’ll notice that monitoring how many people walk through the shop doors, and how many people are in the shop at the same time are the best ways of determining how popular a particular shop is, so it seems only logical that the same practice could be applied to a website.

Using the Google toolbar it could be possible to track how many times a website is visited and how many people are viewing that website at any given time, giving a good indication of how popular that website is.

Monitoring The Number of Returning Visitors

If a person returns to a website time and time again then there must be a reason for it: the website is providing useful up-to-date information that keeps them coming back. This is obviously a quality that all websites would like, and one that should be synonymous with a
popular website. Again, it seems only logical that this is, or could be used as a ranking factor. Again, the google toolbar could be used to keep track of which websites you visit, and how many times you return to that website.

Monitoring the Length of Visit

If a website is providing lots of useful, unique information then chances are you’ll spend quite a lot of time browsing the site and looking at or reading what information it has. The longer you spend on a particular website, the more popular and useful it could be deemed to be.

Overview

The trouble with these suggestions is there is no way of proving that adding more content to your website will actually improve your search engine rankings. But one thing can definitely be said, if you provide more useful
content for your visitors then not only will they keep returning to your website, but also word of mouth will spread about the quality of the information on your site, so as a result your website will naturally begin to climb the search engine results through the increase in links to your website. So even if you don’t get a direct increase in search engine results, you will definitely benefit from the indirect results.

Do Not Drop Your Web Site Off the Search Engine Cliff

2005-12-14T03:03:00.000-08:00

If you've been feeling like Tom Cruise climbing up the side of some remote jagged mountain in the blazing hot sun and concerned you're facing "mission impossible", chances are you own a web site.

Adding to the intense thrill of web site ownership are keyword comparisons and bidding for good keyword positions in search engines. You might hire a search engine optimization specialist who can track elusive algorithm clues and is unfazed by page rank drama. Your programmers and designers insist they get along. The marketing department actually believes deadlines are met. The new bank account is waiting for fresh revenue. And oh yes, it's assumed someone will come looking for your web site and wants to use it.

You did build it for them, right?

For every search result, there is the possibility that:

a. The engine will display a description that makes sense. Or not.

b. The page the search engine refers to does what the description said it would do and is about what the search engine said it would cover. Or not.

Your SEO/SEM, if you hired a good one, helped you write your title tag statement and Meta page description and structured it so it makes sense in SERPs (search engine results pages).

Your Usability professional, if you hired one, evaluated the page to make sure it would meet customer expectations and convince visitors there are other hot pages inside the web site to look at too. Without call to action prompts, well displayed, logically labeled navigation links and credible content, the chance of someone remaining on that page is pretty slim.

Says Gordon Hotchkiss, President and CEO of Enquiro Search Solutions , Inc., in a recent Search Day article written by Shari Thurow, called Creating Compelling Search Engine Ads and Landing Pages, "Once searchers arrive on your landing pages, you have 13.2 seconds to convince visitors that they are on the right site." Impossible Mission ?
Had enough of web page abandonment? Are those cost per click fees putting you further in credit card debt and not producing any bang for your buck? Which part of "understand your web site visitor" didn't make it to the drawing board?
I know this is hard. You're not a mind reader. Unless you have access to costly studies and data about who to build your web site for and their computer usage habits, chances are you simply wanted a web site and hoped people would find it and use it. By incorporating the skills and expertise of an SEO/SEM along with a user centered design specialist, you will not be wastefully tossing your web site off the search engine cliff. Rather, your adoring fans will clamor up the cliff to get to it.

Sometimes a web designer is also trained in these fields or is partnered with people who are. This is something to consider when shopping around for web site assistance.

Here are some things to keep in mind when studying your web site. You can also ask your team to consider these points.
1. What happens after your site reaches top rank? It's lonely up there, if nobody notices your page or understands the page description. How effective is high rank? Do people really click on "sponsored" pages vs. natural results?

2. Pay attention to inside "landing" pages. Optimize them for easy indexing and point visitors to your homepage, sale products or free stuff.

3. Be wise about what you invest. Every cost per click must be productive. If not, a usability web site review can locate roadblocks.

4. It's about the user experience. Really. It's a common habit for web site owners to create the site for themselves based on what they like and want. When you receive a complaint, consider it a favor. Yes, some people are mean and critical. But, enhancements are improvements that sometimes benefit a lot of people, and you too, in the long run.

5. Don't settle for minimum effort. One of your goals is to reach potential customers and readers. Your optimized pages reach people looking for them. Your user centered pages reach people wanting to use them and will refer them to friends.
6. Your competition does it better. Not by packing hidden keywords and buying links, but by carefully targeting keywords, providing cleverly written content and delivering user centered design.

7. Think sustainability. If you plan on your web site being around for a while, make this a checkpoint for every future decision related to your site. If someone has an idea that won't impact the long-term sustainability of the site, the site may disappear out of sheer user boredom. And search do engines notice.

8. Understanding your visitors and customers allows for more creative keyword combinations. Put a feedback form on your web site. Ask them how they found your web site. Ask them what keywords they used. Ask them why they came or what they wanted to find. Ask them if they found what they were looking for and if not, provide room for comments so they can explain what happened. This information is a gold mine for you.

9. Never mislead your visitors. Be accurate with what you say a site or page is about. Search results relevancy establishes trust from the start.

10. The elegance of action. The act of landing on a relevant, accurate, persuasive, interesting page leads to the fluid, unencumbered desire to know more and click deeper. Aim for this.

Do not drop your web site over the search engine cliff without considering the usability effect. Design it to be productive and user centered. This will pay off in many ways. Remember your original requirements and goals and trace back every dollar you spend to meeting them. Marketing efforts are strengthened when you make your visitors feel welcome, informed and productive once they arrive at your web site.

Source : trafficology.com - By: Kimberly Krause Berg

Protect Your Brand With SEO Research

2005-12-12T08:59:00.000-08:00

Feature article By Paul J. Bruemmer, TrademarkSEO.com

In today's competitive environment, many advertisers resort to using competitor trademark names as keywords in paid-search advertising. These trademark names appear in the search engine results pages for Google, Yahoo! and affiliates and partners when you buy Google AdWords or Overture Precision Match sponsored listings. Therefore, it's possible for your competitors to drive substantial traffic to their web sites by virtue of your trademark name, using your reputation to attract visitors.

A fine example of this is the sticky situation with Google AdWords. In an Internetnews.com article titled "Google Adwords Under Further Trademark Scrutiny," Google was quoted thusly:

"As stated in our Terms and Conditions, advertisers are responsible for the keywords and ad text that they choose to use. We encourage trademark owners to resolve their disputes directly with our advertisers, particularly because the advertisers may have similar advertisements on other sites."

I can certainly understand Google's position. Can you imagine what would happen if it were forced to
reverse its policy allowing advertisers to buy keywords containing trademark terms belonging to others? This would severely impact Google's revenue, and no doubt would require exhaustive efforts on their part to prevent such activities from occurring.

It's interesting to note that originally, Google AdWords did not sell trademarked keywords. However, it currently sells trademarked keywords in the U.S. and Canada (but not internationally) with the proviso that the trademark name can't be used in the ad copy itself.

The Best Defense is an Offense

Is there any way to protect yourself from competitors raiding your trademark? One way is to hire an SEO vendor to help identify your competitors and then research their search engine advertising activities. Your legal department can subsequently use the SEO research data to protect your trademark and reputation. This step will prove invaluable toward defending your future and ongoing business.

Most often, it will be the smaller, "wannabe" companies riding on your coat tails by using your trademark terms as keywords in their advertising. These companies will generally avoid the threat of legal action upon receipt of a cease and desist letter. Not only are you protecting your name and reputation, you are crushing the competitors that you don't want representing your firm.

Building Your Marketing Network

Another benefit of mining this competitor data is to assist those whom you do want to benefit from using your trademark name. For instance, you may have affiliates, resellers, and a number of associates with whom you can negotiate on a recurring basis. These are the folks you trust with your trademark and reputation -- your friends and family marketing network. There's something in it for you when they profit from your success.

Knowing who is using your trademark in keyword search advertising or in the body text of their web site has a directly positive effect on managing your brand, your trademark, and your reputation. Make sure your SEO vendor covers this critical marketing aspect for your online success.

A Word of Caution

It goes without saying that you don't want to use trademark names other than your own in keyword phrases. Profiting from the use of another company's trademark or brand without relevance or permission is unacceptable and could even result in legal action against you.

Reviewing the above information on trademark term research while interviewing SEO vendors will help
you to identify those vendors who provide added value to your search engine marketing and optimization campaign. ----

Paul J. Bruemmer is founder of trademarkSEO. His articles have appeared in numerous publications, including ClickZ, MarketingProfs, Marketing Today, WebProNews, SitePoint, SEO Today, SEO Consultants, MarcommWise, Pandia, B2B Interactive and Search Engine Guide. TrademarkSEO is a search engine optimization firm based in Santa Ynez Valley, California and serves clients nationwide. His company provided search submission services to over 10,000 websites, including many of the most prominent names in American business.

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