Thursday, January 17, 2008

Improve Search Engine Rank - How To Gain More Visitors In Weeks Not Months

How to create your business online as a success is all about leveraging the search engines. Google, MSN, Yahoo! are the three largest and should be your main focus. While your website is for users such as yourself, you also want to create the web pages for the search engines. There is a unique balance that gets played when developing web pages for better search engine rankings. The balance is making sure it is easily navigable for humans as well as search engine spiders.

A good point is always having a easy navigation bar either on the top left or right of your website that is consistent. Another good tip is having a heading for those navigation bars and making sure that seven links are not below or above those navigation headings. For example, the heading should be bolded and then have no more than seven links below or above.

If there's too much information for the human eye, they will get distracted and leave the site. Make your navigation bars very simple for users. The faster they can see information in their view, the faster they will click and get to a deeper part of your web page. Search engine optimization includes all of the following. It includes key word research to find out what your customers are looking for and how they say the words about the products or services that you are selling.

It also includes on-site optimization. This is basically organizing your website so it is friendly and also user-friendly for Google as well as humans.

The last part is reports. Reports are effective ways to see what is going on with the website and make the needed changes.

And the most important part for search engine ranking is really the off-site or link building campaign.

Link building is a process of either developing great confidence to bring links in from other websites or simply going out and building many websites and gathering links from those. The trick with link building is making sure the content is excellent and also is helpful to your target market. Now with the social web 2.0 networking available, there is so much opportunity to gain qualified and theme related links. In the linking game, to improve search engine rankings, you simply need powerful, theme related websites to point links back to yours.

Link building is the most crucial part of organizing your SEO services. The professional search engine optimization companies are really focused on building excellent links to your website. Link building services will create a far better traffic rate to your website. Although the method is very strenuous, it does take some time. Things will not happen overnight. Search engine optimization companies do take time because they do not own the search engines. Their main job is to work with the search engine and abide by their rules. Ethical search engine optimization techniques for link building includes getting powerful links from websites that are themed related to yours. Do not spam and try to get away with spamming methods. These methods over time will be caught. If you do happen to use Black Hat SEO techniques, be sure they are not pointing or set up for your main money site. Use demo site or nonsense site to do testing.

In a strong link building campaign, be sure that you have theme related anchor text that comes to your site from qualified websites. The best way to build links in today's market is using Web 2.0 methods. These Web 2.0 methods, such as Facebook, YouTube, and other social networking sites, involve getting to know users and communicating online with them. This year and this generation involves user-generated content. Everyone on the Internet can optimize their own website and can build great relationships with other websites by using Web 2.0 methods. Excellent techniques involve the social bookmarking sites, these websites are bookmarking sites for everyone to see. By having a powerful website and then bookmarking it, you are actually telling all your social network that this site is relevant. This opens up a new opportunity to allow people to link to that web page. Social bookmarking is very powerful, although most social bookmarking sites do not have page rank, which is not going to give you too much link love. This strategy is an effective way to improve search engine rank for your website.

But, it will open the door for other people to see the page and send links or traffic to the web page. If you are looking for straight links, develop

excellent content and distribute them to the article directories. Article marketing is the best for improving search engine rankings.

In order to have an effective search engine optimization campaign, you will need to optimize your website. In order to do this, you need to look inside the code of the site as well as the links on the site. Web optimization includes on-site optimization and off-site optimization. This article will

explain on-site optimization so you can improve your search engine ranking.

Search engine optimization is really about making sure your pages are easily readable by the search engine crawlers. If search engine callers cannot go through the website and get to each of your pages, then your website or web page will not rank. It is important to use key words and heading tags for on-site optimization. The heading tags should have key words inside them and they should be towards the front of the heading. The paragraph below the heading tags must also have similar key words. Google is now using synonyms as key words as well. This means you should use key words inside your content but also synonyms of those key words. This goes said by Google itself.

For example. If there is a website with Tiger Woods in the content, then this web page is automatically placed in a theme related topic of golf.

So, when developing content for on-site optimization, do not only use specific same old key words. Be sure to use synonyms, as this will improve ranking and Google link love. On-site optimization also includes using no follow tags. And the last part of on-site optimization is linking

structure within the site. No follow tags is really about using a code snippet that Google gives you.

The no follow tag tells Google that when having a link point to another page that this link should not pass any page ranks to that page. This is an effective way to promote pages that are very important in your money makers. It also is an effective way to not have page ranked to nonsense pages on your site that will not create any conversions or sale. Since you want to make money online, it is important that your money pages have a lot of page rank and rank at the top of the search engine. Some Florida SEO companies specialize in creating web 2.0 marketing madness, while others are still working on submitting to thousands of search engines. This is interesting because how many search engines do you use, about 3? Yep, so why submit to thousands?

Markus Skupeika,
Discover more about Florida SEO Companies so your website can become a larger success. Ask Florida SEO Expert, Markus any questions about search marketing and online visibility.

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Wednesday, January 16, 2008

CMS SEO Quick Reference Guide - For Websites That Rank At The Top Of The Search Engines

If you are qualifying an off-the-shelf content management system (CMS) system or creating your own custom CMS system then the capabilities listed below are imperative to achieving maximum organic search engine rankings.

A couple excellent open source CMS systems are Drupal and Joomla. It is easier to configure Drupal than Joomla to meet the search engine optimization (SEO) requirements discussed in this article.

ON PAGE SEO FEATURES NEEDED FOR CMS SYSTEM

1. Page Header Information (not visible on the page and between the tags). Note that the title, meta-description and meta-keywords tags listed below do not allow html tags at all.

a. Title tag - the most important SEO attribute on the page. Summary of Body content, no more than 70 characters, most important keywords in front. Ideally the title will also be of a persuasive nature. The title of the page is what users see and click on in search engine results pages so you have to make your persuasive and sales case in the title.

b. Meta-keywords tag - only the keywords that are in body content (spelled exactly the same), all of the keywords on the page, most important keywords in front. Place above the meta-description tag and after the title tag.

c. Meta-description tag - summary of body content, no more that 200 characters, most important keywords in front. Since many search engines including Google sometimes use the meta-description directly in their search engine results pages (SERP) as the description of the page this tag should contain keyword rich and persuasive sales-oriented content.

2. Main Body Content - these attributes are all contained in the visible body content section. Note that all of the following content editing features are provided by the open source FCK Editor.

a. Text body content - most important keywords at the top, persuasive and benefit oriented, not feature oriented content.

b. Text anchor links -second in SEO importance only to the page title. Use keywords as the anchor text of the link and point to a page that is also focused on this anchor text.

c. HTML Head tags - keyword rich h1, h2 tags should be used at the top of the page to show the main page heading and subheading.

d. Bold targeted keywords - use no more than 3 times. Bold the first 2 instances of the keyword then place it in Italics if you use it 3 times.

e. Italics targeted keywords - place main keywords in Italics if a keyword is used a 3rd time. Also use Italics for emphasis as you do in normal writing.

f. Main body text - The XHTML of the page should be constructed so the main body text is as close to the top of the page as read from left to right, top to bottom. This can be accomplished using either tables or Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).

g. Footer - The last line in the footer (the last text on the page) should be a link to the home page using the full site URL, and using the same text as the title tag of the page.

h. Main navigation - should use text links. If Javascript, Flash or Java Applets are used for navigation then you should also have a footer section that includes direct text links to all important pages of the website.

i. Image alt tags - should have the capability to allow content creators to add text into these tags. The tags should be keyword rich, succinct, and should describe the image.

j. Image Links - capability to place a link around images that points to the same page as an accompanying text link that describes the destination page.

3. Page URL - fully optimized SEO sites need the capability to use keyword rich URL's. Here is an example of a search engine unfriendly URL. Note the extraneous URL parameters: yourdomain.com/public/default.aspx?id=185&category=285

Here are a couple examples of SEO friendly URL's. Note the efficient use of keywords and the separators between the keywords (forward slashes [/] and hyphens [-] are ideal, underscores are not advisable):

yourdomain.com/ecards/pets.aspx

yourdomain.com/greeting-cards/sports/football.aspx

4. All CSS and javascript code should be relegated to an included file instead of placing it inline with the rest of the page content. Example tags to do this (between the tags) are shown here:

OTHER SEO AND USABILITY CONSIDERATIONS

1. Before any content is added, all pages and templates should have error free XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS code, and the site should have no broken links.

2. Each website should use all of the following:

a. Robots.txt

b. Sitemap.xml

c. Visitor sitemap page that they can click on and get to their desired page within 2 clicks of being on the site.

3. Add analytics to the website before releasing it. StatCounter and Google provide free analytics. ClickTracks is a good tool that allows you to track multiple channels as well as monitoring for click-fraud in your Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns.

4. Ensure that the background color of the page isn't the same as the color of any other text on the page - this can be construed as spamming and can get your website banned.

5. Do not use a flash intro page since search engines can't read the contents of it (or links out of it) and it forces the user to perform a click just to see your real content. Bad for both usability and SEO.

6. If you are considering using Really Simple Syndication (RSS) or Blogs then select a CMS tool with the capabilities listed in this document. Most of the top CMS systems provide these features with a bit of custom manipulation.

7. Avoid redirects for all pages on a new site. If you have to change pages or page names then leave the old page on the site and place (only) SEO friendly 301 redirects into the page so SEO importance isn't lost.

8. The pages should be designed for a 1024x768 resolution. This is the most used resolution today, and all new monitors support this resolution.

9. Frames or IFrames should not be used on any pages because their content can't be indexed.

CMS SELECTION TOOLS AND CRITERIA

This website lists all of the features of current CMS systems and allows you to select and compare them by feature set: http://www.cmsmatrix.org. This site is a great place to start in your determination of your CMS requirements.

Below is a list of general CMS requirements I recently used in a review of CMS systems for a customer of ours:

? SEO capability

? Localization - (Internationalization) capability to use different languages

? Granular User Privileges

? Solid LAMP architecture (Linux, Apache web server, MySQL database and PHP language)

? Ease of use

? Capability to integrate with vTiger open source and enterprise quality CRM system

? Can use text, images

? Can use flash

? Flexible nav controls

? Professional looking website

? Templatized scheme

? Clean, friendly output with no errors

MAINTAIN SEO PAGE QUALITY THROUGH A REPEATABLE QA PROCESS

Once you have the CMS system installed and configured you'll be creating many pages of rich content. Keep in mind that the CMS system you get may be very SEO compatible, but the content you enter into it may not be.

Before you enter all content for your websites you should create processes that ensure that all of the content entered into your websites keeps the website at a high quality of SEO and your company's standards compliance. You should consider the following items in these processes. Each time the website is updated you can utilize online tools to verify compliance to all of these items:

? No XHTML, CSS errors or broken links

? Adherence to your company's aesthetic design standards and logo requirements

? Persuasive and sales oriented content where necessary. This can include flash, images and text.

Creating a Quality Assurance (QA) team that ensures all requirements are met is a great way to ensure compliance to all company and SEO requirements.

For more information about creating a content-rich website with SEO optimized CMS capabilities, Search Engine Optimization (SEO)/Internet Marketing, social marketing or software development and database design services contact Michael A. Cordova, Managing Partner, Mercury Leads, Inc. and President, 21st Century Technologies, Inc. at any of the links above or call him at (303) 744-2178.

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Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Search Engine Marketing Tips - Takes You Site To The Peak

Day by day competition among the online businesses is gaining momentum. Every online owner wants their site to be prominent and rank in a high position. One has to think and work in the right direction to make their site popular. Everyone wants their site to get picked up by the search engine and ranks higher in the World Wide Web. To popularize any website is a very tough job. Search engine marketing tips will help you in this regard. Any online owner is known by his site. He will fetch lots of accolades only when his site is capable of dragging innumerable visitors. Proper implementation of the marketing tips may prove wonder.

Search engine marketing tips are effectively used for optimizing websites. The tips will be very helpful for those who are in the online business and willing to boost up his site. There are many search engines marketing firm that work towards lifting your sites. Hiring an efficient marketing firm will help in increasing the traffic for your site. They adopt certain strategies which proves miracle for your site. The owners feel satisfied and relax once their site is recognized by one and all. The search engine marketing firm always implements new techniques for the betterment of the site. Those firms will work hard in lifting up your site. Search engine marketing tips are quite beneficent and almost every website is using those tips.

If you own a website and struggling to rank your site in a higher position, then search engine marketing tips will be the best option. Only proper planning can boost up your website. Once, your site is picked up by the well known sites like Google, Yahoo and MSN, you will feel that your work is almost done. The position of your site becomes stronger if it is capable of dragging more traffic. Once, your site becomes popular and well known among the internet surfers, it will be very hard to lower down your site. Only a good professional can take your online business to a great height and earn maximum profit. Every online site fights hard to make their site visible. It is not at all an impossible task and proper planning can only make this happen.

Many times, in spite of having a good content, coding, images and other elements, your site may not gets picked up by the popular sites. In this case, proper implementation of the search engine marketing tips may be very effective. It will make your website presence felt in this crowded world of websites. Then only, everyone in the World Wide Web will realize your existence. Non-existing of the website is a nightmare for all the online owners and today almost 90% of the online businesses is suffering from this nightmare. Installation of blogs on your website may prove wonder. Search engine will index blogs faster than any other pages on your website. Another method to get picked up by the search engine is to work on contents. The contents should have appropriate keywords and the length of the content should also be maintained.

Steve Waganer has specialization in web marketing. He is expert in search engine marketing, search engine marketing firm, search engine optimization and Search engine marketing tips. To get the SEO tips from seo firm for your website to get high rank and top position in major search engines visit www.cometsearchenginemarketing.com

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Monday, January 14, 2008

Squeeze Pages and Search Engine Rankings - Myth and Reality

I've heard that if you have a link and they end up at a squeeze page, Google has been penalizing you and you can lose your ranking. Are you familiar with that?

I've heard that before a lot; however, that's how I run my sites. 95% of all my pages are squeeze pages. I get plenty of traffic from Google. I've got a Page Rank of 4 in Google. I've got probably 20 different squeeze pages that are in the top 10 search results in Google.

So I can't tell you that that's not true, but what I can tell you is that on my own website that it doesn't hurt me. That's the only way I can answer that question and really be fair.

Do you change the content of your squeeze page to provide freshness?

No. I mean each squeeze page has a little bit different content on it, but no, I don't change my first page. But remember, I'm not in the business of courting the search engines. I don't focus on search engine optimization. I focus on driving direct traffic with articles, so that's the difference.

If you're focusing on search engine optimization and organic search and that's how you want to drive traffic, then maybe using a squeeze page isn't the right thing to do.

Plenty of people, though, have nice search rankings but don't make any money. The difference is I've got a squeeze page and I don't have the greatest search rankings, although I've got some good 20 pages I'm sure in the top 10 results, but I'm making money. The key for me is conversion, and I drive around 18,000 visitors a month.

If I didn't have a squeeze page there, if I had something else, would I get more traffic? Yeah, maybe I would have more traffic from Google, but something tells me I wouldn't have the income that I do right now, and to me that's more important.

To learn more, download my free guide, "How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online" here: "How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online"

Sean Mize is an internet marketing mentor who teaches people to generate over $15,000 per month online via automated systems and product funnels.

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Sunday, January 13, 2008

Search Engine Marketing - A Newbie's Understanding

Search Engine Marketing can get quite complex even for those who deal with it daily. However, we can break down bits and pieces of the information to turn it into a powerful marketing tool.

People use keywords in search engines, such as Google, to find the topic of their interest. If you in turn use these same keywords you can help direct your target audience to your site.

However, to be effective you have to have knowledge of the words and phrases they are using. If there is a disconnect between these two, your target audience will have a difficult time finding you, and you will have a difficult time finding them.

Fortunately, there are tools and services available online that will help you find the correct keywords that your target audience is using.

There is a program called Word Tracker that will find all the keywords that you should use to generate traffic to your site. Word Tracker is by far the most popular program but can be considered pricey, especially to those on a limited budget. Another alternative is Good Keywords by Softnik. They offer software to help you find the best keywords that bring your targeted audience to you (optimize). Softnik offers other very good free tools so be sure to check them out.

Now once you get the right keywords you have to understand Search Engine Optimization. In layman's terms, this means understanding what the search engines are looking for when they find your site, and then tweaking the information so that more people will find your site. This is called optimizing your site. When thinking of optimizing, one of the first places to start is your domain name.

You don't necessarily have to have a keyword in the domain name unless you can it make memorable, and therefore easier for your visitors to remember. You also don't need to buy multiple domains for the search engines to find you. If you pick a generic domain name, you can add sub domains that are the names of your keywords.

Next, you should look at your title tag. You should include your keyword or keyword phrase in your title tag. You may have heard of meta tags. At one time meta tags was the talk of the town. Now, most search engines don't bother with this anymore. However, you should consider the meta description tag. This tag explains what your site is all about. This is the text that visitors will see, so make sure it is written properly.

You can also add images and a site map to help with optimization. There is a lot of free and professional help online. So if you have problems just do a search on SEO or search engine marketing.

Okay, now that you have your site optimized you need to submit it to the search engines. There are a few options. You can let the search engines find you. You can use free submit forms. Or you can pay the search engine to index your site.

Caveat emptor, you should exercise caution when paying a service. There is a boatload of scams out there promising you high ranks. Be very careful and do a thorough investigation on any company before you spend your hard-earned cash.

Another consideration is link popularity. What is link popularity? Well again, in layman's terms, the more links you have pointing to your site dictates how popular your site will be ranked. These links come from other websites, directories, or articles, and the more articles you have, the better.

Make sure that your site is appealing to your visitors before you worry about your links. Remember this is now a popularity contest. You must have good content to draw in your readers and keep them there. Once you have done this, then you can start submitting to directories.

The next step would be to find sites that offer similar information as yours and ask them about sharing links with one another. However, remember to only share with a site if it will benefit you. Sometimes when inquiring about exchanging links some people may not want to do it. Others may not even acknowledge your email. Just remember that you can always try again later.

As you can see, now that you have a understanding about what to do, it is easy to uncover the secrets behind search engine marketing once you know what to do,. You know have enough information to start using search engine marketing like the tool that it is.

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Sonja Davis provides valuable resources to HOT Tips, Tools and Information to help your Internet Marketing business prosper. For more information on these topics please go to Sonja's Blog

Subscribe to my newsletter for valuable information along with weekly gifts to help you with your marketing needs. For more information on these topics please go to Sonja's Newsletter

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Saturday, January 12, 2008

Search Engine Marketing - Defender Of The CEO's Leisure Time

Once upon a time, a wise contemporary American made a bold proposition: let's make November 7th a national holiday.

Why November 7th? Because on this date, the average American will have worked as many hours as his or her European counterpart works in an entire calendar year. That's a solid 15% more time spent on the job, for anyone who read Innumeracy by John Allen Paulos and craves an alternative view of the numbers.

Clicksharp's Small Business Blog does not dabble in public policy, demography, or existential crises. Rather, let's put the focus squarely on the by-products of our great American obsession. Here are the week-old results of a recent small business survey conducted by Staples, sorted of course in order of ubiquity:

* 98% of small business owners and managers work nights, weekends and/or vacations

* 72% make business phone calls behind the wheel

* 67% do not complete the tasks on their "to-do" list each day

* 54% expect to work even harder in 2008

* 52% make New Year's resolutions for their business

* 51% dream about their work

* 48% would work even harder if they knew it would double their sales

* 38% don't remember the last time they took a vacation

And only 21% wish for more time off in 2008. Read between the lines. Small business owners are making more and more sacrifices, and have begun to view these as necessary to survival. Here's one last eye-opener:

84% percent have not yet integrated new media (blogs, podcasts, etc.) into their business models.

What do most small business owners have in common? Typically, it's that they all, to some extent, do the jobs of all their employees. They need to drive sales, improve margins, launch products and research markets. (Otherwise they'd be chairmen and directors, instead of President/CEO's.)

When fused with corporate strategy, a search engine marketing campaign can meet all of these objectives alongside your other marketing functions, with enough potential for automation to let you dream about something else for a change.

Your digital marketing consultant will be happy to explain how.

- - - - -

Study was designed by Staples and conducted online by Decision Analyst, Inc. http://www.acop.com surveying over 300 companies of < 20 employees.

Paul Burani is an internet marketing consultant based in New York, NY. After acquiring account experience working with Fortune 500 clients in the advertising and market research industries, he has since turned his attention to startups and growing businesses. His company, Clicksharp Marketing, is a full-service digital marketing consultancy, aimed at helping entrepreneurs market themselves effectively on the internet.

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Friday, January 11, 2008

How Your Internet Business Web Pages Are Ranked By Search Engines

Of course sometimes it happens that the exact order of these matches are not right, but generally the result list is right. The se`s do an amazing work.

Because after the internet business search query, the se cannot make any additional question to the searcher, it must trust on the on-page and off-page information it has. So how on earth it can determine the relevancy, when there are millions of pages available.

Okay, the answer is clear: they must have rules in their memories, which they use. These rules are called algorithms and no-one really knows how they work, because it is a strictly kept business secret. If we internet business entrepreneurs would know them, the Net would be totally different. However we know that all the big search engines follow certain common rules.

1. The Location And Frequency Of The Keyword On A Web Page.

This is one of the main rules in the ranking algorithm, a location/frequency method. This means that pages with the search term in the HTML title tag are often thought to be more relevant than others to the topic.

Then the se`s will watch if the search keyword is located on the top of the page, like in the headline or on the first paragraph of the copy, because they think that the relevant keywords are placed right in the beginning.

Then search engines watch the frequency of the search keywords, because they determine the relevancy out of that. So they calculate what is the share of different keywords out of all words on the page, this is called the keyword density.

The higher the density compared to the other words, the more important the term is. However, the density is recommended to be around 4 %, but still the webmaster should reach bigger keyword density than the competing sites.

We know that all major search engines follow this location/frequency method, but they add some customized ingredients into it, which no entrepreneur knows exactly. That is the reason, why the same search gives so different results in different search engines.

One reason for this is that some do not index all pages but some do. Some index pages more often than the other ones, which leads to the situation that all have a different collection of pages in use, which gives different search results. Then there is the rejection issue: search engines reject pages because of keyword spamming, too many keywords, which leads to the situation, when pages will be excluded from the index.

2. Off-Page Factors.

Because of some artificial tricks to get better ranking, they also look at the off-page factors, when determining the ranking.

The key here is the number and the quality of backlinks especially at Google. The search engine see the backlinks, i.e. links from other sites to your web site, like votes. This means that if the site has lots of backlinks it is seen to be popular and useful for the other sites.

Now they can determine, whether the site deserves higher page rank. They also have techniques to judge if the webmaster has used artificial tricks to be able to increase the number of the backlinks.

By the click through counting the search engines measure which of the search results links get most of the clicks. This means that also the result page copy has meaning, because if the searcher will not click the top page, something is wrong and the lower ranked site will get a boost.

Juhani Tontti Is The Internet Business Entrepreneur With Long Experience About SEO And Good Results. Find More Useful SEO Information And Successful Examples From My Internet Business Site.

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Thursday, January 10, 2008

Three Alternatives Of Getting Easy Good Links That You Seldom Think Of

It is a basic requirement to get as many inbound links as possible in order to rank high in the search engines. Ranking high will inevitably draw in traffic (the free kind), and if you run an e-commerce site, your survival will depend on your site showing up in the first three pages of the results. However, getting people to link to your site is a time consuming exercise. At times, it is even frustrating as well when you have to write courteous letters to beg for them. As far as the search engines are concerned, notably Google, you are not suppose to get your links in too quick a time frame and you are not suppose to pay for it. So what can you do?

Here are three things that you can do if the links are not forth coming.

Write some articles and post it at ezine directories. You will get one way links from it. Oh, you are not good at writing? Have you tried it yet? Most probably not, ever since you left school! If you are not used to writing, then putting pen to paper is a great task to undertake. Don't be cowed however; you are capable of doing many things, if only you give yourself that chance!

Can you cut and paste then? Yes, you can. Well, you can write an article by using the cut and paste method, sort of. Pick a subject that you have some knowledge of, and then search for articles on it. Use a highlighter pen, mark those important points from the various articles and write them down on a piece of paper. Now you have a rough article on your hand! Next, read over it, and then connect the different points together. Edit it and you are done. It is not that impossible, right? And nobody is going to comment, even! You can also post to as many article directories as you like, with the same article or a slightly different version. The more you post, the more one way link!

Second thing you can do. Write a short press release, or a few releases that you can submit to online Press Release aggregators. Some are free and some cost very little. You will also get one way link this way. Most press release companies rank high as well, and your links get indexed by the search engines in less than twenty four hours! If you can write your web page content, you can also write the press release as well.

Third thing you can do. Offer something free, either from your site or from high traffic sites. Small widgets are popular items and you can outsource these things to low cost countries. Design it with your corporate identity on it. People like to tell others about unique free items, and some of them might give you a link from their website. Think of it as giving away small value promotional items. It gets you a lot of goodwill. How about an ebook then? You can write it, or buy a re-branded one with full redistribution rights. With ebooks, you can embed your links inside your contents, so when the book is widely circulated, people will click on the links and get to your website. In this way, you do not need to depend too much on the search engines to bring you traffic.

So you see, there are things you can do to get inbound links other than to beg for them from stingy web sites. You should know that websites with good page ranks (PR) are not forthwith in giving links to websites with lesser page ranks! And you do not wish to get links from even lower page ranked sites than yours! Furthermore, reciprocal links are not very sought after now by established sites. There are of course other ways to get traffic, and not necessarily from search engines alone!

Yap Tat Meng
Inventor, author, and Internet Marketer.

You can also get a Free Internet Marketing 2008 ebook here

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Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Effective Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Keyword Advertising Without Losing Your Shirt

You may or may not know that traditional methods of marketing (emblematic items, broadcast ads, printed ads, etc.) can be integral to successful marketing on search engines. I will remain very broad in covering the topic because there are many options available to you , and some of them will be better suited for your particular goals than others. Up front, the best advice I can give is to talk over your specific goals with a qualified Website solution provider who practices SEM and is familiar with integrating it into Website design.

The ways to market your business (specifically your Website) via the search engines make up a lengthy list. The pay-for-placement methods are somewhat fewer, and can be broken down into three general categories as follows:

  • You can pay for the number one spot (in the page margins) of the search engines by individual keywords. Although this kind of placement may seem appealing, it is only as reliable as your advertising dollars allow. You can be outbid by someone who is willing to pay more for that position.
  • You can pay-per-click (PPC) for given keywords, and depending on your budget and the popularity of the word(s) you select, your positioning will vary. Again, this is effective in getting traffic, but there is a difference between someone who clicks their way to your site and someone who makes a purchase once they're there. (You aren't paying-per-click for customers who buy something. You are paying just to get the visit.)
  • You can pay to advertise on other peoples' Websites by having the search engine companies liaison between you and the other site owners. This is a comparatively newer way to advertise, paying to put out an advertisement while other Website owners receive some search engine indexing and kickback benefits for allowing your ad to be on their sites. In theory (and usually in practice), this is a win-win option.

Of these three general methods, keyword ad campaigns can usually be limited to a pre-specified number of dollars per month (or until your account is replenished). So you aren't really writing a "blank check" to advertise with keywords in these ways, but you do need to manage your budget and your account carefully. Buyer beware!

I have had several clients who came to me because of keyword ad accounts that were handled poorly by their previous service provider. In the worst cases, some of them were victims of out-and-out fraud. One case in particular stands out in my mind.

I had an accountant approach me with complaints that he had been spending $400 to $600 per month for the previous 6 months for 200 guaranteed clicks to his Website per month. "Wow... that's a pretty good guarantee," you might be thinking. And he received a report from his provider each month that substantiated that he was in fact getting that kind of traffic (more than 200 hits per month) from his keyword ad campaigns. His complaint, however, was that he had no new clients that came from his Website (otherwise called "conversions" from ad response to customer). The ratios of hits (impressions) to sales (conversions) seemed unreasonably low. I was suspicious.

I did a bit of research on his Website's performance, and what I found was disturbing (but all too common). His account was set to automatically replenish (re bill his credit card) on the fifteenth of each month, up to his specified maximum monthly budget of $500 or so. That means that if his account balance was $250 on the fourteenth of the month, another $250 would be charged to him to restore his account balance to $500. Each click cost him money, and over the next 30 days his balance would incrementally be debited until it came time to replenish it on the fifteenth of the following month. If he ever hit zero, his ad would "fall off the map," but such a billing plan assured him that he would never go beyond his budget. Sounds like a foolproof way to advertise, right? Guaranteed hits with no cost overruns! It gave him a false sense of security, and he was getting scammed!

When I did an analysis of his Website traffic, I saw a steady trend of visitors that came from a variety of sources, some of them from his paid-for advertising campaign. I counted about 20 to 30 hits related to his pay-per-click deal. Suspiciously, however, he had about 150 to 180 hits on the fourteenth of each month, the day before his account replenished. It never took him down to zero, so he didn't think anything strange was going on. But it seemed apparent that whoever was managing his account was taking advantage of his trusting nature, and he was paying for artificial hits. His reports showed over 200 hits, just as he was promised, but he was unwittingly padding the pockets of his account manager!

Don't let that happen to you! I didn't relay that story to scare you or to deter you from using paid-for advertising. Really, paid ads are extremely effective in the right situations. I simply want you to realize that, like everything else with doing business online, there is often more than meets the eye. Forewarned is forearmed. Get into the game of marketing your Website, but do it with a wise eye and wary wallet. The best approach is likely to be one that combines the three types of advertisements bulleted above, so you can measure which one works best for your particular campaign. You might also want to try a Text Message Marketing (TMM) portal to supplement your variable advertising budget with a flat rate option! Text Message Marketing (TMM) is a relatively new marketing trend that appeals to millions of consumers for a number of reasons.

Most solution providers and SEM companies that have been around for awhile are reputable or they wouldn't stay in business. But you must take an active interest in the management of your advertising budget. Ensure that your SEM provider gives you more than just a total-hits-per-month report and an invoice for recharging your account. You should require them to provide you with the Website analytics that show all of your traffic, the trends, the hits-per-page, hits-per-day, sources of hits (so you can ensure they're from different addresses), keywords used to find you, and so forth. Even if you never look at the details of those reports, the fact that they are provided to you will be a deterrent to keep your SEM provider honest. They probably are honest anyway, but in the end you have to CYA (cover your assets).

For information on getting an affordable TMM portal, visit http://www.webdraftertexting.com Please visit http://www.website411book.com and http://www.webdrafter.com for more information on Websites, search engine optimization (SEO) and marketing (SEM), Text Message Marketing (TMM), domain names, hosting, e-commerce, merchant accounts, and more.

Tom Elliott is the author of Website 411: Business Survival in an Internet Economy, the president of WebDrafter Inc. and an international Internet trainer. His undergraduate degree is from Purdue University, and his Masters in Information Systems is from Florida Institute of Technology.

He served 13 years as a Naval Officer, followed by two and half years as the Director of Internet Training for a large marketing company, simultaneously building his own business. He is a Board of Directors member of the Central North Carolina Better Business Bureau, and has been the president of a Business Networking International (BNI) chapter. He also serves on the bachelor degree advisory board for a technical college, and is a keynote speaker.

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Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Australian Search Engines

The best Australian search engines and directories are worthwhile because they have high traffic and some pass on links and Google PageRank to your site. Some are free, and others are low cost paid inclusion directories or search engines.

I have spend a lot of time searching search engines, directories SEO sites and resources that deliver the best bang for your buck. If you reside in Australia, or your site is hosted here, you will gain many benefits of being listed locally.

N.B. I haven't mentioned the Yahoo directory as it isn't Australian or low cost at $US299, but it does give you lots of relevant links to your website.

These are a few that I've found to stand out from the rest:

Hotfrog - www.hotfrog.com.au/ Free listing with loads of traffic. Article submission available

Infolink - www.infolink.com.au/ Another free listing with article submission. An online information service provided by the architecture, building and construction publishing arm of Reed Business Information at Chatswood

Webwombat - www.webwombat.com.au/ Australia's original Search Engine. Has huge traffic, over 1 million unique visits per month. Has waiting list for Premium Links which give you a PR 6 link. Expensive, but worth waiting for.

Yahoo Priority Listing is NOT recommended and my opinion, not good value for money. Go for the free listing.

Here is a hot tip. Go to your favourite search engne (read Google) and type in your best keyword, followed by search engine or directory. You might come up with some "hidden treasures!"

This article was written by Bruce Gow, the owner of http://www.searchengine-guy.com.au Bruce is a member of S.E.M.P.O., the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization. Bruce has gained Advanced Search Engine Optimization accreditation and has worked in the SEO industry for the past six years. This article is sponsored by http://www.clickfind.com.au

Clickfind? is Australian owned, run and managed by an experienced, enthusiastic team based in Brisbane.

You may use this article free of charge, as long as the article remains unchanged and intact, you reference the author and provide a link back to our website

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Monday, January 7, 2008

How Important Is Page Rank To Your Make Money Online Business?

Just how important is page rank to your make money online site? In recent times many have poured scorn on the Google page rank (PR) score saying that it is utterly irrelevant when it comes to ranking sites in search engine results.

Search engine traffic is critical for any site when you consider that statistics indicate that a staggering 80 per percent of the traffic web sites receive still comes in through search engines. Therefore anything that has an impact on search engine traffic is extremely important for any site and not just sites that make money online.

Firstly, it is useful to note that page rank was the most important ingredient that went into the new Google search engine right at inception. The wonderful new Google search engine found a market where search was mostly a very frustrating exercise to most people. The new search engine using a system based on page rank and the number of links pointed to a site took the web by storm. The truth is that even today, after so many adjustments to the algorithm of the Google search engine, the system still leans heavily on page rank, although its' importance has been slightly reduced. Actually the number of relevant links pointing to a site is a little more important than the site's page rank. Still you will find that generally speaking sites with a higher PR will tend to get a higher traffic at the end of the day.

Interestingly there was a time when many sites cheated the system. Some smart webmasters simply looked for a relevant site with a very high PR and then paid them to include a link on their site pointing back at them. The immediate effect would always be the PR of that site dramatically rising. Google have since taken care of this loop hole in their system that many exploited to their benefit. One of the things that was done was to adjust the significance of page rank.

In Conclusion

So what strategy should a make money online web site business owner use to ensure maximum traffic? Actually what they should do is place all their focus on increasing the number of links pointed at their site. If they do a good enough job here, their page rank will inevitably improve. But even before that, they will see the fruits of their efforts in higher traffic and more profits for their make money online business venture.

Want to examine some unique make money online web businesses? Try http://www.capitalistnow.com

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Saturday, January 5, 2008

Home Business Web Site SEO - How To Attract Tons Of Search Engine Traffic

The biggest challenge for any home business web site is related to SEO (search engine optimization) and how to attract traffic from leading search engines. It is rather obvious that the quality of traffic that comes to a web site via search engines is usually very high and even more important-targeted. It is not very easy to get this kind of traffic anywhere else.

So the question here is how does a home business owner make their web site search engine friendly? To many people this sounds very complicated. But the whole process is actually a lot simpler than many people may think. It all starts with the critical decision of choosing the single most important keyword phrase for your web site. This keyword phrase should describe exactly what your site is all about in the most accurate manner. It is also from this single keyword phrase that you will develop other keywords that are really synonyms and similar words and phrases.

The most common mistake that most home business owners make with their web sites and SEO strategy is to select numerous different keyword phrases and then try to cover them all on their site. This immediately sets them off on the wrong track in terms of SEO and building up their home business site.

Creating Quality SEO Content For Your Home Business Web Site Will Attract Tons Of Traffic

Any web site, no matter how poorly it is currently doing can be almost magically transformed and tremendously at that, by simply injecting lots of articles and excellent content into it. Search engines love content and that is why that is the best place where every successful SEO campaign must begin.

An extra valuable tip here is to post the same articles with leading article directories complete with links pointing back to your site. Be careful about what anchor text you use for the links pointing back to your site. This is important for SEO reasons because search engine robots do take it into consideration.

Creating A Popular Blog Is A Powerful Home business web site SEO Strategy

Make no mistake about it, blogs are a very powerful medium. Used properly they can be an invaluable SEO tool for any home business web site owner. Other sites tend to easily and naturally link to blogs and it is common to see a blog pick up hundreds and even thousands of back links in a few hours. Carefully re-directing this traffic to your home business web site can have a tremendous SEO effect. Not only will the links from blogs to your site count, but higher traffic will also cause others to link directly to your web site.

Get more tips for home business web site SEO from my site http://www.capitalistnow.com

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Friday, January 4, 2008

How To Become A Millionaire Off Of Google In More Ways Than One For Free

I know you're probably wondering "Millionaire off of Google in more ways than 1"? How so? Well, let's start from the ground floor up. We all know that Google is the king of search, great content and contextual advertising. In the beginning, it's wise to always invest in yourself, through purchasing a reliable web hosting package, preferably a dedicated server. That is a beneficial move on your part, because a dedicated server hosting package has enough or more bandwidth than you need to host your website or blog on. I highly recommend making this move first, because you're not buying anyone's making money packages, e-books or anything like that. Any success gained will be solely from your efforts. Once you have your dedicated server, its best that you host a website, rich in content, along with links for a forum and a blog, or blogs on your website's domain. Website and blog content can be optimized by you, for good search engines rankings. Mind you, you must be patient before the search engines grant you free search engine traffic. This is definitely not something that happens overnight. In all you do, have faith and keep writing and posting. Making millions, compliments of Google, also requires much patience. If yours is limited, there is room for change in everybody's personal ways.

While you are optimizing your website, forum and blog for free traffic from Google, a lot of people like to sign up for affiliate programs. A reputable affiliate program or affiliate marketing company charges nothing to get started. Now, there are companies that charge for a membership fee, which are very legitimate, but if you are new to earning online and optimizing, then that route are certainly not for you. What I would recommend is you sign up for Google's AdSense program. Not only is it free, but you can also earn money, every time someone clicks your ads. In addition, the search engine visitor who came to you, in which you did not have to pay for advertising, may potentially click that ad. They do not have to purchase anything, in order for you to make money. Just click and that's it. Easiest money in the world! Also, After you purchase your dedicated server, blogs, such as Google's blogger, or WordPress is free to download. Depending on your server package, your hosting provider may or may not offer you free website building tools. You'll have to inquire further about that, as preferences vary, depending upon who your web host provider may be, depending upon your hosting selection.

To gain the benefits of free search traffic, it's best to employ legal SEO tactics. You'll most definitely have to be patient, as this method will teach you patience. That is, if you're humble enough to wait for the millions of dollars to fall in your lap potentially 2 years from startup of your internet enterprise. So that is one way of making millions for free off of Google. Another way is to slap those "Ads by Gooooogle" on your website or blog for that fast cash. For someone to click a Google ad costs them nothing. In turn, you get the money for them clicking it, even if he or she doesn't opt to purchase the service or product advertised on your site's Google ads. How simple is that? Mostly, the last and final method of securing millions and millions of dollars over and over again effortlessly, is when you start to earn over ten thousands of dollars monthly, just hand the entire check back to Google, through buying their stock options. As we all know, there is little to no risk involved, because Google remains technically , as well as financially innovative enough to keep investors of all financial heights satisfied!

So there you have it. Again I say, buy a dedicated server. Install Blogger, Movable Type, MSN Spaces, or even WordPress on your own domain. Having your own wwwdotcom address creates a professional business presence. Don't be cheap and have it hosted on someone else's service, because then, they have complete control over your site's content, and can potentially delete all of your hard work for no reason. It has happened to me. Additionally, you'll want to create many sub-domain addresses as you'd like, either focusing on one topic & sub-category topics, or just different topics under different sub-domains. Make sure you do not use any black hat search engine optimizing tactics, as you will lose not only credibility, but lots of money and your IP address will be banned. Tweak your AdSense ads or any ad that makes quick cash at the top fold, and upper left hand or right sidebar corners for maximum exposure. Most of all, when everything you did starts to look good upon completion, have patience. It might take an entire year, if you're not using any pay per click advertising services to get the free traffic from the engines, as well as a good search engine ranking. In all you do, just keep working at it. The people want your businesses' service and products. Stick it out and humble yourself mostly. Good things come to those who wait!

Shawn Drewry is the CEO of

http://www.Drewryonline.net

He was born & raised in Brooklyn, New York & has been in the working world for 10 years, including corporate America. As much as he did well on his jobs, someone somewhere he worked with or even the employer themselves found some reason wrongfully to terminate him. He has learned the hard way to become an independent person, breaking the shackles of traditionally following the working class. His mother worked for The City of New York for 35 years and successfully retired in 1994 paycheck to paycheck and thus was never able to ever save a dime nor keep money in her small bank account.

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Thursday, January 3, 2008

Targeted Search Engine Traffic - 5 Top of the Line Tips to a Better Search Engine Traffic

The search engine plays a vital role on how a specific site performs and works. It is the search engine that assesses and checks whether or not the site is passing the standards of a good and relevant website. The whole process of assessment may be too tedious to understand but what is significant about it is the fact that major part of the ranking is based from the traffic that a website is capable to generate. This means that your site needs to draw traffic in order for it to earn good standing based on the assessment of the search engine. Below are some of the ways on how to generate search engine traffic:

1. Check on your links. While it is true that search engines check on the number of links that are associated with your site but you have to remember, too, that these links should bear relevance and importance to your site as well. This means that all links that are connected with you should bear the same nature as yours.

2. Think about your contents. One of the things that search engines look for in a site when it assesses and ranks it is the content of the site. It checks the content based on the usefulness, relevance, reliability, and newness.

3. Evaluate your keywords. One of the closest things in the "eye" of the search engine is the keyword presence on your site. You have to make sure that you place relevant and pertinent keywords on your site to make the site look more appealing to the search engine.

4. Know your limits and boundaries in terms of keyword usage. It may seem to look very important for a search engine to find keywords on your site but when you overdo the placement of these keywords on it, the site content may be subject to rejection for publishing because of the too many keywords on it. So, as a word of precaution, never use too many keywords on your site content.

5. Contemplate about submitting your site to site directories. Search engines see a site more productive when it competes with other sites on the net.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, 'Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide'

Download it free here: Secrets of Article Promotion

Sean Mize is a full time internet marketer who has written over 1574 articles in print and 11 published ebooks.

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