Killer SEM for SEO Jerks

7 Steps To Running A Killer Link Exchanging Campaign

2005-09-30T15:07:00.000-06:00

It’s no secret that one of the best ways to get traffic online is to trade links with other related websites. Not only does this help you get targeted traffic, but it helps with your search engine optimization as well.

Well, there’s a right way to link exchange and a wrong way – if you want the most out of your linking, then be sure to follow these 7 steps:

1. Develop a Spreadsheet File (in Excel) and Create the Following Columns:

Website URL
E-mail
Contact Name
Website PR (we'll talk about how to figure this out in a minute)

Contact 1
Response to Contact 1

Contact 2
Response to Contact 2

Contact 3
Response to Contact 3

2. Finding a Website’s PR.

Go to Google and download the free toolbar. This toolbar has a feature on it that will tell you the PR for any website you visit. If you plan on optimizing your website for search engines, this tool is a MUST.

3. Choosing Websites to Link To

Go to any search engine and start typing in keywords for which you'd like to rank highly. Visit each website and add them to your excel file. Once you hit 50 websites, spend some time contacting them. We recommend contacting each website personally and not using any automated software (it’s very easy to see when someone uses
There are many programs out there that will do a mass link exchange mailing, but we strongly advise you NOT to use them (at least in the beginning). These programs can get you in a lot of trouble with SPAM laws. Also, if each email is personal, you are MUCH more likely to get a link back.

4. Write Your Contact Email.

Make sure to address the email to someone specific. Always insert some details that you enjoyed about the site. It's evidence that you actually visited the site and made a conscious decision to link to it. Briefly introduce your website, and send them the URL of your link to their site. Finally, ask for a link back to your site.

Article Tip
Give them specific directions on how to link back to you, what keywords to use, and what URL to link to. It always helps to give them the exact HTML coding that they would need.

5. Respond to Replies.

If you get an acceptance of your offer: Thank them, and add them to a separate Excel file. This will become a list of people you will constantly stay in touch with (to submit articles, free viral reports, etc.). Register the reply in your 'Reply to Contact 1' section. This way you will know NOT to send a follow-up email.

If the person rejects your offer: Add that note to your Excel file so that you don't contact them again. A good technique is to highlight that entire row with a red highlighter so there's no danger of a mistake.

If you get no reply: Follow step 6.

6. Send Follow-Up E-Mails.

Wait one week to follow-up with those who have not replied. This is the second contact. In this e-mail, state that you wrote to them the prior week. Rephrase the email to keep it fresh.

Wait for replies, then repeat Step 5. Do not contact a “no-reply” website a third time unless you have a very good reason to.

7. Find More Web Sites.

After finishing your initial batch of 50, repeat the process for another 50. Once you begin getting incoming links, you will slowly start seeing similar 'link exchange requests' coming to you. This will decrease your leg work.

There you have it – those are the 7 simple steps to starting an effective link exchanging campaign. Remember, a small percentage actually accept and respond, that’s OK. The trick to getting lots of links is to send lots of requests so make this a daily habit.

sportsbook

Cross Promoting Techniques That Work

2005-09-29T14:14:00.000-06:00

Cross Promoting Techniques That Work
by Jason Walsh
2005-09-20 00:00:00
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. 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. 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.

sportsbook

How To Get Free Publicity For Your Business

2005-09-29T14:12:00.000-06:00

How To Get Free Publicity For Your Business
by Matt Bacak
2005-09-20 00:00:00

Dear Friend,
You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars on advertising to build an effective campaign. In fact, you can get great publicity that will drive customers to do your door absolutely free of charge!

One of the best ways to do this is to attract press coverage. You don’t have to pay for advertising space to get written about in a newspaper or magazine, or on a website. All you have to do is interest the editor or webmaster in your story. Today’s media is huge – and it’s hungry for news. If you present a publication with a ready-made story that will interest their target audience they will snap it up.

The way to do this is to write a press release, sometimes called a “news release”. Release writing isn’t rocket science, but there are a few important tips and tricks to remember:

* Make sure the release is dated, and has a contact name, address, phone number and email address. The contact should be a single, named individual.
* Start off with an attention-grabbing headline that announces a piece of specific news. “Atlanta Motorbike Store Launches New Line of Helmets” is a good headline; “Atlanta Motorbike Store Has Another Good Year” is not. Your release should announce something specific and out of the ordinary.
* Always include a quote. Store owner Mike Smith, 44, says, “we’re really pleased to be stocking X-Brand Helmets….” Quotes bring news stories to life and give them a human touch – you’ll look a long time before you find a professional media story without one.
* Make sure your spelling, grammar and punctuation are one hundred percent accurate. If they’re not, the professionals in your target media will lose respect for you and trash your release. If you didn’t get top grades in English, get a friend to check it
Once you’ve written your release you need to distribute it. There are plenty of free newswires that will do this for you – www.internetnewsbureau.com is a good example. Remember that to be successful a press release needs to be targeted at a precise market. If you’re releasing on the topic of your new range of motorbike helmets in Atlanta, you’d better make sure every bike magazine and local newspaper in Georgia gets a copy.

It’s quite acceptable to email press releases. Just make sure that the text is included in the body of the mail – most sensible internet users are a little suspicious of mail attachments received from strangers.

So your release is out, and it’s getting you some coverage. Why other cost-free means can you use to build your business’s profile? Well, the obvious place is the internet. Here are some suggestions:

* Build web links. It’s a tactic as old as the internet and it takes time – but it’s still worth it. Make sure your business’s name is on every relevant free directory on the web. This can be pretty backbreaking work, but it will pull in the customers. Crucially, it will also improve your website’s rank on Google and other search engines.
* Post to message boards. If you can find a web discussion forum related to your business topic, join in and post regularly. Don’t simply push your product – get involved in the online community. This is a great way to establish contacts. Make sure that your username is the same as your business name and that your forum profile contains a link to your site.

One rule of advertising hasn’t changed since prehistoric times: nothing beats word-of-mouth. Ultimately the secret of getting free publicity is having a great product that people will talk about. If you can get folks talking about you and your business, you’ve beaten every single Fortune 1000 company – they’ve spent millions on advertising and branding campaigns. If you’re smart, and if you’re persistent, you can achieve the same results without spending a single cent!

NCAA football

What Is Link Trading And How Do You Trade?

2005-09-29T14:10:00.000-06:00

What Is Link Trading And How Do You Trade?
by Halstatt Pires
2005-09-20 00:00:00

Link trading is the task of getting links to your site on other sites by trading.. umm.. links. This is done to get more traffic to you web site. Link trading creates more traffic in two main ways, increased search engine rankings and also from the traffic the links themselves generate from people clicking on them.

Link Trading and Search Engines

Trading links helps search engine rankings because the algorithms that determine rankings factor in the number of sites that link back to the site to be ranked. The logic is that sites that have many links pointing back to it must be relevant and good in some sense, and are therefore ranked higher in the engines.

How to Trade Links

Now that we know what link trading is, how is it done? There are many methodologies. Since link trading can involve many contacts, requests and link categorizations, it is best to use software to handle your link trading campaign.

Link Trading Software

The software you choose should allow you to create a link directory, ad links to that directory, send requests to have your link posted on other sites and a method for keeping track of responses.

Link Trading Process

The general process begins when the site owner identifies a site which he or she would like to trade links with. Generally, these sites should be relevant to the topic of your site, or at least have a section dedicated to the topic of your site. Trading links with huge numbers of unrelated sites will actually hurt your search engine rankings in most cases. Also, usually it is a good idea to look for well-ranked sites to trade links with. The importance of a well-ranked site's link to your site in search engine algorithms will be greater than those of not so well ranked sites.
After the site to trade links with is located, a link to that site is posted on your site. Sometimes the link would be posted on a different site than the site wishing to get a link back. This produces non-reciprocal links, which weigh heavier in search engines.

After the link is posted, a request is sent that a link back be posted, explaining that if a link back is not created, the original link to the prospects site is likely to be removed.

If a link is returned, then the trade is marked as successful and each of the link traders has one more site linking to it. Other wise a follow up is sent. If the follow up still does not result in a link back, often the link would be removed.

Link Trading Etiquette

Asking to trade links without posting a link to the site you are wishing to trade with is bad form. The prospect is likely to think 'If this person has not already posted a link to my site, what will motivate them to do so when I post a link to their site?' Many people will not even respond to a link request whereas the link has not yet been posted.

This is of course only a brief introduction to link trading. In short, effective link trading requires organization, persistence and time, yet is often well worth the effort.

sportsbook

How to Add a Search Engine to Your Site

2005-09-29T14:06:00.000-06:00

How to Add a
Search Engine to Your Site
By Herman Drost

When visitors arrive at your web site you want them to find the information quickly otherwise they will losë patience and move on. A great way achieve this is to add a search engine or search box to your web site. Since most visitors are already familiar with using search engines such as Google, they can easily use the search feature on your site.
In this article I will discuss:

A. The benefits of adding a search engine
B. Types of search service providers
C. Where to place a search box on your site
D. How does the search engine work

A. Benefits of Adding Search Engine and Types of Sites Where It Can Be Used

1. Ecommerce sites - your ecommerce site usually has many different types of products so the navigation menu is not focused enough to rapidly find the specific product your visitor is looking for. Adding a search engine to your ecommerce site will help the visitor to easily and quickly zoom in on the product by entering their keyword in the search box.

2. Dynamic sites - search engines have difficulty spidering dynamically generated web pages. These are pages often generated from a database, so the information on your pages will not appear in the search engine's index. Add a search engine to each page of your site. If a visitor arrives on that page from one of the large search engines, they can then do a quick search from that page instead of searching elsewhere.

3. Small sites - web sites that contain 5-10 pages don't need a search engine because visitors don't have to search through many pages to find the information. Instead, make sure you create a simple navigation menu at the top or side and bottom of your web pages.

B. Types of Search Service Providers

1. Atomz - Atomz Express Search is a frëe service where you can integrate basic search capability on your personal web site or on one of your commercial sites. It can be used on sites with 750 total pages or less and allows customization of look and feel to match your site's design. Some third-party text ads are shown above and below the search results. You can use it for as long as you like for there is no trial period.

2. Freefind - features include the ability to customize search and results pages. The frëe accounts are limited to 3,000 pages or 32MB of storage. Site search is hosted on FreeFind's server. It generates a site map for you, tracks visitors searches and indexes password protected pages.

3. Google Frëe site search service - searches only the specific domain(s) that you list when you create your search box. You can customize your results display to include background, text and link colors you select. The search box itself will reside on your web site. The search results page will be served by Google with the customized look and feel you specify. Google may serve ads on the results page. You can do an unlïmited amount of searches. You must display the Google logo on the web pages that contain the search box.

C. Where to place the search engine on your site?

1. Place the search box in a prominent location on your web page...preferably top center or top right.

2. Place the search box on all pages of your web site. Visitors may enter your site from any page.

3. Make the search box large enough to accommodate all search terms the visitor would use to find the information.

4. The search box should be a type-in box, not a link so visitors don't have to wait for another page to load.

5. Limit the search results to 50 per page. Visitors losë their patience if they have to scroll through long lists of results.

D. How Does the Search Engine Work?

It works similar to the major search engines that search the web, however instead of crawling the web the search engine spider will search your site. The results of the crawl are stored in a database that resides on the search company's server.

The company provides the necessary code to add a simple förm to your web page. This usually consists of a search box for inserting your keywords and a send button. When you clïck the button it sends the query to the search company. They process the query to create a search results page. This shows those pages in your site that match the visitor's query.

The quality of the search results the search engine spider collects depends on how much information is contained in your site. Therefore take time to correctly optimize your site i.e. provide lots of good content that includes your keywords. Optimize your meta tags, images and create an accessible navigation structure.

Optimizing your site will not only provide focused results from your internal search engine but also boost your rankings in the major search engines.

NCAA football

Streamline Your Website Pages

2005-09-29T14:05:00.000-06:00

Streamline Your Website Pages
by Eric Lester
2005-09-23 00:00:00
Squeezing the most efficient performance from your web pages is important. The benefits are universal, whether the site is personal or large and professional. Reducing page weight can speed up the browsing experience, especially if your visitors are using dial-up internet access. Though broadband access is the future, the present still contains a great deal of dial-up users. Many sites, ecommerce sites especially, cannot afford to ignore this large section of the market. Sites with a large amount of unique traffic may also save on their total monthly traffic by slimming down their web pages. This article will cover the basics of on-page optimization in both text/code and graphics.

Graphics

Graphics are the usual suspect on heavy pages. Either as a result of a highly graphic design, or a few poorly optimized images, graphics can significantly extend the load-time of a web page. The first step in graphics optimization is very basic. Decide if the graphics are absolutely necessary and simply eliminate or move the ones that aren't. Removing large graphics from the homepage to a separate gallery will likely increase the number of visitors who 'hang around' to let the homepage load. Separating larger photos or art to a gallery also provides the opportunity to provide fair warning to users clicking on the gallery that it may take longer to load. In the case of graphical buttons, consider the use of text based, CSS-styled buttons instead. Sites that use a highly graphic design, a common theme in website 'templates', need to optimize their graphics as best as possible.

Graphics optimization first involves selecting the appropriate file type for your image. Though this topic alone is fodder for far more in depth analysis, I will touch on it briefly. Images come in 2 basic varieties, those that are photographic in nature, and those that are graphic in nature. Photographs have a large array of colors all jumbled together in what's referred to as continuous tone. Graphics, such as business logos, are generally smooth, crisp and have large areas of the same color. Photographs are best compressed into 'JPEGs'. The 'Joint Photographic Expert Group' format can successfully compress large photos down to very manageable sizes. It is usually applied on a sliding 'quality' scale between 1-100, 1 being the most compressed and lowest quality, 100 the least and highest quality. JPEG is a 'lossy' compression algorithm, meaning it 'destroys' image information when applied, so always keep a copy of the original file. Graphics and logos generally work best in the 'GIF', or more recently, the 'PNG' format. These formats are more efficient than JPEGs at reducing the size of images with large areas of similar color, such as logos or graphical text.

A few general notes on other media are appropriate. Other types of media such as Flash or sound files also slow down a page. The first rule is always the same, consider whether they are absolutely necessary. If you are choosing to build the site entirely in Flash, then make sure the individual sections and elements are as well compressed as possible. In the case of music, I will admit to personal bias here and paraphrase a brilliant old saying, 'Websites should be seen and not heard.' Simply, music playing in the background will not 'enhance' any browsing experience.

Text and Code

The most weight to be trimmed on a page will come from graphical and media elements, but it is possible to shed a few extra bytes by looking at the text and code of a web page. In terms of actual text content, there may not be much to do here. A page's content is key not only to the user's understanding but also search engine ranking. Removing or better organizing content is only necessary in extreme situations, where more than page weight is an issue. An example might be a long, text heavy web page requiring a lengthy vertical scrolling to finish. Such a page is common on 'infomercial' sites, and violates basic design tenants beyond those related to page weight.

Code is a different story. A website's code can be made more efficient in a variety of fashions. First, via the use of CSS, all style elements of a web page can now be called via an external file. This same file can be called on all a site's pages, providing for a uniform look and feel. Not only is this more efficient; it is also the official recommendation from the W3C. The same may be said of XHTML and the abandonment of 'table' based layout. Tables, though effective for layout, produce more code than equivalent XHTML layouts using 'div' tags. Where a minimum of 3 tags are required to create a 'box' with content in a table, only 1 is needed using divisions. Using XHTML and CSS in combination can significantly reduce the amount of 'on page' code required by a web page. A final, relatively insignificant trick is the removal of all 'white space' from your code. Browsers don't require it; it is primarily so authors can readily read and interpret the code. The savings are minimal at best, but for sites that receive an extreme amount of traffic, even a few saved bytes will add up over time.

Conclusions

Target images and media files first when seeking to reduce the weight of a page. They are the largest components of overall page weight and simply removing them can significantly reduce total weight. The images that remain should be optimally compressed into a format appropriate for their type, photos or graphics. Avoid huge blocks of text that cause unnecessary vertical scrolling. Organize the site more efficiently to spread the information across multiple pages. Adopt XHTML and CSS to reduce the size of the on-page code, and call the CSS externally. These tips should help reduce the size of your pages and speed their delivery to your viewers.

sports betting

5 Ways To Explode Your Viral Marketing

2005-09-29T14:03:00.000-06:00

5 Ways To Explode Your Viral Marketing
by Anik Singal
2005-09-22 00:00:00

We all know that viral marketing can be a very effective way to drive targeted traffic to your website, but do all viral marketing tools have to be ebooks or little reports? Absolutely not…

Before we start, let’s refresh our memory on exactly what viral marketing is. Viral marketing is a form of marketing where you get someone else to spread the word for you, just a virus works.

For example, if you give someone a free report, they like it, they pass it on to their friends and their friends pass it on to their friends. Basically the report has become a virus and is spreading exponentially.

You can see the power that this form of marketing has – over time it can really build up. But, if you really want yours to move fast, then you have to be unique.

Just giving away a free report has become too common – everyone is doing it!

So, here are 5 other great tools you can make viral while keeping the unique edge.

1. Freeware.

Freeware is software with that has your marketing message in it – a banner, URLs, etc. If you are not a programmer but like the idea of giving away some simple software, type 'freeware +your niche' into Google, and look at the results.

If you find a program that interests you, contact the creator, and see if you can get him/her to add your marketing messages in exchange for actively promoting the software.

Simple, that way you don’t even have to make your own program. Or, if you want, just go to any freelance website and hire an inexpensive programmer to build you a small little program (this is very inexpensive).

2. Surveys and polls.

Many people love to share their opinions on anything and everything. Come up with a provocative poll question or interesting survey for your niche, then use it to drive traffic to your site.

If you can find a “controversial” topic you will get the most viral effect.

3. Tell a friend forms.

Especially effective in niche marketing. Simply adding a tell-a-friend form to your web site can, over time, significantly increase your traffic.

Many think that these forms do not work anymore, but I know from personal experience that they still work. A neat trick to get someone to use it is to offer them something for free in return – maybe another free report!

4. Your own forum or bulletin board.

Adding a forum or bulletin board to your site can be a great way to spread the word about your product or service. In fact, if there's no forum or newsgroup for your niche, you can create one - and reap the benefits of having targeted prospects come to your site regularly.

People get their friends to come participate in forums – it’s a great source of word-of-mouth advertising.

5. Blogging.

Creating a blog just for your niche is a way to get people to bookmark your site and come back over and over again. People also tend to spread the word about blogs they like rapidly. Offering your viral products on your blog gives them a reason to spread the word - plus it helps you get valuable traffic.

What will you write about? Progress reports and advice seem to be popular, as well as humorous blogs and running commentary on current events.

Blogs help build a community and communities are great word-of-mouth networks!

Well, there you have it – viral marketing can once again be a bit more exciting than just giving away free reports. Think outside the box, do something unique and viral marketing could be your next big traffic generator!

sportsbook

Why Google Blog Search matters to your Business

2005-09-29T13:57:00.000-06:00

Why Google Blog Search
Matters to Your Business
By Tinu AbayomiPaul (c) 2005

According to Google, Google's Blog Search is "Google search technology focused on blogs". It includes search engine results specific to blogs not just in the Blogger.com community, but across the blogosphere at large. You can access it at http://www.blogsearch.google.com.
What the Big Deal Is

A lot of people have probably heard about this extra version of search Google has added and are greeting it with a big yawn, particularly since it's still in Beta. So what is the big deal, anyway?

The big deal is that the top search engine in the world, which was already paying particular attention to blogs in regular search results, seems to make a subtle statement with the introduction of blog-specific searches.

Blogs are important enough to warrant their own special level of search, and not just as an advanced search option, but in their own search engine.

If search engines are paying attention to blogging that closely, you should be too -- if you want better search engine results. Current fans of blogs will be able to search the freshest results so that they can see what is being discussed right now - information that is often as fresh as the news, and draws upon sources that the media-at-large either doesn't have ready access to, or interest in.

So to those with even the most obscure interests or hobbies, a blog search powered by a top search engine gives ready access to fresh information on any subject that someone can blog about.

And if a blog doesn't yet exist on these narrow themes? You can be the one to start the discussion.

Why It Matters to Your Business

Speaking of the media, this is likely to become one of the many tools that a journalist in the know would use in order to research a story, or to find out more information about a company, directly from the people who use its products or services.

Technorati, is at present, arguably a better tool, but it's just not as well known as the Google brand. If you're a power searcher, you already know what Technorati is. But the key thing to understand is that most consumers - even B2B consumers - aren't as deeply involved in the internet.

But even those folks know what Google is.

There's an even more obvious advantage to this specialized search.

Google Blog search has the unprecedented potential to bring the mainstream surfer into blogging, even more than Yahoo's RSS Headlines pioneered the start of making RSS mainstream about a year ago. Why?

While many of your clients will fall instantly in love with RSS, it's more fair to them to present its possibilities in a format that's easier for them to digest. It's not as hard to explain a blog - and if you can't, you can simply tell them it's a more frequently updated part of your existing site.

When Google's Blog Search is brought more to the front in coming months, if your site gets into position to be visible when more of the internet population becomes blog-happy, then the traffïc potential for your site may prove to be enormous.

The proper use of one RSS feed in one of my content management systems doubled my traffïc, with most of the new users coming from Yahoo, this time last year. Another feed increased my daily traffïc another 75%, and brought me additional return traffïc as well.

At the time the margin between Yahoo and Google was wider than it is today -- so the potential increase from being in Google boggles the mind.

How to Get Listed

According to the Blog Search Help Page:

"If your blog publishes a site feed in any format and automatically pings an updating service (such as Weblogs.com), we should be able to find and list it. Also, we will soon be providing a förm that you can use to manually add your blog to our index, in case we haven't picked it up automatically. Stay tuned for more information on this."

This means that if you're already blogging - and responsibly pinging, you're probably already listed.

If you haven't been blogging, you're in luck. This special brand of Google search is still in Beta, so if you get moving now, you still have enough time to start getting into position. And since the search currently seems to be focused on freshness and relevance, if you keep up the blogging once you start, and you keep your theme narrow, you could still dominate your niche.

Do It Today

The mantra for blogging before was that, proper blogging is a sure fire way to increase traffïc, as well as build stronger ties to your end users or clients, not to mention that it is the simplest of the many implementations of RSS.

Now, with all three major search engines paying more attention to both RSS and Blogging, you can get spidered more frequently, get more of your pages indexed more deeply, and be included in more searches.

You have absolutely no time to waste - if you're not blogging already, you need to get started quickly. Many webmasters are hesitating because they haven't been able to find a blog system that fits well with their site, or find the most popular tools too sophisticated for their needs.

There are literally dozens of frëe resources to help you decide between the standard systems that were originally built for the personal blogger, and the more robust solutions that are aimed at the medium-sized or corporate company - but that's another article.

Whatever you chose, the important thing is to get started blogging today. You'll be missing out on targeted traffïc from the most dominant search engine, from the most sophisticated surfers today, and sooner than you know it, the mainstream web.

About The Author
Tinu Abayomi-Paul is the co-owner of Leveraged Promotion, which provides many solutions for companies who prefer to out-source their online promotion needs. At Blog.LeveragedPromotion.com you can find out more about how RSS, Blogs and Podcasting can increase your online visibility.

college football betting

Viral Marketing Defined

2005-09-29T13:55:00.000-06:00

Viral Marketing Defined
by Herman Drost
2005-09-27 00:00:00

One of the most time consuming aspects of online marketing is finding the most effective strategies to attract visitors to your web site. If you set up a viral marketing campaign correctly, you have the opportunity of gaining 1000s of visitors for years to come.

Definition of viral marketing

This is the online term for word-of-mouth advertising. You provide something that encourages others to spread the word about your product, quickly and inexpensively with little effort on your part. This potentially creates exponential growth in the message's visibility and effect. The message spreads in a viral form in a manner similar to the spreading of a common cold virus from person to person.

One example of successful viral marketing is Hotmail, which began offering free e-mail accounts, with a link back to Hot Mail at the end of every e-mail message sent by one of its customers. That spread the word about the service like a virus, with every customer a virtual 'carrier' of the message.

Benefits of Viral Marketing

1. Free advertising

2. Short term gains - gain immediate visitors.

3. Long term gains - attracts visitors for years to come.

4. Causes exponential growth - reaches a large audience.

5. Automate your marketing methods - set it up once and forget about it.
6. Inexpensive to set-up - it primarily involves some investment of time.

7. Viral marketing tools are easy to develop i.e. you can create an e-book without knowing how to write.

8. Quickly build your reputation.

9. Easy to combine with other marketing methods - i.e. include as a bonus with other products.

10. Increase targeted traffic to your web site.

Viral Marketing Strategies

1. Write articles - allow people to reprint your articles on their web site, in their ezine, newsletter, magazine or e-books. Include your resource box and the option for article reprints at the bottom of each article. Make sure that the link in your resource box is live so that all people that use your article will link back to your site.

2. Create a free e-Book - give your e-book away to your visitors and other editors or webmasters within your target market. Encourage them to pass it on. Insert ezine subscription links or affiliate links to the products throughout your e-book. Subscriptions to your newsletter will increase in proportion to the number of places your e-book is placed.

3. Set up an affiliate program - affiliate programs provide a financial incentive for other sites to link to yours. Make sure your commission is enough to make this attractive to web site owners. As the number of affiliates increases, so do your visitors and sales.

4. Getting sites to link to your site - you can receive ongoing traffic from other sites by asking them to link to yours. If it's a site that already has lots of traffic, you will see an immediate increase in traffic to your own site. Only contact site owners who have products that compliment the products on your site.

5. Send out news releases - create a free service or product that is available on your site. The most important aspect is to have a truly newsworthy event, contest, free service, or digital download. If your news release is carried by just 5% of the media you send it to, you could have your URL in front of tens of thousands of readers quite inexpensively.

6. Viral software - offering a free download of a script, e-book, calendar, etc is an effective method for gaining new subscribers to your ezine. You can also market your product by including your logo or marketing message with your download.

7. Create an e-course - give your visitor numerous chances to respond to your offer by creating an email course or courses. You accomplish this by writing a series of small articles outlining the benefits of your product, then distribute them automatically over several days or weeks with an auto responder. This can be set up automatically for the product or ezine you are promoting.

8. RSS Feeds - this is a relatively new viral marketing method. RSS stands for 'Really Simple Syndication'. It was originally used by news organizations to syndicate their news stories. RSS Feeds are now used to automatically distribute content to blogs. They can also be used to distribute articles to web site owners and ezine publishers throughout the web.

Conclusion

Using these viral marketing strategies will help boost your web presence, by rapidly increasing web traffic, gaining more links and building your reputation as an expert in your field.

sports betting

What NOT To Do With RSS

2005-09-29T13:53:00.000-06:00

What NOT To Do With RSS
by Richard Keir
2005-09-27 00:00:00

Everybody is hot on using RSS to increase their traffic, promote their sites and do their marketing. Why?

Well, it's newish - at least within the internet marketing segment. Not as new as it was a year or so ago, of course. Getting significant results is a little harder as the competition increases.

With the profusion of blogs and spam blog-pinging to attract the search engine spiders to index static pages, the utility of this approach has been seriously impaired by unscrupulous overkill.

Pinging every 3 minutes is - even to an idiot - absurd - or at least it should be. Why not just scream, 'I AM AN AUTOMATED SEARCH ENGINE SPAM PROGRAM.' Lovely footprint, very hard for even a seriously brain-damaged bot to identify.

Still there are a lot of sites with RSS feeds that are real feeds being produced as pages change and new content is added. So, yes, RSS feeds still work. Maybe not as fast and maybe they are less powerful than they were, but RSS remains a valid and increasingly necessary part of site promotion.

Techniques do get abused and the early rapid response tends to decline as a result. If people were a little clearer about what they're doing and why and how it all works, the frenzied search for new approaches could, perhaps, be a little less daunting. And if the quick buck artists were less successful at misleading people into doing things that are bad for everybody in the long run, then . . . but that's how it is, was, and apparently will be forever more.

One thing about a real feed - it's for more than getting bots to index your pages. If that's all you want then you can stop reading here.

For the remaining readers (if any), consider the single most critical element of any marketing or website promotion effort. You can have the most magnificent site, the greatest ever-changing content, beautiful and valid feeds in all formats -- and very little in the way of traffic. Unlike the search engines who have all those lovely spiders we are so hot to gain the attention of - most blog/RSS search engines and directories do not send out bots in search of RSS feeds.

Nope. You have got to submit to them. I know. I've done the smart thing - submit to a bunch - and the incredibly unspeakably stupid thing - letting the submissions slide because, frankly, it's a horrible boring tedious and extremely boring (did, I mention how boring it is?) job. That's not a very pretty admission, but there you are. I have a limited ability to tolerate severe boredom - even when I know I'm hurting myself.

And if you don't do the submissions, you won't get the traffic you could have. And that means fewer conversions, sales, opt-ins or whatever it is your site is about.

Ah, but there are answers to this problem. RSS submission services exist and so do RSS submission tools. In fact here's a new (still in beta) service that allows you to submit to 17 blog/RSS search engines - with more promised - for free. It's called FeedShot and you can find it at http://www.feedshot.com/

Now with FeedShot you need to enter each feed individually. However, with a tool like RSS Submitter you can enter from 3 (in the free evaluation version) feeds to an unlimited number in the SEO version. RSS Submitter then submits automatically to over 70 blog and RSS search directories and can also be used to do additional manual submissions with auto-form filling.

This tool is the purest gold for the serious RSS feed marketer. It works, it's easy to use and it saves you incredible amounts of time - and eliminates that nasty boring tedious repetitive work.

Just to be clear here you should realize that you can create and use RSS feeds without ever using any of the ping sites. RSS feed updates are noted by RSS readers/aggregators which check feeds for new content either on demand or on a schedule. RSS/blog search directories also check on a regular basis. Users find your feed through these directories. Again, if you want visitors, then no matter how you do it, you've got to submit.

Obviously, if your feed is produced by a blog, you'll want to notify ping sites when your content is updated. But you still need to submit the feeds. And you can also submit your blog URL to a whole host of pure blog directories, but that's a different subject.

The people who use RSS readers/aggregators in addition to or in place of a browser are the real target group for RSS marketing. When you consider how and what you want to market with RSS, keep in mind that this group tends to still be made up of relatively affluent, early adopters with some technical sophistication, a taste for new technology, a low boredom threshold and a keen appreciation of the value of their time. And don't forget to submit.

sportsbook

The Seven Secret Skills Of SEO Work

2005-09-29T13:51:00.000-06:00

The Seven Secret Skills Of SEO Work
by John Fowler
2005-09-27 00:00:00

There is a lot of talk on the web regarding Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and how, if you just do this one thing, you will be at the top of Google. If only it were that easy! In fact, I believe there are seven distinct skills that a search engine optimiser needs to possess. Most people possess one or maybe two of these skills, very rarely do people posses all seven. In truth, to get to all seven, people who are good at two of these need to actively develop the other skills. This takes time and effort and, if you are running your own business, do you really have the time to do this?

The seven skills that I believe are necessary for SEO work are:

Web Design – producing a visually attractive page

HTML coding - developing Search Engine friendly coding that sits behind the web design

Copy writing – producing the actual readable text on the page

Marketing – what are the actual searches that are being used, what key words actually get more business for your company?

An eye for detail - even the smallest errors can stop spiderbots visiting your site.

Patience - there is a time lag on any change you make, waiting is a virtue.

IT skills - an appreciation of how search engine programs and the algorithms they use actually work

Many website designers produce more and more eye-catching designs with animations and clever features hoping to entice the people onto their sites. This is the first big mistake; using designs like these may actually decrease your chances of a high Google rating. Yes, that’s right; all that money you have paid for the website design could be wasted because no-one will ever find your site.
The reason for this is that before you get people to your site you need to get the spiderbots to like your site. Spiderbots are pieces of software used by the search engine companies to crawl the Internet looking at all the websites, and then having reviewed the sites, they use complex algorithms to rank the sites. Some of the complex techniques used by web designers cannot be trawled by spiderbots. They come to your site, look at the HTML code and exit stage right, without even bothering to rank your site. So, you will not be found on any meaningful search.

I am amazed how many times I look at websites and I immediately know they are a waste of money. The trouble is that both the web designers and the company that paid the money really do not want to know this. In fact, I have stopped playing the messenger of bad news (too many shootings!); I now work round the problem.

So, optimising a website to be Google friendly is often a compromise between a visually attractive site and an easy to find site. The second skill is that of optimising the actual HTML code to be spiderbot friendly. I put this as different to the web design because you really do need to be “down and dirty” in the code rather than using an editor like FrontPage, which is OK for website design. This skill takes lots of time and experience to develop, and just when you think you have cracked it, the search engine companies change the algorithms used to calculate how high your site will appear in the search results.

This is no place for even the most enthusiastic amateur. Results need to be constantly monitored, pieces of code added or removed, and a check kept on what the competition are doing. Many people who design their own website feel they will get searched because it looks good, and totally miss out this step. Without a strong technical understanding of how spiderbots work, you will always struggle to get your company on the first results page in Google. We actually run seven test domains which are testing different theories with different search engines. Remember that different search engines use different criteria and algorithms to rank your site - one size does not fit all.

Thirdly, I suggested that copy writing is a skill in its own right. This is the writing of the actual text that people coming to your site will read. The Googlebot and other spiderbots like Inktomi, love text – but only when written well in properly constructed English. Some people try to stuff their site with keywords, while others put white writing on white space (so spiderbots can see it but humans cannot).

Spiderbots are very sophisticated and not only will not fall for these tricks, they may actively penalise your site – in Google terms, this is sandboxing. Google takes new sites and “naughty” sites and effectively sin-bins them for 3-6 months, you can still be found but n t until results page 14 – really useful! As well as good English, the spiderbots are also reading the HTML code, so the copy writer also needs an appreciation of the interplay between the two. My recommendation for anyone copy writing their own site is to write normal, well-constructed English sentences that can be read by machine and human alike.

The fourth skill is marketing, after all this is what we are doing – marketing you site and hence company and products/services on the Web. The key here is to set the site up to be accessible to the searches that will provide most business to you. I have seen many sites that can be found as you key in the company name. Others that can be found by keying in “Accountant Manchester North-West England”, which is great, except no-one ever actually does that search. So the marketing
skill requires knowledge of a company’s business, what they are really trying to sell and an understanding of what actual searches may provide dividends.

The next skill is an eye for detail. Even a simple change to a web page can create an error that means the spiderbots will not crawl your site. Recently, I put a link to a page that didn't have www. at the front of the address. The link still worked but the spiders stopped crawling, and it took my partner to find the error. We have recently invested in a very sophisticated html validator that picks up errors that other validators just fail to see. These errors do not stop the pages displaying correctly to the human eye, but cause massive problems with spiderbots. Almost all the code that I look at on the web using this validator flags major errors, even from SEO companies.

The sixth skill is patience, or is it a virtue! Some people seem to want to make daily changes and then think they can track the web page ranking results the next day. Unfortunately, it can take a week for absolutely correct changes to take effect, in which time you have made six other changes. Add to this Google's
reticence to allow new sites straight on to its listings by adding a waiting factor of, maybe, three months for new sites, and you have a totally uncontrollable situation. We say to all our clients that a piece of SEO work should be looked at like a marketing campaign that runs for six months, since it is only after that time that a true judgement of the effectiveness of the work can be made.

The final and seventh skill is an appreciation of how search engines and algorithms work, for this where both IT and maths experience is useful. People who have programmed at a detailed systems level have a natural feeling for how spiderbots will read a page, what they will search for, what tables they will set up, what weightings they may give to different elements. All of this builds a picture of the database that will be created and how it will be accessed when a search is undertaken. Unfortunately, this skill is the most difficult one to learn as it relies on many years experience of systems programming.

So, in summary, I would say 'If it was easy everyone would be doing it!'. I hope you will see that professional Search Engine Optimisation companies need more than a bit of web design to improve your business. Make sure anyone you choose for SEO work can cover all the bases.

football betting

Google Blog Search - What You Should Know

2005-09-29T13:49:00.000-06:00

Google Blog Search - What You Should Know
By Titus Hoskins

Google is moving in so many directions, it can be somewhat difficult to keep track of all the services and tools offered by this premium search engine. For the seasoned webmaster as well as the ordinary surfer, keeping a clear picture of what Google is offering is sometimes a little overwhelming.
Recently, there has been a deluge of new products from Google. If you hit the 'more' button on the Google Home page, you will see a smattering of Google services and tools. Including Desktop 2, Print, Maps, Google Earth... you can even search and browse mail-order catalogs.

Now comes Blog Search - where Internet users can now search blogs for their information. This is a welcomed service, especially for bloggers. Google's embracing of blogs started with the purchase of Blogger.com and got sidetracked with the 'costly' argument over which syndication standard to use. Most favored RSS while Google promoted the Atom standard for its blog feeds.

Blogs are online journals where ordinary people give opinions, information and links on topics that matter to them. These topics can be anything under the sun: from politics to needlepoint to corporate blogs to your local school's basketball team. Blogs give a real insight into what ordinary surfers believe and feel about a subject.

It's an instant snapshot of our world in words and pictures - but mostly words. Blogs are often associated with RSS because RSS is the syndication standard that sends out the blog's content in little snippets to all interested parties. Subscribers to these blogs can read these headlines in News Readers or Aggregators and then click on the links to get more information. Keep in mind, the original acronym for RSS is 'Rich Site Summary', but that meaning has been somewhat replaced by the major benefit of RSS which is 'Really Simple Syndication'.

Many browsers are now coming with an RSS reader already built-in, such as the popular Mozilla's Firefox browser. Microsoft's new Longhorn version of Windows will have RSS built into its operating system.

Recently Google has embraced RSS in its Desktop 2 program and in the XML powered Google Sitemaps. Now comes Blog Search, a way to search all the information in these blogs. In the past, most bloggers have used the Technorati site to search blogs as well as RSS search offered by MSN and Yahoo.

Some things you should know about Google Blog Search:

1. How to access it? You can use the blog Search site www.blogsearch.google.com or www.search.blogger.com You may also use the Navigational Bar on any BlogSpot blog, plus you will also be able to access it from your Blogger Dashboard. The Blogger Navbar gives you the option of searching within the current blog or searching all blogs.

Major criticism - Google has not placed a link on its home (front) page of Google search - as blogs and blogging becomes even more popular maybe this error will be fixed.

:: increase your traffic, use our submission service!
:: target your traffic, use our optimization service!
:: understand your traffic, use our statistics service!

Google Blog Search - What You Should Know
By Titus Hoskins

Google is moving in so many directions, it can be somewhat difficult to keep track of all the services and tools offered by this premium search engine. For the seasoned webmaster as well as the ordinary surfer, keeping a clear picture of what Google is offering is sometimes a little overwhelming.

Recently, there has been a deluge of new products from Google. If you hit the 'more' button on the Google Home page, you will see a smattering of Google services and tools. Including Desktop 2, Print, Maps, Google Earth... you can even search and browse mail-order catalogs.

Now comes Blog Search - where Internet users can now search blogs for their information. This is a welcomed service, especially for bloggers. Google's embracing of blogs started with the purchase of Blogger.com and got sidetracked with the 'costly' argument over which syndication standard to use. Most favored RSS while Google promoted the Atom standard for its blog feeds.

Blogs are online journals where ordinary people give opinions, information and links on topics that matter to them. These topics can be anything under the sun: from politics to needlepoint to corporate blogs to your local school's basketball team. Blogs give a real insight into what ordinary surfers believe and feel about a subject.

It's an instant snapshot of our world in words and pictures - but mostly words. Blogs are often associated with RSS because RSS is the syndication standard that sends out the blog's content in little snippets to all interested parties. Subscribers to these blogs can read these headlines in News Readers or Aggregators and then click on the links to get more information. Keep in mind, the original acronym for RSS is 'Rich Site Summary', but that meaning has been somewhat replaced by the major benefit of RSS which is 'Really Simple Syndication'.

Many browsers are now coming with an RSS reader already built-in, such as the popular Mozilla's Firefox browser. Microsoft's new Longhorn version of Windows will have RSS built into its operating system.

Recently Google has embraced RSS in its Desktop 2 program and in the XML powered Google Sitemaps. Now comes Blog Search, a way to search all the information in these blogs. In the past, most bloggers have used the Technorati site to search blogs as well as RSS search offered by MSN and Yahoo.

Some things you should know about Google Blog Search:

1. How to access it? You can use the blog Search site www.blogsearch.google.com or www.search.blogger.com You may also use the Navigational Bar on any BlogSpot blog, plus you will also be able to access it from your Blogger Dashboard. The Blogger Navbar gives you the option of searching within the current blog or searching all blogs.

Major criticism - Google has not placed a link on its home (front) page of Google search - as blogs and blogging becomes even more popular maybe this error will be fixed.

The Internet has been around for much longer than most people think, with its roots able to be traced back to the 1960s. This web site will give you an insight into the background and development of the medium.
Visit the http://www.Internet-Story.com!

2. Who's included? It should be noted that Google will index all blogs using a site feed (RSS or Atom) and you can get your Blog indexed just by using an automatic pinging service offered by such sites as www.weblogs.com

Please Note - Your older posts may not be present in search results, Google started indexing feeds around June, 2005. Older posts may be included at a later date.

3. What search operators or query words are supported? You can use these standard Google Search modifiers and Google will restrict your results - link:, site:, intitle: plus new ones for Blog Search - inblogtitle:, inposttitle:, inpostauthor:, and blogurl:

4. Can I subscribe to search results? Yes, just use the News Aggregator of your choice and subscribe to the feeds at the bottom of the results page, then you can be automatically updated as new posts come online.

5. Can I use Safesearch? Yes, Google lets you filter out any unwanted sites.

sportsbook sports betting

The 3 Best Website Traffic Sources

2005-09-20T11:36:00.000-06:00

The 3 Best Website Traffic Sources
by Jim Edwards
2005-09-10 00:00:00

Not a day goes by that any serious website owner doesn't wonder how to get more traffic to their site.

This intense desire to generate more clicks makes virtually any online entrepreneur easy prey to many of the traffic schemes and scams that pervade the Internet like conmen on a carnival midway.

Promises of fast traffic and big bucks often separate even the most savvy business person from their money because they want to believe the promises made by these traffic hucksters.

However, rather than thinking 'complicated equals better' in the traffic game, the best website traffic sources rate extremely easy to separate from the useless garbage traffic.

Fact: 'Good Traffic' equals 'Targeted Traffic!'

That means the visitors come as a result of desire to find out more on a specific, niche topic, not as a result of 'exit' traffic or membership in a 'safe' list where members simply pitch each other in an incestuous spam fest.

Good traffic comes from people clicking links on topics targeted to their interests and getting directed to a website containing information they want and expect as a result of clicking the link.

Bottom line, when you get right down to it, the best, most dependable sources of targeted traffic come from links that people click.

So, next time you're considering spending money on a traffic source, understand that unless it involves a targeted link that a targeted visitor can click to get to your website, think twice before opening up your wallet.

To my knowledge, only three ways exist to get a link to your site: buy it, 'voodoo' it, or grow it.

Buy Links

Buying links actually rates the fastest way to get traffic to your website.

You simply sign up for Google AdWords at Google.com or you open an account with Overture.com.

You then run ads with a link on those sites and any time someone clicks the link, you pay for the click through a relatively straightforward bidding process based on the popularity of the keyword.

You can also buy links in ezines, newsletters, and on other people's website either on a per-click basis, for a period of time (a week or month), or in exchange for paying them a commission if a sale gets made as a result of a click on the link.

Linking 'VoodDoo'

Linking 'voodoo' refers to attempting to manipulate the search engines into displaying links to your website.

You can find a large number of automated software programs online at any given time that will claim to help you get more search engine traffic.

Depending on the intensity of competition in a specific market and the fact that search engines change their rules frequently, pursuing search engine links this way can quickly turn into the online equivalent of Alice chasing the rabbit down the hole.

Grow Links

I personally prefer this method to get links to my websites: growing them.

The best type of link to get involves one person telling another person, either explicitly or implicitly, they should click the link and visit the site at the other end.

One way to do this is simply to exchange links with another site which targets the same audience as your site.

You can manage this process manually or use one of the many software packages that will mange the process for you.

A search on Google.com for 'reciprocal link manager software' yields a good start.

The easiest way to grow a link is through using articles other people post on their websites which link back to your website.

The reason articles work so well for 'growing' links involves the numerous ways in which articles get distributed online, each of which can create dozens, hundreds, even thousands of different links back to your website by publishing a single article.

In fact, the following represent only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to all the places you can grow links by publishing articles online.

Blogs - Your articles can not only appear on your own blog, but get posted by others on their blogs with surprising ease.

The links in these articles can point directly back to your website.

Article Directories - Article directories such as IdeaMarketers.com abound online.

They not only provide an easy way to display your articles to allow others to pick them up for posting on their websites, but also in and of themselves attract readers searching for content.

OPS (Other People's Sites) - Popular websites like WebProNews.com attract repeat visitors by offering targeted content to their readers.

Since they can't produce all the content themselves, they publish articles created by others. Links from these sites can bring a steady stream of targeted visitors by giving you targeted exposure.

Ezines - By getting your articles published in other people's ezines, you can get a link on the most valuable real estate online, a targeted prospect's email 'inbox.'

Many ezine publishers run articles written by others to their targeted readers, and your link in the resource box can bring you a veritable avalanche of targeted site visitors when hundreds, even thousands of people receive your article at the same time.

Whether you choose to buy them, 'voodoo' them, or grow them, getting targeted links to your site posted on the Internet represents the absolute best way to get steady traffic to your site.

Though not as fast as buying them or as exciting as trying to manipulate the search engines, growing links with articles gives you a long-term, dependable presence online.

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

Towards A New Philosophy Of SEO

2005-09-20T11:16:00.000-06:00

Towards A New Philosophy Of SEO
by J. Green
2005-09-10 00:00:00

The following overview of a common SEO campaign is not an attempt to describe the processes in use by all SEO's, and in fact there are a handful of really good SEO firms out there. Good SEO firms are generally identifiable by two common elements:
Longevity and Customer Loyalty Overview of a common SEO Campaign:

On Page Optimization:

a) Add textual content that is keyword rich - Embed pre-determined target keywords throughout text according to the SEO's notion of ideal keyword density and usage.
b) Add Title and Meta Tags that are keyword rich- Often this involves composing code that is extremely keyword dense, which fortunately is no longer an effective technique to manipulate rankings on most search engines.
c) Miscellaneous other elements such as Anchor Texts, Alt Text, etc. are manipulated to increase keyword density.

Off Page Optimization:

a) Link Building - Ideally this involves finding related but non-competing web sites of high quality to exchange links with. However automated ink spamming is a common practice that is employed, which although initially effective, can result in expulsion from search indexes. Furthermore link spamming degrades the overall quality of the WWW.

Adjustment:

a) On a regular basis the various 'optimized' elements are adjusted in an attempt to find an ideal combination that will result in top rankings for the target keywords. This is quite often a lot of guesswork and wishful thinking. The Mission of this type of campaign is to take an existing website, regardless of quality and Make it Appear to be the Best. When such a campaign is successful, the SEO has succeeded in reducing the quality of search results for that keyword by positioning a web site that does not deserve a top position. Furthermore link spamming reduces the quality of the internet link graph by forging unnatural connectivity families.

Overview of Proposed SEO Campaign:

Ground Up Solutions:

a) The construction of innovative, high quality websites that are built according to concepts that reflect knowledge of search engine technology.
b) Rejection of existing websites as a standard with few exceptions. Offer complete solutions of design and SEO to insure uncompromising quality.

New SEO Methodology:

a) Traditional SEO techniques should be abandoned to pursue a true Search Engine knowledgebase resulting from scientifically sound research.
b) Abandon the concept of 'tricking' search engines into ranking web pages and focus on building websites of high enough quality that they can rank well based upon their own merit.
c) Citation development will still be an integral part of this campaign however new systems, standards of quality and types of citations are implemented and enforced such that the idea of link building no longer accurately describes this process.

A New Philosophy for Search Engine Optimization

The Mission of this type of campaign is to build a highly optimized web site that Is the Best.

Websites will achieve top rankings for 2 reasons:

1. They are constructed as comprehensive authorities within their industry.
2. They are designed to make the most of their natural strengths through an understanding of search technologies.

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

How To Measure Your Website's Performance

2005-09-20T11:14:00.000-06:00

How To Measure Your Website's Performance
by Charlie Cook
2005-09-11 00:00:00

Do you know how to get the numbers you need to accurately evaluate the performance of your company's website? Before selling one of my early sites, I had no idea.

In the late 90s I had a web site I'd developed that was getting well over a million 'hits' and over three hundred thousand 'page views' a month. When ZDNet approached me about buying the site. I thought I'd hit the jackpot and that it must be worth tens of millions. Before we even started negotiating on price, though, they wanted to run a test on my site by adding code to the homepage so they could do their own evaluation.

The numbers I had been tracking, hits and pages views, didn't help them determine the value of the site. Hits are the number of individual gifs and items that load each time someone visits a page. Page views tell you how frequently different parts of your site are being seen, but you could have a large number of page views triggered by a small audience.

ZDNet wanted to put tracking code on my homepage to determine the number of 'unique visitors' to my site. This would tell them how many visitors I was attracting per month and what percentage of these were unique visitors; new visitors who hadn't already been to my site or visited one of their own sites.

The more 'unique visitors' you are attracting to your site the better, but you could attract a zillion visitors a month and it wouldn't help you at all if none of them contacted you or bought from you or at least clicked on the ads on your site. The key question in evaluating your web site's performance is:

What percentage of site visitors take the action or actions you want them to take, whether it is subscribing to your newsletter, emailing you, calling you to inquire about your services or making a purchase?

To evaluate your site's performance first look at your web usage statistics to identify the number of unique visitors your site receives each month. Once you have this number, divide it by the number of people who took the action you wanted them to take. This is your site's 'conversion rate' and is the second number you want to look at each month to determine how well your site is performing.

Let's say that you had thirty thousand unique visitors each month and generated 30 sales. Your conversion rate would be one-tenth of a percent. If you generated 300 sales, your conversion rate would be one percent. A 1% percent conversion rate is a healthy rate for most businesses on the web.

If you offer a free newsletter, your objective is to get as many people as possible to sign up for it, to maximize your conversion rate. While you may only get 1% of people to buy your products during a given month you should be able to get 5-15% of site visitors to give you their contact information so you can stay in touch with them.

Want to increase your web sales?

1. Increase the number of unique visitors to your site.
2. Get more people to contact you and buy from you.

Track your conversion rate as a first step to identifying where and how you can increase your online profits.

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

SEO Success: Step Two is Attracting Search Engine Attention

2005-09-20T10:54:00.000-06:00

SEO Success: Step Two is Attracting Search Engine Attention
by Chesa Keane
2005-09-11 00:00:00

Once the website has been created and published, many new website owners think that the web development project is finished. But in reality, the real work is just beginning. In order to create a money-making site, traffic must be generated and driven to the website. There are several effective methods that can be implemented in Tier II of the SEO strategy to create this web traffic. While all methods may not be required to realize successful traffic generation, some combination of most, if not all, will probably be needed to create traffic, maintain traffic and finally, grow traffic to your website with long-term, lasting results. Consider implementing these strategies:

1) Dynamic content is necessary for search engine recognition, and by updating the website frequently, the search engines see your website as an active, not stagnate, website. How often should changes be made? At the very least, monthly. But the more frequent the changes, the better. There are some tried and true methods you may want to employ:

- Monthly newsletter (or weekly)
- Tip of the day that rotates to the page using a script from an existing database of information at your site
- RSS feed to public news feeds that update hourly or daily at the least
- Changes to contact information, staffing, clients, etc.
- Checking the links frequently to make sure that they are active and valid, and changing the link text from time to time will register as a change to the page
- Simple modification of content from time to time should be done in between these regular maintenance tasks which will update the website

2) Good links management will result in a stronger weight given by the search engines for search positioning. The algorithms used for weighting one page over another require link popularity assessment for successful traffic to your website. Link popularity is also one of the main considerations for Google and Alexa Page Rank. How do you achieve link popularity? It can be tedious and requires careful attention to the selection of the links, but there are several means that can be employed:

-Reciprocal Links - Search for relevant and desired web pages with which to trade links
-Purchase Page Rank based links - boost your relevance and weight in the eyes of search engines by purchasing links for a period of time, three to six months until you have achieved a better ranking
-List with directories - paid or unpaid directory listing that are relevant to your website will give your website additional exposure
-Anchor text - create the links with link text in mind, utilizing relevant keywords where possible
-PageRank consideration - link only with websites that have decent PageRank (PR); i.e., PR of 3 could be a minimum but a PR of 4 would be a better minimum requirement from those pages who want to exchange links with you
-Blogs - web logs linked to your site or posting to popular blogs with your links included to point traffic back to your site; a good strategy is to employ pinging with the blog posting
-Forums - forum participation that allows you to leave your link with the intent of attracting traffic back to your site can get traffic back to your website, however, take care that you actually offer something of value in your posting so you are not accused of spamming
- Search engine listings - listing with the few free search engines and directories is an essential step, although you won't see any results for months
-Gather opt-in email addresses - utilize an email list subscription function on your website with the intent of sending e-newsletters and announcements on a regular basis. This subscription list can be used for several other campaigns, including the sale of advertising space on your newsletter.
-Advertise on ezines - purchase sponsorship on other email lists where you can promote your product and/or services as well as links to your website in the process.

3) Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns with Google and Yahoo Search Marketing where you purchase advertising space based on keywords that are popular for your website if you are not in a saturated market. If your business operates in a saturated internet market, seek niche keywords for your PPC advertising. Determine your budget first and from there, you will know how much you can afford for the positioning you desire. It's all mathematical:

-Price Per Click = monthly budget/number of clicks or
-Number of clicks = monthly budget/price per click

Some suitable combination of price and number of clicks based on your own budget will result in a campaign you can monitor and adjust as necessary. The important result to watch for is the conversion rate. How many paid clicks convert into the desired result; i.e., new contract, sale of product, sign up for e-newsletter, etc.

Remember that the website is only the first step. Driving traffic to your site is the next important task. Layout a plan of action and follow-through. You are not going to realize success until you spend the time and energy - or pay someone else for their time and energy - to get the job done.

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

Marketing Optimization 101 for Blogs

2005-09-20T10:52:00.000-06:00

Marketing Optimization 101 for Blogs
by Rok Hrastnik
2005-09-14 00:00:00

Truth be told, most blogs aren't really optimized for marketing effectiveness. Even more so, some blogs are absolute marketing machines, but they at the same time fail to fully capitalize on that fact by not being really optimized marketing-wise.

Blogs may be Web 2.0, but bloggers should not ignore some of the good old internet direct marketing tactics that have been working for marketers online almost for a decade or more.

Here are the absolute 101 basics you really shouldn't ignore ...

1. DON'T FORGET E-MAIL DELIVERY

Bloggers are often abandoning or completely ignoring e-mail as a tool to deliver their content to their readers. As an RSS evangelist I certainly believe in using RSS to get your content to the world, but only as a supplement to e-mail delivery.

While RSS provides us with many unique benefits, it is yet to reach mainstream adoption. Until it does, marketers and publishers should not even consider abandoning e-mail delivery, or risk ignoring most of their potential readership.

If you're still wondering why you need e-mail, consider the potential you might be wasting without it. Someone visits your blog, likes the content and would like to be notified as new content of interest becomes available, and he does not know what RSS is or even care. If you fail to capture his e-mail address and consent at that exact moment, he might never again return to your site, either because he forgets about it or because dozens of other sites capture his interest even before the next day.

2. E-ZINE PUBLISHING IS STILL A MUST
Publishing a blog is not a replacement for an e-zine. If nothing else, publish a weekly or monthly e-zine of your top blog posts, available in a single easy-to-consume format.

Some simply do not have the time to watch your blog regularly and others will only want to receive a quick summary to get only your best and most crucial content. Publishing an e-mail e-zine will do that for you, giving you the opportunity to communicate with the widest possible long-term audience for your blog.

3. E-MAIL AND RSS SUBSCRIPTIONS

Providing e-mail (e-zine) and RSS subscriptions is important to the success of any blog. But neither of these will do you much good if your visitors don't actually see them and if you don't give them enough incentive to subscribe.

Foremost, display your e-mail e-zine and RSS subscriptions information at the top of your blog, instead of somewhere far down where no one will see them.

And second, use enticing copy to get visitors to subscribe. Briefly explain the benefits of subscribing, what kind of content they can expect to receive, and also do not forget about your privacy disclaimer, calming potential subscribers that you will never abuse their personal information.

4. EXPLAIN RSS

Most internet users still do not know what RSS is or how to use it, and consequently the RSS buttons on your blog mean absolutely nothing to them.

To overcome this problem, create a special RSS presentation page and link to it next to the RSS subscribe button. On that page explain:

- What RSS is
- How the visitor will benefit from using RSS
- Where they can get a free RSS aggregator (recommend one yourself!)
- How they can install it (provide step-by-step instructions)
- How they can subscribe to your RSS feeds
- Why they should subscribe to your own RSS feeds
-
Then, on this same page, include the links to all of your RSS feeds.

5. TOP CONTENT

If you update your blog frequently, your less recent top content keeps being pushed down and down, where most of your blog readers will never bother to look for it.

Overcome this frequent blog problem by creating a list of your top posts, clearly displayed and available from each of your pages. Depending on the topic you cover, you might want to place these headlines as close to the top of your blog as possible, in order to quickly entice your new visitors to start reading the best of what you have to offer and then use this content to convert them to loyal readers and subscribers.

6. THE HEADLINE

The site or blog headline will tell your visitors what to expect from reading your blog and will answer their key question: 'What's in it for me?'

Make sure that your blog headlines gives this reason and the story inviting enough for your readers to keep reading.

7. LEAD YOUR VISITORS TO YOUR MDA

MDA is the Most Desired Action you want your visitors to take on your site, ranging from a subscription to your e-zine to requesting more information about your services or ordering your product / getting more information about it.

Your blog will be of great help in this area, but only if you actually lead your visitors to this action. Putting this information in your menu simply is not enough.

Experiment putting some copy for your MDA directly below each blog post (on your permanent blog post archives pages) and also prominently in your left- or right-hand columns.

If you're providing multiple services or products, promote each of them next to the appropriate posts, based on post topics.

And yes, this is more important than having dozens of Google AdSense ads on your blog ... if you want to use your blog as part of your marketing mix.

8. LOOK DIFFERENT

Blogs are usually not heavily designed and most of them look exactly the same. While light design is one of the positive sides of blogs, you should invest some effort in making your blog stand-out visually. Don't cram it with design, but still make sure it's different than every other blog in the market.

9. USE YOUR OWN DOMAIN

Having a subdomain.typepad.com type sub-domain might be the easiest choice, but don't forget that your domain name is your permanent online address and part of your online brand.

Consequently, invest a couple of dollars to get your own domain name, to enforce your brand, as well as making it easier for your readers to access your blog.

10. DON'T FORGET YOUR KEYWORDS

What keywords do you want your content and blog to be found under in the search engines?

Don't forget to implement these keywords in the titles and body content of your blog posts. I'm not saying you should write your posts to please the search engines, but at least keep them in mind and use them when possible, without taking anything away from the actual content.

11. INTERACT WITH YOUR READERS

If you're blogging for business, don't forget about business oriented reader interaction.

Mainly, solicit questions from your readers, pertaining to your field of expertise, and then respond to them via your blog. Post interesting client case studies. When you get a review, post it or link to it. And so on ...

12. BLOG SPECIFIC PROMOTIONAL TACTICS 101

a] Intensively market your RSS feeds

b] Ping the search engines and directories after you update your blog, using a free service such as http://www.pingomatic.com

13. DON'T FORGET ABOUT THE CONTENT

And of course, none of the above won't make any difference at all if you don't provide high-quality, interesting and frequent content.

These 13 points are of course only the most basic stuff, but enough to help you get on the marketing optimization train.

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

Instant Blog Builder!!!!!!!!

2005-09-20T10:50:00.000-06:00

http://auto-blog-builder.com/?hop=mdaoust

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

Website Check-List: Part 2

2005-09-20T10:48:00.000-06:00

Website Check-List: Part 2
by Jennifer Stewart
2005-09-14 00:00:00

[This is Part 2 of a Series on Good Web Design]

A web site is like everything else in life -- there are good ones and not-so-good ones! Professional web designers have a check-list of elements that make up those in the first category. Here are the remaining four main elements to be considered. Each of these contributes to the impact and success of your site.

6. Segmenting and Sign-Posting

You have to make your page as easy for your visitors to read as is humanly possible and this means breaking it up into little 'chunks' for them. We've already looked at the need for columns, (which divide the page vertically), you also need to divide your page horizontally, by the use of headings and sub-headings.

When you were at school, your teachers told you to use headings in your notes; apply the same principles to your web pages. Look for the key points on each page and write a short statement that summarises each point; this is your heading.

Read through each section and see if it can be further divided into smaller points; write a summary of these sub-sections and these are your sub-headings.

Select a font for all your headings and sub-headings (and stick to it). It's not necessary to have a different font for headings (just go up one size for headings, and then use bold on all headings and sub-headings).

This way it's easy to recognise which is a heading (large and bold) and which is a sub-heading (smaller size and bold).

The point of this is to make it easy for your visitors to glance at your page and to take in all the key points. If what they see interests them, they'll stay and keep reading, so it goes without saying, that your headings should be written with care!
To draw attention to other important points, you can also highlight them -- by putting a whole sentence in bold or a different colour (or both). However, take care with the colours you select; some are quite difficult to read, even against a white background.

7. Navigation

Your main navigation bar should run down the left side of your page, for two reasons:
• We're accustomed to reading from left to right and from top to bottom
• We're accustomed to finding navigation bars on the left of web pages so why buck the system (especially when it works)?

It's also a good idea to have a brief navigation bar along the bottom of the page (just home | top of page will suffice).

When you've found a system you're happy with, use it on every page, so that your visitors know where to look for the information.

Make a blank page which has your page layout (columns), any logos or standardised graphics, alt tags and navigation bar already built in. Call this 'blank' and then when you make a new page, you have everything already set up and just have to enter the content, html tags and then save it as 'whatever.htm'.

8. Customer Security

If your site is a business site, then one of the most important things you have to do is to ensure that your potential customers feel confident dealing with you. On the web, you do this by telling people exactly what you're doing to safeguard their interests, in particular, how you're protecting their privacy. It's worth having a separate page which sets out -- in detail -- your policy towards their email addresses; how you accept orders; how you gather information; who has access to this information; how you use information gathered from children and so on.

Visitors also like to know that real people have used your products or services, so it's worth asking your satisfied customers if you can quote any positive comments they've made about you. Don't be afraid to ask for testimonials; we all like to know that our opinions are valued.

Set up a separate page for your testimonials and offer to include links to your customers' pages in return for using their comments. This is one of those 'win-win' situations!

9. Words, words, words

Now we come to the most important element; if this part is wrong, the rest of your efforts are largely wasted. How many times have you been impressed by a site's initial appearance, only to be disappointed by poor spelling, careless grammar and punctuation?

It reflects badly on the site owner and indicates that whoever is responsible for this page, is sloppy, careless, lazy, unprofessional or all of the above!

Would you entrust any of your hard-earned money to someone who doesn't even care enough to check the expression of his/her own site?
• You can take steps to improve your own writing skills
• You can employ someone to proof read and edit your work
• You can employ someone to write your pages for you.
There are places that will assist you with any or all of these steps. Don't spoil all your hard work by skipping this one, vital step! Browse through these other articles to read how you can improve the writing on your web site.

N.B. If the spelling of words like 'colour' in this article worried you, please read this: http://www.write101.com/aus.htm

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

Website Check-List: Part 1

2005-09-20T10:45:00.000-06:00

Website Check-List: Part 1
by Jennifer Stewart
2005-09-14 00:00:00

A web site is like everything else in life -- there are good ones and not-so-good ones! Professional web designers have a check-list of elements that make up those in the first category. Here are the nine main elements to be considered; each contributes to the impact and success of your site.

1. Visual Impact

Your home page is your billboard or store front -- it creates an immediate impression on visitors to your site, so it's got to create the right impression ... right?

It should look:
• Clean
• Uncluttered
• Professional
• Attractive

Aim to 'underwhelm' rather than overwhelm! Too many flashing lights, colours, drop-down boxes, graphics etc will be distracting. It's a bit like those stores that play loud, frenetic music; your heart rate rises, your stress levels go up and you just want to get out -- fast!

2. Content

Whether you have a business site or a personal page, you have to give people a reason to stay on your site; we're mercenary little critters, we humans, our first question is always, 'what's in it for me?'

That doesn't mean that you have to give away free programs, books, tickets or holidays; it does mean that you have to offer something. That 'something' could be:
• Information
• Entertainment
• Advice
• Help with a problem
• Opportunities to contact similar minded people
• Links to useful sites

If you do have a business site, you need to give information about your product or service that is:
• Easy to follow
• Easy to find
• Easy to order

3. Loading Time

We all know that speed is the key to keeping visitors. I often catch myself getting impatient because it's taking me 20 or 30 seconds to connect to some site or other. Then I stop and think about the fact that here I am, sitting in my office on the east coast of Australia, connecting to a site in the north of England, on the west coast of the US, in Canada, South Africa, India or one of the dozens of other places I regularly contact, and I shake my head in wonder. How quickly we become accustomed to technology.

However, we DO get impatient if it takes us too long to make contact, so you must ensure that your home page at least, loads as quickly as possible. That means no big, flash graphics.

Keep reminding yourself that your first page is like a billboard. When driving your car, you don't have time to read detailed descriptions, or admire intricate pictures on billboards. The signs flash past you and have to make an immediate impression.

Your web visitors are 'flashing past' as well, so keep your front page simple and fast.

There are numerous articles on the net about how to improve speed; take the time to check them out and then discard anything that slows down your home page too much.

4. Colour, Lay-out and Graphics

The graphics and lay-out of your home page contribute to that first impression. Think about what image your site is trying to convey and make sure everything on your site contributes something towards that overall image.

If you have a serious business site, you don't want garish cartoons on your front page; but if you have a games site, then cartoons can be an integral part of the image.

Graphics are what eat up the loading time of your site. A rough rule of thumb to determine good loading time for a page is to keep the entire page around 30k.
Images should be between 6 - 8 k. Each additional 2k adds approximately one second to loading time.

If in doubt, right click the image and then click on Properties to get the size of the image.

Colour is also an important part of your site; colours have different effects on our emotions:

• Red and orange excite the senses and increase heart beat
• Blues and greens are more restful
• Yellow reminds us of sunshine and is a happy colour

Consider the effect you want to create and choose a colour that is appropriate.

When reading Western texts, the eye travels from the top left of the page, across and then down to the bottom right. Remember this when you're placing graphics on your page.

Any graphic which has a directional aspect should be placed to point the eye towards the most important section of the page. If you have a picture of a bird on the top left corner of your page, make sure it is facing inward and that its beak is leading the eye to the centre of the page, not away from it.

The same applies to all graphics:
• Faces should 'look' to the centre of the page
• Cars should be 'parked' facing towards the centre of the page
• Roads, neck ties etc should all be placed to lead the eye across from left to right, or down from top to bottom

This is also why you should place your navigation bars down the left side of your page; it keeps them constantly in the visitor's field of vision.

5. Readability

This doesn't refer to the words you use (we'll look at them in detail in part 2 of this series), but to the way the words look on the page.

Going back to the concept of the billboard, your words need to stand out on your page; you need to surround them with plenty of white space.

Think over some of the sites you've visited; some make you feel as if you have to duck your head to read them! Dark backgrounds make you feel as if you're in a small space and also have a depressing effect on your mood.

Certain coloured backgrounds make it very difficult to read the text; purples, orange tonings and reds dazzle the eyes.

The colour of your text is just as important. Bear in mind that different browsers read colours differently; what looks great on your browser, could well be invisible on another!

Take a lesson from the newspapers and divide your text into columns for easier (and quicker) reading; even two columns are better than one slab of text that covers the entire width of the page.

Another element that contributes to text readability is the font you choose. Plain fonts (Arial, Times New Roman, Garamond and Courier) are the easiest to read.

Fancy fonts are fine for headings, but not for full pages (imagine trying to read a whole page in Gothic, Script, Vivaldi, or Matisse). Your eyes would soon tire of the effort involved and you'd be reaching for the back button!

Part 2 follows.

N.B. If the spelling of words like 'colour' in this article worried you, please read this: http://www.write101.com/aus.htm

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

Simple Changes That Can Explode Your Response Rate

2005-09-20T10:42:00.000-06:00

Simple Changes That Can Explode Your Response Rate
by Alli Ross
2005-09-17 00:00:00

John Reese, Jason Potash, and Joe Vitale are all very well known online marketers that have achieved conversion rates of 10% or more. Now, why does these online marketers have such high conversion rates while the majority of sites on the internet are only obtaining about a 1% conversion rate? It's simple. They invest a lot of time and effort into improving their conversion rate. They know that small changes to a web site can make huge impacts to your bottom line. Here are some simple changes that can make a dramatic difference in your own profits.

Headline

A change in your headline alone can produce a 1,900% increase in your income. This is one of the most crucial parts of your sales page and can pull in 80% of the orders if done correctly. Your headline should concentrate on the biggest benefit of your product. In addition, it should create enough curiosity to compel the reader into the sales copy.

One of the most powerful words in sales copy is the word you. This is also true for headlines. Using the word you or your in your headline and sales copy transfers ownership and makes your writing much more personal.

Color of Your Background

The color of your background is a very simple change that can raise your sales by up to 30%. The most effective color is dark blue, but grey, black, and white also work pretty well. All aspects of your sales letter must be tested because different market segments respond differently
Audio Marketing

Adding audio to your order page could catapult your sales by 437%. Audio makes your message much more personal and adds to your credibility. People also like to associate a face with a voice. Place a small picture above your recording and see how this affects your sales conversions.

Pop-Ups

Pop-ups are a powerful tool for collecting the email addresses of potential customers. It is also a good way to catch your visitors by the tail before they leave your site. You don't want any of your web site visitors to go to waste. So, before they leave, grab them with a pop-up. With a pop up you can introduce them to your other products, subscribe them to your newsletter, or find out why they didn't buy your product. It is crucial to know exactly what your visitors are looking for. When you know what your targeted visitors want, you can target your marketing and catapult your conversion rates.

Number of Order Buttons

Long sales letters have proven to be the best for online sales letters because they limit a visitors navigation choices, they are focused on one product, and they provide potential customers with every bit of information they could want about a product. However, if you only have one order button at the very end of your sales page, you are probably losing out on a number of sales. The key is to place multiple button links that direct the user to the order page.

Place a red border around your order buttons. This has proven to increase conversion rates. However, nothing can take the place of testing.

Another important factor influencing click-through rate is what text you use for your order buttons. Some of the most effective text that have been used on the internet are below.

Click here to order
Click here to grab your copy of _____________

There are so many sites that still do not include a call to action. You must clearly explain to your visitors what you want them to do. Marketers have proven that you will increase your sales by at least 80% simply by asking for the order.

Newsletters / Autoresponders

Unfortunately, not everyone that comes to your site will be ready to buy. Actually, this is usually 90% or more of the visitors that arrive at your site. However, to be successful, you must be able to stay in contact with potential customers. In order to do this you must capture their email address by offering a newsletter or autoresponder. You can do this through a pop-up or subscription form. Some of the best places for a subscription form include the top-left hand of your sales page and the very bottom of your sales copy.

Limited Choices

Limit your visitors to a single choice. Your sales page should have one main goal: to sell one, individual product. You may have a secondary purpose of subscribing visitors to your newsletter, but this is not the main point of the page. The more choices you give people to surf around your site, the more confused they become and many will often just click away to somewhere else. By focusing your potential customers, you can crank up your conversion rates.

Web Site Copy

Strong testimonials can increase your sales by a phenomenal 250%. Gaining credibility is crucial on the internet where there are no sales reps on hand to talk to personally. When your visitors see that other people have risked doing business with you and have been pleased with the results, you gain trust that cannot be bought. However, when lost, it is nearly impossible to gain back.

For a testimonial to be effective, it must contain the following elements:

· A good testimonial is descriptive Avoid using one and two word testimonials. People will be much more influenced by longer testimonials that contain solid numbers and facts about the benefits they experienced.

· List the customer's full name, business name, and URL.

· Do NOT edit your testimonials. This is an unethical practice. However, correcting the spelling would be acceptable

So, how do you go about collecting these powerful testimonials? There are a couple of options. You may ask current customers for testimonials. Many times, you may have many very happy customers who just never really thought about sending in a testimonial. They are very likely to be responsive if you approach them and explain to them how both of you stand to benefit.

Another option is to give a couple of your products away for free in exchange for a testimonial. This has proven to be very effective in some cases.

Nevertheless, be sure to incorporate testimonials into your overall marketing plan. Research has shown that they work best when placed right below the headline.

A strong guarantee helps alleviate any anxiety the customer may be feeling about ordering from you. Your guarantee shows that you have confidence in what you are selling. Did you know that the longer your guarantee is for, the fewer returns you will receive? This is a simple solution that will increase your bottom line and reduce the headache of filing returns. So go ahead and give your customers a one year guarantee. If you want to gain their trust even further and lower your return rate, give them a lifetime guarantee. Remember, your first-time customer is often worth much more than just their initial purchase. Your current customers are the most valuable sources of repeat sales. Always keep this in mind when marketing to a lifetime customer.

No matter what you are selling online, you can increase your conversion rates by using pictures of your products. This is especially true for ebooks.
People are visual. A three-dimensional picture of your product can:

· Increase your pageviews by 300%

· Increase actions (clickthroughs, downloads, responses, signups, subscriptions, phone calls, emails, and sales ) by 200%.

Increase time spent at your site by 50%. Any time people stay longer at your site, your chances of making the sale are higher.

Another important feature of a good sales page are bonuses. A bonus that is related to your product increases the perceived value of your offering. People are always looking to get more bang for their buck. A bonus can be one of your best sources for closing the sale.

By making the bonus a limited time offer , you create a sense of urgency. Anticipation is one of the most powerful tools in online marketing. When used appropriately, it can drastically increase your response rate.

You are now coming near the end of your sales letter. Add some personalization with a handwritten P.S. Some online marketers even use a P.S.S. and a P.S.S.S. Test a combination to see what works best for you.

Now it's your turn to put these strategies to the test. I challenge you to test and track your way to increased profits.

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

Business Marketing Strategy

2005-09-19T11:41:00.000-06:00

Business Marketing Strategy
by Joy Gendusa

• What is it and who needs one?

The term business marketing strategy might sound like it is esoteric or stratospheric, so let’s take the mystery out of it so you can devise and implement your own business marketing strategy that fits in to your small business plan.

Strategy comes from a Greek word “stratagein” meaning “to be a general”. Think of a strategy as an overall plan of action needed to win a war. The smaller, detailed actions are called tactics. You can have tactical plans which help you achieve your strategic marketing plan or overall business marketing strategy. That’s simple enough, isn’t it?

A business marketing strategy or strategic marketing plan is an overall plan of marketing actions you intend to take in order to accomplish a specific goal for your company.

Start with a goal: $2 million in sales this year; expand into new premises by a certain date; double the size of the company in 2 years… whatever the goal may be. Something realistic but challenging. That's the 'war' you want to win. Guess who the general is.

Then work out a simple, overall plan of the major marketing steps needed to accomplish that (for example):

1. Publish a newsletter for all existing customers and mail out quarterly.

2. Work out 4 special offers in the year and promote them to all our customers.

3. Set up on-line shopping and expand the web site.

4. Direct mail campaign promoting the web site to all customers.

5. Get mailing lists of (target markets) and do a series of 3 mailings of postcards to them and follow up on and close all leads.

6. Etc.

You get the idea. Don’t rush this. Do your homework. What worked in the past? Read up on successful marketing campaigns. Your business marketing strategy needs to be laid out in the right sequence and you should have some idea of budget when you write it. “Run a series of 30 second TV ads during the Superbowl” might sound like a good thing to do but can you afford it? On the other hand, when you build your business marketing strategy you mustn’t try and cut corners. If you don’t promote heavily, it doesn’t matter how good your product or service is, no one will know about it and you will go broke. What really works when it comes to marketing?

Many business owners don't have a good enough answer to this important question. I learned by a combination of study and trial and error.

From my own hard won experience I have discovered that a real marketing campaign will take into consideration at least the seven points which are outlined below:

1. Target Your Market

Your marketing will produce the best results for the lowest cost when you target prospects with the greatest need for what you offer.

Identify the best people to send your postcards to. Design your postcards to appeal to their greatest need.

If you are able to break down your target market into sub markets you can then write postcards that specifically speak to the needs of those people (an example is breaking down your own customer list into customers who buy most often, customers who spend the most money with you, customers who have been your customers the longest and then making them special offers based on the category they fit into).

2. Create A USP For Your Business

USP stands for 'Unique Selling Proposition'.

It is a statement of what is different about your company and its products. Your USP gives the reason people should do business with you. It amplifies the benefit of doing business with you and your company.

Create your own USP and put it on all your promotional materials, invoices, shipping labels etc. Use your USP to communicate the benefit of doing business with you and why you are better than any of your competitors.

3. Always Make an Offer

Make sure you ask your prospects and customers to do something when they receive your postcard. By offering them something you know they are likely to want and giving them a smooth path to respond on, you are making it easy and desirable for them to respond.

4. Create and Maintain a Database of The Customer Information You Collect From The Responses To Your Mailings

Most people who receive a postcard from you won't contact you the first time they receive one.

But once they contact you, you must create and maintain a database which allows you to repeatedly contact them with offers to respond to.

Fifty percent or more of many businesses' sales come as a result of following up with people who were previously contacted, but didn't buy right away.

No kidding, repeat contact does drive sales. One-time mailings can get response, but are bound to leave sales on the table. Those sales can be picked up with repeated mailings.

5. Take Away the Fear of Loss

People don't want to be fooled, plain and simple. Unfortunately trust does not run high today between customers and businesses in general. People have been disappointed too many times by being sold one thing and getting another.

A guarantee or warranty is a good way to reduce or eliminate the customers’ risk of getting something other than what they bargained for.

Guarantees and warranties increase response and sales by reducing customer risk.

6. Expand Your Product Line

Getting new customers is more expensive than selling to existing ones. By regularly developing new products and services to sell to your customers and offering these new products and services to them, you can expand your business efficiently and easily.

7. Test Your Postcard Promotions

Track the effectiveness of your postcard mailings. How many people responded to your mailing? What dollar amount of sales resulted from those responses?

Is the money you are spending to attract new business giving you a good return? What can you do to make your marketing more effective? Change your offer, headline, price, the timing of your offer. When you do track the results and improve your response.

These are the points to follow when designing your own marketing strategy. When you are done, you will have laid out the steps needed to accomplish your goal using existing resources to achieve a great marketing ROI (return on investment).

After that, you simply have to get those steps executed and that might require further planning but it is all in the context of your main business marketing strategy.

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

ZEN AND THE ART OF VIRAL MARKETING

2005-09-19T11:39:00.000-06:00

ZEN AND THE ART OF VIRAL MARKETING

Let's begin with some simple tenets we can agree on. Free is better than paying. Cheap is better than expensive. An invitation is better than a command. A smile attached to the eyeballs you want scanning your site is better than a disappointed scowl.
________________________________________
Editor's Note: Have you had success with viral marketing campaigns, or do your viral markting efforts always seem to die on the table? Discuss your experiences in WebProWorld.
________________________________________

These concepts make up everything that is viral marketing, or as it is referred to outside cyberspace-word of mouth advertising.

Now lets look at how AOL and Juno got schooled by Hotmail and NetZero. Hotmail is a key beginning as it is considered the progenitor of online viral marketing. While Juno was spending $20 million on traditional advertising channels, it didn't come close to the success of Hotmail's email service that began with a modest $50,000.

Hotmail's subscriber base grew from zero to 12 million users in 18 months, spreading over the globe (even countries where no marketing was done), in the words of Steve Jurvetson, as if Zeus sneezed over the planet.

The concept was simple. Offer a free subscriber email and let subscribers tell their friends about it by providing a sign-up link. Recently, Google has launched a similar initiative with originally invitation only G-Mail accounts.

At around the same time, while millions were using AOL Free Trial CDs as drink coasters and Frisbees, NetZero launched its own, completely free Internet service. The result: NetZero grew ten times faster than AOL.

AOL continues to learn this lesson, recently noted in a New York Times article, as it attempts to combat a huge drop in renewal rates. No doubt they noticed Google's tripled share prices and $1.3 billion first quarter returns, and adjusted accordingly by launching its own free portal.

The big lesson here is that while traditional real world marketing is valuable, it's getting killed by creative, less budget-pinching initiatives due to a resurgence of the ancient and fundamental principle of word-of-mouth.

Consumers have come full circle by being able to spot a salesman a mile away. Worse, they've got their shotguns loaded and cocked. While Hotmail's method was a precursor to a spam epidemic (all good ideas are perverted by opportunists), it illustrated the importance of likeability, believability, and the law of giving and selling.

Gimmicky spammers and pop-up advertisers, like telemarketers, are only selling, door-to-door style, interrupting dinners, breaking into conversations in a way that typically causes a knee-jerk, negative reaction. When it gets to the point that laws are passed, you know you've caused a problem. In the long run, that's bad for business.

Elements of Successful Viral Marketing

Am I going to tell you how to create a viral marketing campaign? Well, no, not really. It's a very Zen concept, a faith-based business model that butterflies away whenever you try to hold it down. I can tell you what it's about, give examples, and then let the reader clear his mind, become the uncarved block, allowing his imagination to guide him.

All I can say that it seems paradoxical: giving instead of selling; low budgets lead to big returns; you can't want it or you'll never get it. Clear your mind, Grasshopper, and know there is no pebble to snatch.

Dr. Ralph Wilson, consultant to E-Commerce, put forth six elements of a successful viral marketing strategy. The successful campaign:

1. Gives away products or services
2. Provides for effortless transfer to others (i.e., easily emailed, linked, or downloaded)
3. Scales easily from small to very large (popularity drives success)
4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors (i.e., funny content motivates people to share with others)
5. Utilizes existing communication networks
6. Takes advantage of others' resources (people become the medium, free of charge)

Examples Of Others Using Viral Marketing

Budweiser
Anheuser-Busch hired Jib Jab's Gregg and Evan Spiridellis, the creators of the web-phenom "This Land," an animated spoof of the 2004 presidential candidates, to develop entertaining content for Budweiser's website (a concept I call "advertainment"). "This Land" was seen by an estimated 80 million web viewers and was fueled further by being picked up by the Today Show and others.

The Blair Witch Project
All the buzz around the famous motion picture "The Blair Witch Project" orignated from a simple Internet rumor that the movie was not fiction, it was actual footage of college film students who were killed in the woods by the Blair Witch ghost. The return on investment was huge.

Forget-Me-Not-Panties
What turned out to be a contest entry for sponsor Contagious Media, a website advertising "Forget-Me-Not Panties," GPS enabled, trackable, heartrate and temperature monitoring underwear attracted 615,562 unique viewers. Even though it was a hoax, it was believable enough to win the contest and attract media attention.

The site beat out "CryingWhileEating.com" and won its creators the $2000 grand prize. Contagious Media received a bit of attention too.

There are numerous ways to get the word out about your company through the concept of viral marketing. You just have to be creative enough to make it work. It doesn't take money, it doesn't take "in your face" advertising. It takes enough likeability to get viewers to do the work for you by spreading the news around.

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

Using External Coding To Improve Search Engine Placement

2005-09-19T11:38:00.000-06:00

Using External Coding To Improve Search Engine Placement
by George Peirson

Do you have lots of JavaScript coding in the header section of your web pages? Do you re-list your CSS styles at the top of every page? Do you have JavaScript coding spread throughout your web pages?

If you answered yes to any of these questions your site may be driving away search engine spiders and losing search engine position ranking.

As you can imagine search engine spiders have a lot of pages to get through on the web when they are indexing sites. To improve their speed and efficiency search engines program their spiders to give up easily if they have problems with a page or if they have to wade through too much code to find the relevant content.

This is one of the reasons why it is so important to put your keywords as close to the top of the page as possible. This way the search bot will see the keywords before giving up and moving on to the next page.

But what do you do if you have lots of JavaScript code or CSS styles pushing your keywords down the page in your coding? You need to find a way to cut down on all that code that gets in the way of the search engines properly indexing your page.

We do this by moving the JavaScript and CSS styles off the page and into external files. This is a fairly easy and straight forward process and can have the added benefit of making your pages load faster as well, which the search engines also like.

In many ways CSS styles and JavaScript work in a similar fashion. You set up functions in a script or formatting in a style sheet section, and then refer to that section in your html code. For instance if you have a JavaScript that displays a clock on your page you would have the JavaScript functions for the clock listed in your head section, then you would simply call that function from the place on the page where the clock would be displayed.

Similarly with CSS you set up your styles ahead of time in a Styles section of the page head, then you simply refer to the styles as needed in your html coding. One benefit of this is that it cuts down dramatically on the amount of formatting code needed when compared to using Font tags.

If you want to use the same JavaScript or CSS styles on a different page you could copy all that code onto the new page. But this would cause two distinct problems, first you would be adding a lot of code to each page and second if you wanted to make a change to the JavaScript or CSS styles you would need to do so on every page that the code had been copied onto.

Both of these problems can be solved simply by using external files. You create one external file for your CSS and another file for your JavaScript. These could be named mysite.css for the CSS and mysite.js for the JavaScript. These files can be created in any plain text editor or html code editor, they are nothing more than files that contain most of the CSS or JavaScript code from the web pages.

With JavaScript you have an opening JavaScript tag, then a comment tag, then assorted functions and what not, followed by a closing comment tag and a closing JavaScript tag. Your external file would start with the opening comment tag, contain all the functions and such, and end with the closing comment tag. You would leave both the opening and closing JavaScript tags in the html page. If you have more than one JavaScript on the page you can move all the code into one external js file. Simply copy it into the file in the same order as it exists in the JavaScript tags on the html page. You will only need the one pair of opening and closing comment tags.

Once your JavaScript is moved off the page you will need to tell the web page where to find it. This is done in the JavaScript tag that was left on the page in the head section. Right now this will be an opening JavaScript tag placed right up against the closing JavaScript tag, with no additional code in between. You will place the reference to the external JavaScript code inside the opening JavaScript tag like this:

script language='JavaScript' type='text/JavaScript' src='mysite.js'

Placing CSS styles in an external file is handled in exactly the same manner. Move the styles into the external file, and then refer to that external file with your style tag in the head section of the web page like this:

link href='mysite.css' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'

An added benefit of moving the code into external files is that you can then change the styles of your whole site simply by changing the code in the one external file.

Once you have moved the code into external files you will have greatly simplified the code on each page. This will take you a long way towards making your pages lean and mean, and very search engine friendly.

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

Four Search Engine Marketing Metrics

2005-09-19T11:36:00.000-06:00

Four Search Engine Marketing Metrics
By Kevin Lee
February 20, 2003

Clear objectives, effective measurement, and appropriate metrics are critically important for small business marketing efforts. Search engine marketers have additional campaign metrics challenges because of the nature of the industry. Typical search engine marketing (SEM) campaigns involve tracking hundreds of keywords simultaneously, post-click behavior changes based on position, and multiple engines with different syndication networks. Marketers have learned that not all search-result click-throughs are created equal. Some visitors find what they are looking for while others just leave.
The challenge is to translate your site's business objectives into campaign objectives based on the right metrics. Metrics help you get the most out of your campaign, so make sure you understand how to pick which goals to suit your needs. The most common SEM metrics are: cost per order (CPO), cost per action (CPA), return on advertising spending (ROAS), and return on investment (ROI). In the interest of sharing best practices, let's review the common metrics, how they interrelate, and where they come from.
CPO
Offline media, such as direct response television (DRTV), direct mail and print advertising, use the CPO metric regularly, and online banner campaigns are often judged based on CPO. If you sell something online, then you might want to measure CPO and use the data to manage your campaign. You can measure CPO for a whole campaign or for individual keywords and engines. CPO targets can be set on a campaign wide basis or even on a much more granular level, including by product or keyword.
Some marketers have a hard time setting a CPO target. It's not always easy. Since an order has an immediate profit value and an impact on the lifetime estimated value for a customer, you can use both the immediate profit and long-term value in setting your CPOs.
If you need a justification to set a CPO target higher, consider adding intangible values to your formula, such as brand building (through user experience of the brand/site) or gain of market share. In addition, if you know you often get phone or mail orders generated by your online efforts but not captured, adjust the measured CPO targets accordingly. By adding an adjustment factor to the measured CPO, the campaign can be managed closest to the actual CPO.
CPA
Sales orders are great as a metric, but for some businesses tracking orders online is difficult or even impossible. This may be because the business is a service, the item is not appropriate for online purchase, it's a high-involvement purchase, or the sales process for that product or service is complex. In that case, to differentiate between good and poor traffic, the campaign metric must be an action that correlates to a future sale.
Actions that marketers may measure to determine traffic quality typically include registering for a newsletter, requesting information, downloading a white paper, reaching a particular important page within the site, or visiting the "contact us" page. To select actions to measure, understand that those actions are proxies for what you're really after — revenue. Think about how your sales and revenue generation process works. If you have more than one action that contributes to the likelihood of a sale, assign a weight to each action relative to the others.
ROAS
Measuring the ROAS is an appealing concept. It's the amount of revenue generated per dollar spent on advertising. For example, a ROAS of $1 means you're generating $1 in sales for every $1 in advertising spend, and a ROAS of $10 means you generate $10 in sales for every $1 in spending. ROAS is a useful metric, but only for some marketers. If your profit margin is the same or very similar across products, the ROAS can be quite appropriate as a campaign metric.
With a predictable profit margin, it's easy to set a target ROAS. For example, if your profit margin is 25 percent and your ROAS is $4, then you are breaking even (spending all your profit on marketing spend). If your ROAS is $8, then half of your profit goes toward customer acquisition.
Of course, ROAS does not take into account lifetime value; it simply looks at the return for the initial order. Also, when using ROAS and all these metrics, keep in mind that gross profit doesn't take into account your overhead, allowances for returns, bad debt, and so on.
ROAS starts to break down when there is a large variation in profit margin on products or if some products tend to predict a higher lifetime value. For example, an online office supply store may have a lower margin on office phones than on binders, but customers who buy binders may be more likely to order again. Neither factor is taken into account with ROAS.
ROI
It would be hard to find a more overused word in marketing than ROI. True, ROI is difficult to accurately measure and calculate. Most marketers use gross profit when calculating ROI, and that is a great start. If you really want to know the long-term profit generated by an investment in advertising, marketing, or any other activity, you need to capture all sorts of information that is more difficult to find.
The slipperiest of variables is lifetime value, which is how much profit a particular customer or type of customer contributes to the bottom line over time. Then there are factors that could influence profit negatively, which sometimes get left out of a lifetime value formula that looks at revenue, such as how often that customer calls the tech support line or how many returns are made.
If you don't have access to more sophisticated data, leave out complications such as lifetime value, and use the immediate ROI based on the purchase transaction that occurs online (or offline). For example, if you spend $100 advertising an electric stapler and sell $800 worth of staplers, on which you make $300, your ROI is 300 percent. ROI is often the metric used in planning when setting CPO and/or CPA targets for a campaign. After all, you probably want to set your CPO or CPA at a level where the ROI is acceptable.
Putting It All Together
These metrics and formulas are tools that allow marketers to make better decisions about marketing, shedding light on the good and bad portions of a campaign. Marketers who understand and use these tools will outperform those operating in the dark. A campaign can have objectives that are measured using more than one of the above metrics. If I sell products but also have a monthly newsletter, I can set both CPO and CPA objectives and even meld the two by assigning weights. If 1 in 20 people who sign up for a newsletter eventually orders, then a conversion to a newsletter subscription is worth five percent of a sale.
Now that you have the arithmetic and strategic basis to manage your search engine marketing campaign, here's your success!

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

Pay Per Click Definitions

2005-09-19T11:35:00.001-06:00

Pay Per Click Definitions
by S. Housley

• Pay-Per-Click marketing has become an online phenomenon, with marketers only paying for traffic they receive. As Internet marketing has evolved, pay-per-click is seen by many as the middle ground between paying per impression and paying per sale. Advertisers only pay when they receive traffic that may or may not be targeted.

The pay-per-click advertisements are usually displayed with the advertisement from the highest paying bidder in the top position.

Navigating the complex web of Internet marketing, publishers and marketers are often confronted with terms that seem foreign. This simple guide will assist marketers in navigating the Pay-Per-Click marketing model.

Bid - The amount that an advertiser is willing to pay for a click on a specific keyword.

Budget- The amount of money that an advertiser sets aside for an advertising campaign. Different publishers allow for advertisers to set daily, weekly or monthly budgets.

Clickthrough Rate (CTR) - The percentage of clicks on a link. This is usually a percentage based on the total number of clicks divided by the number of impressions that an advertisement has received.

Conversion Rate - The relationship between visitors to a web site and actions considered to be a 'conversion', such as a sale or request to receive more information: the percentage of people whose clicks have resulted in a sale or desired action in relation to the total number of clicks on an advertisement.

Cost Per Click (CPC) - The cost or cost-equivalent paid per click-through to an advertiser's website.

Cost Per Thousand (CPM) - The amount an advertiser pays for one thousand advertisement impressions, regardless of the consumer's subsequent actions.

Delisting - The removal of a listing as a result of inaction or poor performance.

GeoTargetting - An advertisement targeted at a specific geographical region, area or location.

Impressions - The number of times an advertisement is viewed by web surfers.

Keywords - Search terms or phrases that are related to an advertisement or ad copy.

Landing Page - The specific web page that a visitor ultimately reaches after clicking an advertisement. Often, this page is optimized for a specific keyword term or phrase.

Linking Text - The text that is contained within a link.

Pay Per Click (PPC) - Advertising model in which advertisers pay for click-throughs to their website. Ads are served based on keywords or themes.

Rank - How well a particular web page or web site is listed in a search engine or advertising results.

Return On Investment (ROI) - The percentage of profit that results in a marketing or advertising campaign. Naturally, advertisers want the amount of money made to exceed the money spent.

Understanding the above terminology will help marketers navigate the pay-per-click advertising model, which has emerged on the Internet and become one of the leading advertising models in the online world.

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

The Click Fraud Problem

2005-09-19T11:35:00.000-06:00

The Click Fraud Problem
by Christos Varsamis

• Click fraud has become a major problem for online marketers. If you participate on Google Adwords campaigns or Overture, you must already pay a lot for your campaigns.

What is click fraud?

Click fraud - the deliberate clicks to PPC search engine ads for completely other reasons than expressing interest for buying the related products or services.

Overture defines click fraud as clicks arising for reasons other than the good-faith intention of an Internet user to visit a web site to purchase goods or services or to obtain information.

Google defines click fraud, or invalid clicks, as any method used to artificially and/or maliciously generate clicks or page impressions.

In simple words, Click fraud means that someone is cheating you and that you pay too much for your pay per click campaigns.

Who is doing that?

Three main groups click on pay per click ads, without real interest in the offered goods:

1. People who join Google AdSense or other per click affiliate programs click on the ads on their own web site to make a little income. Often, these people cooperate with other webmasters to click on each other's ads.

2. Some unethical companies click on the pay per click ads of competitors to drive up their advertising costs.

3. Companies (often in India, Russia and China) hire people who are paid to click on ads. Google and other search networks provide refunds to advertisers when click fraud has been discovered.

Google and Overture employ 'fraud squads,' or teams of people dedicated to fighting click schemes. But at least two marketing executives say such countermeasures are missing fraudulent clicks that are responsible for between 5 percent and 20 percent of the advertising fees paid to all search networks.

This is a huge problem. There is no 'pay per click' Company denying that click fraud exists. Web analytics companies estimate that the 50% of all click activity is fraudulent.

This means that your pay per click marketing activities are half effective as they could be because of click fraud.

Overture spokeswoman Jennifer Stephens refutes that in estimate, the numbers likely represent acts of fraud that are ultimately caught. She added that Overture filters most fraudulent clicks with the best antifraud system in the industry, which combines technology and human analysis.

Most advertisers are aware of the click-fraud issue but have not delved into it because of the technical complexities involved. Others are concerned that they could jeopardize their relationships with the powerful search networks if they complain too loudly.

One of the best ways to eliminate click fraud is using anti click fraud services such as ppctrax. They provide services like the below:

* IP address capture.

* IP address geographic Location.

* User Agent (browser, bot etc.)

* See exactly what keywords are generating your clicks

* Date and Time stamp

* System detects sudden click spikes from one or more IP addresses

* Real-time email alerts at 80% and 100% of your account's transaction utilization

* IP address history - alert you to prior offenders

Another similar service is 'who is clicking who'.
Other way is the click fraud capture software like Click Auditor.

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

Make Your Internet Marketing Easier With Niche Marketing Keywords

2005-09-19T11:32:00.000-06:00

Make Your Internet Marketing Easier With Niche Marketing Keywords
by Timothy Spaulding

• If your home based business depends on niche marketing, keywords are your best friends. If your answer to the first sentence was no, you are missing out on a lot of potential business. This is because keywords are what people search for on search engines like Google, Yahoo, Excite, and if the keyword being searched on matches keywords provided on your Web site then your web page will be returned as a result.

The results that are returned from the search engines are ranked in order of correlation between the keywords searched for and those on your site. You can easily see that you will want to have as many possible keywords pertaining to your home based business niche market on your web page in order to drive more people to your site. Even though there are thousands of keywords and combinations of keywords, not to mention misspellings, that potential customers might search for, you will want to make sure you have all of the most popular search terms and as many of the others as possible. These keywords equal web page traffic, which equals income and is certainly worth your time to put forth the effort to find out what the most popular keywords are for your niche business.

If you are trying to think of all the possible niche marketing keyword combinations by yourself it may find that it is a daunting task. So it might help significantly to get a software program or sign up for a keyword service that will do most to the work for you as well as let you know the most popular keywords for your niche business. These will also help you come up with additional combinations. You can find these online and can also compare different aspects of different programs to see which one will be best suited for you.

Once you have all of the keywords you want to include on your web page, you might be curious as to how to do it and still maintain a professional looking page. The answer is keyword articles. Keyword articles use particular keywords within a story pertaining to it. As a result, your web page has useful information about a particular service, product, and keyword and the keyword is incorporated on your web page enough so as to return your web page as a result. When your web page is returned as a top result in the search engines, it means your traffic will increase and subsequently your business.

Keyword articles are easy to write if you are interested in doing it yourself, however if not you can freelance the work out. For most home based business entrepreneurs doing it yourself is certainly cheaper if you are trying to market on a tight budget, but having the work done by a freelancer might save you considerable time that needs to be focused elsewhere. And if you find that writing articles is one of your strong points you could turn that talent into a home based business of its own.

Niche marketing keywords sounds as if it could be a little tedious and difficult, however it does not have to be that way. You simply need to establish the keywords for your niche market and then incorporate them in articles on your web page. It is guaranteed that the more information and keywords your web page contains, the more traffic and business you will see.

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

All About Title Tags

2005-09-19T11:31:00.000-06:00

All About Title Tags
by Jill Whalen
Revised April 2004
What Is a Title Tag?
The title tag is one of the most important factors in achieving high search engine rankings.
A title tag is essentially an HTML code snippet that creates the words that appear in the top bar of your Web browser.
The HTML code for a title tag looks like this:

XYZ Company Home Page

The title tag belongs in the section of your source code, and is generally followed by your Meta description and Meta keywords tags. The order of these tags is not critical, so don't worry if your HTML editor places them in a different position.
Some Web site design tools and content management systems (CMS) automatically generate the title tag from information you provide. You may have noticed Web pages that are labeled "Page 1," "Page 2," or "Home Page" in the browser title bar. You'll often see titles like these being used by beginning Web site designers who simply don't know how to use their software or their title tag for maximum benefit.
Search Engines and Title Tags
All search engines use title tags to gather information about your Web site. The words in the title tag are what appear in the clickable link on the search engine results page (SERP). What you put in this tag is a key factor in which search queries you will rank highly with in the major search engines. Title tags are definitely one of the "big three" as far as the algorithmic weight given to them; they are equally as important as your visible text copy and the links pointing to your pages.
Do Company Names Belong in the Title Tag?
For years I was adamantly against "wasting" precious title tag space on company names. However, now that I work with many well-known brands, I've altered my thinking on this. I've found that it's fine to place your company name in the title, and *gasp*, even to place it at the beginning of the tag! In fact, if your company is already a well-known brand, I'd say that it's essential. Even if you're not a well-known brand yet, chances are you'd like to eventually be one. The title tag gives you a great opportunity to further this cause.
This doesn't mean that you should put *just* your company name in the title tag. Even the most well-known brands will benefit from a good descriptive phrase or two added to this tag, as it will serve to enhance your brand as well as your search engine rankings. The people who already know your company and seek it out by name will be able to find you in the engines, and so will those who never heard of you, but who seek the products or services you sell.
For example, if your company is "Johnson and Smith Inc." and you are a tax accounting firm in Texas, you shouldn't place only the words "Johnson and Smith Inc." in your title tag, but instead use something like "Johnson and Smith Inc. Tax Accountants in Texas."
Title Tags Should Contain Specific Keyword Phrases
As a Texas tax accountant, you would want your company's site to appear in the search engine results for searches on phrases such as "Texas tax accountants" and "CPAs in Texas." You would need to be even more specific if you prefer to work for people only in the Dallas area. In that case, use keywords such as "Dallas tax accountants" in your site's title tags. This is a key point: If you're only seeking customers or clients in a specific geographical region, your keywords need to reflect that. People looking for a tax accountant in Dallas may begin their search by simply entering "tax accountant" in the search engine. However, once they see that their search is returning accountants from all over the world, they'll narrow the search by adding "Dallas" to their search terms. When they do, you want your site to be right there on the first page of new results.
In our Dallas accountants example, you might create a title tag as follows:
Johnson and Smith Inc. Tax Accountants in Dallas
or you might try something like this:
Johnson and Smith Inc. Dallas CPAs
However, there's more than enough space in the title tag to include both of these important keyword phrases. (In fact, search engines will display 60 to 115 characters of your title tag.) Here's an example of an approach I like even better:
Johnson and Smith Inc. - Dallas Tax Accountants - CPAs in Dallas, TX
Today's search engines are not case-sensitive; therefore I generally use initial caps in this tag because it looks the cleanest. I used to often use ALL CAPS in parts of my title tag because when the engines were case sensitive, it would give me a different variation of my phrase. However, ALL CAPS looks somewhat spammy in the SERPs, so I generally avoid this practice these days.
As for placing the word "Dallas" twice in the title tag, I have found this approach to be both permissible and effective. Just make sure that you don't put the same words right next to each other. For example, a tag that reads "Accountants in Dallas -- Dallas CPAs" may trigger a red flag with the search engines, possibly making that word ignored entirely. (Search engines see hyphens and commas as spaces, which is why they would count that example as the same word next to itself.) In order to play it safe, it's probably a good idea to not use any given word more than two times in the title.
Use Your Visible Text Copy as Your Guide
I personally would not be able to create a title tag for any page until the copy on the page has been written and optimized. I need to see how the copywriter integrated the keyword phrases into the visible text copy to know where to begin. If you've done a good job with your writing (or better yet, hired a professional SEO copywriter), you should find all the information you need right there on your page. Simply choose the most relevant keyword phrases that the copy was based on, and write a compelling title tag accordingly. If you're having trouble with this, and can't seem to get a handle on what the most important phrases are for any given page, you probably need to rewrite the copy.
The optimal approach when writing copy for a Web site is to think of the main phrases that best reflect your business, and then compose the text around them. When you write your title tag, you simply revisit these same phrases, and compose your keyword-rich title accordingly. I recommend that you *don't* take an exact sentence pulled from your copy and use it as your title tag. It's my preference to have a unique sentence or compelling string of words in this tag.
So what if a keyword phrase you want to use doesn't actually appear within your visible copy? Does this mean you shouldn't use this phrase in the title tag?
Well, yes and no. Since the title tag is given a lot of weight in the engines, even if you're not willing to change the text on your page, you may be able to rank highly simply by placing your phrase in this tag. Just note that for any phrase that is even slightly competitive, having it in the title tag and not the copy will generally limit its overall effectiveness. You'd want to be sure to gain lots of keyword-rich links to your site in these cases, which can also work in conjunction with your title.
You'd be better off still if you'd rewrite the text on your page so that it utilizes the phrases that are important to you. This doesn't mean to just stick keywords at the top or bottom of the page. It doesn't mean to hide them in the background. Nor does it mean to put them in a tiny font so that no one will notice them. If certain keyword phrases are important enough that you want your site to be found under them in the search engines, they are certainly important enough to be elegantly incorporated into the body text of your page.
Once you've incorporated your phrases into the text of your site, you'll find that creating brilliant title tags that help with branding as well as with getting found in the search engines is truly a no-brainer!

++Getting a Great Google Description++

First, it's important to note that Google will display a different
description in its results pages, depending on the keyword phrase that
was searched for. Because of this, it's impossible to completely
control what will show up as you have no way of knowing every single
keyword phrase that someone might use to find your site. The number
of different phrases people find your site with is often quite
surprising, which makes it a good idea to check your server logs
regularly.

So let's look at what circumstances cause Google to display your Meta
description as opposed to a plain old "snippet."

It's actually surprisingly simple, yet elegant:

If the keyword phrase searched upon by the user is included in your
Meta description tag, then this is what will show up in Google,
instead of the usual snippet.

This is why when you find my site on the first page of Google for the
phrase search engine optimization, my Meta description shows up --
that phrase is used within my description tag. As long as the *exact
phrase* being searched upon is contained in your Meta description tag,
it will show up in the search results.

It's as simple as that, and doesn't have anything to do with the
PageRank or the authority of the page in question. The same thing
should happen for every site under the same circumstances. This is
why Meta description tags are still important to use on all of your
pages. They don't actually boost your rankings, but they allow you to
have better control of the description that shows up for your
optimized keyword phrases.

Does this mean you should create really long Meta descriptions that
have every conceivable keyword phrase in them? Of course not! If you
have a long Meta description, Google will then just show a snippet of
your Meta description that contains the searched-upon phrase.
Theoretically, you could create a 10- or 20-sentence Meta description
tag that used every conceivable keyword phrase you might be ranked
highly with, but you wouldn't get any real benefit from that.

So what happens when the searched-upon phrase *isn't* used within your
Meta description tag?

You'll notice that if you do a search for search engine rankings in
Google, you'll still find my site in the first page of results, but
this time my Meta description tag *doesn't* show up. Instead, you'll
see the following snippet: "When performed by a qualified, experienced
search engine optimization consultant, optimizing your site for high
search engine rankings really does work!"

It's not my Meta description, but it's a darn nice marketing statement
nonetheless. So, how'd I do it? Well, I waved my magic wand and said
"ala peanut butter sandwiches" and poof, there it was! Don't worry,
for those of you who don't have magical powers, you can achieve the
same thing through other means. In reality it showed up as it did
simply because that sentence was the first (and in this case the only)
instance of the phrase "search engine rankings" within the copy of my
page. Pretty neat, huh?

I didn't purposely optimize my snippets as I'm really not smart enough
to think of such things, but there's no reason why you can't or
shouldn't optimize yours. There are definitely things you can do to
get the most benefit out of your Google listings, once you realize how
it works.

The best (and most obvious) thing to do is to make sure your two or
three optimized keyword phrases are being used in your Meta
description tag. However, if there's a phrase you happen to be
getting found for that you can't or don't want to use in your Meta
description tag, then just make sure that the *first instance* of that
phrase is part of a nice call-to-action marketing statement within
your copy, and voila -- that's pretty much all it takes!

On a related note, if you happen to check to see if your page is
indexed by Google, and search for it by company name or by the site's
URL, you'll often find that this brings up the copyright notice at the
bottom of the page, or some other strange, ugly snippet in the search
engine results page (SERP).

I've had frantic emails from people concerned about this, but there's
really no reason to be worried. Your site's description only shows up
that way for that particular search, not for the real searches people
do to find your site. Since the copyright notice at the bottom of
your page is often the only place that mentions your company name or
URL, it becomes the Google snippet by default!

If you're not a big brand that people are searching for by company
name, then you don't need to worry about it. However, if people do
indeed search for you by name, then simply control the snippet by
making sure you put the company name in your Meta description or in a
nice marketing sentence closer to the top of the page.

So you can see, although those descriptions at Google never seemed to
have any rhyme or reason to them, they actually do! You'll find that
the more you learn about search engine marketing and optimization, the
less mystifying it becomes. Most of the time, the things that seem
really strange on the surface are actually very logical.

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

Link Strategies 2005

2005-09-19T11:30:00.000-06:00

Link Strategies 2005
4:30pm - 5:45pm - Wednesday, May 4, 2005
Eric Ward - EricWard.com
ericward.com/ses/toronto.html

Define the terms "authority site, hub site, and quality link"
A "quality link" can mean different things for different sites
What is a quality link for a pure e-commerce site ?
Is it an organic link that helps the site's search engine ranking at Google?
Is it a paid link?
Is it a link from a blog?
Is it a link from a Yahoo searcher.
What is a quality link for the new site for the movie Batman Begins
Review in Hollywood News
Yahoo.ca
private fan group
pagerank might be zero, but so what?
What is a quality link for a site about the TV show Desperate Housewives ?
Discussion list
DH Club
DH Links
pagerank will be low to zero, but so what?
What is a quality link for the Better Homes and Gardens site Win America's Home
which is temporary promotional site.
Sweepstakes Advantage Web Site?
Moderated Sweepstakes List
But...
If you ask Google "what is a quality link" they might say quality links are...
100% organic
Sometimes abut not always reciprocated
Have descriptive anchor text
Exist within the first two to three levels of a web site
Do of my above examples qualify?
So the answer to the question "What is a quality link"? is that it depends on who you ask, and who is giving the answer. All of the above are quality links for that particular content creator.
Don't let any search engine dictate or rule over your linking strategy. Links can appear in many venues that Google and other search engines will never know about. It's fine to use Google for link building research, but don't stop there.

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

Banned By Google And Back Again.

2005-09-19T11:29:00.000-06:00

Banned By Google And Back Again.
by T. O' Donnell

The date: 29th July 2005. The time: early morning. I got out of bed and fired up my PC. Opened my browser to check my site. Had a look at the third-party Google toolbar plugin (http://toolbar.google.com/) on said browser (FireFox). It showed grey.

Ice formed in my stomach. I opened my bugged version of Internet Explorer: my PageRank was 0. By now I was frantic. I went to http://www.google.com and typed in 'site:www.tigertom.com': no pages listed. I did this for two other satellite sites of mine: ditto.

What had happened?

TigerTom.Com (http://www.tigertom.com) had been banned by Google. I went to the WebmasterWorld forum (http://www.webmasterworld.com), and found out the awful truth. Google was doing one of its periodic updates of its algorithm, and had filtered out my sites completely.

Further research there, and a bit of soul-searching, revealed why. I had too many pseudo-directory pages with auto-generated external links. Snippets from search engine results were used as descriptions of said links. Said links were run though a redirect script. These are hallmarks of pseudo-directories and 'AdSense scraper'* sites. Google is reportedly trying to filter these from its 'SERPs'**. I say reportedly, because Google doesn't announce these purges. They are inferred.

To compound my sins, these pages were also effectively doorway pages.
The theory was that legitimate sites had been hit as 'collateral damage'. I say theory, in that Google rarely comments on individual cases. It won't tell you exactly why your site was banned. I guess this is for reasons of time, and to give no clues to spammers.

In my case the ban was justified for my two satellite sites; while not looking like spam, they were effectively doorway sites.

My main site was different. It had offending pages, but was mostly a diverse labour of seven years; a personal site on steroids.

Google bans sites algorithmically: a site that fits their 'spammer' profile gets dropped via software from their index automatically. Real spammers shrug their shoulders and move on; honest webmasters write emails begging for mercy.

Like me.

I did some searching via Google, to find out how to do a re-inclusion request. Here's how:

1. First, you check your site is truly gone, by going to http://www.google.com, typing 'site:www.yourdomain.com' without the apostrophes. If it returns no pages at all ...

2. You check Google's webmaster guidelines at http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html. These are not really guidelines; you should treat them as iron-clad rules.

3. You stop the offending content from being web-accessible, permanently.

If you're familiar with Apache web-server mod_rewrite you can:

- Send a 410 'Gone' response to requests for the offending pages, or
- CHMOD them to 600, which will return a 403 'Forbidden' response, or
- Move them to a different directory if you need to keep them, or
- Just delete them.

Don't try to be clever. Just get rid of them.

4. You go to http://www.google.com/support/bin/request.py, tick the relevant boxes, and type 'Re-inclusion request' in the subject box of the form.

4a. You add the complete URL of your site i.e. http://www.naughtydomain.com,

4b. You state that you have read the webmaster guidelines above,

4c. You admit what you did wrong; simply, succinctly, with no carping or special pleading.

Don't try to be clever. Don't argue. Don't lie. Don't waffle.

Google has cached copies of your site. When an engineer checks your site, he'll look for the offending content, and compare it against their cache. He'll spend about two minutes on it; don't give him a reason to continue to exclude you.

5. You ask for re-inclusion.

6. You wait.

In my case, it took about a week; a long, unpleasant, fretful week. I sent follow up emails saying what I was doing, and a fax, and I was going to write letters if that didn't work. That was probably excessive. Once you have a ticket number, that's all that should be necessary.

They emailed a standard reply saying 'the problem had been passed to their engineers'. That's good. I understand they send no reply to spammers.

A week later my site was back in. Lesson learnt. To make sure I'm not so vulnerable again, I'm splitting my content to different sites, on the principle of 'best not to have all your eggs in one basket'.

Have I learnt anything from this? Yes. Have more than one site as your 'money-maker'. Spend less time on search engine optimisation and more on traditional marketing. Come up with a unique selling proposition that compels people to link to your site. Easy(!)

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

Of Spam and Sandboxes

2005-09-19T11:28:00.000-06:00

Of Spam and Sandboxes
by Ross Lambert
About a month ago I had the privilege of giving a demo of the next version of Sonic Page Blaster to the attendees at Yanik Silver’s “Underground Online Marketing Seminar”. I fielded a couple questions afterwards that bear a better treatment than I could manage on the spur of the moment and in less than 60 seconds.

Q: If we create “feeder” sites that point to our main sales page or “money site”, won’t they be adversely affected by Google’s sandbox?

A: Let’s first define what we mean by the “Google sandbox”. Over the last seven months or so it has become apparent that new web sites do not tend to show as high a page rank as older established sites. The reason for this is not a raw prejudice against new sites. According to my sources, it is instead an attempt by the search engine giant to discount the effect of reciprocal linking, especially paid linking. If links cost you money and they have no immediate effect, chances are most people will abandon the practice.

And that’s exactly what Google is hoping for. Frankly, I understand and support this move. The reason is that Google’s motives and mine coincide. Google is trying to make sure they return the most relevant and highest quality results available for a given search term. If I have the most relevant and authoritative web site for a given subject that encompasses those same search terms, I want Google to return my results at the top of the heap. I don’t want spammy link farms to change this.

The key is quality. Really, over time, the best search engine marketing strategy is to create a killer web site. Wouldn’t it be nice if all the energy we direct towards search engine optimization could instead be focused on the quality of our web site? Google feels the same way, believe me, and the refinements they make to their alogorithms are designed to move in that direction. For that reason alone, the quality and focus of your web site is your best long-term SEO play.

Q. Could automatically generated web pages be penalized as 'spam' by search engine spiders?

A. I call Sonic Page Blaster “SPB” a lot, and I definitely don’t think of the “S” as standing for “spam”. On the contrary, Sonic Page Blaster simply saves you time in creating search engine-friendly web pages that contain really good articles that pertain exactly to the content of your web site. No “automatic” content system can find the content that best fits your niche. You need to either write or find the articles that will help your web site visitors or subscribers the most. I know that a few of the seminar attendees I talked to had spam-filled stars in their eyes when they saw SPB churn out a bunch of pages at the push of a button.

Trust me, you don’t want to go there. Google will eventually punish you in a big way.

Here are some rules that I believe will not only help your search rankings, but also drive the right kind of traffic to your primary web site (at the seminar Jeff Johnson called these “money pages”).

1. Do not post duplicate content at multiple web sites, especially if you own them all, if they are on the same server, and if they link to each other. SPB makes it so easy to generate article mini-sites, why would you want to duplicate content, anyway? With SPB you have a huge advantage over those who have to manually create web pages. Use your advantage. Create many web sites that focus on narrow subject matters, each having their own set of articles.

Worried about duplicate content and potential search engine punishment? Good. You should be. Don’t do it.

Ah, but what about duplicate content on other people’s web sites? If they don’t link to you, you don’t have anything to worry about. I’ll save a further explanation about that for later, but I don’t believe it makes sense for Google to punish you for something that is not giving you any advantage. Besides, they understand content syndication. Google’s developers and designers are anything but stupid.

2. Your money site does not necessarily need to be extremely narrowly focused on a few key words, but your feeder sites should be. For example, I will soon be starting a web site for those folks trying to develop an online business in their spare time. That is, they hold down a regular job and do this stuff at night. The site is called MidnightMarketer.com and it is not live yet (but the sign-up page works). Anyway, that will be one of my “money sites”. It will cover a plethora of topics related to internet marketing, time management, technology, and even health.

In order to “feed” it potential customers, I am also developing “feeder” sites that will focus on each of those more focused topics. The feeder sites will contain as many highly focused articles on their subject matter as I can find. My goal is that the search engines will (rightly) see them as quite valuable and relevant results for some important search terms. Then visitors will see the links and ads for MidnightMarketer and head on over. I can even make a little money off those that don’t click through to MidnightMarketer.com, thanks to Adsense ads mixed into each page by Sonic Page Blaster.

3. Don’t use reciprocal links, especially between your feeder sites and your money page. Yes, I know that flies in the face of conventional wisdom. But try to understand Google’s motivations--that is the key to predicting what they will eventually do. They understand that one-way links are usually more meaningful than reciprocal links, which are often just trades between webmasters. A one-way link usually points to something useful.

OK, I’ll back off on this just a little: When you can, get one-way links. When there is no other choice, reciprocate. And yes, you can be sure Google keeps track of all links into and out of a web site.

4. Do use a blog, hopefully even more than one. Blogs don’t have to be on your server(s), they’re not owned by you, and it is going to drive Google’s software gurus nuts trying to sort the wheat from the chaff in the blogging world. Even though I support Google in most things, it is kinda fun to do something that makes them a little crazy. [I mean that in a good way, Sergei.]

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

Buying Text-Link Ads

2005-09-19T11:26:00.000-06:00

Buying Text-Link Ads
By Dane Lyons

It is widely agreed that SEM (search engine marketing) is one of today’s most cost efficient and effective methods of marketing a web site. One of the most important aspects of SEM is obtaining link popularity. For example, if you expect to rank high in Google for the search term "search engine optimization" it is important to have other sites link to you with "search engine optimization" within the text of the link. This is called anchor text. Generally the more sites linking to you with your target keyword within the anchor text the better. However, it should be noted that not all links are of equal value. There are two primary factors to consider when assessing the value of a link.
1. Link Weight
An established site that has already obtained a fair amount of link popularity is generally a more valuable location to park your link. The Google Page Rank is a general assessment of the link popularity of any given page. If a page has PR5 it is considered to have above average link popularity. For each 1 point increase in PR the link popularity is increased by about 7-10 times. So a PR6 link should theoretically be as valuable as 7-10 PR5 links but there is more to the story.
The weight of a page is distributed evenly to each link within the page. Lets say we have two PR5 pages. One page has a total of 10 links, the other has only one link. In this case it is about 10 times as valuable ,weight wise, to park your link on the page with only 1 link. It should also be noted that a PR6 page with 10 links is roughly equal to a PR5 page with only 1 link. Many webmasters only take into account the link weight when purchasing a text link. Link weight in itself is not worth much. Link weight when combined with link relevance is another story entirely.
2. Link Relevance
Link relevance is fairly straight forward in principle. It is more valuable to park your link on a site that is relevant to the search term you are optimizing for than one that is not. Large search engines closely guard their ranking algorithm for determining link relevance and placement. People have been able to reverse engineer the PR equation but for something with as many factors as placement and relevance it is next to impossible. Therefore we can only speculate as to which terms are close in relevance and which are not. My opinion on the subject is you can’t go wrong with a page that is optimized for the exact term or even slight variations of the term you are optimizing for. However, if you are considering optimizing for a term like "xbox" and you find a site to host your link that is optimized for "games" there is risk in believing these terms are relevant. Of course it can be inferred that these terms are relevant. After all, xbox is a major gaming platform but we have no idea how close in relevance the search engines consider these terms to be. To be safe value exact terms and variations of the term to be highly relevant. All other terms within an industry such as items, buzz words...should be considered relevant. All other terms should be considered non-relevant.
Now we basically know what to look for in determining the value of a potential link. There are many ways to go about building your link popularity. I am going to focus on a few of the paid methods.
1. Paid Directories
There are a ton of link directories that will host your link for a fee. Some work on a month by month basis but most are either 6 months, 1 year or permanent. Yahoo is an example of a paid directory. They cost $299 for a 1 year listing. This may seem expensive and it is. Yahoo is a high end directory which is quite valuable in comparison to other directories. However, there many smaller directories that are more cost efficient. Usually directories are only relevant to your search term assuming you are listed in a relevant category. Some niche directories can be considered highly relevant.
2. Link Brokers
There are several link brokers out there who gather potential websites willing to display your link. This is an excellent method to obtain highly relevant links. The only downside is the brokers will generally charge a listing fee to the website so they must sell the links for more than they would otherwise be willing to sell them for to cover expenses. If you are checking out a broker see what their listing fee is before you purchase any links. I wouldn’t buy from a broker that charges more than about 20% of the value of the purchased link.
3. Directly contacting webmasters
There are literally millions of sites out there more than willing to display your link for a fee. In my opinion the best method of purchasing text links is to get out there and contact webmasters for price quotes. Its certainly not hard...if you are optimizing for the search term "SEM" simply type it into google and find the top 10-20 sites listed for the term. Then either email or better yet directly call them to get price quotes from each site. Then decide which sites offer the most value and spend within your budget. It is also a good idea to ask for quotes for a 6 month and a 1 year term in addition to the standard 1 month term. Some webmasters will see you are competition and will refuse to list your site. This is perfectly acceptable, thank them for their time and move on.
Note: Building link popularity is only one aspect of SEM. If you are not familiar with SEM or SEO basics then I advise you to read up on keyword research and on-site optimization before you start purchasing links.

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

How To Get Your BLOGS Site Feed Listed In Yahoo! and MSN Within HOURS, Is Easier Then You Think

2005-09-19T10:58:00.000-06:00

How To Get Your BLOGS Site Feed Listed In Yahoo! and MSN Within HOURS, Is Easier Then You Think

• BLOGS... they seem to be the talk of the Internet marketing world these days, and for good reason.

Not only do the Search Engines love them for there Content Rich pages, you also have the ability to plug your Blogs 'Site Feed' into an RSS feed and then have it syndicated to thousands of websites and directories giving your content more exposure to your target audience.

RSS(Real Simple Syndication) is a very Powerful technology that has been around for quite some time and when used correctly, can build an audience overnight.

If you want a crash course on what RSS is, in more depth, since the nature of this article is to show you how to get your Blogs 'Site Feed' listed in Yahoo! and MSN, I've provided a link to a page full of articles on RSS related issues. http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-articles.htm

Now, depending on where your Blog is hosted, whether its through a free service like Blogger.com -- http://www.blogger.com or hosted on your websites server you should have a 'Site Feed URL' that has the .XML extension.

This is your 'Site Feed URL'.

You'll usually locate it within your Settings area of Blog control center.

Here's what mine looks like as an example:
http://theiwe.blogspot.com/atom.xml

This URL is intended for a RSS News Reader, so disregard its appearance.

Once you find your 'Site Feed URL', copy and paste it into Notepad because you'll need it for the next steps coming ahead.

Now, what you need to do is go and set-up an My Yahoo! and My MSN account.

I've provided the links for you below.

- My Yahoo! ==> http://my.yahoo.com

- My MSN ==> http://msn.com

It should only take you about 15-20 minutes at the most.

If you already have accounts with My Yahoo! and My MSN,
read on.

This is assuming you already have your accounts set-up, so your next step is to Login to your My Yahoo! account.

When you login, you'll be taken to your Yahoo! page immediately.

What you want to do next is go look under the Yahoo! search box to the left and click on the 'Add Content' link.

This will bring you to a new page.

From there, over to the right by the 'Find' button you'll see an 'Add RSS by URL' link, click on it.

A new window will open with a 'Web Form'. Simply copy and paste your 'Site Feed URL' from Notepad into the web form and click on the 'Add' button.

Now, you should see your Blogs name infront of you. Simply click on the yellow 'Add To My Yahoo!' button and your feed will be added.

The next thing you should see is your 'Site Feed' with your 'Headlines'.

Click on one of them, it should take you to your Blog, to the desired Headline you chose.

Your My Yahoo! page should Now have your Blogs 'Site Feed' Headlines listed at the bottom.

Scroll down to check. If you don't see them, it sometimes takes up to 24-48 hours for them to appear, so just check back later.

Now that thats done, everytime you update your Blog with NEW content, it'll 'Automatically' update on your My Yahoo! page and everybody else's pages who have subscribe to your feed, plus, within 24-48 hours your feed will get Spidered and Indexed by Yahoo!.

Talk about getting the word out in a HURRY with very little effort on your part.

This is 'Viral Marketing' at its Best in my mind.

And... it's so simple to implement.

Okay.

Now it's time to do the same to your My MSN account as what you did above to your My Yahoo! page.

Here's the link to go login(click on Sign In from main page): http://www.msn.com

Once your login to your My MSN account you should see an 'Add Content' link under the MSN logo to your left. Click on it.

A pop-up should now be displaying. Simply copy and paste your 'Site Feed URL' from your Notepad into the web form provided and click the Search button(the green button with the arrow).

You should now be looking at Check Box with your Blogs name beside it. Check off your 'Site Feed URL' and then press the OK button at the bottom.

PRESTO! Like magic... your Blogs site feed has now been added to your My MSN page which will then be spidered in the next 24-48 hours and Indexed by MSN.

That's the Power of BLOGS (Web-Logs) and RSS (Really Simple Syndication) combined with two Internet giants.

The only thing you have to bring to the table IS, fresh, quality content that your audience WANTS, and do it on a regular basis.

I post my articles that I write on a weekly basis, making my Blog called... The Internet Wonders Blog - http://theiwe.blogspot.com - a search engine Magnet!

You can do the same because I just showed you HOW.

In conclusion, creating BLOGS and using RSS as a vehicle to syndicate your Blogs content is a Sure-Fire way to get your content spidered more frequently by search engines and the exposure it deserves, which in turn, will build you a large audience of buying customers that TRUST you.

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

Link Popularity Building Best Practice: Vary Your Anchor Text

2005-09-19T10:57:00.000-06:00

Link Popularity Building Best Practice: Vary Your Anchor Text

The recent increase in penalties given to sites with unnatural backlink anchor text, along with the possible implementation of LSI, should give webmasters motivation to vary their backlink anchor text heavily. Rather than seeking to only obtain links using their main keyword, webmasters should include synonyms, variations and related words. Certainly no single keyword variation should be used the majority of the time; rather, the text of all links should vary widely, just as they would if the links were obtained passively. This will ensure a site's improvement in the SERPs, without drawing a penalty flag.

Local Search Optimization: Think Globally, Act Locally
Many small businesses need to have an online presence and sell their products or services locally. For instance, doctors, dentists, real estate agents and restaurants can all benefit from online marketing but only on a local scale, not globally. In order to tap into the local market, however, it may be necessary to make some global changes to your website.

In order to target a website to a local market, it is important that 3 key areas be addressed:

1. Global website text changes targeting local keywords
2. Geographical meta tag implementation
3. Getting indexed by Yahoo! Local

In regards to global website text changes, let’s take, for example the case of the Romeo Cuccina restaurant in Nowhere, Ohio. This family-owned Italian restaurant wants to be found by people in and around Nowhere, Ohio and by people traveling to this location. The body text of the Romeo Cuccina restaurant needs to contain the name Nowhere, Ohio, plus references to the surrounding towns and attractions along with its Italian restaurant keywords, which will also be scattered throughout the text. The title text and the H1 tag should also contain the words ‘Nowhere, Ohio’ as well. Making sure that these geographical keywords are in the text, names of the graphics and links will help this website do well in the search engines for local searches.

In regards to geographical meta tag implementation, this is simply a tag with the company name and address that will help establish a website locally. This tag can be used on the homepage, About Us page and / or Contact Us page as well. In our Italian restaurant example, the tag will look like this:

Now in regards to getting indexed by Yahoo! Local, it is important to know two things upfront. First, your business may already be indexed by Yahoo! Local so it is best to do a search first. Second, Yahoo! Local is now offering a free 5-page website to small business owners who want to establish a web presence. This promotion is to encourage business owners to get listed locally so that Yahoo! can continue to expand its map of businesses per region. If you find your business is already listed in Yahoo! Local, then check the information for accuracy since sometimes there are errors. These errors are easily corrected by going through the sign up process. For more information see http://local.yahoo.com/

By using the 3 key methods listed above, your website will get a jumpstart in the local search arena. Also, don’t forget a link-building campaign as well since you’ll need a few relevant links pointing back to your website. So, what are you waiting for? Get started now!

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

Why You Should Use (Not Abuse) Forums to Increase Your Traffic

2005-09-19T10:55:00.000-06:00

Why You Should Use (Not Abuse) Forums to Increase Your Traffic
There are dozens of reasons why you should look up the forums that are related to your market and post to them often. Here are 3 to get you started.

1- Get to Know Your Market as both an Associate and An Expert

The research alone is a good enough reason to at least sign up to some forums and read. Just by reading posts in forums, you can hear what your market concerns are, straight from consumers. You'll be able to find what their pains are - look particularly for frequent questions that don't appear to have solutions.

For example, if you sell timeshares, and you join travel communities, you may often hear questions asking for the best times of year to visit a certain region or locale. With this information you could start a section at your site for every listing that tells the cheapest time to travel for that area, the best time of year for good weather, and other special bits of information a traveler might want.

When you're comfortable enough to begin posting, after watching the conversation for a few days, or perhaps even a week, you might find that new people have questions that you can help them with. By consistently becoming the go-to person, you increase your credibility as a knowledgeable expert, and people begin to trust your ability to provide information.

2- Increase Your Site's Visibility With More Targeted Links Back to Your Site

Many forums are run by hobbyists who aren't so much concerned with marking money from their visitors, as having an established community for discourse on certain issues. These forums will often allow you to leave a link to your site in every post. The ones that are open to public viewing for visitors are also frequently spidered by search engines.

If you set up your link correctly, you'll then have topical links back to your own forum. Even if the search engine spiders can't see these links at forums that can be viewed by registered users only, you will also find that once you become a part of the community, other members will click your link out of curiosity or because they're looking for something specific that you may have at your site.

Even forums that exist to gain more sales of their own products often allow you to post your link, especially if it isn't to a competing site. For example, internet marketing forums run by people who sell do-it-yourself SEO products may allow infopreneurs who sell a different type of product, such as an autoresponder service, to post their link freely.

The focus here, at all times, is to help other members, not just to promote your product. Your link is in your signature, so unless someone asks you a specific question, you get far better results from being helpful than you do by posting forum spam that gets deleted anyway.

3- Lurk, Listen and Learn

If you've been around forums at all, you already know that there are often 8 to ten times more people registered and not posting than there are people who actually visit and participate.

Reading without ever posting is commonly known as 'lurking'. I usually suggest that at least for the first week, you should monitor the community you wish to join in this way, just reading posts, and learning the personality of the forum you'd like to post in - this keeps you from committing any faux pas that might have you corrected by another member, or even worse, banned.

Sometimes you'll find a forum that is appropriate to read, but doesn't seem like the right place for commercial posting. Or you might find that you're there to learn and not to teach - or maybe you just don't have the time to post as you'd like to. You can still learn a lot by being a lurker.

When lurking in forums, your primary job is to listen (figuratively speaking) and learn. Again, pay attention to questions that come up repeatedly over the course of a month or so. Be on the look out for rumored product or technology developments. Find out who is the resident expert - maybe this is the key person for an interview you want to do, or an affiliate program you can join.

The most important thing you can learn from this exercise is what annoyances your market is experiencing. If you sell cat furniture, and you find out that a common complaint is availability in remote markets, maybe you can change your shipping policy to add international ordering and increase the scope of your business.

Anywhere you can fit a solution to a problem can bring you the sales you need. You may find out that you need to change your product, to enhance it, or perhaps to take out features your prospects just aren't interested in.

This is a good solution when you have the time to visit forums and post or read. As you become more busy, you'll find yourself at the forums less and less as a poster, so this isn't necessarily a permanent solution. However, if you follow these steps correctly, you'll soon have the traffic to foster more community relations at your own site as well.

LSI AND LINK POP
• When Paypal's official Web site no longer ranked #1 in Google on a search for 'paypal,' it was obvious that Google had become more aggressive in penalizing sites with 'unnatural' backlink anchor text. Although the high-profile Paypal example has since been rectified, thousands of webmasters are suffering the consequences of not ranking for even their official company name, let alone their top keywords. It is important for search engine optimizers to understand both how anchor text penalties are being applied and how LSI ensures that anchor text variance will not dilute a link popularity building campaign.

Anchor Text Penalties

In the past year, webmasters have found that the aggressive link popularity building tactics that work well in search engines such as Yahoo! do not fare well in Google. Google has implemented several features to filter out sites that appear to have an unnatural backlink structure; one of these features seems to be specifically penalizing sites with unnatural backlink anchor text.

It has always been an SEO best practice to use descriptive anchor text in both external and internal links. But search engine optimizers have often focused on a single keyword phrase when choosing anchor text, especially if their topic has one keyword that receives vastly more traffic than any secondary keywords. Since good links are hard to come by, they do not want to 'waste' any of those backlinks with anchor text that does not contain their main keyword.

The drawback to this approach is that it can be interpreted as unnatural by a search engine. A site with organic, passively-obtained backlinks will have a wide variety of backlink anchor text variations such as: 'official site title,' 'keyword,' 'keyword synonym,' 'www.thesite.com' and even 'click here.' If the vast majority of a site's backlink anchor text is simply 'keyword,' it is obvious to an algorithm that the link popularity was not obtained organically.

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) Basics

2005-09-19T10:54:00.000-06:00

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) Basics

Let's now touch upon the myth I mentioned before, that if a backlink's anchor text does not contain your Web site's main keyword, its power is wasted. The concept of latent semantic indexing, which may be more fully implemented by major search engines in the near future, will prove this myth to be false.

Latent semantic indexing can help overcome the 'vocabulary mismatch' problem when a human uses a search engine. Individual words do not always provide reliable evidence about the conceptual meaning of a document. For instance, a Web page that is highly relevant to the term 'laptop' may never use the term 'notebook,' however it is clear to a human being that 'notebook' is often used as a synonym for 'laptop.'

While it is beyond the scope of this article to discuss the mathematics behind LSI, its implications for search algorithms are simple. LSI can use statistical techniques to create a semantic analysis for any given query topic. In practice, this means that a page can be considered relevant for a particular keyword, even if it does not contain that keyword. For instance, a page that is considered relevant for 'laptop' can also be considered relevant for 'notebook' even if it does not contain the word 'notebook,' if LSI determines that 'notebook' is semantically related to 'laptop.'

The principle can be applied to backlinks as well. Backlinks with anchor text that do not contain your Web site's main keyword, but instead contain a synonym or related word, may still be giving your site a bonus for the main keyword.

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

WORKING 4 PAGE RANK

2005-09-19T10:53:00.000-06:00

WORKING 4 PAGE RANK

So you have a new website. You want to increase your PageRank on Google so you can start receiving a respectful amount of traffic. You have already looked through our [suggestions on how to improve your PageRank], but you feel you need to do something more. Luckily, there is indeed a way to be more proactive about attaining a better PageRank – that is, if you are really willing to work for it.undefined

This is how it works. No matter what the subject of your website is, there are other websites out there covering similar material. And these websites have been around longer, have more traffic, and – of course – have higher PageRanks. This is normally where you would read something like “now you'll want to send them a polite e-mail asking them to trade links with your site.” Everyone knows that trading links is a good idea – and it is a good start. But wouldn't it be nice if you could get these sites to include a link to yours without you having to provide a reciprocal link? There's a way you can – and it actually makes great PageRank sense to do so.

Giving sites free content is the key. There are a lot of high PR sites out there that are based largely upon volunteer article writers and contributors. These sites will gladly post a link to your website in exchange for a relevant, well-written article, product review, news story, or commentary. You give them some free content they can post on their site, and you get a nice link in return. Right now it's one of the few truly effective win-win situations for webmasters.

Finding sites that will post your well-crafted creative content is really quite simple. Just do a search using Google, or your favorite large search engine, that involves some topic (presumably whatever you website's main topic is) and the word/ phrases “articles,” “submit articles,” or “submit your article.” For instance, if your website is about flowers, you could search for “flower articles” or “submit your flower articles.” These searches are likely to turn up dozens of popular websites that would love to publish your content in exchange for a free one-way link to your site.
So how do you come up with original content? This is indeed that hardest part of this little endeavor. But coming up with topics really isn't that hard. You just have to take some time to site down and brainstorm about anything and everything that has to do with the topic of your website. If your website is about flowers, or you sell flowers, you might want to consider writing articles about how to take care of certain flowers, how to grow them, or perhaps a few secret gardening techniques. All it takes is a little bit of effort, a little time at the computer researching and writing, and you'll have plenty of articles you can use to barter for valuable one-way links.

Now, once you have your articles written, you'll want to start searching for the sites to donate your content to. Use the keyword suggestions mentioned earlier and you are likely to find quite a few. To decide which sites are best to do business with, consider using the Google toolbar, or have open a site with a free PageRank check tool while you are searching. You can use these resources to determine the PageRank of any site you are thinking about submitting your content to. As a general rule, you may want to exclude sites that have a PR less than 4 – these sites probably won't help increase your PageRank enough for you to worry about them. This is a quick and easy way to save time and determine which sites are worth submitting your content to, and which you should simply pass up. Keep in mind that you can submit one article to multiple websites, so there's no reason not to devote some time and effort into each one. The better your content is, the more people will visit your site and want to return.

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

Five Ways to Increase Your Website Conversion Rate

2005-09-19T10:52:00.000-06:00

Five Ways to Increase Your Website Conversion Rate

• Though it’s wonderful to get all those hits to your e-commerce web site, hits don’t mean much unless you convert them into sales. This is especially true if you are paying for, and not converting, clicks.

If your website is suffering from the “Conversion Rate Blues”, consider the following steps for improving sales and ultimately, profits:

1. Make sure your website is optimized to attract people with the highest potential to buy

When I first designed my log furniture website, Log Cabin Rustics, I unwittingly targeted an audience that wasn’t the perfect one for my site. As things turned out, I didn’t even rank for my two top key phrases, log furniture and log beds, in the search engines. I managed to get pretty high on the scale, however, for log cabin related searches.

People who build log cabins are a target market of mine, since many of them eventually purchase log furniture to go with their home. The most likely immediate customers, however, are those who actually searched for the term “log furniture” rather than “log cabin”. When I re-optimized my site for the search terms I thought would bring the highest conversion rate, visitors to my site were more likely to buy because my site was selling what they were searching for. My efforts paid off, when my conversion rate (and sales) doubled in the month or two following my changes.

2. Add a personal, trustworthy touch to your site

I don’t personally care to have my picture posted on the front of my website, although many people do. I do have my name prominently on the site, together with information about why I sell log furniture and my business background as a CPA. I have found that a personal touch goes a long way towards selling log furniture. Many of my customers spend $2,000, $3,000 or even $4,000 on their log furniture order, and some of them have waited years to get the furniture they want.

They didn’t find what they wanted in their local area (they must not have many white cedar trees in Texas), but they found it on my site. There’s just one problem, however. They wish they could touch the furniture, slide the drawers in and out, look for drips in the finish, and generally evaluate the quality before the drop that kind of money. I have had people drive 4-6 hours to visit my store on more than one occasion for that very reason, and frankly, I don’t blame them. I’m pretty picky about my furniture too.

This is where I can help my customers. I use primarily local suppliers, and finished furniture that I sell is finished right in our building. I can and do inspect much of the furniture before it goes out. Our finishing department does a pretty good job, but if I see something I don’t like, I have them sand it down and get it right.

Some people I sell furniture to place their order online or with one phone call, but many of them talk to me several times before they place their order. They start to feel like they know me, and I start to feel like they are my friends. The last thing I want to do is ship a suite of log furniture from Michigan to Caifornia and have it come back because the customer isn’t happy. And I don’t want to let down my friends. When customers understand this, they trust me to deliver what my site promises, and that translates into sales.

There are many ways you can build trust in your website. When I realized my conversion rate was not what it could or should be, I went out and researched the topic on the web. By reading a number of SEO articles on the topic, I came up with a checklist of things to do on my site. My list included:

• giving name and contact information for the owner of the site
• telling a personal history of the business
• showing pictures of your factory, office, semi-truck or anything else that makes your business real. If possible, give an online office or factory tour.
• getting a secure security certificate and posting it on your site, and
• posting a privacy policy, warranty information, and product testimonials

3. Include a detailed FAQ on your site

A detailed FAQ that answers just about every conceivable question can do much to improve customer confidence in your site. Many people are quite methodical in their product research. They may be looking at my site at 3 in the morning, have a question, and want an answer NOW. Otherwise they will migrate on to a competitor who has both the information and product they are looking for.

I am continually tracking the questions people ask and modifying my site to make sure it answers those questions. That way people can get answers to the most common questions right away, and I don’t spend time answering the same questions over and over again.

While a good FAQ is a great time-saver for the person who has to answer those questions, it also gives site users the impression that your site is well-thought-out, that you care about their questions and will take time to answer them thoroughly. You can build trust in your website by having relevant product-related content throughout the site as well, but there’s nothing like a well-planned FAQ to assist in answering questions.

4. Make Your Shopping Cart Easy to Use

I’ve had a little trouble with my shopping cart from time to time. It seems that if I modify the header for my site, and put in a link that says “http:” instead of “https:”, the secure part of my shopping cart pops up an error message with every click of the mouse. Take it from the voice of experience—this is not conducive to sales.

If your sales are clicking right along, then suddenly drop into the abyss, it’s a good idea to go out and place a test order. I’m embarrassed to say that in my busy-ness, I’ve had to have a customer inform me of how very difficult it was for them to place an order. Upon investigation, I have found several times that something had gone wrong on my site.

In addition to making sure your shopping cart is fully functional and doesn’t return error messages, it pays to have a shopping cart that is easy to use. I am not an affiliate for Clickbank, but whenever I buy an e-book from someone who is using their service, I am always impressed with how smooth and quick the online transaction is. There have been other times when I really wanted to purchase something, but some little glitch in the shopping cart wouldn’t let me proceed with the order, and nearly drove me to distraction.

As a customer I always think to myself, “if these people can’t get their website to work, how do I know they can ship me an order?”
As a webmaster or mistress, you certainly don’t want to be on the receiving end of such thoughts—and you can prevent it by making sure your website shopping cart is easy to use, and testing it every now and again to make sure it’s working properly.

5. Give Free Shipping or Make a special offer

This might seem like a no-brainer, but it really does work. I used to give away a free rocking chair to anyone who bought a suite of log bedroom furniture, and you’d be surprised how many customers I had say to me “I just love the idea of getting something free!” At the moment, I give a 5% discount for the purchase of multiple items. That might not sound like much, but its $100 on a $2000 order and many people are glad to have it.

I also include free shipping in the continental 48 states. This makes it much easier for people to know the exact cost of the furniture. I used to have people people contact me to see how much shipping would be, then I would estimate the cost of the furniture they wanted, contact several freight companies for a quote, re-contact the customer, etc. Free shipping makes everything so much easier, and it really seems to appeal to my customers too.

In conclusion

I’m sure there are other quality ways to build people’s confidence in your site—thereby increasing both conversion rate and sales. Some of my friends have Better Business Bureau seal on their sites, or participate in BizRate or other rating services. I haven’t tried any of these yet, so I can’t speak for them. But I have learned from experience that people want to know you are a real person with a real business. They want to know that you care enough to answer their questions, they want a smooth shopping process, and they really do like special offers.

In these days of security breaches and privacy concerns, many customers will need extra reassurance about the care you take in such matters. You can accomplish much in that direction by spelling out company policies on your site.

If you think the conversion rate on your site could be better, why not make a to-do list of items mentioned in this article that might not be all they could be on your site. And oh yes, if you have a website selling “widgets” but the only people finding your site are those who are searching for “bridges”, you really should change your keywords.

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

1 Simple SEO Strategy To Get More Visitors To Your Site From Google

2005-09-19T10:50:00.000-06:00

1 Simple SEO Strategy To Get More Visitors To Your Site From Google

• Did you know that you can dramatically increase the number of visitors that come to your site on a daily basis from Google? And it's not constantly improving your position in Google search engine result pages(SERPs) for your competitive keywords which can take some time after working on your search engine marketing campaigns.

I take this example from Google because I've experienced it some time back now. Apart concentrating on getting and maintaining a top 10 ranking in Google, there are lots of easy traffic sources that you haven't exploited yet. We are still talking about search engine traffic here.

What's that strategy you ask? The answer might surprise you but it's a technique that works and is pretty legitimate. It's not creating stand alone or doorway pages with practically no content, overly optimized with keywords and a link back to the homepage. Doorway pages work but only if you know how to do it well. And this article will talk a bit about this topic as well.

The strategy is to search for overlooked keyword phrases which are not too competitive and create effective doorway pages related to these keyword phrases. These pages can be promoting a product for instance.

Just by adding a few effective doorway pages, I managed to make 9 sales in just a few short weeks and earned $364.59.

Imagine you come up with several keyword phrases that generate a few monthly searches, you now have several pages. So each page targeting a specific keyword phrase is worth traffic and not any type of traffic but it will be targeted.

So if you have one page which brings you only 1 visitor per day and you have 50 pages, you can easily receive 50 visitors per day for free. You see the potential now.

Keywords that have about 1000 searches on Yahoo! Search Marketing Solutions previously known as Overture at this link are valuable keywords with lower competition.

If you are using Wordtracker at http://www.wordtracker.com , a keyword with only 10 searches per day can get you a good ranking and bring you traffic.

If you have already a website which is generating traffic, you can dramatically increase your numbers, simply by adding relevant doorway pages targeting a specific keyword. These pages have content and have your optimized navigation menu on it with their specific keyword phrases. These pages are just an entry to your site nothing more nothing less.

They should not be overly optimized with keywords but they must have some optimized content which is readable by your visitors and friendly for the search engines as well.

If you have a good website which is crawled by Google's robot called 'Googlebot' often, your new pages will get spidered and indexed fast and will start bringing you small loads of targeted traffic.

But be careful when adding pages, don't go in a frenzy with this and add hundreds or even thousands of pages all of a sudden. For eg if your site has 50 pages already indexed in Google and ranking well and you add 100 new pages at once, your indexed pages might suffer a temporary drop in rankings. The key here is to add pages on a regular basis say 1 or 2 pages daily until you reach the total number of pages to be added.

Why not capitalize on this free source of traffic? The key is to research your keywords well first, work on your content and create these pages afterwards.

Your website will grow bigger and bigger with time and it will attract loads of targeted traffic from multiple keyword phrases.

Good luck and happy research and optimizing.

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

Link popularity

2005-09-19T10:48:00.000-06:00

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

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

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.

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.[b]

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

How to Write and Use

2005-09-19T10:44:00.000-06:00

How to Write and Use
Description Tags on Your Web Pages
By Donald Nelson (c) 2004

Many people are afraid to write the meta tags for their websites, thinking that they would have to be search engine optimization specialists in order to do it properly. While you may not have any special expertise in the field of search engine optimization, you should be an expert in your own business's area of activity, and, if you combine this knowledge with some simple guidelines, you can write accurate meta tags. Let us see how to write one of the most important meta tags, the description tag.

The description tag is one of the "big three" meta tags, which also include the title tag, and the keywords tag. These three meta tags along with other tags are located in the html code of your website between the sections marked and . While this information is not seen on your web page when someone views your site with a browser, the head section is read by the search engine "robots" and helps the search engines to "understand" what your web page is all about.
Writing the description tag is a good exercise because it will force you to become clear about what you are doing and what you are offering to your viewers. A description tag is in fact like a short mission statement, explaining your enterprise in a nutshell. If someone wakes you in the middle of the night and asks you what your website or your business is all about, you should be able to answer with a concise two or three sentence description without any hesitation.
Below is step-by-step guide to creating and using effective description tags:
1. Write like a journalist. Mention the important W's, such as who, what, where, when, why. In a description tag, the "what" is the most important element. What do you do? What do you sell? Where do you do it? What is this page all about? Describe what you do in a simple sentence and be sure to incorporate the words and phrases which are most likely to be used when people search for your product or service.

Suppose your business is the Kenosha Wisconsin Window Cleaning Company. A description tag for your main page might start off like this: "The Kenosha Wisconsin Window Cleaning Company provides window cleaning services for residences and businesses in the greater Kenosha, Wisconsin area."
2. Include your Unique Selling Proposition or USP: The USP is actually the "why" of the classic "who, what, where and why" formula. Why should someone use your service and not someone else's? The USP is what sets you apart from the others.
Remember when someone makes a query in a search engine yours will not be the only site that comes up. Your competitors will also be there, and they will offer similar products or services. In many search engines the description tag or part of the description tag is displayed in the search results. If your description tag provides some distinctive information, conveying a unique benefit that you provide, then the likelihood that a searcher will click-through to your site will increase.
Let's go back to the example of the Kenosha Window Cleaning site and add the USP to the description. The first lines of the description read: "The Kenosha Wisconsin Window Cleaning Company provides window cleaning services for residences and businesses in the greater Kenosha, Wisconsin area." Another sentence saying "We guarantëe a great job every time at a price you can afford," could be added to give more detail about the quality, guarantëe and the affordability of the service.
3. Put this description in the meta tag section of the head and in the text of the page itself.
You've just taken some time to explain what your web page is all about, and have included some compelling reason why someone should buy your product or service. Don't hide this information in a place where your readers cannot see it. If you only put the description in the meta tag section, then the search engine robots will see it, but many of your visitors will not.
Rather, use your description as part of your first paragraph or even as part of your opening headline. Your description contains your important key phrase and key words. If you place it in the opening paragraph or somewhere on your page, then the search engine optimization value of the description is doubled or even tripled. A big mistake in search engine optimization is to use meta tags, but then have no descriptive text on the page, relying on images to convey the message. Use the description tag to begin your text, and add some more to amplify it and expand on what you have written.
4. Write a distinct description tag for each of your pages, focusing on the unique content and purpose of that particular page.
Another big mistake on many websites is to use the same meta tags on all the pages. Each of your pages is different. Each page has or should have a special item of importance. Look at your pages and think of the special part that the page plays in your overall marketing effort, and make a unique description tag. As with the description tag for your main page, put this description within the text of the page itself.
Even if you get a professional search engine optimization service to write the main meta tags for your site, you can put this knowledge into practice whenever you add new pages to your site. Good description tags will help your site to be found in search engine queries, and when used as part of the main text of your pages will also help your web visitors to quickly understand your most important marketing messages.

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

Playing By Googles Rules

2005-09-19T10:43:00.000-06:00

Playing By Googles Rules
by Wil Rushmer
2005-04-28 00:00:00

As the undisputable leader in search engines, Google places a very high importance on the quality and relevancy of its search results, especially now that the company is public. The know that in order to keep the shareholders and users of the engine happy, the quality of returned results are extremely important. For this reason, doing the wrong thing, purposely or unintentionally could result in a severe penalty or even get you get you banned from the listings. Below is a short list of ideas to consider when drafting your search engine optimization campaign.

Hidden Links

Link PR is becoming a hot topic among seo firms, however whether or not incoming/outgoing links still play an as important role as they used to, it still considered a ”blackhat” technique that can and most likely will result in a ban or penalty from Google.

Hidden Text

Stuffing your pages with text to small to read, same color as the background, or using css to push the text of screen for the sole purpose of loading your pages with content rich keywords and copy will also get you awarded the same penalties as hiding links.

Page Cloaking

The practice of using browser or bot sniffers to serve the bots a different page then your human visitors may see. Loading a page specifically for a bot that a human user may never see will most certainly get you banned from the listings
Multiple Submissions

Submitting your domain and pages thereof is also a big thing to stay away from. For example if I submit http://www.seohype.com and http://www.seohype.com/resources.html as two separate urls, I may be looking at a ban, penalty or at the least; a very long time before my pages get submitted. This is another reason to avoid auto submitters. Make sure you check if your domain is listed already in the search engine you are submitting too, if it is… move on to the next.

Link Farms

Be careful who and even what you are linking to. Links in to your site will not hurt, even Google knows you cannot control your links in. However you can certainly control what you link to. Link farming has always been a bad apple in Googles eye and should be avoided at all costs. Google also suggest that your own link pages should not contain more then 100 links, assume anything higher then 100 links on a single page will get you classed as a link farm and avoid doing it.

Selling Your Sites PageRank

Time and time again I come across sites selling there pr7 links or ONLY trading links with certain pr sites. This will cause a ban or penalty as well. Its okay to sell the advertising, or the gain the link, but doing so based on direct advertisement of your page rank is a sure way to get the bad end of the stick from Google.

Doorways

This is similar to cloaking pages. The practice of having one page loaded with your choice keywords that simply re-direct to another more “user friendly” page is also a big issue for Google. My clients get offers all the time from other seo firms offering these kinds of “services”. If you get these offers, avoid them at ALL costs.

Same Content on Multiple Domains

Google looks at domain IPs, dates they were registered, etc. Having multiple domains serving the exact same content is a no no as well. This also applies to serving the same content multiple times on separate pages, sub-domains and forwarding multiple domains to the same content.

Conclusion

Many of the above techniques apply to most search engines. By following a mind set that you are building your pages for your human users and not bots, you can insure you will get the most important things from your site: Qualifying links, clicks and a higher ROI. For more information also see “Googles information for webmasters”, http://www.google.com/webmasters/.

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

GOOGLE’S SITE MAPS

2005-09-19T10:42:00.000-06:00

GOOGLE’S SITE MAPS

Well, not really. But Google Sitemaps does employ XML technology in order to provide its program members the opportunity to have their site crawled after they make updates or alterations.
________________________________________
Editor's Note: Yesterday, Google launched Google Sitemaps in order to assist webmasters in keeping their content current in Google's search engine index. Will you take part in Google's new service? Discuss at WebProWorld.
________________________________________

Before we get ahead of ourselves and in case you haven't heard, yesterday, Google launched Sitemaps, a "collaborative crawling" service designed to keep Google informed of modifications to your web site so their search index can reflect these changes… or as Rusty call it, a free pay-for-inclusion program.

Sitemaps works by taking advantage of XML and RSS capabilities. By placing XML code on the web server, you inform Google of when changes occur, and they respond by crawling the updated pages and making the necessary updates to the search index. Over at the Google Blog, Engineering Director Shiva Shivakumar indicated why Google launched Sitemaps:

"Initially, we plan to use the URL information webmasters supply to further improve the coverage and freshness of our index. Over time that will lead to our doing an even better job of delivering more search results from more websites."

Shiva also gave an extensive interview to Danny Sullivan over at the SearchEngineWatch Blog. In it, Shiva iterates that the Sitemaps program's current beta state; he won't guarantee each submitted URL would be crawled. He did indicate that this was something they were working toward, however.

As mentioned, in order to participate in Sitemaps, you have to have a Google account and you have to place an XML file on the webserver being used by your site. This is done in order to inform Google's crawlers of what URLs to look for and how often these pages change. As pointed out by Rusty, over at SocialPatterns.com, SEM Michael Nguyen broke down an example of his Sitemaps' XML code, line-by-line; in order to shed some light on what's actually being done.

The XML file must also the URL of each page you want to be in the Sitemaps program. If you have four pages that undergo frequent change, all 4 page URLs should be listed, if you have an entire site that you want included, you have to include the URL of each page. By employing the changefreq and priority XML tags, you can also indicate how important each page is and how frequently the page changes.

After the XML is complete, you must submit it to the Sitemaps program. This is where the Google account comes in. Once the URL of the sitemap is submitted, your task is complete.

There are a couple of methods you can use in order to get an XML sitemap. A sitemap generator can be downloaded from Google or you can develop one. The generator is an open-source Python file that has to be uploaded to the webserver. According to their FAQ the sitemap generator "can create sitemaps from URL lists, webserver directories, or from access logs."

You can also develop your own XML sitemap if you so choose. This will have to be submitted as well. The final method Google accepts is a text file containing the URLs you want in the program. Obviously, this method is saved for those who have little experience dealing with webservers or structural web alterations. It also seems like the text files will be given the lowest priority, at least until the program is off and running.

As to whether or not you should be taking part in the Google Sitemaps program is quite simple: if search engines play any role in your business whatsoever, you should be apart of the program. Having Google's (or any other search engine for that matter) index reflect changes in your site quickly will only benefit your search engine presence. Or as Nathan Weinberg says, it'd be stupid not too.

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

Yahoo! Search Site Guidelines

2005-09-19T10:41:00.000-06:00

Yahoo! Search Site Guidelines

Yahoo! strives to provide the best search experience on the Web by directing searchers to high-quality and relevant web content in response to a search query.
Pages Yahoo! Wants Included in Its Index
• Original and unique content of genuine value
• Pages designed primarily for humans, with search engine considerations secondary
• Hyperlinks intended to help people find interesting, related content, when applicable
• Metadata (including title and description) that accurately describes the contents of a web page
• Good web design in general
Unfortunately, not all web pages contain information that is valuable to a user. Some pages are created deliberately to trick the search engine into offering inappropriate, redundant or poor-quality search results; this is often called "spam." Yahoo! does not want these pages in the index.
What Yahoo! Considers Unwanted
Some, but not all, examples of the more common types of pages that Yahoo! does not want include:
• Pages that harm accuracy, diversity or relevance of search results
• Pages dedicated to directing the user to another page
• Pages that have substantially the same content as other pages
• Sites with numerous, unnecessary virtual hostnames
• Pages in great quantity, automatically generated or of little value
• Pages using methods to artificially inflate search engine ranking
• The use of text that is hidden from the user
• Pages that give the search engine different content than what the end-user sees
• Excessively cross-linking sites to inflate a site's apparent popularity
• Pages built primarily for the search engines
• Misuse of competitor names
• Multiple sites offering the same content
• Pages that use excessive pop-ups, interfering with user navigation
• Pages that seem deceptive, fraudulent or provide a poor user experience
Yahoo!'s Site Guidelines are designed to ensure that poor-quality pages do not degrade the user experience in any way. As with Yahoo!'s other guidelines, Yahoo! reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to take any and all action it deems appropriate to insure the quality of its index.

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

MSN Guidelines for webmasters

2005-09-19T10:40:00.000-06:00

MSN Guidelines for webmasters

The best way to attract users to your site, and keep them coming back, is to populate your pages with quality content that users are interested in. MSNBot and other Web crawlers can help by making your site available to a broader audience. Below, we've provided recommendations that may help MSNBot and other Web crawlers effectively index your site. We've also provided a list of items and techniques that MSN Search discourages.
Technical recommendations for your Web site
• Use only well-formed HTML code in your pages. Ensure that all tags are closed, and that all links are functioning properly. If your site contains broken links, MSNBot may not be able to index your site effectively, and users may not be able to reach all of your pages. For more information about correct HTML syntax, see the HTML 4.01 Specification.

• If you move your page, use the appropriate HTTP redirection code to indicate whether the move is permanent or temporary.
• Make sure MSNBot is allowed to crawl your site, and is not on your list of Web crawlers prohibited from indexing your site.
• Use a robots.txt file or Robots Meta tags to control how MSNBot and other Web crawlers index your site. Using a robots.txt file will tell Web crawlers which files and folders on your site it is not allowed to crawl. For more information, see the MSNBot FAQ.

• Whenever possible, use URLs that are simple and easy to read.

Content guidelines for your Web site
• Limit all pages to a reasonable size. An HTML page with no pictures should be under 150 KB.
• MSN Search recommends discussing one topic per page. Use links to take users to related topics.
• To ensure your pages are easy to link to from other sites, keep your URLs simple and static. Complicated URLs, or URLs that change often, are difficult to use as link destinations. A persistent URL is easier for users to find and remember, and makes it a more likely link destination from other sites.

Items and techniques discouraged by MSN Search
MSNBot recognizes the following items and techniques as spam, an inappropriate use of the index. Use of these items and techniques may affect how your site is ranked within MSN Search, and may result in the removal of your page or site from the MSN Search index.
• Loading pages with irrelevant words in an attempt to increase a page's keyword density. This includes stuffing ALT tags that users are unlikely to view.
• Using hidden text or links. You should use only text and links that are visible to users.
• Using techniques to artificially increase the number of links to your page, such as link farms.

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

Google’s Webmaster Guidelines

2005-09-19T10:38:00.000-06:00

Google’s Webmaster Guidelines

Following these guidelines will help Google find, index, and rank your site, which is the best way to ensure you'll be included in Google's results. Even if you choose not to implement any of these suggestions, we strongly encourage you to pay very close attention to the "Quality Guidelines," which outline some of the illicit practices that may lead to a site being removed entirely from the Google index. Once a site has been removed, it will no longer show up in results on Google.com or on any of Google's partner sites.
Design and Content Guidelines:
• Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.
• Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map is larger than 100 or so links, you may want to break the site map into separate pages.
• Create a useful, information-rich site and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.
• Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it.
• Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn't recognize text contained in images.
• Make sure that your TITLE and ALT tags are descriptive and accurate.
• Check for broken links and correct HTML.
• If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a '?' character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them small.
• Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).
Technical Guidelines:
• Use a text browser such as Lynx to examine your site, because most search engine spiders see your site much as Lynx would. If fancy features such as Javascript, cookies, session ID's, frames, DHTML, or Flash keep you from seeing all of your site in a text browser, then search engine spiders may have trouble crawling your site.
• Allow search bots to crawl your sites without session ID's or arguments that track their path through the site. These techniques are useful for tracking individual user behavior, but the access pattern of bots is entirely different. Using these techniques may result in incomplete indexing of your site, as bots may not be able to eliminate URLs that look different but actually point to the same page.
• Make sure your web server supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header. This feature allows your web server to tell Google whether your content has changed since we last crawled your site. Supporting this feature saves you bandwidth and overhead.
• Make use of the robots.txt file on your web server. This file tells crawlers which directories can or cannot be crawled. Make sure it's current for your site so that you don't accidentally block the Googlebot crawler. Visit http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/faq.html for a FAQ answering questions regarding robots and how to control them when they visit your site.
• If your company buys a content management system, make sure that the system can export your content so that search engine spiders can crawl your site.
When your site is ready:
• Once your site is online, submit it to Google at http://www.google.com/addurl.html.
• Make sure all the sites that should know about your pages are aware your site is online.
• Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!.
• Periodically review Google's webmaster section for more information.
________________________________________
Quality Guidelines - Basic principles:
• Make pages for users, not for search engines. Don't deceive your users, or present different content to search engines than you display to users.
• Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"
• Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.
• Don't use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our terms of service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.
Quality Guidelines - Specific recommendations:
• Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
• Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
• Don't send automated queries to Google.
• Don't load pages with irrelevant words.
• Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
• Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
These quality guidelines cover the most common forms of deceptive or manipulative behavior, but Google may respond negatively to other misleading practices not listed here, (e.g. tricking users by registering misspellings of well-known web sites). It's not safe to assume that just because a specific deceptive technique isn't included on this page, Google approves of it. Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles listed above will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit.
If you believe that another site is abusing Google's quality guidelines, please report that site at http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html. Google prefers developing scalable and automated solutions to problems, so we attempt to minimize hand-to-hand spam fighting. The spam reports we receive are used to create scalable algorithms that recognize and block future spam attempts.
http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

Google Reveals Ranking Components in Patent Application!

2005-09-19T10:36:00.001-06:00

Google Reveals Ranking Components in Patent Application!
...by sketching their ideal search engine, Google dropped a truckload of clues about how their engine actually ranks sites!
Courtesy of SearchEngineNews.com | May 2005
Have you ever played the game Clue where you run around a mansion and try to collect information to figure out who killed Mr. Body? Well, optimizing a site for Google is a lot like that game. SEO's collect clues, try to put two-and-two together, throw in some educated guesses and ...voila! ...it was Ms. Scarlet in the Conservatory with the Candle Stick! Or, in the case of search engine optimization, they win the game as they watch their site's SE ranking rise.
With Google's recently released Patent Application we've been handed an enormous clue as to what goes on behind the closed doors at Google. Mind you, this document does not provide answers, but it does point us in the direction of what Google can do and what they are considering doing in the future.
Let's take a closer look at the clues and see what we can find...
The patent, titled Information Retrieval Based on Historical Data, was authored by several Google engineers and originally filed December 31, 2003. Now, over a year later, the patent has finally been published and offers several clues regarding how Google ranks pages, what Google considers to be spam, and how they go about detecting that spam.
While most of what is covered is not particularly surprising, it does help confirm a lot of what was previously educated-speculation. The real questions are, how many of these ideas are actually being used at Google? ...and, if not in current use, will they be used in the future? ...and when?
Though we seriously doubt Google employs all of the proprietary methods they list in the document, the patent still covers a huge number of techniques they could use (or are reserving the rights to use) in the future. The patent itself takes a shotgun approach to covering as much ground as possible, as opposed to closely documenting any current or future methods.
The patent also makes frequent reference to the concept of using a web page's score to rank that page, as well as what factors play a role in raising and lowering that score. The implication here is, of course, that high-scoring pages will rank better than low-scoring pages.
Reading Between the Patent's Lines
So what does all of this mean to you and your optimization efforts? Let's run through the patent step-by-step:
Historical Data: The bulk of the document is devoted to ways in which Google could use domain- and site history-data to help determine relevancy. This patent application reveals what kind of history they might consider to be important when it comes to scoring web pages and identifying spam. Some factors include:
• How old a page is.
• How frequently page content changes over time.
• How links to a page are added and removed over time.
• The rate at which links are added or removed.
• How the anchor text of incoming links changes over time.
• The current and previous levels of traffic to a page.
• What position Google ranked the page in the past.
• The age of the domain the page is on and how long it's been registered for.
Document Age: The patent implies that Google closely watches the date documents are created, the average age of documents on the site, and how frequently the page changes over time. Document creation date is determined by the date on which the Google spider first indexes the document, either through its regular crawl or through the page being manually submitted to Google.
For example, a page that is one day old and has ten incoming links may have a higher score than a page that is ten years old and has 100 incoming links, since the younger page has a higher rate of link growth. However, an excessively fast rate of link growth may actually hurt the score of a page, since, to Google, that looks like artificial link accumulation.
The indication here is that older pages will generally be given higher scores than newer pages, but only if those older pages are continually adding new incoming links at a moderate pace. Also, Google takes into consideration the average age of all pages on a site. This means that a new page on an old site will score higher than an equally new page that resides on a new site.
However, for some time-sensitive queries, newer pages may be considered more favorable than older ones. For instance, Google might rank new pages more highly for a phrase like nuclear option, since new pages will be more likely to be discussing issues in the current US Senate. Old pages, in contrast, might be about Cold War politics, and probably not satisfy today's searcher's query.
Rate of Document Change: In general, pages that are updated frequently will score higher. However, Google may watch to see if all web pages on a site are updated at the same time, which may signal a navigation or site template change, as opposed to a page-content change. In such a case, pages may not get credit for being updated, since the change more likely applied to the look of the site, rather than to new information being added.
Individual pages changing frequently may signal a news or blog page, or some other important content, and indicate to Google that those pages should be spidered more frequently, and perhaps ranked higher for their targeted keywords.
When it comes to determining if a web page has been modified, Google will give greatest weight to changes in the title of a page, followed by changes in the anchor text of outgoing links on a page, then to changes in visible page text. Little weight is given to changes in Javascript, on-page ads, date/time tags, comments, or navigational or template elements.
To make things even more challenging, the patent also takes into account the rate of change. This means that, even if a page is updated regularly, it still won't score as highly as a page that is increasing in its rate of change.
For example, imagine that you update your pages once a week and your competitor updates their pages once a month. If your competition switches to updating their pages once a week, they'll receive a higher score than you. This is because, even though you're both updating once a week, they will have accelerated their rate of updates, giving them the advantage.
The patent also discusses how a "stale" document, or one that hasn't changed for a given amount of time, should perhaps be ranked higher than a more recently updated document, if it gets clicked more often than more recently modified pages. This brings us to...
Traffic, Click Tracking, and User Data: Google gives us a few clues to indicate that pages that are clicked more frequently in the Google search engine results pages (SERPs) for a given search term may get a higher ranking.
The patent implies that Google is tracking not just how many clicks a search result is getting, but also what kind of traffic is going to the page in question. Higher relevance is awarded to pages that are accessed through browser bookmarks, for instance, since those pages are assumed to be more valuable to searchers.
High scores are also assigned based on the amount of time a user spends on a page. But how can Google know how long you're browsing a page and whether or not you accessed it from your bookmarks? Now you know what things like My Search History and the Google Toolbar are really for (cue ominous-sounding music).
And what happens if people used to spend 30 seconds on average looking at a page, but now only spend an average of 5 seconds looking at that same page? You got it. Page score goes down.
Even more Orwellian is that the patent indicates that Google may employ information stored in a user's browser cache and cookies to determine the popularity of a page.
Further, Google may look at the rate of traffic, whether it's increasing or decreasing, and in particular the seasonal variation in traffic. This could help them to identify sites that may be important during some parts of the year but not others. Examples could include travel sites, or sites that sell holiday related merchandise.
One of the more potentially controversial aspects of the patent involves the way Google may look at advertising traffic. In particular, Google's rating of the "quality" of the advertisers. A page featuring ads that link to sites that Google trusts (such as their good buddies over at Amazon.com) will likely score higher than a page with ads that link to lower-traffic, less-trusted sites.
While this may make a certain amount of sense, it also raises some flags about the ways in which the online behemoths are able to use their power to collaborate and squeeze the little guy out of contention.
The patent also discusses assigning higher scores to those pages that have higher click-thru rates on their ads. Obviously, the easiest way for them to track this is if you're running AdSense on your site. (Who knows, maybe this whole patent was just a devious attempt by Google to convince more people to put AdSense ads on their pages?)
Links: Google watches how quickly inbound links develop over time, including how quickly they disappear. Google's not just factoring in how many links you have now, they're also taking into account the way in which those links behave and analyzing trends in the growth and decline in the number of links a page has.
A downward trend in the number of links to a page may indicate that the page is "stale" and hence deserves a lower score, while an upward trend indicates fresh content and deserves a higher score.
Changes in the anchor text of links pointing to a page may also indicate fresh content, as can other changes to the pages on which those incoming links appear. This means that it helps to not only have fresh content on your own page, but also for your page to be linked to from other fresh pages.
And, of course, the rate at which those new links are added is critical. Add them too fast and you risk a penalty. As the patent plainly states:
A typical, "legitimate" document attracts back links slowly.
By now, you know our advice here at SearchEngineNews.com has always been to create a natural-looking incoming link structure. This means growing your links gradually, avoiding run-of-site link purchases, varying your incoming link anchor text, and limiting to a certain degree your number of reciprocal links.
Much of this patent just reinforces that advice. You should always be asking yourself if your links fit a natural-looking development cycle.
Domain-Related Information: The patent also covers a few ways Google may distinguish between illegitimate and legitimate domains. One aspect is the length of time a domain is registered for. According to the patent, legitimate domains are more likely to be paid for several years in advance, while doorway and spam-heavy domains are rarely registered for more than a year in advance, since the owner knows they'll likely be penalized anyway. Does this mean you should go out and register your domains for the next ten years? If you plan on being in business that long, we can't see how it can hurt.
Google may also take into account the rate at which whois info, IP address, and name servers change for a given domain. Domains that are frequently being shuffled between owners and locations may be tagged as more likely to contain spam.
And if that hasn't ratcheted up your paranoia, the patent also indicates that Google may look at the other domains that share a name server with your own domain. If there are a lot of questionable domains on your name server, you may get lumped in with a bad crowd, causing your rankings to suffer.
Avoid Artificial Flavors
The primary theme of this patent is that Google is looking to profile web page value based on factors that are naturally created and influenced, as opposed to those that are artificially manipulated. That's essentially what this is all about - finding ways to detect and score documents that deserve to rank highly even if search engines didn't exist.
Something Google Software Engineer Matt Cutts (one of the co-authors of the patent) has frequently relayed in the past was the importance of building pages for human traffic, while trying to ignore the search engines. For those of us who market products online, that may be easier said than done, since so much of what we do is focused on getting our pages to rank higher in the major engines.
The question is, what is truly natural? Considering that SE optimization is built into almost every facet of online commercial activity, the line is somewhat blurred.
Keep Things in Perspective
Of course, it's also important to keep in mind that this is only a patent application. There's no proof that any of these ideas are actually being implemented at Google. For all we know, this patent could just be a brilliant attempt to foster paranoia amongst search engine optimizers and make us second guess the techniques we're currently using.
Further, note that this patent was not put out by Google, but rather by a team of Google engineers. Of course, we're not so naive as to assume that the two aren't one and the same.
Regardless, it does show that Google is quite intent on discovering pages that develop a natural course of growth, as opposed to pages that search engine marketers try to put on the Fast Track to high rankings.
See for Yourself...
Since the patent itself is actually fairly readable, we recommend you check it out yourself (skip the claims and go straight to the description, about 2/5 of the way down). The contents of this patent application have already generated more online buzz than any other previously released Google publication.
Google USPTO Filing - A must read for SEOs

As we've always said: when it comes to Google, if it can be done, then assume it is being done. Familiarizing yourself with this document will give you an idea of just what Google is striving for and will prepare you for what you can expect to see, if not today, than very likely in the near future.
Keep it natural...
Esoos Bobnar
SEM Specialist and Technical Analyst
Planet Ocean Communications
Reprinted by permission from: SearchEngineNews.com
________________________________________
Google Limits Link Popularity Searches?
Some Google searchers have been noticing a new limitation when checking link popularity using the "link:" command. If you perform too many of these searches within a certain period of time, a page is returned claiming that your computer has spyware installed on it and requires a code to be entered on the page before the search results will be returned. The message can be a bit misleading: in most cases, spyware has nothing to do with it. The problem? Too many link popularity searches were performed in too short of time period from your computer. The limit is usually imposed for only a few hours.
Link popularity searches on Google take the form of link:www.domainname.com, and when used, return the number of sites within the Google index that link to whatever domain you are querying about. It's a useful feature to measure trends over time, but most agree that the results are filtered and not representative of the actual number of links for a given domain.
Reports suggest that the amount of link queries allowed usually run into the hundreds, and only when the requests are sent at a fairly rapid rate.
WebPosition uses the link popularity searches very sparingly, so it should never be a cause for this block being placed. WebPosition recommends users always use best practices in their SEO efforts.
For more information about this feature, see the section "Who Links To You?" at the bottom of the Google Web Search Features page.
SEO Compass: Site Map and 404 Error Pages
By Kent Lewis, President of Anvil Media Inc.
These days, it's much easier to get lost in search engines, than to be found. As the Web grows and evolves, many sites are redesigned, leaving orphaned or "dead pages" in their wake. While site visitors appreciate improved content and features a new site can offer, they get frustrated by clicking through to blank white 404 error pages on the old site. Building a custom 404 error page is an elegant solution to this problem.
Mapping it Out
Before we go into too much detail on 404 error pages, let's take a brief detour into the world of site maps. If you don't have a site map on your Web site, you need one. It's simply a visual outline of primary, secondary, and tertiary pages within your site. Some site visitors appreciate visual navigation as a quick way to assess the overall size and structure of a Web site and get to the information they want within one or two clicks. Additionally, you should ensure the integrity of your site's link structure. This can be easily done through software applications like Link Defender that can automatically verify the integrity of your web site's links including image, FTP, and dynamic links.
Intentional Errors
Now that you have a better understanding of the benefits of a site map, we can get back to the topic at hand: custom 404 error pages. As described earlier, a standard 404 error page is a blank white page that says "The page cannot be found." While the fine print suggests visiting the home page of the URL in question, visitors often find it easier to click the back button to return to the search results and visit another site (like your competitors).
The best way to capture visitors from dead pages still visible in search results is to create a custom 404 error page that looks like your Web site template. It should have your logo and navigation, and in the main content area, it should say something like, "We're sorry this page is not available, please visit the links below to find what you are looking for." The "links" that follow would be content from the existing site map. Now a visitor is able to locate what they are looking for rather than leaving.
Once you've developed your site map, use that as a baseline to build a custom 404 error page. Since you've already submitted the site map to search engines to ensure all current pages are indexed, you don't need to do anything more but sit back and watch your traffic increase (using WebTrends of course). Once the spider is served a 404 error page instead of a dead link, two things happen: the current listing maintains position longer and the spider is directed to the current pages, improving overall visibility.
In the end, creating a custom 404 error page based on the site map allows you to retain current search engine visibility while driving lost traffic to the appropriate areas of the site and improving overall site conversion. For more information, check out the resources below.

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

SEO Compass: Site Map and 404 Error Pages

2005-09-19T10:36:00.000-06:00

SEO Compass: Site Map and 404 Error Pages

By Kent Lewis, President of Anvil Media Inc.
These days, it's much easier to get lost in search engines, than to be found. As the Web grows and evolves, many sites are redesigned, leaving orphaned or "dead pages" in their wake. While site visitors appreciate improved content and features a new site can offer, they get frustrated by clicking through to blank white 404 error pages on the old site. Building a custom 404 error page is an elegant solution to this problem.
Mapping it Out
Before we go into too much detail on 404 error pages, let's take a brief detour into the world of site maps. If you don't have a site map on your Web site, you need one. It's simply a visual outline of primary, secondary, and tertiary pages within your site. Some site visitors appreciate visual navigation as a quick way to assess the overall size and structure of a Web site and get to the information they want within one or two clicks. Additionally, you should ensure the integrity of your site's link structure. This can be easily done through software applications like Link Defender that can automatically verify the integrity of your web site's links including image, FTP, and dynamic links.
Intentional Errors
Now that you have a better understanding of the benefits of a site map, we can get back to the topic at hand: custom 404 error pages. As described earlier, a standard 404 error page is a blank white page that says "The page cannot be found." While the fine print suggests visiting the home page of the URL in question, visitors often find it easier to click the back button to return to the search results and visit another site (like your competitors).
The best way to capture visitors from dead pages still visible in search results is to create a custom 404 error page that looks like your Web site template. It should have your logo and navigation, and in the main content area, it should say something like, "We're sorry this page is not available, please visit the links below to find what you are looking for." The "links" that follow would be content from the existing site map. Now a visitor is able to locate what they are looking for rather than leaving.
Once you've developed your site map, use that as a baseline to build a custom 404 error page. Since you've already submitted the site map to search engines to ensure all current pages are indexed, you don't need to do anything more but sit back and watch your traffic increase (using WebTrends of course). Once the spider is served a 404 error page instead of a dead link, two things happen: the current listing maintains position longer and the spider is directed to the current pages, improving overall visibility.
In the end, creating a custom 404 error page based on the site map allows you to retain current search engine visibility while driving lost traffic to the appropriate areas of the site and improving overall site conversion. For more information, check out the resources below.

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

Google Operators

2005-09-19T10:34:00.001-06:00

Google Operators

site:
If you include [site:] in your query, Google will restrict the results to those websites in the given domain. For instance, [help site:www.google.com] will find pages about help within www.google.com. [help site:com] will find pages about help within .com urls. Note there can be no space between the "site:" and the domain.
allintitle:
If you start a query with [allintitle:], Google will restrict the results to those with all of the query words in the title. For instance, [allintitle: google search] will return only documents that have both "google" and "search" in the title.
intitle:
If you include [intitle:] in your query, Google will restrict the results to documents containing that word in the title. For instance, [intitle:google search] will return documents that mention the word "google" in their title, and mention the word "search" anywhere in the document (title or no). Note there can be no space between the "intitle:" and the following word.
Putting [intitle:] in front of every word in your query is equivalent to putting [allintitle:] at the front of your query: [intitle:google intitle:search] is the same as [allintitle: google search].
allinurl:
If you start a query with [allinurl:], Google will restrict the results to those with all of the query words in the url. For instance, [allinurl: google search] will return only documents that have both "google" and "search" in the url.
Note that [allinurl:] works on words, not url components. In particular, it ignores punctuation. Thus, [allinurl: foo/bar] will restrict the results to page with the words "foo" and "bar" in the url, but won't require that they be separated by a slash within that url, that they be adjacent, or that they be in that particular word order. There is currently no way to enforce these constraints.
inurl:
If you include [inurl:] in your query, Google will restrict the results to documents containing that word in the url. For instance, [inurl:google search] will return documents that mention the word "google" in their url, and mention the word "search" anywhere in the document (url or no). Note there can be no space between the "inurl:" and the following word.
Putting "inurl:" in front of every word in your query is equivalent to putting "allinurl:" at the front of your query: [inurl:google inurl:search] is the same as [allinurl: google search].
allinanchor: Note: Not taken directly from Google, but is my definition.
If you start a query with [allinanchor:], Google will restrict the results to those with all of the query words in anchor text pointing to their site. For instance, [allinanchor: google search] will return documents that have both "google" and "search" in anchor text pointing to their site.
Note that [allinanchor:] works on words, not url components. In particular, it ignores punctuation. Thus, [allinanchor: foo/bar] will restrict the results to pages with the words "foo" and "bar" in the anchor text, but won't require that they be separated by a slash within that anchor text, that they be adjacent, or that they be in that particular word order. There is currently no way to enforce these constraints.
inanchor: Note: Not taken directly from Google, but is my definition.
If you include [inanchor:] in your query, Google will restrict the results to documents containing that word in anchor text pointing to their site. For instance, [inanchor:google search] will return documents that have the word "google" in anchor text pointing to their site, and mention the word "search" anywhere in the document. Note there can be no space between the "inanchor:" and the following word.
Putting "inanchor:" in front of every word in your query is equivalent to putting "allinanchor:" at the front of your query: [inanchor:google inanchor:search] is the same as [allinanchor: google search].
cache:
The query [cache:] will show the version of the web page that Google has in its cache. For instance, [cache:www.google.com] will show Google's cache of the Google homepage. Note there can be no space between the "cache:" and the web page url.
If you include other words in the query, Google will highlight those words within the cached document. For instance, [cache:www.google.com web] will show the cached content with the word "web" highlighted.
link:
The query [link:] will list webpages that have links to the specified webpage. For instance, [link:www.google.com] will list webpages that have links pointing to the Google homepage. Note there can be no space between the "link:" and the web page url.
related:
The query [related:] will list web pages that are "similar" to a specified web page. For instance, [related:www.google.com] will list web pages that are similar to the Google homepage. Note there can be no space between the "related:" and the web page url.
info:
The query [info:] will present some information that Google has about that web page. For instance, [info:www.google.com] will show information about the Google homepage. Note there can be no space between the "info:" and the web page url.
define:
The query [define:] will provide a definition of the words you enter after it, gathered from various online sources. The definition will be for the entire phrase entered (i.e., it will include all the words in the exact order you typed them).
stocks:
If you begin a query with the [stocks:] operator, Google will treat the rest of the query terms as stock ticker symbols, and will link to a page showing stock information for those symbols. For instance, [stocks: intc yhoo] will show information about Intel and Yahoo. (Note you must type the ticker symbols, not the company name.)
related:
The query [related:] will list web pages that are "similar" to a specified web page. For instance, [related:www.google.com] will list web pages that are similar to the Google homepage. Note there can be no space between the "related:" and the web page url.

allinurl:keyword, allintitle:keyword and allinanchor:keyword are commands that return results showing what pages in the index have the highest Ranking weight for keyword in the url, keyword in the title and keyword in the anchor text.

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

SEO Content Distribution Linking For Newbies

2005-09-19T10:34:00.000-06:00

SEO Content Distribution Linking For Newbies

• The new buzz on the internet is all about getting one-way links by distributing content to other sites in exchange for backlinks. As with every other SEO or website promotion technique ever devised, there are plenty of newbie myths about it that can ruin your chance for success before you even start.

Newbie Myth 1: The 'Duplicate content penalty.'

Some webmasters worry that if the content on their sites is suddenly on hundreds of other sites, search engines will inflict a 'duplicate content penalty.' Why is this concern unjustified?

* If this were true, every major newspaper and news portal website would now be de-indexed from the search engines, since they all carry 'duplicate content' from the news wires such as

Reuters and the Associated Press.

* Thousands of self-promoting internet gurus have proven that distributing content is an effective method of improving search engine rank.

* Even more thousands of content websites have proven that republishing this content does not carry any search engine penalty.

True, the first website to publish an article often seems to be favored by search engines, ranking higher for the same content in searches than higher-PageRank pages with the same content. But the 'duplicate' pages do show up in the search engine results, even if lower than the original site. Meanwhile, the reprint content has no effect on the ranking of a site's other pages.

The only duplicate content penalty is for duplication of content across pages of a single website. Meanwhile, there is a sort of 'copyright theft' penalty, whereby someone who copies content without permission can be manually removed from search engine indexes out of respect for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. But that penalty is only for flagrant theft, not minor mistakes in attributing reprint content.

Newbie Myth 2: The goal is to get in article clearinghouse websites.

There are over 100 popular, high-traffic websites that act as clearinghouses for content made available for redistribution. These websites include isnare.com, amazines.com, and goarticles.com.

Many novice content-distributors are upset when the article clearinghouse websites, with tens of thousands of articles each with a backlink, pass negligible PageRank. But the point of distributing content to those websites is for other website owners to find your content and put it on their websites--not to get a backlink directly from the clearinghouse website (though this is sometimes an unexpected bonus).

Plus, to maximize PageRank-passing links, you also have to submit articles to website owners individually. It's not a small amount of work. But there's no substitute for a polite, individually crafted email recommending a website owner complement his or her existing articles with one you've written.

Newbie Myth 3: Any content will do.

Reality: It should be obvious that many website owners, jealous of their link popularity, will only republish exceptionally high - quality content. For articles, this means a unique point of view and solid information that cannot be found just anywhere, ideally presented in compelling language in a web-optimized format by a professional published writer. You can conduct a content distribution campaign with bad content, but you'll be handicapping yourself from the start.

Newbie Myth 4: Distributing content is easy. Just hit 'send.'

Reality: Content distribution campaign requires skillful planning to target publisher websites effectively.

This is essentially a four-step process.

1. You must identify the categories of websites most likely to republish your articles. These categories range from the very broad, such as internet, business, and family, and can go as narrow as family-friendly internet businesses.

It's a careful balance: you need to make your target category narrowly relevant to maximize the value of the link and your chances of getting your article accepted for publication. But if you target too narrow a category, you'll lower the maximum number of links you can hope to get.

For instance, a website on web content writing has to target its content distribution to more than just sites focusing on web content. There are only so many websites devoted to web content as a topic of interest, and besides, many such websites would be competitors. Distribution should target broadly relevant categories, such as web design, webmaster issues, writing, marketing, business, website promotion, and SEO. Yet some broadly related categories, such as internet or publishing, are not relevant enough to yield good results.

2. To maximize success, you must have articles custom-created for each major category you want to submit to. 'Incorporating Content in Web Design' and 'Marketing with Content' would be possible titles for a web content-writing website owner targeting web design and marketing websites, respectively. An article about web design won't appeal as strongly to marketers, or vice versa, so simply submitting to websites having to do with 'the web' would not be as effective.

3. For maximum success, articles custom-written for a category then often have to be refined for sub-categories. For instance, 'Incorporating Content in Web Design' becomes 'Incorporating Content into Flash Web Design,' or 'Incorporating Content into Accessible Web Design.' Sometimes the refinement is just a 'find and replace' of one keyword for another, sometimes just in the title. Sometimes, entire paragraphs have to reworded or removed.

4. Once you've identified sub-categories of websites, you still have to be able to meet the requirements of individual websites. Some sites only publish articles up to 500 words, some only do how-to articles. Owners of high-ranking websites can afford to be choosey. To really maximize results within a sub-category, you need at least three different articles of varying lengths and focus specifically geared toward that sub-category.

In the end, distributing content for website promotion and inbound links is a marvelously effective way of promoting a website. But it's not magic beans. Like anything else having to do with achieving success on the web, it takes hard work and knowledge to be successful.

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

Getting Your Website Noticed

2005-09-19T10:33:00.000-06:00

Getting Your Website Noticed

You may have created and established the best Web site in the world, however if the world does not know it is there, it will not do your business any good. As a result, knowing how to market your site and getting your site noticed is incredibly important to the success of your business and something you will want to concentrate your efforts on.

Fortunately, getting your site noticed is not expensive so marketing on a tight budget does not mean you can't get quality exposure.

One of the first things you will want to do is pack your Web page full of keywords that people might use when searching for information contained in your site. The more keywords you have, or keyword phrases someone might use, the more often your site will be returned as a result for the person searching. You want to be in the top 5 results posted as often as possible, so being diligent about keywords and keyword phrases will help direct more traffic to your web site.

Also, once you have packed your page full of useful information and as many keywords as you and your thesaurus can think of, you will want to upload your URL to various search engines like Yahoo, Google, Excite, Alta Vista, and any specialized search engines that focus on your particular business or service. By including more keywords on your web site, when the search engines are searching for sites pertaining to the keywords entered in the search engine, your page will be listed as a higher result than others. This is very important because people generally check the first few web sites results and skip the others if they find the information they were looking. However, make sure the information you provide on your site is useful and you don't just have a string of keywords to attract people to your page. If you have useful information about a product or service, people will look around. If all you have is a bunch of keywords and nothing that actually pertains to what the individual is looking for, they will leave and never come back. So, be alert to what you are offering potential customers and attentive to the way you bring them to your page.

If you have done all of the above, and are still interested in more traffic, then consider marketing your site on other related or non related sites by banners and the like. This is a way of letting individuals know about your product that might not be aware of it to even search for it. By advertising in this way you are reaching a sector of individuals who want and need your product, but were never aware of it.

There are multiple ways to market and of getting your web site noticed, just make sure you do it in a responsible way. Internet users are fed up with pop up ads, Spam e-mail and other unsolicited information. For instance, any people now have programs that block pop up ads, which means you are not even marketing. Finally, you don't want to anger potential customers or have them close off their mind to your product, so be creative when you are marketing, aggressive and always respectful of current and future clients.

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

Beware Of Spam Withdrawals

2005-09-19T10:32:00.000-06:00

Beware Of Spam Withdrawals

• Q: I am so sick of all the spam that is sent to my business email address. I spend an hour every morning just trying to sort out the good email from the bad. I know I could just delete it all, but I'm afraid I'll accidentally delete email that might be important to my business. Short of unplugging my computer, what's the best solution for dealing with spam?

A: I feel your pain. I, too, miss the good old days when the only time you'd spend an hour dealing with spam was trying to pry it out of the can.

Due to the nature of my business, I get a lot of unwanted email. I've been working on the Internet since 1995 and my email address has been publicly exposed for most of that time, so I am a spammer's delight. It is no exaggeration to say that I used to receive more than 400 email messages a day. Out of those 400 messages about 10% were from people I knew, 10% were from people I needed to know, and the rest were from people that I would like to track down and field dress with a very dull knife.

Spammers, they are called… the scourge of the Internet… the digital kin of the lowly telemarketer and dreaded junk mailer.

After listening to me complain about spam for months, my lead engineer burst into my office a few weeks ago and announced, 'I've solved our spam problem! I've installed a spam filter on our server that will prevent spam from getting through.'

Great, I thought, now I can find something new to complain about.

I wondered what I would do with the extra two hours a day this wonderful spam filter would give me. My joy quickly waned when within a day my email went from 400 to 40. It was the saddest day of my life. Sitting there staring at my empty email box I suddenly felt very alone. At that moment I realized that not only had I come to expect the morning deluge of email, but I had come to find comfort in it. The spammers had become my friends. They wanted me to get rich quick and brighten my smile. They wanted to enhance my love life with generic Viagra and give me great deals on miniature cameras, low interest loans, waterfront property, and more. And the sheer number of folks concerned about the abundance (or lack thereof) of my anatomy was incredibly heart warming.

And the ladies that sent me email were so nice. They were worried that I was lonely and offered to cure my loneliness if only I gave them a credit card number. How sweet is that?

After a few days the withdrawal symptoms ceased and I was happy to be free of the majority of the spam, though to this day I'm afraid that I might be missing out on something grand.

You and I are not alone, Anna. According to a recent study by eMarketer, the average Internet email user now receives 81 emails a day, and nearly one quarter of them are spam. Spam now makes up more than 40% of all email and costs U.S. companies more than $10 billion annually. Seventy-six billion unsolicited e-mail messages will be delivered in 2003.

So how do spammers get your email address in the first place? It's easier than you might think. While some spam comes as a result of online purchases (yes, there are companies that will sell your email address no matter what their privacy policy says), that's just one of the ways spammers get you in their sites.

Spammers use 'spider software' to crawl the web and harvest email address, so if you have a personal or company website that has your email posted on it, sooner or later a spam spider is going to grab your address and add it to the mill. Likewise when you sign up to take online surveys or receive email newsletters, you are potentially exposing yourself to spammers.

How can you reduce the amount of spam you get? Many people think that you can't fight spam, so you should just accept it and move on. In other words, you can not fight the Borg, so smile and be assimilated into the fold. While spam is hard to eliminate, there are things you can do to lessen the amount of spam you receive and it's impact on your daily business life.

First, stop clicking on the 'unsubscribe' links at the bottom of spam emails. While some of the links are valid and will get you removed from spammer's lists, other are actually there just to let the spammer know that your address is valid. Click the link to unsubscribe and you might actually see the amount of spam you receive increase.

Second, it's a good idea to have at least two e-mail addresses. Use one for personal or business use, and the other for surveys and online purchases.

Third, consider installing a spam blocking software on your computer or company network. There are a variety of spam blocking applications on the market that range in price from free to a hundred bucks. Though none of them will completely eliminate spam, they can greatly reduce the volume you receive. Search the Web for 'spam filter' and investigate the ones that you feel are right for you.

Your Internet Service Provider should also offer an anti-spam application, but be careful how you use it. I have a client who recently increased the sensitivity of their ISP spam blocker to the point that nothing was getting delivered to their company email accounts, including their own company newsletter. They had effectively built an email brick wall that stopped the spam and everything else. Not a good idea.

Before investing in a commercial spam blocker you might also try adjusting the email filtering settings in your email software. Microsoft Outlook, for example, lets you set rules for handling incoming mail. The same is true with Outlook Express, Eudora, and Apple's Mail OSX. Each have built-in filtering features that can help eliminate unwanted email by parameters you set.

One thing to remember is that if spam didn't work, it would quickly go away. In other words, if spammers weren't profiting from sending unwanted emails they would go do something else.

Probably become a telemarketer or credit card debt collector.

Whether you use a commercial product or rely on your existing email software to filter out spam, just be careful that you don't batten down the hatches so tight that you no longer receive any email at all.

Here's to your success!

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

5 Ways to Promote Affiliate Programs

2005-09-19T10:31:00.000-06:00

5 Ways to Promote Affiliate Programs

• After having chosen several programs to join, you probably realize that customers won't knock on your door - you have to come to them. By promoting your affiliate programs successfully, you build your own success!

So what should you do to promote your affiliate programs? Here are five methods which have succeeded for millions and can succeed for you, if you choose to follow the same steps as those millions before you!

#1 Create your own marketing affiliate program materials.

Many people use the marketing materials provided by the program they signed up for. Guess what? Thousands of people are using those same materials, those same ready-made websites and those same advertisements. People are easily bored and those ads get old really, really fast. Create something brand new and all your own!

* Create your own promotional website instead of using a stale, pre- packaged website. This is not very expensive and the returns can be huge!

* Create your own brochures and pamphlets. Whether using email or mailing materials to prospects in the old-fashioned way, be sure your material is fresh and new.

* Create compelling business cards. The business cards you hand out to contacts that you network with should also be fresh, new, and cause the person reading the card to feel compelled to contact you. A simple byline such as 'Information on Becoming an Overnight Success' can be all it takes to make that person call you for more information.

* Write original articles and submit for publication to ezines for exposure of your fresh material.

#2 Generate Leads from an Opt-In Email List

Sure, you can buy names from email lists, but are those people even interested in the type of product you have to offer? Probably not! Create an opt-in mailing list by allowing prospects who come to your website to choose to receive a free newsletter. This gives you the opportunity to include information in the newsletter about your products. Why is this the best way?

* Allows contact with people who have at least some interest in the product you are promoting on your website

* Generates mailing list for future products you may promote

* Saves tons of money compared to buying mailing lists!

After all, think of all those flyers that come in the newspaper. What do you do with them? If you are like most people, you throw them away because they don't pertain to you. If all the flyers in your newspaper were placed there because you, personally, had expressed interest in them, you probably would read them all! This is the difference between random mailing and mailing to prospects that share an interest in your product type!

#3 Network, Network, Network

Never miss an opportunity to network with others who may have an interest in your products, or even be interested in joining the affiliate program under you.

* Share your own success story with others you encounter. Many will be interested in joining you in your endeavor.

* Offer to mentor new prospects to ensure their success.

* Exchange business cards and make follow-up calls to encourage them to talk with you further about your programs.

#4 Use Blogs to Promote Your Programs.

In the past year, blogs have become extremely popular. You can use this forum to your advantage in promoting your affiliate marketing programs.

* Generate top-quality content to place on the blogs.

* Be sure that the blogs you choose are not over saturated by affiliate marketers already. Locate fresh blogs to use in your promotions.

* Content should compel the reader to action. Make them HAVE to check out your program.

#5 Use banner exchanges to your advantage.

Most marketers know that banner exchanges can help them promote their products, but there are a few tricks to success.

* Make sure your banner is placed on sites that will attract the same client base that will desire you product.

* Create attractive and compelling banner content. Plain-Jane banner ads won't attract, those that send acompelling message to act will!

* Always look for new places for your banner to appear. Don't become complacent because you have three or four sites showing your banner. There are new websites every single day!

These five tips will help you successfully promote your affiliate programs. There are many other ways to promote products, but these are proven to work for people who dedicate themselves to ensuring their programs get the necessary exposure to succeed.

How to Keep your Marketing Strategy and Sales on Course

• When a company announces that they’ve lost a billion dollars in the first three months of the year, as General Motors did two months ago, it is a good indication that they are way, way off course. While Ford and Daimler/Chrysler weren't in the hole for a billion dollars, their profits were down by 50% or more for the quarter. Their cars just aren't selling.

Why are these companies having such a hard time selling their products and what does it have to do with your marketing?

According to Wharton management professor John Paul MacDuffie, these companies, 'don’t tend to be good learning organizations which is something Toyota and Honda are superb at.' And in the New York Times, 'General Motors and Ford have swerved off course for a far more basic reason: not enough people like their cars.'

All three companies have lost sight of the most important aspect of their business and their marketing; what their prospective customers want and need. Focused on shareholder profits, they've lost their vision of what their prospects are looking for.

There are two ways of thinking about making more money. You can ask yourself,

A. How can I maximize my profits?

Or you can ask yourself,

B. How can I give my customers what they want and need and maximize my profits?

Are you putting profits before prospects?

Whether you're running a one-person firm or a hundred-person company, your compass should point to what prospects want and need. This is the direction to long-term success; your customers have the information you need to develop your products and services and map out your marketing strategy.

Help your clients get what they want and need, and they'll buy your products or services again and again and tell all their friends to do the same.

Do you know what your prospects want and need?

Here's how to keep your business and your marketing pointed to profits:

1. Constantly Collect Information
You don't need to hire a marketing research firm and spend tens of thousands of dollars to learn what your prospects want. Yes, third party research can provide one more way of listening to what people want, but you can use many low- and no-cost ways of collecting information.

Use every prospect and client contact to find out more about what they want and need. Every time a prospect or client talks to you on the phone or visits your web site, use the opportunity to prompt them to tell you more about their needs. Get people to respond to your postcard, letter or your web site copy by offering them a free report in return for their input.

2. Ask Questions
Ask prospects and clients what they need and want. Ask clients how they used your product or service and what would make it even more useful.

3. Watch What Clients Do With Your Products and Services
One of the challenges of product development is getting prospects to identify a product they haven’t seen. Steve Maynard, a Vice President of Marketing at Wiremold in Connecticut understood this dilemma and had a simple solution. He regularly sent his employees out to watch how customers used his company's products.

By watching customers install their wire and cable management products, they could identify any problems that occurred and come up with new or improved products.

These insights into your customers’ needs and problems can also drive your marketing.

4. Listen to the Questions Prospects and Clients Ask
Every day prospects and clients call me with lots of questions about how to improve their marketing. I get questions about cold calling, email marketing, closing sales, getting the boss to spend money on marketing, solving office politics etc.

Each question is an indication of a need. When I evaluate which products to develop, which services to keep and which to add, I use this list of my own prospects’ needs to help set the course of my business.

My primary service is teaching people how to market their products and services, but I have had so many requests for help with copywriting that uses the successful approach I espouse that I am now offering copywriting as an added service.

5. Think About How You Want to Be Seen By Your Customers
Do you want your customers to think of you solely as a profit-driven service provider? Or do you want your clients to think of you as a professional who they know and trust to help them solve their problems? The path you choose will determine how you approach your product development, delivery and marketing.

Want to ensure repeat orders and the continued growth of your business? Keep your business compass pointed to prospects' needs and wants and you'll stay on a course toward long term success and greater profits.

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

SEO One-way Web Links: 5 Strategies

2005-09-19T10:30:00.000-06:00

SEO One-way Web Links: 5 Strategies

• With so much talk about search engines putting a damper on direct reciprocal links, the hunt for the elusive one-way inbound link is on.

As someone who works with small business website owners, I've heard just about every inbound-linking scheme there is. In the end, I've only seen five strategies that really work consistently for getting hundreds of links.

Less Effective One-Way Link Strategies

Yet there's perennial interest in alternative linking strategies. They range from bad to OK, but none offer as much potential as the five major ways of getting links.

* Link farms never seem to die. The latest variations try to pass themselves off as viral marketing, but are really a sort of endless pyramid scheme: you link to me, so I link to someone else, who links to someone else, and on and on down the line. Link farms can get you delisted from search engine indexes, so don't even try them.

* Affiliates can provide you with one-way inbound links if you use affiliate software that links directly to your site rather than through a redirect. But many, many affiliates are now placing all their affiliate links in redirects of their own invention, to help protect their commissions from pirates who will simply apply to the program themselves to get a discount.

* Posting to web forums and blogs regularly will get you one-way inbound links, but they'll only have search-engine value a small percentage of the time. Many blogs and bulletin boards use search-engine-unfriendly dynamic file formats, automatically encase links in script, or use robot instructions to prevent spiders from following links.

* Many one-way inbound linking strategies fall into the great-if-you-are-lucky-enough-to-get-it category, such as winning a web award or being featured on a high-PageRank website just for being so great.

* Other one-way incoming link strategies are in the this-will-take-forever-to-get-anywhere category, such as offering to provide testimonials to all your vendors in exchange for a link to your site. (Hint: If you can get more than twenty links that way, you probably need to simplify your supply chain.)

Now, on to the five major ways of getting large numbers of one-way inbound links. Some are better than others, but they all have more potential than some of the more madcapped strategies. Of course, none is a good strategy all on its own. You have to understand all five strategies in order to really gain a distinct advantage in the one-way link hunt.

1. Waiting for Inbound Links

If you have good content you will eventually get one-way inbound links naturally, without asking. Organic, freely given links are an essential part of any SEO strategy. But you cannot rely on them, for two reasons:

* Unfortunately, 'eventually' can be a very long time.

* Worse, there is a vicious cycle: you can't get search engine traffic, or other non-paid traffic, without inbound links; yet without inbound links or search engine traffic, how is anyone going to find you to give you inbound links?

2. Triangulating for Inbound Links

Search engines will have a tough time dampening reciprocal links if the reciprocation is not direct. To get links to one website you offer in exchange a link from another website you also control. This would seem to be a mostly foolproof way of defeating the link-dampening ambitions of Google and the rest. If you have more than one website, you probably are already employing this linking method. There are only a few drawbacks:

* You need to have more than one website in the same general category of interest or the links won't be relevant.

* The work required to set up this kind of arrangement and verify compliance is not insignificant. The process cannot be automated to the same extent as direct one-to-one reciprocal linking.

* As with traditional reciprocal links, a very big drawback is that the links are mostly on 'Resources' pages that are just lists of links. There's only a small chance of getting significant traffic from these links. Plus, any 'Resource' page may well eventually become an easy target for link dampening, if that hasn't happened already.

3. Submitting to Directories

They are the legendary fairy lands of SEO: PageRank-passing, no-fee-charging, and actually well-run directories of relevant links. Yes, they really do exist. An SEO acquaintance tells me he knows 200 good ones just off the top of his head. Plus, there are other kinds of directories: directories of affiliate programs, of websites using a certain content management system, of websites whose owners are members of this or that group, of websites accepting PayPal, etc. etc.

Ah, a link in a PageRank-passing link directory: it's a good deal if you can get it. But let's say you do get links from all 200 such directories and a hundred more from the little niche directories--now what?

4. Paying for Inbound Links

Buying and selling text links on high-PageRank web pages has become big business. Buying good traffic-generating 'clean' links is a great alternative to pay-per-click advertising, which confers no SEO benefit. But, there are a number of pitfalls of relying primarily on paid links for SEO:

* The cost of the hundreds of links required for substantial search engine traffic can become prohibitive.

* As soon as you stop paying, you lose your link--you are essentially renting rather than owning, with no 'link equity' building up.

* Google is actively trying to dampen the impact of paid links on rankings, as revealed in various patent filings. A website can try to mask the fact that the links are paid, but how well it does that is out of your control.

* Given Google's mission to dampen paid links' effectiveness, paid link buyers have an interest in verifying that a potential paid link partner is 'passing PageRank.' But identifying appropriate PageRank-passing paid link partners is quite a task in itself.

* Google also has a stated mission of dampening the value of any 'artificial' links. Having most of your links on PageRank 3 or higher web pages would seem to be a dead give-away that your links are 'artificial,' since the vast majority of web pages (note: not necessarily websites, but their pages) are PageRank 1 or lower. Meanwhile, buying PageRank 0 or 1 links would have so little impact on a site's PageRank that it would not be worth the expense.

5. Distributing Content

All of the above four inbound-link-generating methods really do work. But it is the fifth method of getting one-way inbound links that is the most promising: distributing content

The idea is simple: you give other websites content to put on their sites in exchange for a link to your site, usually in an 'author's resource box,' an 'about the author' paragraph at the end of the article.

The beauty of distributing content for links is that the links generally generate more traffic than links on a 'resources' page. Plus, your article will pre-sell readers on the value of your site.

The downside, of course, is that it's no small amount of work to create original content and then distribute it to hundreds of website owners. But nothing good ever came easy. And on the internet, one-way inbound links are a very good thing.

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

Is There A Future For Spam?

2005-09-19T10:29:00.000-06:00

Is There A Future For Spam?

• Will you always be buried underneath a mountain of spam? Is there any light at the end of the tunnel? With the current flood of spam to your inbox and ever more devious practices on the part of spammers you'd be forgiven for thinking that spam is here to stay.

The tide has turned folks. It may not seem like that right now with spam being just as abundant as ever. Spammers are getting desperate though. Their most recent move to use home computers as spam zombies demonstrates this desperation quite clearly. For spammers to want to use low speed cable and DSL connections to send their junk email means one thing - the email servers they're normally using are being blocked as quickly as they go online.

This is not to say that spam will just disappear. The volume of spam you're receiving hasn't noticeably reduced. Not yet but it will. Education is beginning to take effect. People are deleting spam instead of replying to it. Home users are hiding their PCs behind firewalls, antivirus software and spam filters. Companies are implementing enforcable Internet policies which prevent employees from sending spam, jokes or otherwise, during working hours. Even Microsoft have made a committment to fighting spam. Their recent buyout of Giant Software may see spam filtering as a default feature in the next version of Microsoft Windows perhaps?

Let's just imagine for a second what might happen if spam doesn't decrease over the next few years.

The geographical hotspots for spammers are Russia, China and the Phillipines. Could a government ,say perhaps the US Government, take a drastic step. Maybe initiate an electronic first strike on the countries which host junk email servers which are used to send out billions of pieces of spam every day? The US already have military Cyber Warfare teams fending off attacks from hackers working for foreign Governments. How hard would it be for them to initiate a cyber assault on spam servers? The US and China actively trade cyber warfare body blows every single day - although this is never discussed on the evening news.

Could data embargos be used to 'choke' spammers of their online resources? The Internet itself is compromised of 13 central 'pillars' and millions of nodes. A joint venture between the US, UK and the EU could theoretically shut down entire nodes to certain countries - a sort of E-embargo. No data in. No data out. In a world that relies so heavily on data this could bring any offending spam supporting country to its knees in just a few hours.

What's the likelihood of either scenario ever developing? Anywhere from non-existent to highly probable. We live in a world where absolutes mean nothing as each day passes and we surpass what was previously thought impossible.

The future of spam is a dim one. Public outrage and the drain on bandwidth and Internet resources as a whole has forged a bond of common anger between Joe Soap users and big business worldwide. The message is clear - Spam Has To Go!

What was once a very lucrative business for the spammer may soon be putting up a 'Closed Due To Lack of Business' sign. Let's hope so.

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

Google's Giant Sandbox

2005-09-19T10:26:00.001-06:00

Google's Giant Sandbox
By Mark Daoust
What is the Sandbox?
Before we get too far into an explanation as to what Google's sandbox is, it must be noted that not everyone even agrees that the sandbox exists. The sandbox is actually nothing more than a theory developed to explain what many different SEO experts have witnessed with their listings. Whether or not the sandbox really exists is actually irrelevant when we know that the effects of the sandbox exist.
Google's sandbox is a relatively new filter that appeared to be put in place back in March of 2004. This happened after the widely publicized updates of Austin and Florida, and the implementation of what is known as the Austin update. If you are not sure what those are, there is no need to worry as those updates are for the most part in the past. The sandbox filter seems to affect nearly all new websites placing them on an initial "probation" status. The effect of this is that new websites may get into Google's SERP's (search engine results pages) relatively quickly and may even perform well for a couple of weeks. When the filter is applied to the new website it is referred to as being put in the "sandbox". The new website still appears in the result pages, but it does not rank well regardless of how much original, well optimized content it has and regardless of how many quality inbound links it may have. The filter keeps new websites from having immediate success in the search engine result pages.
The sandbox filter seems to affect almost all new websites, with very few exceptions. It is important to note that the filter is not a punishment for anything a webmaster does with a new website. The filter is merely an initiation period for new websites.
The sandbox filter also affects competitive keyword driven sites more than sites that key in on less competitive keywords. If your website focuses on very competitive keywords, you are likely to remain in the sandbox for a longer period of time than if you focus on keywords that are relatively non-competitive.
Why Does the Sandbox Exist?
There is a lot of debate as to whether the sandbox filter is a good thing for Google to implement or not. Obviously webmasters who are trying to get their sites well positioned in Google do not like the sandbox filter as it prevents them from receiving the huge levels of traffïc that a top listing in Google can bring. The filter was not implemented at random, however, and there are some good reasons for the filter's existence.
As the SEO community figured out the basic elements of Google's ranking algorithm, inbound links, original content rich with keywords, and the proper use of anchor text, search engine spammers began to take advantage of these elements, setting up websites that were in clear violation of Google's policies with the knowledge that eventually those websites would be banned. This, however, did not matter. If a search engine spammer got a website to rank well in Google for even one month, the profïts justified the cost of building the site in the first place. All that needed to be done in the future was to rebuild the sp@m websites with different domains and slightly different content. The idea for spammers was a simple one - capitalize on Google's traffïc for as long as possible (before being banned), then do it all over again with a new website. The method was extremely effective and easy to implement.
What made this all the more easy to accomplish was Google's extremely fast indexing. While other search engines would take several months to index a new website, Google could index a website in as little as one month (sites are currently being indexed within a few days). Search engine spammers were living large off of Google's generosity.
To solve this problem, Google determined that it would compromise by continuing to index websites quickly, attempting to get as much new, fresh content out to the general public as possible, but new websites would not be trusted as implicitly as they had been in the past. Instead, all new websites would be put on probation. As time passed, and a website continued to pass any sp@m filters, it would begin to perform well in the rankings. Eventually, the site would be allowed to "leave" the sandbox and join the rest of the established websites.
How Does This Affect My Website?
If you have a new website, there is a good chance that you will be placed in the sandbox. This should be expected, but it should not change the way you build your website or market it. You should use the sandbox filter to your advantage.
Google still ranks websites in much the same way that it did in the past. Websites are judged on the quality of their inbound links and the quality of their content. Google will continue to change how they evaluate inbound links and content, but the basic elements of ranking will remain the same.
While your website is in the sandbox, you should use the time to build your traffïc using regular traffïc building methods such as writing articles, building a strong community of visitors, and partnering with websites that offer some synergy to your visitors. During this probationary time, you have an excellent opportunïty to build all the elements that cause websites to perform well in the search engines. When your site finally does leave the sandbox, it should be very well positioned within Google.
Is My Website in the Sandbox?
When webmasters learn about the sandbox filter, their first question is always whether or not their websites have been placed in it. Determining whether or not you are in the sandbox is relatively easy.
First, being placed in the sandbox is different than having your website banned. If you do a search for your domain in Google and it returns zero results for your website (and you had been previously listed in Google), there is a chance that you have been banned. One of the best ways to determine if you have been banned is to look at your log files to see if Google is visiting your website. Banned websites typically do not receive Google visits, regardless of who is linking to them
. If you have not been banned, but do not rank well with Google, you should look at the quality of your content and the quality of your inbound links. You should also see if you rank well for non-competitive keywords. Remember how the filter affects competitive keywords more than less competitive keywords? Well, you can use this to determine if you have been sandboxed. Finally, if you rank well in all the other major search engines, but do not show up at all in Google's rankings, you have probably been sandboxed.
Is There A Way to Get Out of the Sandbox?
The quick answer to this is yes, there is a way out of the sandbox, but you will not like the answer. The answer is to simply wait. The sandbox filter is not a permanent filter and is only intended to reduce search engine sp@m. It is not intended to hold people back from succeeding. So eventually, if you continue to build your site as it should be built, you will leave the sandbox and join the other established websites.
Again, if your website has been placed in the sandbox you should use this time to your advantage. It is a great opportunïty to build your traffïc sources outside of the search engines. If you have a website that does well in the search engines, you may be tempted to ignore other proven methods of traffïc building such as building a community, or building strong inbound links through partnerships. However, if you establish traffïc sources outside of search engines, when you finally leave the sandbox, you will see a welcome increase in your traffïc levels.
Conclusion
Google has been going to great lengths to reduce search engine sp@m. Some have faulted Google for this, claiming that legitïmate sites are being affected as well as the sp@m websites. While this is probably the case, as an owner of a website, you need to place yourself in Google's position and ask yourself what it is really looking for in a website. Google is looking for websites that offer quality content and still relies on the natural voting system that was first used to establish pagerank. Google may change the way it qualifies content or inbound links, but the basic elements of a quality website will always remain the same.
No website owner in his right mind "likes" Google's sandbox. However, a smart website owner will use the sandbox as an opportunïty to build a website that Google simply cannot reject.

The Google Sandbox : A Frustrating Inevitability or a Golden Opportunity?

The Google Sandbox is a term applied to the phenomenon experienced by many new websites that delays the sites inclusion within the main Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS) of Google. Often new websites can find themselves confined to the 'Sandbox' for 6-9 months, during which time traffic to the site is severely compromised. The Google Sandbox is therefore usually seen as a frustrating inevitability by webmasters and one for which there is no quick easy solution.

My recent observations however have led me to believe that the time your website spends in the Google Sandbox should be seen as a golden opportunity rather than a frustrating inevitability.

Into the Sandbox

Many webmasters respond to their websites confinement to the Sandbox by spending endless hours forever checking the listings in Googles results pages for any sign of their website. Not only is this a waste of precious time but also serves only to increase the frustration caused by the Sandbox. Other webmasters more sensibly focus their time and effort improving the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) of their website in order to improve its rankings within other search engines such as MSN, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves and others. Although these may not be as widely used as the Google search engine, they don't have the same aging delay of the Sandbox that Google does. Therefore, achieving good listings in these search engines early in a websites life can at least generate some traffic and hopefully some sales whilst confined to the Sandbox.

Earlier this year the Tsunami disaster in Asia forced me to change the name of my web development business from Tsunami-Site-Design to Pixelwave Design. I had to register a new domain name, build a new website and start from scratch with my web promotion. The new site was an ideal candidate for confinement to the Google Sandbox, and sure enough after an initial day or two of good rankings the new site couldn't be found in a Google search for any of my keywords. A search for the business name did bring the new site up in first place though so I was safe in the knowledge that my site was contained within the Google database but the lack of inclusion for my keywords suggested that my site had been confined to the Sandbox. The inclusion of my own personal site within the Google Sandbox gave me a great opportunity to monitor and track its progress.

The first thing I noticed was the high frequency with which a Googlebot spidered the pages of my site. The Googlebots were visiting a few times everyday and visiting all the pages of the site. It struck me that if Google had gone to the trouble of writing and implementing the 'Sandbox' filter as part of their algorithm and regularly spidering the sites within the Sandbox then the Sandbox wasn't simply an area into which new sites get put in order to delay their inclusion in the SERPS. Instead it can be considered as a probationary period for new websites during which Google pays close attention to the sites development.

This means that as far as Google is concerned, your websites time in the Sandbox may well be one of the most important times in its development. Rather than seeing this time as a frustrating inevitability you should see it as an opportunity to really show Google how your website can shine. The Google Sandbox should be a time to make the most of all the attention your site is getting from Google and show the search engine what it wants to see.

The Steps to Success

Now that we have decided that Google is actually paying your site a good deal of attention whilst it is in the Sandbox it is time to see how we can make the most of this Golden Opportunity.

The first thing to do is plan ahead and get your site into the Sandbox as soon as possible, so attracting this attention from Google. Don't wait until your website is built in all its glory before registering a domain name and uploading your site. Instead make sure the first thing you do is register your domain name, set up a hosting account and go live with one or two pages explaining what your site is about and what can be expected from it as it develops.

Next get the Googlebot to visit these embryonic pages so that Google is aware of the new site as soon as possible. There is no need to submit your site manually or repeatedly to search engines, a couple of inbound links (IBL's) from other sites that are regularly spidered will be sufficient to get the Googlebot calling. Once the robots have paid an initial visit they will return.

You may be lucky and find that your site gets straight into the main SERPS, but if it is a new domain name and new site then it is likely that before long you will find your new creation in the Sandbox where it will receive a great deal of attention from the Googlebot. Now is the time to be proactive with your website development, don't sit back patiently waiting to be released from the Sandbox, instead make the most of your time in there and show Google the potential of your website.

Content is King

The first thing you need to do is continue the development of your website. Regularly add new pages packed full of relevant content to your site. As far as search engines are concerned, 'content is king'. Search Engines exist to provide their users with links to content relevant to their search criteria, therefore they are always on the lookout for websites that contain plenty of good quality, regularly updated relevant content. Of course, good quality, relevant content will also be beneficial to your websites human visitors, which at the end of the day is your number one priority. Add plenty of new, relevant content of interest to real visitors and the Googlebot will thank you for it.

There are numerous ways to generate inbound links and I have covered these in previous articles. However, things rarely stand still for long in the world of Search Engine Optimisation and latest research seems to suggest that simply getting huge amounts of IBL's whilst in the Sandbox may no longer be sufficient. It now seems that the rate of accumulation of IBL's may be important. Google is now thought to pay attention to the rate of accumulation of IBL's and expects to see them develop in what it considers a natural, organic manner. This means that suddenly gaining a huge number of inbound links may be frowned upon by Google. Instead your linking strategy should be a sustained effort aimed at gaining new IBL's from relevant websites over a long period of time.

Summary

Although the Google Sandbox is still a frustrating inevitability and there is no quick fix way limit the amount of time a website spends confined to it, patiently sitting by waiting for this confinement to end is a waste of what could be a golden opportunity. Google pays a lot of attention to sites in the Sandbox making confinement to the Sandbox an ideal time to really let your website shine. During this time give Google what it wants to see; regularly updated relevant content, lots of new pages and a sustained increase in the number of inbound links. Not only could this improve your sites ranking within the SERPS once its confinement to the Sandbox is over, but it will pay dividends for your site in general by providing its visitors with the information they require.

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

The Future of RSS is Not Blogs

2005-09-19T10:26:00.000-06:00

The Future of RSS is Not Blogs

• Blogs vaulted RSS into the limelight but are unlikely to be the force that sustains RSS as a communication medium. The biggest opportunities for RSS are not in the blogosphere but as a corporate communication channel.

Even now, businesses that were initially reluctantly evaluating RSS are beginning to realize the power and benefit of the RSS information avenue. The inherent capacity for consumers to select the content they wish to receive will be the driving mechanism for keeping advertisements to a minimum and content quality consistent.

Like the Internet when it first started, blogs were emboldened by the 'cool factor'. As the novelty of being new and cool wears off, Internet webmasters and bloggers alike are realizing that maintaining a website or blog is time-consuming. 'Coolness' often wears off if a channel is not monetized. With the ease of blogging and the array of blogs available, only a handful will be able to sustain fresh, constant, unique content and generate any sort of reasonable or significant revenue. As a result, blogs as we know them today will fade into the background, with many blogs being abandoned.

RSS, being a tool that saves Internet surfers time and allows webmasters to re-purpose and re-package existing and new content will, in my opinion, continue to thrive. A business effectively using RSS can bring new site visitors, increase search engine positioning, and generate product interest. The flexibility of RSS as a communication medium and the expansion capabilities of the enclosure tag will allow RSS to flourish as an online marketing tool. Each day businesses are adopting new uses for RSS, and users are becoming accustomed to skimming content that *they* choose in a single centralized location.

As businesses adopt RSS and consumers experiment with feeds, the popularity of RSS will grow. Ultimately, consumers are the driving force behind technology. The convenience of RSS and increased popularity will set a precedent for consumer expectations. Businesses using RSS as a communication vehicle are able to create keyword-rich, themed content, establishing trust, reputation, and ongoing communication with current and prospective customers.

The big consumer benefit to RSS is that consumers opt-in to content of interest, totally controlling the flow of information they receive. If the quality of the content in the feed declines, users simply remove the feed from their RSS reader and they will not receive any additional updates from that source. The RSS reader acts as an aggregator, allowing users to view and scan multiple content streams in a timely fashion.

Consumer expectation will drive businesses that are slow to adopt. Ultimately, RSS will be a standard, like email addresses and websites are now a 'must' for businesses. RSS feeds will join their ranks.

Unlike blogs, businesses can easily justify RSS feeds, as they will be increasing customer and corporate communication. RSS will create new revenue channels. RSS has the potential to help companies develop strong relationships with consumers and create brand loyalty. RSS Feeds will draw existing customers and prospective clients, translating to a new or renewed income stream. Businesses using RSS feeds as a communication medium to notify interested customers of specials, discounts, product announcements, technical support tips, news and industry studies will ultimately sustain RSS as a viable and valued communication medium.

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

Google Sitemaps Explained - How to Get Your Site Indexed With Google Sitemaps

2005-09-19T10:24:00.000-06:00

Google Sitemaps Explained - How to Get Your Site Indexed With Google Sitemaps
By Titus Hoskins (c) 2005

Three Ways To Index Your Site With Google Sitemaps
[Difficult, Hard, And Easy]

Google has recently implemented a program where any webmaster
can create a Sitemap of their Site and submit it for indexing by
Google. It is a quick and easy way for you to keep your site
constantly indexed and updated in Google.

The program is appropriately called Google Sitemaps.

In order for you to best use Sitemaps, you must have an XML
generated file on your site that will transmit or send any
updates, changes, and data to Google. XML (Extensible Markup
Language)is everywhere these days, you have probably seen the
orange XML logo on many web sites and it's often associated
with Blogging because Blogs use XML/RSS feeds to syndicate
their content.

Today RSS is known mostly as 'Really Simple Syndication' but
its original acronym stood for 'Rich Site Summary'. XML is only
simple code like HTML and it is used to syndicate your content
to all interested parties.

And the interested party in this case is Google. By creating
Sitemaps, Google is really asking webmasters to take charge of
the indexing and updating of their sites. Basically, doing the
Googlebot's job!

This is a 'Good' thing! With the steady influx of new web sites
growing rapidly, indexing all this material will become a
challenge, even with the resources of Google. With Sitemaps,
websmasters can now take charge and make sure their site is
crawled and indexed.

Please note, indexing your site with Sitemaps WON'T improve your
rankings in Google. You will still be competing with the other
sites in Google for top positions. But with Sitemaps you can
make sure all your pages are crawled and indexed quickly by
Google.

There are some other big advantages of using Google's Sitemaps -
mainly you have control over a few key variables, attributes or
tags. To explain this as simply as possible, your XML powered
sitemap file will have this simple code for each page of your
site:

< url>
< loc>http://www.yoursite.com/< / loc>
< priority>1.0
< lastmod>2005-07-03T16:18:09+00:00< /lastmod>
daily< /changefreq>
< /url>

Along with 'urlset' tags at the beginning and end of your code,
and an XML version indication - that's basically your XML file!
File size will depend on the number of webpages you have.

Taking a closer look at this XML file:

location - http://www.yoursite.com - name of your webpage

priority - you set the priority you want Google to place
on that page in your site. You can prioritize your pages:
0.0 being the least, 1.0 being the highest, 0.5 is in the
middle. This is ONLY relative to your site. It will not affect
your rankings. Why is this important? You have certain pages on
your site that are more important than others, (home page, high
profit page, opt-in page, etc.) by placing high priority on
these pages, you will increase their importance in Google.

last modified - when you last modified that page, this
timestamp allows crawlers to avoid recrawling pages that
haven't changed.

change frequency - you can tell Google how often you change
that particular page. Never, weekly, daily, hourly, and so on
- if you frequently update your page this could be extremely
important.

Why do I need a XML Generator?

In order for this XML sitemap file on your site to be constantly
updated, you need a Generator that will spider your site, list
all the urls and automatically feed them to Google. Thus
constantly updating your site in Google's massive index or
database. Keep in mind, Google also gives you the option of
submitting a simple text file with all your URLs.

Now there is already a flood of these generators popping up!
Different ways of generating your XML powered sitemap file. More
are probably appearing as you read this. But lets look at Three
ways to generate your XML file.

Difficult - Google's Python Generator

That's a relative term, if you know your server like the back of
your hand and installing scripts doesn't scare the bejesus out
of you, you're probably smiling at the word difficult. Google
supplies a link to a generator which you can download and set up
on your server. It will cough up your sitemap XML file and
automatically feed it to Google. Google XML Generator
(https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/sitemap-generator.html)

In order for this Generator to work, Python version 2.2 must be
installed on your web server - many servers don't have this. If
you know what you're doing, this will probably be a good choice.

You don't need a Google Account to use Sitemaps, but it's
encouraged because you can track your sitemap's progress and
view diagnostic information. If you already have another Google
Account, gmail, Google Alerts, etc. just use that one to sign in
and follow directions from there.

To submit your Sitemap using an HTTP request, issue your request
to the following URL:

www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=sitemap_url

Hard - A PHP Code Generator

This is a php generator that you can place on your server. This
generator will spider your site, and produce a XML sitemap file.
Download the phpSitemapNG and upload it your server. Run the
generator to get your XML sitemap file and send it to Google.
PHP Generator (http://enarion.net/google/)

Again, this is only hard to do if you don't know your way around
PHP files or scripts.

Easy - Free Online Generator

These Generators are popping up everywhere, and Google now keeps
a list of these 'third party suppliers' of generators on their
site. Find them here: Google's List of Third Party Generators
(http://code.google.com/sm_thirdparty.html)

One of the easiest to use is www.xm-sitemaps.com
(http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/), and you can index up to 500
pages with this online Generator very quickly and it will give
you the sitemap XML file Google needs to index your site. It
will go into your site, spider it and index all your pages into
an XML sitemap of your site. You can download this file,
Compressed or Non- compressed and make minor changes such as
setting the priority, changing frequency, etc.

Then upload this file to your site as sitemap.xml to the root
directory of your server i.e. where you have your homepage. Then
notify Google Sitemaps of your XML file and you're in business.

Of course, the only drawback, if you constantly add pages
to your site, you will need to also add these pages to your XML
sitemap file. This won't be much of a problem unless you're
daily adding pages to your site - then you will need something
like the PHP or Python generator to do all this for you
automatically.

Google is still the major search engine on the web so getting
your pages indexed and updated quickly is the major reason to
use Google Sitemaps. If you want your site to remain competitive
it's probably the wisest route to take.

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

Playing in Googlebot's Sandbox with Slurp, Teoma & MSNbot

2005-09-19T10:23:00.000-06:00

Playing in Googlebot's Sandbox with Slurp, Teoma & MSNbot
by Mike Banks Valentine

• There has been endless webmaster speculation and worry about the so-called 'Google Sandbox' - the indexing time delay for new domain names - rumored to last for at least 45 days from the date of first 'discovery' by Googlebot. This recognized listing delay came to be called the 'Google Sandbox effect.'

Ruminations on the algorithmic elements of this sandbox time delay have ranged widely since the indexing delay was first noticed in spring of 2004. Some believe it to be an issue of one single element of good search engine optimization such as linking campaigns. Link building has been the focus of most discussion, but others have focused on the possibility of size of a new site or internal linking structure or just specific time delays as most relevant algorithmic elements.

Rather than contribute to this speculation and further muddy the Sandbox, we'll be looking at a case study of a site on a new domain name, established May 11, 2005 and the specific site structure, submissions activity, external and internal linking. We'll see how this plays out in search engine spider activity vs. indexing dates at the top four search engines.

Ready? We'll give dates and crawler action in daily lists and see how this all plays out on this single new site over time.

* May 11, 2005 Basic text on large site posted on newly purchased domain name and going live by days end. Search friendly structure implemented with text linking making full discovery of all content possible by robots. Home page updated with 10 new text content pages added daily. Submitted site at Google's 'Add URL' submission page.

* May 12 - 14 - No visits by Slurp, MSNbot, Teoma or Google. (Slurp is Yahoo's spider and Teoma is from Ask Jeeves) Posted link on WebSite101 to new domain at Publish101.com

* May 15 - Googlebot arrives and eagerly crawls 245 pages on new domain after looking for, but not finding the robots.txt file. Oooops! Gotta add that robots.txt file!

* May 16 - Googlebot returns for 5 more pages and stops. Slurp greedily gobbles 1480 pages and 1892 bad links! Those bad links were caused by our email masking meant to keep out bad bots. How ironic slurp likes these.

* May 17 - Slurp finds 1409 more masking links & only 209 new content pages. MSNbot visits for the first time and asks for robots.txt 75 times during the day, but leaves when it finds that file missing! Finally get around to add robots.txt by days end & stop slurp crawling email masking links and let MSNbot know it's safe to come in!

* May 23 - Teoma spider shows up for the first time and crawls 93 pages. Site gets slammed by BecomeBot, a spider that hits a page every 5 to 7 seconds and strains our resources with 2409 rapid fire requests for pages. Added BecomeBot to robots.txt exclusion list to keep 'em out.

* May 24 - MSNbot has stopped showing up for a week since finding the robots.txt file missing. Slurp is showing up every few hours looking at robots.txt and leaving again without crawling anything now that it is excluded from the email masking links. BecomeBot appears to be honoring the robots.txt exclusion but asks for that file 109 times during the day. Teoma crawls 139 more pages.

* May 25 - We realize that we need to re-allocate server resources and database design and this requires changes to URL's, which means all previously crawled pages are now bad links! Implement subdomains and wonder what now? Slurp shows up and finds thousands of new email masking links as the robots.txt was not moved to new directory structures. Spiders are getting errors pages upon new visits. Scampering to put out fires after wide-ranging changes to site, we miss this for a week. Spider action is spotty for 10 days until we fix robots.txt

* June 4 - Teoma returns and crawls 590 pages! No others.

* June 5 - Teoma returns and crawls 1902 pages! No others.

* June 6 - Teoma returns and crawls 290 pages. No others.

* June 7 - Teoma returns and crawls 471 pages. No others.

* June 8-14 Odd spider behavior, looking at robots.txt only.

* June 15 - Slurp gets thirsty, gulps 1396 pages! No others.

* June 16 - Slurp still thirsty, gulps 1379 pages! No others.

So we'll take a break here at the 5 weeks point and take note of the very different behavior of the top crawlers. Googlebot visits once and looks at a substantial number of pages but doesn't return for over a month. Slurp finds bad links and seems addicted to them as it stops crawling good pages until it is told to lay off the bad liquor, er that is links by getting robots.txt to slap slurp to its senses. MSNbot visits looking for that robots.txt and won't crawl any pages until told what NOT to do by the robots.txt file. Teoma just crawls like crazy, takes breaks, then comes back for more.

This behavior may imitate the differing personalities of the software engineers who designed them. Teoma is tenacious and hard working. MSNbot is timid and needs instruction and some reassurance it is doing the right thing, picks up pages slowly and carefully. Slurp has addictive personality and performs erratically on a random schedule. Googlebot takes a good long look and leaves. Who knows whether it will be back and when.

Now let's look at indexing by each engine. As of this writing on July 7, each engine also shows differing indexing behavior as well. Google shows no pages indexed although it crawled 250 pages nearly two months ago. Yahoo has three pages indexed in a clear aging routine that doesn't list any of the nearly 8,000 pages it has crawled to date (not all itemized above.) MSN has 187 pages indexed while crawling fewer pages than any of the others. Ask Jeeves has crawled more pages to date than any search engine, yet has not indexed a single page.

Each of the engines will show the number of pages indexed if you use the query operator 'site:publish101.com' without the quotes. MSN 187 pages, Ask none, Yahoo 3 pages, Google none.

The daily activity not listed in the three weeks since June 16 above has not varied dramatically, with Teoma crawling a bit more than other engines, Slurp erratically up and down and MSN slowly gathering 30 to 50 pages daily. Google is absent.

Linking campaign has been minimal with posts to discussion lists, a couple of articles and some blog activity. Looking back over this time it is apparent that a listing delay is actually quite sensible from the view of the search engines. Our site restructuring and bobbled robots.txt implementation seems to have abruptly stalled crawling but the indexing behavior of each engine displays distinctly differing policy by each major player.

The sandbox is apparently not just Google's playground, but it is certainly tiresome after nearly two months. I think I'd like to leave for home, have some lunch and take a nap now.

Back to class before we leave for the day kiddies. What did we learn today? Watch early crawler activity and be certain to implement robots.txt early and adjust often for bad bots. Oh yes, and the sandbox belongs to all search engines.

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

Google Site Ranking - The Secrets Out

2005-09-14T12:27:00.000-06:00

Google Site Ranking - The Secrets Out
Posted by Mike (Shmoo) on June 16, 2005 at 6:40 PM

How many years did you register your domain name for?

If it's only one then that's a point against you in Googles eyes.

Why?

Because the majority of Spam websites only register a domain name for one year. A domain registered for a longer period implies that the owner is more likely to be legitimate and serious about their web site.

This is just one of the unusual factors now considered by Google when indexing and ranking a website. Factors you could never even have guessed at in some cases.

How do I know this?

Google have recently filed United States Patent Application 20050071741 on March 31, 2005.

In which many of the search giants secret ranking criteria is revealed and it makes very interesting reading. You have got to read this if you're serious about ranking well in Google. The days of Spaming Google are drawing to a close. With this patent they reveal just how hard they're coming down on Spam sites. You Do Not want to get caught out.

Below you will find the hard facts, I recommend you bookmark this page now. You will need to reference it each time you optimize a new site.

• First of all Links. It's common knowledge that Google relies heavily on inbound relevant links to rank a site. Now they explain exactly how it works. :)

This is a major factor so I'll take a few paragraphs to explain what is going on.

As well as the number, quality and anchor text factors of a link. Google seems to also consider historical factors. Googles 'sandbox' or aging delay begins countdown the minute links to a new site are discovered.

Google record the discovery of a link and link changes over time. The speed at which a site gains links and the link life span.

With this in mind fast link acquisition may be a strong indicator of potential search engine Spam.

Gone are the days of pages and pages full of link farms. You must grow your links slowly to stay below the radar and be careful who you exchange links with. That means no more buying hundreds of links at once or other underhand tactics.

PR is now very valuable.

Your link anchor text should vary but remain consistent with your site content. No more using your main keywords on every link exchange you gain. That's 'anchor Spam'. Instead vary them around your top five to ten keywords.

Link exchanges are still very important but you must work and utilize them ethically. If you don't and you get caught the recovery from a ban can be months in coming and your host and IP may also be recorded.

Softly softly seems to be the message. The fact is fewer but better quality links will benefit you more anyway and likely to be more long-term which is good to.

• Site click through rates (CTR) may now be monitored through cache, temporary files, bookmarks and favorites. Via the Google toolbar or desktop tools. Many have suspected for some time that sites are reward for good CTR with a raise in ranking. Similar to how Adwords works.

CTR is monitored to see if fresh or stale content is preferred for a search result.

CTR is monitored for increases or decreases relating to trends or seasons.

• Web page rankings are recorded and monitored for changes.

• The traffic to a web page is recorded and monitored over time.

• Sites can be ranked seasonally. A ski site may rank higher in the winter than in the summer. Google can monitor and rank pages by recording CTR changes by season.

• Bookmarks and favorites could be monitored for changes, deletions or additions.

• User behavior in general could be monitored.

As Google is capable of tracking traffic to your site you should closely monitor the small amount of copy returned in search results. Ideally you want to integrate a call to action in there to increase CTR.

Clicks away from your site back to the search results are also monitored. Make your site as sticky as possible to keep visitors there longer. As mentioned above it may also help if you could get your visitors to bookmark you.

• The frequency and amount of page updates is monitored and recorded as is the number of pages.

Mass updates of hundreds of files will see you pop up on the radar.

On the other hand to few or to small updates to your site could see your rankings slide. Unless your CTR is good. A stale page that receives good traffic may hold it's own and not require an update. So don't update for the sake of it.

Depending on your market fresh content may not be a requirement. If the information your pages contain does not go out of date then updating may not be necessary. If your market is more news based for example then changes regularly are a must. In general changes don't necessarily have to mean fresh content. They could involve simple edits to current content.

A further indicator that Google is really cracking down on Spam is made clear in the following extract from the Patent. Mention is made of changing the focus of multiple pages at once.

Here's the quote -
"A significant change over time in the set of topics associated with a document may indicate that the document has changed owners and previous document indicators, such as score, anchor text, etc., are no longer reliable.

Similarly, a spike in the number of topics could indicate Spam. For example, if a particular document is associated with a set of one or more topics over what may be considered a ’stable’ period of time and then a (sudden) spike occurs in the number of topics associated with the document, this may be an indication that the document has been taken over as a ‘doorway’ document.

Another indication may include the sudden disappearance of the original topics associated with the document. If one or more of these situations are detected, then [Google] may reduce the relative score of such documents and/or the links, anchor text, or other data associated the document."

There's still more to look out for:-

• Changes in on page keyword density is monitored and recorded as are changes to anchor text.

• The domain name owner address is considered, most likely to help in a local search result.

• The technical and admin contact details are checked for consistency. These are often falsified for Spam domains.

• Your hosts IP address. If you are on a shared server it's possible somebody else on that server is using dirty tactics or Spaming. If so your site will suffer since you share the same IP.

The impression I get here is that Google have learned from the Spam attack they suffered in early 2004 and are determined to eradicate it.

So what do you do?
There's a lot to take onboard here and consider. But you can't go far wrong with your SEO if you try to grow your site as organically as possible. If you know what you're doing you can take short cuts. Carry on with link exchanges but consider each site carefully and slow down in your gathering of them. Vary your anchor text. Add small amounts of good quality content to your site regularly. Check your search engine listings and edit your site to include a call to action in them if possible. Make your site more 'sticky' to encourage visitors to stay a while. Encourage visitors to Bookmark your site. Oh and register new domain names for at least two years.

Before you do anything remember to reference the above info first. It may just save you months of misery as your site gets banned and 'Sand boxed'.
Overall keep it ethical and you can't go wrong.
Do not be tempted to Spam. Stick to the guidelines above and you are much more likely to outlast and out rank your competition.
About the Author
How-to-make-money-online.info is a site focused on Making Money Online and Internet Marketing, listing the many and varied ways of making money online. Featuring, resources, thousands of Internet Marketing articles and useful links.

This article comes with reprint rights. You are free to reprint and distribute it as you like. All that we ask is that you do not make any changes, that this resource text is include, and that the link above is intact.

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

Google Algorithm Shift

2005-09-14T12:25:00.000-06:00

Google Algorithm Shift:

Google did an update in early February which caused many sites to
no longer rank for their official site names.

Some have stated that they thought Latent Semantic Indexing was
used on links while others still believe it is technically
impossible. Whether or not they did that I still think it is
important to understand the general concept of LSI and what
it does.

A few common problems amongst sites which fell were: inadequatley
mixed anchor text, low deep link ratios (few other sites linking
into their deeper pages relative to the # of links pointing at
the home page), and many sitewide inbound links.

This was also seen more often on sites where their official
names were well aligned with their keywords, as that also
consolidates anchor text variations.

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

SEO Design Parameters

2005-09-14T12:23:00.001-06:00

WEB DESIGN CHECK LIST

1. Design colors and structure: get in the mind of the user. Small changes can make a big difference: Simplify site organization and navigation as much as possible, date the content (add “last modified on…” within page), HTTP last modified header, no infinite, no old pages, let sites link to us. Do use text in images, name alt zones, unique content, DO use site maps. No multiple domains. Less : More. Remove distracting elements.
2. Links towards all internal webpages on navigation bars. Anchor texts are a must for crawlers.
3. Keyword rich brief content on index page.
4. Full home page with main assigned keywords. Include the keywords on the main links.
5. Clean up html code. You can use an online HTML validator, such as www.htmlvalidator.com
6. Include given meta tags to optimized site. Different tags for each webpage.
7. All images must have Alt tags.
8. Links must have Title tags in order to increase keyword density.
9. Avoid undated content. Add sources and dates!
10. Avoid overly detailed ALT text.
11. Avoid overly restrictive form entries.
12. No frames, no unnecessary long Scrolling Text, Marquees, and Constantly Running Animations.
13. No orphan pages.
14. Avoid Non-Standard Link Colours and Overly Long Download Times.
15. Include a tag line that explicitly summarizes what the site or company does.
16. DO place name and logo on EVERY page.
16. No Javascript Use instead standard rollovers and/or css

17. No dynamic  Instead use ASP or CFM. Make sure there are no “?” in any page’s URL.

18. No frames, i-frames.

19. DO a Site Map  This is the internal path to all pages, makes easier for Search Engines to crawl the entire site.

20. USE keywords in header tags H1 and H2 – as specified by the W3C- plus at headlines and subhead lines.

21. Check there are no links to death sites

Standard Links:

Principal Links. Must be included in ALL webpages.

1. Home
2. Site Map
3. About Us
4. Terms & Conditions
5. Member Login & Join now (presente en todas las paginas)
6. FAQ
7. Contact Us

Secondary Links. Upon request.

1. Promotions (presente en todas las paginas)
2. Testimonials
3. Newsletter
4. Bookmark this page

Summary:
Sites are getting better at using clean design, maintaining archives, and offering comprehensive services. Changing the URL when archiving content causes linkrot. It also makes other sites reluctant to link to you. The Back button is the lifeline of the Web user and the second-most used navigation feature (after following hypertext links).

Types of Web Pages
According to some usability professionals, there are seven types of Web pages. Others claim there are 11. Regardless of the number, it's important for SEMs to understand different types of Web pages do exist. How you write, design, optimize, and promote a Web page depends on the page type.
Some Web page types:
• Home page
• Category/gallery page
• Product page
• Form page
• News/media page
• Services page
• Advertising (landing) page
• Search/search results page
• Shopping cart / Cashier page
• Credibility page

Frames:
There are many pitfalls in design that can hinder a spider's ability to completely (or even partially) index the content within a given page. One of the biggest mistakes webmasters are still making is that of using "frames".
Frames are a design convention used to utilize independent scrollable regions within a single URL designation (or so it appears). Frames are actually divided into multiple URL designations and are generally not spiderable by the search engines.
We won’t get into how to optimize framed sites here, as this is a tutorial about "proper SEO" not "patchwork SEO". If you have frames in your website, my advice is to redesign, as you can use CSS to give an equivalent effect if that scrolldown is really something you are not willing to give up.
Javascript:
Again, real pretty but excessive use is generally not necessary. The key is to use it sparingly. The reason for this is that spiders cannot read Javascript and thus any link or text portrayed by such Javascript will not be counted in your indexing and will produce a lost opportunity. Our suggestion is for all webmasters to STOP USING JAVASCRIPT FOR NAVIGATION. Use HTML text links instead. Your images can be called in Java as with your pretty little rollovers but when it comes to things you want indexed, Java is not the way to go.
When calling Javascript editors, place the Java protocalls in the header of your page: In order to save file size and maximize load times, cut out that java protocol and paste it in an external file, then to call the java I place just this one line of code: this reduces the file size considerably with no adverse side effects.
Flash:
To have a site with a flash image is great - it will impress your visitors and increase the aesthetic quality of your site for sure, but this flash must still be accompanied by a healthy portion of good old-fashioned text, written in html, and readily accessible to the SE spiders. Also, if it's absolutely necessary to use flash navigation (which it never is) then make sure to include html text link counterparts so that your internal pages will be found and indexed.
Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

Types of Web Pages

2005-09-14T12:23:00.000-06:00

According to some usability professionals, there are seven types of Web pages. Others claim there are 11. Regardless of the number, it's important for SEMs to understand different types of Web pages do exist. How you write, design, optimize, and promote a Web page depends on the page type.
Some Web page types:
• Home page
• Category/gallery page
• Product page
• Form page
• News/media page
• Services page
• Advertising (landing) page
• Search/search results page
• Shopping cart page
• Credibility page

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds

The Three Principles of Image Optimization

2005-09-14T12:22:00.000-06:00

The Three Principles of Image Optimization
By George Peirson

Are you losing visitors to your web site due to slow page load
times? Is your site being penalized because the images on your
site are too large? Are you able to capture your visitor's
attention in the first 10-15 seconds that they are on your site?

All of these problems can be caused by an improperly optimized
web page. In other words, the page loads too slowly and your
visitor leaves before you have had a chance to hook them.

Optimizing a page for quick load times can be broken down into 3
broad categories: the basic coding of the page, scripts that are
used on the page, and images. Of these three, images that are
too large can have the most significant impact on load times and
therefore have the greatest potential for improved page loading
times if properly optimized.

A Brief Primer On Image Types

There are many image formats in common use on web sites, the
three most popular being GIF, JPEG, and to a lesser extent Flash
content. We will be limiting our discussion to GIF and JPEG
images, with a specific focus on still images.

Each of these image formats has their strengths and weaknesses.
GIF or Graphics Interchange Format was developed by CompuServe
before the Internet boom as a way to share images on the
CompuServe service. Due to limitations with screen resolutions
and color depths at the time, GIF images were limited to showing
up to 256 colors, more colors were imitated by Dithering, a
process of fooling the eye into seeing one color by using 2 or
more sets of color dots spaced too closely for the eye to
distinguish separately.

Imagine a chessboard with black and white squares. When viewed
closely we can distinctly see the individual squares, but if we
back off far enough we will no longer be able to discern the
individual squares and instead we will see one large grey
square, the black and white squares merging together in our eyes
to form one solid color. This is the concept behind dithering.

The JPEG file format on the other hand is a newer format that
can handle millions of colors easily. The initial drawback to
JPEG images is that they do contain many more colors, and each
color requires some coding for display, making the file size
larger.

Speeding Up Image Load Times

The main idea behind making an image load faster is to make the
file size smaller. This can be accomplished in two ways, you can
either make the dimensions of the image smaller, or decrease the
amount of coding that is required to display the image.

The easiest way to reduce an image's file size is to reduce the
image's physical dimensions. In other words, the smaller the
image, the smaller the file size. Imagine an image that is a
square 80 pixels by 80 pixels. The number of pixels contained in
the image is 80x80 or 6400 individual pixels. If we reduce the
image size by one half to 40 pixels by 40 pixels we then have
40x40 or 1600 pixels. So reducing the image size in half reduces
the file size to one fourth of the original.

This is our First Principle of Image File Size Reduction: Use
the smallest image dimensions that will work with your layout.
And likewise the fewer images on the page, the fewer image
pixels, therefore the smaller the page size.

Since GIF and JPEG image formats use different methods of saving
image information, they tend to be better at showing some types
of images and worse at showing others.

GIF images, since they are limited to 256 colors per image, are
better at displaying images with large solid blocks of color and
images with very small physical dimensions. The GIF format will
produce smaller file sizes than JPEG for these types of images.

JPEG images are better at showing gradients or subtle changes
from one color to another. Therefore JPEGs reproduce photographs
very well, or any other image with gradations. The JPEG format
will produce smaller file sizes for these types of images than
the GIF format will.

This is our Second Principle of Image File Size Reduction:
Choose the correct image format for the image you are using.
Most web pages will contain a combination of GIF and JPEG
images.

Decreasing the coding is called image compression. Both GIF and
JPEG images can be compressed but the process is different. In
GIF images we try to limit the number of colors, in a JPEG image
we use software algorithms to remove redundant information from
the file.

Whenever we compress a file we will lose some image quality. We
have to reach a balance between a small file size and acceptable
image quality.

This is our Third Principle of Image File Size Reduction: Find
the least acceptable level of image quality. Most images can
handle some compression with very little quality loss, and all
images can stand more image quality loss and still be
acceptable. Your job is to decide how much quality loss you can
accept. In other words, the lower the quality, the smaller the
file size.

GIF images can usually be reduced from 256 colors to 128 colors
or less, the fewer colors used the smaller the file size. JPEG
images can almost always be reduced to a quality setting of 80%
and frequently can be reduced down to as little as 15-30%. So
when you use a higher compression level (smaller number) the
file size will be reduced. Experiment with the image, try
smaller and smaller settings until you find the smallest setting
that still displays an acceptable quality.

The fastest loading page will have no images and the slowest
loading page will be completely filled with full resolution
images. If you work towards controlling your images using the
principles outlined above you will have a very lean web page
that will load quickly and be viewed favorably by the search
engines.

Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds
================================================================

How To Use Flash In Your Site And Still Be Search Engine Friendly

2005-09-14T12:20:00.000-06:00

How To Use Flash In Your Site And Still Be Search Engine Friendly
by George Peirson

• Do you want to have a feature rich web site with animations, sound, and an opening splash screen?

Do you want to use Flash extensively on your site but you are afraid of hurting your search engine positioning?

Do you require an opening splash page but were told that the search engines could not index your site if you had one?

Well there are ways to have the benefits of Flash on your site and still be attractive to search engines. It is all in how the Flash is used. Some of the methods are simple while others require more programming experience. But we all can use Flash without driving away the search engines.

First let’s look at the problem. Search engines index a site by looking at the content. In this case we are talking about text content, not pictures, video, sound, or animation. A basic rule of thumb on having a very search engine friendly site is to have high quality, targeted content in text form and limiting the use of anything that can get in the way of the search engines analyzing this content.

But what about Flash? Flash converts everything into a Flash file, or SWF file playable by the Flash Player plug-in. All the text in this Flash file will be converted from text to vector graphics, and since the search engines cannot read text in a graphic, they will be unable to read the text in a Flash file. Therefore they will be unable to index the information in the site.

So how to we get around this seemingly insurmountable problem? It is all in how we use Flash in our site. The trick is to either wrap the Flash inside normal html coding, or by using xhtml you can have Flash display text from an external source. I will limit this article to the easier methods for using Flash in a search engine friendly manner.

Let’s look at the three main ways we may want to use Flash on a website:

1. Splash Page
2. Flash navigation
3. Flash content

Starting with the Flash Splash page there are a couple of ways to handle this. If we just have the Flash Splash page as the opening page to our web site there will be no way aside from the meta tags for the search engines to index the page, let alone find any more pages in your site.

The trick here is to give the search engines something to work with. This can be easily done in two ways. You can put a text only navigation bar just below the splash screen, this way the search engines can at least find the other pages in your site. But to allow the search engines to index the actual splash screen here is a neat trick. Place the Flash file in a layer, you can then float that layer over the web page allowing you to hide all the plain html text you want underneath the Flash layer. This has the added benefit of giving content to visitors who do not have the Flash player installed on their system.

With a Flash navigation bar things are much easier. As long as only the navigation is in Flash the rest of the page can use search engine friendly text, plus you can put a text only navigation bar across the bottom of the page so that the search engines can find the rest of your pages. This is a good idea anyway and one that I always follow. Plus when a visitor reaches the bottom of your page they have some links to follow without having to scroll back up the page to your navigation bar.

Using Flash content in your web site follows the basic principles outlined above. As long as you have some text based content for the search engines to index you will be OK. I have found that having Flash animation on the top of my page where it fills the screen, followed by additional text is a nice hybrid approach. It gives your visitors the content rich experience you want to provide plus gives the search engines all the text based content they need for proper search engine indexing.

If you really want or need a complete Flash site there is one more thing you can do. This requires more work, but it will keep your site in the search engines. Create two versions of your web site, one in Flash and one using regular HTML. Have a simple home page that allows visitors to select either the Flash or HTML version of your site. Include on this home page your main keywords and navigation links to at least your site map and main pages so that the search engines can find their way around your site. This gives you the best of both worlds, the fully feature rich Flash site, and a search engine friendly HTML web site.

One final note, Google now is able to index Flash files, pulling out the text content from the SWF files. This is a great advance and allows us to use Flash more freely on our web sites, but note that they are pulling the TEXT out of the Flash file. So in order to make your Flash files Google friendly you need to include your search engine optimized text as text inside the Flash file, just like you would in a regular html web page.

So with proper planning and a few tricks we can have a very rich Flash site and still benefit from easy search engine indexing.

Five Ways A Blog Helps You To Market Your Business
by Michael Murray

• Want to advertise online without spending a fortune? Get a blog.
If you're an Internet marketer, you need a blog, because:
* A blog helps your site to rank higher in the search engines; and
* A blog expands your customer base.

Blogs are often called social marketing tools, because they let you interact with your readers via comments and permalinks (see the glossary below.)

What's a blog? Get up to speed here:

* http://www.blogger.com/tour_start.g
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogs

Let's look at five ways a blog helps you to market your business.

One: A blog helps your site to rank higher in the search engines

In 2003, when Google bought Pyra Labs, the company which developed Blogger, the reaction was Huh? At the time, blogs were seen by most as online journals, primarily maintained by the demented and teenage girls.

How times change. In 2005, companies small and large are using blogs to promote their businesses. This is because Google and the other search engines love blogs because of their constantly updated content.

Blog often, and you'll get more visitors and a good search engine ranking.

Two: A blog expands your customer base – you'll reach people you could reach in no other way

A blog helps you to reach people you can reach in no other way because your frequent updates mean that you'll automatically get niche visitors – those people who have no clue about you or the product that you're selling, but who happened to type in a search engine query that mentioned words you used in a single post.

Those niche visitors can become buyers, and this means that you don’t need to struggle to get top listings in any search engine. Write (or link to) quality content, and your visitors will find you.

Three: A blog helps your site to differentiate itself

A blog is a form of stealth marketing. Therefore a blog doesn’t need to be about the products you're selling. A blog can be about any topic that you're passionate about. Blog about your passion, and mention – in passing – the products you're selling. You can also link to them, but don’t bother selling heavily – that's not what a blog is about.

Four: Like a diamond, a blog is forever

Although the most-visited blogs update often, some of them several times a day, that doesn’t mean that you have post more often than you can fit into your schedule. Your permalinks (see below) mean that since your blog items are standalone pages, they’re indexed by search engines in the same way that any HTML or other page is indexed – your blog items/ pages will continue to bring traffic even if you don’t update very often.

Five: A blog attracts new opportunities

A blog makes your business visible. Your stealth marketing efforts will attract the attention of people who may become joint venture partners, or who will have other opportunities for you.

The time and energy that you invest in your blog can bring results beyond your wildest expectations. Create a blog – it's your hardest-working, and most cost-effective online marketing option.

GLOSSARY:
Blog = Web log.
Permalink = permanent link, an URL for a single blog post.
Comment = blogs have a comments section, where readers can interact with the blogger and others.

The Google Sitemap For Idiots
by Stephen Brennan

• Here I am still wrestling with RSS and along comes Google with their Sitemap program. I must admit, it sounds simple enough until you read a couple of articles about how to generate your sitemap or go to Google’s instructions and manage to get completely confused. I don’t know what it is, although I know it’s not just me. I know too many people who work online and have the same problem. Maybe we just went to school in the wrong decade (seventies or maybe earlier). But then, we can spell and write, can’t we…

For those who need to know what the Google Sitemap program is about, here it is in the nutshell and in MY language - English. At least, what I think it is, anyway:

Google, I imagine have become tired of crawling billions of websites, most of which are largely inactive or abandoned or both. So they are giving webmasters (website owners) the opportunity to play a part in the frequency and importance placed on the crawling of our websites. Even to the point of giving us the ability to prioritize these aspects of the individual pages. In doing so, they are also having us do some of their work for them, which is OK, seeing as they are our websites. I think it's grand.

In their instructions, Google give a few different methods by which you can generate a suitable Sitemap and how to get it onto your server etc. To be honest, I found it totally confusing. They do suggest that we use their Sitemap generator, but it is only compatible if your server uses a thing called ‘Python 2.2’ and you need to know the command that launches it… WHAT??? There’s that ‘nerd stuff’ again. Every time I send a simple question to my webhost, like, “what’s your name”, I get three paragraphs of unintelligable ‘techno-speak’, so how do I find out if I have some 'Snake-thingy' on my server? So, Google’s instructions are no good to me, or anyone like me. Even their alternatives, although slightly simpler, don’t answer ALL the questions I need answered in order to get through it in one piece.

Fortunately, through trial and error (or maybe because I may actually be turning into a ‘nerd’), I can tell you how to generate a Sitemap, upload it to you server (and more importantly, WHERE to put it) and how to submit it to Google.

First, you go to this website - http://www.blocklayer.com/googlesitemap/ and you will find that all you need to do is put the URL of you website (the main domain name) into the appropriate field and click “Create map”. It will create a list of the pages in your website and will, helpfully, also list any broken or inactive links (which you can go about fixing). You can change the frequency that each page is crawled and rate it's importance. Obviously, pages which change often, need to be crawled more often etc. When you’re happy with your list of pages, you click on “XML Sitemap” and it creates a coded XML Sitemap. XML is the code that’s used in RSS, which looks much like HTML.

Now, and this is the magic bit, you need to do one more thing before you can upload to your server. You need to copy and paste the XML code to a ‘Notepad’ document. You call the file ‘sitemap.xml’. Now the WHOLE of that file name goes in the ‘Filename’ box,. The ‘.xml’ doesn’t go into the ‘file type’ box, like it would in a Word, Excel or any other program. Low and behold, the little ‘Notepad’ program magically recognizes the fact that it is XML format (I don’t know how, probably mirrors…) and the file you end up with has the '.xml' file extension. That is what you upload to your server.

It’s very easy. You just place it under what they call the ‘Root Directory’. I’ve learned that this is the ‘Main Folder’ (I don’t know why they just don’t say ‘Main Folder’, but…). So, it goes into the very first folder of your website. If using cPanelX® it’s called ‘html public’. If using Frontpage®, it’s simply the folder with the main URL as it’s name.

My first question was, “What about Sub-Domains?” Do I have to submit separate Sitemaps or will they be included in the one I generate for the Main Domain? The answer is that Sub Domains won’t be included in the Main Sitemap, you need to generate a separate one by simply using the Sub-Domain URL in the generator. This is handy because each Sub-Domain will usually have unique needs and it would be more than awkward if they were all included in the main Sitemap.

Obviously, in the case of a Sub Domain, the ‘Root Directory’ or ‘Main Folder’ you put this Sitemap into is the Main Sub-Domain folder, that is, the first one under the Main Domain folder.

Submitting to Google is a really easy process. You just log into your Google account (you have to have one) and go to the ‘Add a Sitemap’ section and enter the COMPLETE filename of the sitemap, which will be: http://www.mydomain.com/sitemap.xml and click on ‘Submit URL’.

Although I have had a little fun with the fact that I still, after several years earning a living online, don't understand a lot of the 'lingo'. To those of you who are in the same position or those who are new to this Internet business thing, I can honestly say, you will get a handle on it and find that all these things, which may seem completely overwhelming at first, will make sense and come more easily if you take the time to read a little and find out. I've obviously surrendered to this concept and it has made things much easier.

Oh God! I think I'm a Nerd!

Getting To Know Google

• Having greatly benefited from my relationship with Google in the past several years, I am dedicating this article to the search engine superstar.

I have to be brutally honest and relay that our friendship hasn't always been rosy. I got to know Google several years back, when it was just a small fish in a big pond. I started to analyze its every move and realized that Google is a fickle, clever and extremely mysterious being. Still, I decided to get more acquainted.
Here are a few things I learned along the way.

When It Comes To Logic, Google Is The Queen

In other words, avoid participating in anything that may blacklist you from this search engine, including keyword stuffing, link farms and hosting 50 'sister' sites on the same server. Keyword stuffing doesn't refer merely to the content of your site, but also the alt tags, headers, URLs and any additional areas of your web site.

Google Likes To Stay Focused

When optimizing the individual pages of your Web site, try to hone in on one or two relevant keywords per Web page. Analyze each page and identify which keyword would be most suitable.

If you decide to optimize for two keywords per page, make sure that they are similar in context. For example, if you are optimizing for the key phrase 'insurance leads,' you may also consider optimizing for 'insurance sales leads' within the same page.

Google Loves To Travel

It is commonly known that Google loves links, both inbound and outbound. When it comes to search engine optimization, lots of research has focused on inbound links, but little has focused on the number of links on an actual page. It appears that Google favors sites that have several internal and outbound links over those that don't have links.

If you have any doubts about this theory, simply do a search on any high-volume keyword or phrase within this search engine and analyze the first few sites that come up. Notice how the majority of them have numerous internal links on the main pages of their Web site.

Google Is Popular And Expects You To Be, Too

The more popular your site is across the Web, the more Google will favor you. Obviously, having several high-quality inbound links to your site is key in achieving higher rankings. When identifying Web sites for inbound links, target the ones that are highly relevant to your site. For example, if you run a jewelry site, look for sites that are purely informational on the topic of jewelry or gemstones. Also, make sure that the sites you decide to partner with have a good PageRank (at least a 5) and online presence.

To save yourself a lot of hassle, conduct a keyword search relevant to your business and target the Web sites that show up on the first and second pages of Google (weeding out the competition, of course); contact the Web masters of those sites and tell them about your company and find useful ways to compensate them for adding your company's information on their site.

If you have an affiliate program, don't be shy to pitch it. If you have an online advertising budget, offer them a pay-per-click deal or monthly advertising fee for promoting your Web site. Note that partnering with these sites or purchasing ads should complement your overall marketing and business development strategy—and not be used merely to get link value.

Google Gets Bored Easily

Regardless of whether your site is informational, e-commerce or just a sophisticated version of a business card, having quality content is crucial for search engine optimization. Adding to that factor is how often you update your site's content.

If you run a site that has new content added on a monthly basis (do not overdo it), then eventually the Google 'freshbot' will start visiting your site more often and index your new content into the database. The more content you update, the more Google visits your site and indexes it quicker. Do not refresh your content simply for search engine optimization purposes, but do take the effort to keep interesting articles, blogs and entries to keep your visitors coming back.

If you haven't already noticed, keeping pace with Google is not an easy undertaking. It takes a certain level of knowledge, skill and creativity to truly benefit from this relationship. The rest is up to the stars.

Cache in the Bank: Understanding Google's Advanced Operators
by Cari Haus

If you would like to know when your site was last indexed by Google, you can find out easily by using the Google cache command. By typing “cache:www.logcabinrustics.com” into the Google search engine, I learned that my site was last indexed yesterday. The Google cache also displays the web page at the time of indexing, so you can see the latest version of your page that was indexed by Google.

As some webmasters have learned, the Google cache feature can be particularly handy when a valuable website and its backup have been lost due to computer failures. It may be time-consuming, especially if you have hundreds of pages, but you can actually retrieve the “lost” pages from your site in the form that Google last indexed them. If this doesn’t work, you might also try the Wayback Machine at archive.org.

Forensic experts have also used the Google cache feature to their advantage—to retrieve incriminating evidence from the web. This should be an important reminder to all webmasters not to publish sensitive material online. A later decision not to publish some tantalizing tidbit, and the frantic page-pulling that ensues, may not be enough to erase those ill-said words from the Net.

Webmasters are supposed to be able to block Google from caching their site by using the “no cache” tag. However, many don’t even try this for fear of losing favor in the company's powerful search rankings. Although Google says the “no cache” tags don’t affect web rankings, some webmasters aren’t so sure.
Other Helpful Google Operators
Other helpful search engine operators of particular value to webmasters include:

LINK: The LINK operator, when used in conjunction with your domain name, is supposed to tell you how many links are pointing to your site. The syntax for this command is “link:http://www.thevegetarianexpress.com/. By way of caution, this only shows how many links indexed by Google that are linking to you. A more inclusive option is found at the Marketleap website, where the Link Popularity Tool reports how many links are pointing to your site from other well-traveled search engines as well.

INURL: Google’s INURL operator will restrict your search to one site only. For example, typing “inurl:www.logcabinrustics.com log beds” will bring up the log beds only on the Log Cabin Rustics furniture website. This is a particularly helpful option if you are looking for a specific phrase on one site.

INTITLE: The INTITLE operator is helpful if you are looking for sites with a particular keyword in their title tag. Use this phrase at Google by typing in “intitle:furniture” or whatever other search term you are looking for.

Variations of the above themes include the ALLINURL and ALLINTITLE search operators. These are particularly useful when you are looking for a string of keywords in either a title or site. For example, if you start a query with allinurl:, Google will restrict the results to those with all of the query words in the url. For instance, [allinurl:logcabinrustics.com bunk beds] will return only documents that have both 'bunk' and 'beds' in the url.

Google operators can be especially helpful in analyzing the web pages of key competitors. To learn more, visit http://www.google.com/help/operators.html.

Business Web Site Content Strategy

• Your web site content helps you get in search engines, speak to visitors, and ultimately get visitors to buy, contact you, or follow a link. Meanwhile, your content has to be updated at least once a month if you want to get return visitors and search engine traffic. To be successful, you need to have a web content strategy.

Web Content Strategy: Sources of Content

There are four basic ways you can get content for your site:

1. Licensed content that you can publish on your site for a one-time or recurring subscription fee, or in exchange for putting a link to the author's site under the article. The main benefit of this kind of content is that you can build up your site quickly. The drawback is that hundreds if not thousands of other sites will be publishing the same content, which means you will get little search engine traffic from it. Also, within a few years, the subscription fees or the value of visitors who leave via the required link to the author's site will amount to more than you would have paid to have original content professionally written.

2. Original content contributed freely by your visitors, such as message boards and guestbook-style comments. The main advantage of this content is that it costs nothing and gives you insight into your visitors. The disadvantages are (usually) low quality and the constant vigilance needed to police it for misbehavior.

3. Original written content that you allow other sites to republish in exchange for a link to your site. This content is usually informational articles, whitepapers, and sometimes, press releases. Distributing content is an essential component of getting links to your site.

4. Original, well-written content that's exclusive to your site. You should have some content that you hold back from republication, to avoid giving visitors or search engines the idea all your content can be had somewhere else. This can include FAQs, 'about us' pages, case studies, testimonials, and other content that other sites would not want to reprint anyway.

What Kind of Content to Use

So, which of the four kinds of content should you use on your site? Ideally, all four. That way you'll maximize the amount of quality content your site can have.

But, the precise ratio of the four kinds of content you end up using will depend on the goals of your site. Some examples:

Licensed content: If you have a content-based website that draws revenue from advertising, a large amount of licensed content can be useful. However, if your site's primary goal is to collect leads, too much licensed content might risk distracting visitors from contacting you, without the benefit of bringing in significant search engine traffic.

User-contributed content: A website that handles support issues may have a lot of use for a user forum. A professional services firm would probably be better off without a forum, with all the user-contributed content in the form of testimonials.

Original written content, exclusive and for distribution: Any website can benefit from original content since it draws search engine traffic and puts your best foot forward with visitors. The broader your potential audience and the greater the competition from other sites, the more content you need.

Scheduling Content Updates

Search engines, especially Google, seem to give pride of place to sites that regularly update their content. Regular content updates also give visitors a reason to return.

In short, if you have thirty web pages worth of content this month, it's better to post one page each day rather than put them up all at once. To make sure you do this, schedule an hour each day for updating your site's content.

One way to get regular content updates for your site is to start a blog, a 'web log' in which you write your thoughts and post news. The one disadvantage is that many web users are getting tired of blogs, which are often not well written and contain more opinion than information. Search engines, too, seem to be featuring blogs in their results less often.

Identifying a Content Provider

Ever wonder how Bill Gates keeps the MSN and Microsoft sites so content-rich? Doesn't he get RSI from writing a thousand or more pages a day?

You guessed it: Bill Gates does not write the content for any of the Microsoft websites. Nor should you write all your own content. All successful website owners have someone else write a large part of their content. This person or company is often called a 'web content provider' or 'website copywriter.'

You need to select a web content provider with proven experience writing content for the web, rather than just writing for print. Ask to see writing samples. You might even ask if you can commission just a single page to start with, for evaluation purposes. Also make sure that you are buying all rights to the content.

After all, the most important part of your website content strategy should be quality.
Sponsored by BetCRIS sportsbook - sports betting and nfl odds