Is Quotpage Not Foundquot Making Google Tell The World Quotsite Not Foundquot

Writen by Daiv Russell

Search Engines are hard to tame, that's for sure. But if you can get on their good side, search can be your biggest ally when it comes to generating tons of free traffic to your business web site. Not many people understand how search engines think. So, search engine "optimization" ends up either ignored or left up to highly paid experts.

You can do this yourself, or at least very affordably

Here's a quick tip that you can put to use immediately that doesn't require any specialized knowledge of the Internet. You can do this yourself if you know how to program HTML. Or, if you don't, you can hire someone far more affordably than a Web Marketing guru to handle this for you. In fact, if you're considering hiring a Web promotion expert to maximize your website's placement in the search engines, you're really better off doing as much of the housecleaning yourself as you can, before you call in the big guns. Otherwise, you'll waste your money having them take care of trivial things you could handle yourself.

What Do Search Engines Think About?

Before I let you in on this simple secret, let me explain a little bit about how search engines "think". You see, the job of a search engine, like Google, for example, is to make sure that people find a web page that's incredibly likely to have the exact information they're hunting for. The search engine does this by measuring and comparing two aspects of billions of pages: Popularity and Relevance.

Don't get me wrong, just because it's two things, doesn't make it easy. To compute popularity and relevance requires tons and tons of processing power. In fact, Google only updates its popularity information once a month or so because it's such a huge effort.

Is Your Page "Relevant"?

To determine whether your page comes up when someone searches, Google asks of your page: "Are you relevant to this search?" For example, a certain page might be the most popular page about socks and have the best information about socks you would ever want. But, if you're looking for a new muffler, that page is not at all relevant, now is it?

Is this Accident Making Your Whole Site Less Relevant?

Having the world's best information on mufflers isn't enough to get you to the top of the heap, either... not if you make this easy mistake that seems to happen on nearly every web site at one time or another.

What is this silly mistake made on too many websites? Broken Links. You might recognize the error you see when you click on one and your browser says "404 Not Found" or "404 page not found".

Intelligent search engines will subtract points from your search relevance if you have broken links on your web site. Not just your home page, mind you – anywhere on your site at all. You see, the search engines view broken links as "stale" content. And as we covered earlier, the job of the search engine is to give the best possible results.

Maybe you've kept old links around when your web site was redesigned. Maybe you've linked to a buddy's business, and now that web site is long gone. Maybe it was a simple typo... Hey! It could happen to anybody.

In the end, having broken links anywhere on your website will hurt your placement in search engine results. Before calling in an expert to help you with your search engine placement, make sure you double and triple check your web site for broken links.

Daiv Russell is a Web Marketing Strategist at Envision Software – http://www.Envision-Web-Promotion.com - Learn the secrets behind Envision's 4C Web Marketing System and see how we turned our web site from a dull, zero-traffic dead zone into a lead-generating powerhouse. http://www.EnvisionSoftware.com/Internet-Marketing-Secrets.asp

Exponential Search Engine Traffic Growth The Beauty And Frustration Of The Internet

Writen by Tim W

The internet is structured in such a way as to facilitate explosive, exponential growth.

Most of us know about the internet's explosive potential to make millionaires almost overnight through search engine traffic, and this potential is quite often what attracts many people to do business online.

The problem, however, is that we often don't realize the amount of hard work and dedication that it takes to actually see and experience this type of amazing and lucrative growth.

If we were to graph a website's traffic growth by the amount of effort put into the website (using various search engine optimization methods – on page optimization, reciprocal linking etc), we would get an exponential curve.

As we can see from the shape of an exponential graph, exponential traffic growth requires a lot of initial effort with very few results at first.

Then after time, the search engine traffic growth begins to increase very rapidly, compounding exponentially with very little effort required to dramatically increase traffic.

Unfortunately, we are most used to thinking in terms of a linear graph when it comes to the amount of effort put in versus the results that we see.

What I mean by this is that typically we feel that we should be able to see an immediate increase in our search engine traffic growth, directly related to the effort that we put in, as it is with most other jobs.

In a linear growth situation (which is typical of most jobs), we can see that the more effort we put in, the more immediate results we see, so the growth/results (or lack thereof) would be seen immediately and would be directly related to the amount of effort put into the job.

However, this isn't the case with exponential growth on the internet.

If we refer back to an exponential growth graph of the amount of traffic growth for a website, we can clearly see that at the beginning stages of search engine traffic generation, there is often a lot more effort put out than actual results seen.

If we were to compare the linear and exponential growth graphs by overlaying them, we would quickly see the dramatic differences between the two graphs.

That being said, if we view search engine traffic growth as being linear – instead of exponential - we would expect that if we were to increase our efforts, we would see immediate results in the amount of traffic that we get.

You can see where the problem lies.

If we start a website thinking that the amount of effort that we put into growing our search engine traffic will have a direct and immediate impact on the amount of traffic and growth that our website sees (the linear graph), but in reality, it is based on an exponential growth curve you can see how one could quickly become discouraged.

Think of exponential search engine growth as planting seeds and linear search engine growth as building a house. When you are building a house, you can see that the harder and longer you work, the quicker you see and experience the results. On the other hand, planting seeds often requires a lot of up front effort without a lot of results before you can get some growth. But when the seeds start growing, they grow and mature fairly quickly with a lot less effort than when you first planted them.

The exponential growth of the internet requires a lot more up front effort, which doesn't achieve much in the way of immediate results, in order to realize the super traffic growth with very little effort later on.

This is why so many people give up in the early phases of search engine optimization and traffic growth – they simply don't see the results that they feel their effort should have earned them.

So they quit.

Unfortunately for them, if they had known that they were dealing with an exponential growth curve (not a linear growth curve), they may have endured long enough to reap the benefits and succeed in their online venture.

That being said, in addition to understanding what kind of growth environment we are in when we deal with the internet, we must also use the techniques for traffic generation that are best suited to take advantage of the explosive exponential growth that is available for us on the internet.

If you thought that this article was good, you must go to http://www.phase1.ws and get a Free copy of Tim's ebook "White Hat SEO Revealed"

It's over 55 pages of the latest cutting edge SEO techniques, written in an easy to understand, "how to" format so you can begin to dominate the search engines

So You Want To Be 1

Writen by Bert Lamer

A quick search on Google for the term "brochure design" results in over 25 million matches. If your prospective customer spent just 5 seconds looking at each match, it'd take around 4 years to view them all

And you want to be #1?

The great thing about the internet is that it is so large. There's so much information available, there's so many web sites and there's so many people hunting for information.

The problem is matching the information to the people who are searching for it. Putting this more specifically, the problem is ensuring that when someone searches for business card design, you are on of the first matches to appear in the search engine.

That means being on the first or second page of the Google matches. For the example of brochure design it means being in the top 20 out of 25 million.

Those are tough odds because you can lay bets that there's a lot of other brochure designers, business card printers, jewelry stores, etc also trying to be in that top 20.

There's also a lot of companies telling you they will put you in the top 20. Over 29 million based upon a Google search for Search Engine Optimization plus a bunch spelt optimisation. This is a whole industry known as SEO for short, dedicated to the science or art of trying to their clients pages into that magic top 20 or, the holy grail, #1.

If there was a magic formula or software out there that could get you in the top 20, everyone would be in the top 20. Obviously there isn't because they aren't.

There are some pretty basic business guidelines to consider if you are considering making use of another company to improve to Web sales:

Your web site should adhere to some basic rules. Any good web developer can help you with these and I will cover these in a future article. They relate to relevant content, good titles and descriptions, good navigation and other techniques designed to ensure that when Google finds your site it knows what it has found and is able to correctly interpret it.

There are two key techniques that will definitely help.

The first is good content. This means that if you are selling a particular product, have lots of pages relevant to that product. Provide background information, how-to's, white papers, frequently asked questions. If this is done well, the search engines will start to think that your site is the site that has the best information about the products you are selling. This is what you want. If Google thinks you are the best then you are #1.

For example, if you design business cards provide articles on printing, inks, colors, business cards from around the world, humorous business cards, famous names, etc.

The second are links from other sites. If lots of other sites that print business cards link to your business card design site then Google will assume your site is important. These are known as backlinks. These and ensuring you are in the directories on the web (such as Yahoo, dmoz, and many more) will ensure that Google gets reminded you exist whenever it goes searching those sites. These backlinks are a major part of how Google determines which sites are most important.

The reality of all this is that the effort involved in doing this is non-trivial. And it is not one-off, it continues for as long as you want your web site to be #1. Finding a good SEO company is very difficult. They will sell themselves based upon your "ranking". They will say "we can make you a top 20 site". The hard part for you is that you want to be top 20 for searches that will lead to a sale of your products. Being top 20 for postcards if they are seaside souvenirs is not much use to the bottom line of a company designing marketing postcards.

Good SEO companies will cost 1,000's of dollars per month. Quite simply it's an advertising expense and that money is what it costs in effort to do the job. Remember that you get what you pay for.

There's 29 million SEO hits on Google waiting for you to click on them!

To leave you with a tip, the first SEO companies to look at are the first 20 of those 29 million.

Bert Lamer works on a consultancy basis for QuickCreative Advertising (http://www.quickcreative.net/).

Pagerank And How It Gets Assigned

Writen by Edward Charkow

We know that each and every website page is assigned a Google Page rank, based upon a mathematical algorithm. Pages rank on a scale of 0 (zero) the lowest, and 10 (ten) the highest. Linking between websites both internally and externally pass a value or Page Rank.

If site A links to site B, a percentage of Site A's Page Rank is passed or credited to site B. Nothing is lost from site A in terms of Page Rank unless the link is to a banned area, or bad neighborhood.

The amount of Page Rank Site A passes is determined by the amount of Outbound links of site A's page. The more Outbound links, the smaller percentage of Page Rank is passed. Pages with large amounts of outgoing links pass very little Page Rank and in some cases may cause more harm than good. Try to avoid linking to pages that have large amount of outgoing links, Like Link Farms etc.

A real life true example. Site A had a Page Rank of 4, there were only 2 outbound links on Site A. One of those outbound Links was to brand new Site B. Brand new Site B had 3 out going links, and NO other Incoming Links, besides the one from Site A. Google awarded Site B a new Page Rank of 4.

From this real life example, we see that the fewer outbound links per page, the more Page Rank is passed.

If Site A in the example above had a large number of outbound links on the page, then a smaller percentage of Page Rank would have been passed and New Site B would have received a lower rank then the equal rank that was passed.

Higher Page rank sites linking to your site to pass PR is consider valuable, but normally the higher Page Rank sites have a tremendous amount of existing outbound links so the true Page Rank Passes is normally minimal. It is also hard at times to get a quality higher Page Rank page to link to your site. Lower Page Rank sites are very important in Passing Page Ranks and link exchanges. Their Page Rank usually grows with age and has more inbound links than outbound links, creating a higher Page Rank, which in turn passes to your site via it's outbound link.

In general terms, an individual page's Page Rank is determined by the amount of links going out of that page (outbound) and the amount of links coming to that page (Inbound). A general rule of thumb: you want to have more inbound links than outbound links.

Definite things to avoid.

When doing reciprocal linking, make sure you check the amount of outbound links that not only the page has but the overall site as well. Search engines such as Google doesn't like Link Farms ( 1000's of links on the site), gambling sites and pornography. Unless that is your business, don't link to any of those types of sites.

You can lose Page Rank and Search Engine Results by Linking to sites that are considered Banned, or Bad Neighborhoods. Be aware and check before linking. Even if you aren't "punished", you will gain no benefit and the PR leached away from your site is not worth it.

Be aware to whom your site is linking to via outbound links. Periodically check your outbound links making sure that they are:

1) Still an active website

2) Still a resource for the reason you linked to them in the first place

3) They have not changed theme formats and are still a quality site.

Page Rank grows over time. Google updates visible Page Rank infrequently, like every 4-8 months or so. The best SEO strategy is to link to and link exchange with like themed sites or quality sites.

Article by Ed Charkow - Ed is the webmaster at http://www.seoengine.info and http://www.nichesitespecial.com . Reprint rights are granted with live hyperlinks and resource box intact.

Recommended Tools When You Put On The Seo Cap For Your Web Site

Writen by Vinodh Pushparaj

The name of the game is search engine optimization and there are 20 winners and a million losers. It is a massive game that is conducted each and every minute by the top search engines. The fun is the referee of the game tries to modify the format each minute, to make the game useful for the spectators, in this case the folks who search. This is a high stakes game with billions of dollars at stake and the rules change daily. The playing field changes daily and the folks who compete constantly change. Wow what a fun filled game this is. This game has consistently shown that the folks with the right tools win consistently and the ones' who don't but with good ideas win at random and like shooting stars fade out real quick.

Search engine optimization is a tough game to play and there are penalties for foul play and this could mean thousands of missed opportunities for your business. The folks out there keep the secret strategies to themselves as they can profit a lot out of it. But a few folks who intend to make money or simply for the fun of helping others achieve the glory of being in the top 20, have developed very good nifty tools. This article is about these tools and the techniques behind them. Google ToolBar is the first and foremost tool that every website owner should have. This tool has much functionality like popup blocker etc. The feature that helps SEO is the page rank bar and the add-on features it provide. The Back links checker is capable of displaying all known back links for your webpage that is known to Google. The similar page feature is very helpful to know your competitors.

Lets look at the top 4 categories of tools needed for SEO:

1. Keyword Tools: the keyword density is the number of keywords present as a percentage of the total words in that page. The keyword density could really depend on what you are targeting and usually a trial and error. This tool provides the details about the density without counting them yourself each time. The other keyword tools are keyword suggestion and research tools that give the right keywords to employ for your optimization, keyword optimizers, keyword typo's tool.

2. Page Rank tools: This is a broad category with many tools under this umbrella. The page rank checker is a simple tool to check your rank and also some versions provide the rank of the competition as well. There are some additional nifty tools like the Google dance tool and the future page rank checker.

3. Meta Tag related tools: Meta tags are needed to describe the webpage for the search engines and other bots. The tools under this umbrella are Meta Tag generators, Meta Tag analyzers, Meta Tag replicator.

4. Link Analyzers: This contains the back links checker, the broken link finders, sitemap generators, Link popularity checkers, Link suggestion tools, Internal link density checkers, I also found a good one - link relevancy checker. These tools are very very important for your page rank if not for your search results.

Most of these tools with basic features can be found for free and there are some good tools that need special licensing and most of them provide a good way to reach the top 20 and be part of the winners and not be in the millions of folks who loose for each and every keyword. There are many keywords you can target and be part of the top 20. The first step is choosing a less competitive keyword and get to the top 20. Well before you put that SEO cap to get down and dirty, please go through the suggested tools in this article. There are a few good tools that have a demo period for you test out whether it is suitable for you. One such product is the SEO Elite.

For more resources on SEO and to try out some good tools you can visit http://www.seo-software-tool-experts.com You can download a free trial version of a good search engine optimization and web site ranking tool from the website as well – the SEO Elite v3.

Getting To Know Google

Writen by Dali Singh

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.

Dali Singh is the Managing Director for Blueliner Marketing, a full service marketing and Internet consultancy specializing in Internet Marketing, Public Relations and Corporate Branding. Visit http://www.bluelinermarketing.com or email her directly at dali @ bluelinermarketing.com.

Overview Of Seo

Writen by Bobbie Grennier

Search Engine Ranking - Optimization Strategy

Think of the Internet as the biggest library-like source of information in human history, with one major difference from a actual library. The Internet is not organized, nor is all the information out there credible. This is where search engines come into play and why SEO services, SEO ranking and SEO optimization strategies are so important to real businesses who provide real information, services and products.

Why You Need Good Search Engine Ranking and Optimization Strategy

We call it being in the Top 10 of a search engine. It means your web site is listed on the front page, in the first 10 results, of any given search engine listing for your keywords ... and that's referred to as a Natural Listing or Natural Results.

In reality, your web site coming up in the top 10 of any search engine is anything but natural. Appearing in the top 10 for your business's keywords will bring in potential customers to your web site just as effectively as the businesses that pay for the Google Ads and Yahoo Ads, but it's more cost effective to you because you didn't have to pay $3-$20 per click like they did ... and remember, clicks don't mean sales, it just means someone clicked onto their web site. Also, I'm not inflating those prices ... if you want to compete with the big boys at the top of the keyword list on Google, that's what it's going to cost you. Suddenly optimizing your web site has much more importance to you doesn't it?!

Search engine ranking and optimization is a highly specialized field of Internet study combined with the ability to write decently. Search engine users are what we call a targeted audience because they come looking for your business and usually want to buy what you sell. You don't need to do anything, but provide them a clean web site that nicely displays your products, and close the sale (but that's another article).

Internet Users and Search Engine Search Listings

Every web business needs a web site marketing plan with a solid search engine ranking and optimization strategy. The Georgia Institute of Technology says more than 85% of all Internet users find new web sites through search engine search listings. Data shows that search engine listings are the number one way to generate traffic to a web site.

Search Engine Ranking and Optimization Services

Think about it ... when you got your very first computer, hooked it up and wanted to go out onto the world wide web ... didn't you ask yourself, How do I find web sites? Then you discovered what a search engine was and from there, you relied on the search engines to give you keyword results and that's where you played on the Internet.

That's what millions of users do everyday. These are people who are not tech savvy like you and me. They use search engines as a way of sifting through the myriad of web sites out there, narrowing their search and focusing them on the top 10 results. The goal of any SEO company is to get your web site to rank in the top 10 for your set of keywords, bringing you the people who are searching for the goods and services you provide.

Good Search Engine Ranking and Optimization Strategy

SEO services involve knowledge of SEO optimization, web site planning, SEO experience and having the right SEO tools, but most of all it requires patience because getting your web site into one of those top positions on the search engine results pages (SERP) takes an average of 1-3 months. Any SEO company will need to tweak your web site and it's content, and then wait for the search engines to make their changes. The goal is to achieve and maintain true search engine optimization and placement for your web site.

By hiring an SEO company like us, to handle your search engine optimization you will see results. A good SEO company will bring you good search engine placement, and any business that can get the targeted traffic should also get the conversion necessary to drive profits up if the web site is able to close the sale.

Your web site content should both drive SEO optimized traffic to your web site and help close the sale. A good SEO Copywriter can help with both!

Search Engine Ranking and Optimization for Good ROI

ROI is the return on investment. You need to compare your ROI for the costs of placing pay per click ads (PPC) with Google and Yahoo vs. the cost of optimizing your web site to get a natural ranking.

How competitive is your market? If it's highly competitive, like the Finance market is, then you're most likely going to need to do both to make it in that business online. This is where where our SEO experience can be invaluable to you and the success of your online business.

Forrester Research reported that Over 80 percent of all Internet users reach sites through search engines. Translated, that means if your web site isn't attracting 80 percent of its visitors from search engines, you're losing out on a lot of free traffic.

A study from the NPD Group found that search engine listings are far more effective than standard banner or button advertisements when it comes to brand recall, favorable opinion rating, and conversion of traffic to sales.

In unaided recall, search listings outperformed banners and buttons by three to one. More than twice as many people gave a more favorable opinion of companies in the top three search positions than those featured in ads. The study also found that 55 percent of online purchases were made on sites found through search listings, while a mere 9 percent were on sites found through banner ads. You do the math! Search Engine Optimization is clearly linked to a better ROI for your business.

Based on our own internal calculations, the current cost of getting customers through a good SEO optimization strategy is less than half of the cost of pay-per-click services such as Yahoo's Overture or Google's AdWords.

We also know that organic or natural traffic, that comes to your web site from natural search engine ranking, converts better than traffic delivered via pay-per-click search... because the traffic is better targeted! Not all, but most people don't want to click on the Ads and prefer to click on the organic links instead.

Search Engine Ranking and Optimization

Search engine ranking and SEO optimization is cost effective and should be a high priority. While the search engine ranking and SEO optimization process is complex and time consuming, it is very do-able if you know what you're doing. That's why you may want to hire an SEO writer.

SEO optimization is not only about working your web pages to match the ever changing search engine algorithms of all the major search engines, but it's also about trying to out-rank your competitors.

If you are new to SEO optimization and want to learn more, Wild Wolf SEO Copywriters and Wild Wolf Webmasters both have a lot of tutorials and articles regarding SEO.

About the Author: Bobbie Grennier is an SEO copywriter and web site copywriter. She publishes Webmaster Blog. Visit her web sites wild-wolf.com or http://www.wildwolf.ws.

Decreasing Importance Of Reciprocal Links

Writen by Gagandeep Dhaliwal

In this article, I will try to give an insight on why reciprocal links have lost their importance with time. This is an article for new web merchants and not for Expert SEO Professionals.

Most SEO Campaigns rely on links from related websites. But as search engines are getting smart every coming day, they notice the linking strategies and try to ignore the websites that use the common strategies.

Reciprocal links were very popular two years back and everyone wanted to exchange links to get more traffic and good keyword rankings. But then suddenly after a major update on Google Search Engine Rankings, the top SEO professionals who share their thoughts on Webmaster World and Site Point observed that the websites having reciprocal linking were loosing traffic.

After long discussion, it was concluded that Google and Yahoo were reducing the importance of reciprocal links as many webmasters got them and used them to manipulate search engine results. Search engines started to identify the inter-linking schemes and de-valued those links. Now, the websites lost traffic and webmasters were looking for new ways to get traffic.

A new scheme that became popular was about using one way links instead of reciprocals. Webmasters were hunting for in bound links now.

These links are good, but why will people link to you for free?

So, a new scheme came into practice. Let's suppose a Webmaster John. He is having two websites, Site A and Site B.

He asks a website X to link to his Site A. In return he will provide a link back from his website Site B to website X.

This way, both webmasters will be happy. In addition, Search engines will also give them more importance and good rankings for their target keywords. As time passed, more and more webmasters were looking for in bound links only.

So, we have entered into a situation, where webmasters and SEO professionals believe that new websites should only have in bound links. Its only once the website gets some good ranking, they can think of a few reciprocal links. Otherwise, they will prefer to stick with one way links only.

The importance of reciprocal linking scheme has decreased a lot and with new ways of promotion coming into practice, people don't want them anymore for their websites.

About Author: The author owns a website that explains simple SEO Concepts for new web merchants. Visit his website Do Not Confuse SEO for more. He is also offering website promotion services at G.D. TECH. Please check their plans on Outsourcing Search Engine Optimization

Google Adwords A Beginners Guide

Writen by Stacey Morris

One of the reasons I love helping my clients with their online strategy is that I believe there is no more effective and powerful way to provide value to our clients and prospects. As service professionals, demonstrating our value is essential to building relationships and establishing credibility.

But who defines value? Do you really know the challenges your clients want help with? How much are you presuming about your prospect's needs and wants?

In this article, I'm going to discuss some great ways to get into the mind of your prospect. The internet is the fastest place to try out new ideas, and the best way to know what the market needs is to ask them directly.

GOOGLE ADWORDS

What makes the Google search engine different is that it was developed with very strict requirements regarding relevant content. Prior to Google, a website could place popular keywords all over its home page (keyword-loading) and get traffic. Google set a new standard.

Google's pay per click system, or AdWords, maintained that standard for relevancy. The popularity of your ad is based on how many people click on it. Very simple. Google provides great statistics to help you determine what's working in your ad, and what turned out to be a dismal failure.

But unlike any other advertising system, Google can immediately provide these results to you, so in a matter of hours, you can determine if a given ad is working. Pay per click gives you immediate access to targeted customers.

So how can you use Google to find out what your prospects want?

A typical Google ad is four lines long—it's very short. The first line is your headline and the last line is usually your link or URL. Below is a successful model that can be used for a service or a product you're selling.

Use your headline to present a challenge you believe your typical prospect faces.

Use the second line to list a clear benefit.

Use the third line to describe the features, or the specifics of what they get.

As an example:

Does your puppy still bark too much?
Stop annoying the neighbors!
Free 3-step report emailed to you.
www.BarkNoMore.com

Because you'll see results quickly, you can determine which ads resonate with your audience. For example, if you're thinking about offering an ebook on puppy training, you can use AdWords to assess if there's a market for such an ebook. Offer a free report, and note the response rate. The more people sign up for your free report, the more likely your ebook will be popular. Using the same giveaway, experiment with different ads. Change the wording of headlines, benefits, and features, until you've written an ad that works. Ads that work speak to their audience.

As another example, let's say you're considering offering a coaching program on interior design for small spaces. You could design one ad that offered a complimentary teleclass, and another ad, similarly worded, that offered a free report. Figure out if there is a significant difference in response rates. Who is more likely to eventually sign up for coaching?

Google AdWords allows for endless experimentation. By setting realistic daily budgets, you can minimize losses while getting a solid handle on effective short ad copy. Also, you'll be able to learn what your audience wants without spending thousands of dollars on market research.

NEXT STEP

Set up a Google campaign. Buy 2-3 keywords, and set a reasonable daily budget. Write two 4-line ads for each keyword. Why two ads? So you can split-test them against each other, and see what works and what doesn't. Your ads will start being shown within a few hours, so monitor your results throughout the next two days.

I'm suggesting you write up to six ads here. It may seem like a lot, but using a formula makes it fairly easy to generate ideas. Google doesn't charge for the number of ads you write for a campaign, which makes AdWords a perfect vehicle for testing ads and keywords against each other.

If you're ready to develop a profitable website, and tired of wasting time, money, and energy on strategies that just don't work, download your free "Website Success Checklist" at

http://www.ServiceBusinessStrategies.com

Has Google Indexed Your Site

Writen by Peter Green

So has Google found your site yet?

Over the last 12 months Google has undergone many changes to the way it looks at and lists your site.

This week sees another upgrade in Google.

As any search engine or member of the public will tell you, Google or any other search engine MUST provide the most relevant listings for a search query.

One of the major changes that Google is implementing is that it will not display more than one AdWords listings for the same company Domain Name. At present they also try to have only one listing (with a secondary) per website domain displayed in the top search results.

This affects mainly affiliated member sites.

This also affects companies that provide a member program. Say if you were using Google AdWords and there are 5 members from your company paying to use AdWords only one listing will be displayed and this will be the highest bid for that keyword.

In another words the average Joe Marketer will have to pay a high price to have his AdWord listing displayed.

For Google and for the Google search user this provides a more defined search. There will not be 5 AdWords placed for the same company or merchant as has been the case in the past.

With 3 or 4 AdWords for the same company displayed, allowed a person who paid a bid of 50 cents to be displayed at the bottom of the list while someone who could afford to pay five dollars for the same keyword to have his link at the top of the page. You stood a chance when your AdWord was displayed, now you have to have the highest bid at that particular time.

BUT, this is not an insurmountable problem. This is where owning your own Domain name and web site is a must.

At present many search engines only allow one plus a secondary listing for any one domain to be displayed in their top page or two of their search results.

NOTE:
There is no easy way around not owning your own domain.

Getting your affiliated member site listed in a search engine is becoming almost impossible, especially when you consider that there are tens and even hundreds of thousands of other members belonging to the same company, promoting their member site too.

This can and will affect many companies as they rely on their members to promote the companies site though pay per click - AdWords and standard search engine listing.

With odds of one hundred thousand to one you have better odds of winning the lotteries.

Once marketers understand the concept of creating their own website, one of the next hurdles they face is the content for their site. What so often happens is that they do not consider themselves as copy writers, so they copy the content from their member site. I have seen this many times where marketers websites are almost exact copies of their companies site.

The definition of a search engine is to provide the most relevant search results for a specific search.

Google are only trying to live up to this definition. So as they are only allowing one AdWord display listing for any one company or domain, Google are also only allowing one page with the exact same content to be displayed.

If your web page is a duplicate of your companies page, then your page is very likely to receive a duplicate content penalty with Google.

In other words if your site has been indexed by Google and they find your page to be an exact copy of another page, it is highly likely your page will receive the penalty and not the company site.

Remember that the Google Bot's are checking and indexing around eight billion pages each month. It takes a very powerful computer system to keep track of all those pages and the content on those pages to return relevant searches. It doesn't take to much brain power to realize that as Google indexes a page it can also compare your page with the thousands that fit into your product, service or information category.

It is generally thought that for a 1st offense your page will be removed from their index for 30 days then for the 2nd offense for 60 days then for a 3rd offense your page will be removed for 90 days. After the 3rd offence you can forget about Google.

But it gets worse, if your page contains duplicate content and Google spots it, for the time your page is cooling off for 30 days it affects the rest of your site as you will no doubt have many links in the site map etc, to the banned page so this can and does affect your whole sites ranking.

The news is not all bad as anyone who has the ability to consider marketing any product and is prepared to attempt creating a web site, also has the ability to reword and rewrite the content from their company site.

Most other pay per click search engines or ones that accept paid inclusion like Overture already use similar policies that Google is now implementing.

There are exceptions to the duplicate rule like RSS News feeds, Directories, ezine article Directories and sites like Ebay and Yahoo stores where these individual stores use the Yahoo or eBay domain name.

Using good common sense, you should never have any problems with Google or other search engines as you are promoting your website as your own unique sales display.

Don't get me wrong Google is my first choice in Search Engines.

Google offers many f`ree tools for web masters. You can find some of tools listed here.

http://www.google.com/help/features.html

If you to Google.com search, you can check the links to your Website. (incoming links). Where I have www.internet-income-index in the search box, you would type in your website domain.

"+www.internet-income-index.+com

Now if I can get 151 links back to my site without submitting it to search engines, think what you can do...

Most Internet Marketers average between 20 and 50 links using the Google links tool.

My point is if you add one link to your website in a single Internet directory, Google and other search engines will find you and your site just by following the link you placed in that one directory.

If you check issue 103 of this ezine dated May 26 - 2004 Google only had 2 links to my ezine site listed.

I have placed a link on my other personally owned sites and have added ezine articles I have written in a couple of Ezine Article Directories. You will find EzineArticles.com will be listed above my site in a search for my ezine site as they are a very high profile site.

The higher the profile or page rank Google gives any site that you have your site link in, the higher Google is likely to rate your site providing you have played by Googles rules.

Did you know that many search engines consider you have 2 sites one with http;//www. in front of your domain and one with just the http;//yourdomain.com plus if you have a sub-domain name like http://www.search.yourdomain.com they treat this generally as a different domain or website. The word search is the sub-domain in this instance.

But it is far easier to promote just the one domain as opposed to promoting 3 variations of the one domain name. I know that from past experience after I listed it in the Dmoz.org Directory without "www."

http://VoipConference.info

"+www.voipconference.+info with 21 incoming links

compared to 320 incoming links (without the www.) "+voipconference.+info

TIP,
Domain Name Branding your website using a one off name like Google or eBay is still best when it comes to search engine marketing and for domain name recognition if you are prepared to invest the time and money, but if your budget is limited then using a domain name that describes your business or includes keywords relating to your product or service is equally good.

May Google be kind to your site.

PETER GREEN.

Editor of ~ The INDEX ~ ezine.

Editor@Internet-income-index.com

http://www.Internet-Income-Index.com

Your Free Weekly Internet Marketing News, Ideas, Resources and Sources Ezine.

Make The Search Engines Love Your Site

Writen by Matt Colyer

Most webmasters have no idea on how to make a search engine friendly web site. If you are one of them this will all change by following these steps below.

1. Research keywords - Before you start to build your web site you should research your keywords or your site may get hurt in the short term. Use the keyword research tool, use Overture to research the most popular keywords that are related to your site. Overture will show you how much traffic each keyword has got in the past 30 days.

2. Create a list of about 50 to 100 keywords that you can include within your web pages. After having completed the above research, you should have found the keywords that were searched on most frequently, but few competing sites.

3. Write a paragraph of at least 250, but better with 500 words of text for the top of each web page. Put your keywords within this text, but be careful because you could repeat your keywords to much and make sure the paragraph makes sense with all those keywords, remember visitors are more important then the search engines.

4. Optimize meta tags - Meta tags have lost there touch with most search engines, but they still help! The most important meta tags are the keyword and description meta tags. Include your keywords within each of these meta tags. Your keyword meta tag should include the most frequently used keywords contained within your web page, but keep it short to about 10 to 15.

5. Title Tag - The title tag is one of the most powerful on-site SEO at your disposal, so use it wisely. Put your most important keyword in the title close to the beginning as posable, keep it short and to the point.

7. Optimize your site size - Too many images or very large images on your web page will slow down your server and cause slow loading times for your site. Slice large images into smaller pieces with a graphic editors. Also to long of pages and to much text will do the same.

8. Find backward links - Web sites that link to yours raise your link popularity. Search for web sites that are compatible with yours. Write articles that are related to your site and submit them to sites like Articlecity.com.

Matt Colyer began as a SEO Specialist in 1997. He founded Superior Webmaster in 2004 as a source of articles and tutorials for Web site owners looking to improve their Web site.

Stay In The Know With Google Sms

Writen by Jakob Jelling

The Short Messaging Service (SMS) from Google sends short, quick, text answers in response to your queries from an SMS-enabled mobile device, such as a cell phone. For example, you can look up phone numbers and addresses of local restaurants, do local phone book searches, compare prices from online merchants in Froogle to those you find in local stores, even look up definitions of words from the dictionary.

SMS has long been a common means of mobile communication in Europe. It has been available in the US for some time, but hasn't been widely used. You don't need a phone with a web browser to use Google's SMS. Since the information is transmitted as text only, without graphics, only the ability to send and receive SMS messages is needed. At present, the service is only available only in English, through major US wireless carriers like AT&T, Nextel, Sprint, and T-Mobile. Your service plan must allow for SMS messaging also. Use of SMS doesn't generally count against minutes under most plans, but both your SMS to Google and the answer received from Google will typically count towards messages allowed.

Use of the Google SMS service is free at present, though of course users will need to pay any connection and messaging charges from their wireless carriers.

Google SMS can be handy for travel in particular. For example, let's say you've arrived at your hotel, and really have a taste for Chinese food. You may be able to use Google SMS to enter "Chinese food delivery" followed by the zip code of your hotel. Google will return, usually in less than a minute, a list of local Chinese restaurants that offer delivery. This is a nice alternative to looking in a phone book, where you may not know the city, and also is handy for situations where you may not be able to connect to the Internet easily.

About The Author

Jakob Jelling is the founder of http://www.sitetube.com. Visit his website for the latest on planning, building, promoting and maintaining websites.

Seo Deadly Sins Mistakes That Hurt Web Page Ranking

Writen by Frank Kilkelly

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

* Specifying no title for your page *

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

* Excessive use of images or Flash animation on a page *

If your web page has plenty of nice-looking graphics and eye-popping Flash animation and not a lot of textual content it may indeed look nice but have you ever considered what how the search engines might see it.

Search engines thrive on textual content, scavenging as much text as they can but unfortunately they cannot understand images or Flash animations like we can and so will find nothing of real value on your page. Try to balance your page so that the textual content is given priority and that any images or animations are used only when needed. Also it is a good idea to attach some text to an image by using its ALT tag as search engines use this text when determining rank.

* Complicated menu systems *

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

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

Frank Kilkelly is a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Expert and Webmaster at http://www.seo-ireland.com/, a complete search engine optimization resource. The highlight of the site is an SEO forum http://www.seo-ireland.com/forum/ for discussion of the latest techniques and tips to improve the ranking of your web site.

Can Invisible Text In Csss Slip Under Search Engine Radar

Writen by Lawrence Deon

I'm literally inundated with questions on the subject of invisible text & hosting so in I thought I'd debunk some myths and give you the facts straight up.

What is invisible text? Invisible text is the body text that's the same or similar color to the background. You know, the stuff you can very easily see on a page if you press Ctrl-A or highlight everything on the page with your left mouse button.

Will invisible text hurt your search engine rankings? Undoubtedly! If you attempt to use the same color text as the background color of your web pages the search engines will penalize you.

Why? The use of invisible text is commonly considered black hat seo by the search engines and a blatant spam tactic. If your visitors can't see or read the text then what good is it anyway? It's deceptive period.

Trust Google when they say in their Quality Guidelines & Specific recommendations to avoid hidden text or hidden links.

http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

Now here's why this topic is so interesting… and I know you're saying, why should I worry or care about invisible text if I've never used any on my web site? Well the answer is simple.

You may be hosting invisible text on your website right now & not even know it. In fact you were never intended to know it... That's why it's invisible!

WHAT? Yes... you may be getting duped!

So just what exactly am I talking about? I'm talking about your hosting company (usually the free ones) leeching your Google PageRank & building link popularity for their clients off your web pages & bandwidth. If you don't think they do it… guess again. It's a lucrative business.

Now with that said I'm not going to name or badmouth any specific hosting service. What I am going to do is tell you how to determine if you're an unsuspecting victim.

Here's an invaluable tool to help you detect search engine spam penalties!

http://tool.motoricerca.info/spam-detector/

Secondly, double-check your cached pages to see what the search engine robots actually see when they index your page. Look for additional links & advertising in the source code that isn't in your original source code.

If you find additional advertising or links that aren't on your current pages… your host MAY be killing your search engine rankings. The simple solution to this problem is to immediately transfer your domain to a trusted service provider.

Now let's talk about the invisible text you can't see at all on a page. Yes, you could still be hosting invisible text. Even if you press Ctrl-A or highlight everything on the page with your left mouse button & nothing shows up!

Just for the record you'll find some content management programs employing this very technique. Imagine my surprise when I discovered my PageRank 5 realty site had two sets of Meta keywords on my pages, easily seen when I view Google's cached versions....

I was choked... especially since their user agreement didn't disclose this fact!

Is using invisible text in cascading style sheets good? Nope!

There's a new school of thought claiming you can use an alternative cascading style sheet (CSS) approach to placing invisible text on your web pages without penalty.

The theory is predicated on the premise that you could employ an external style sheet in another directory. There you' d simply define a special class for a tag like < P > where the font and background colors are identical.

The claim is there's no way for the current search engines algorithms to distinguish the color codes and penalize you. While this may or may not be the immediate situation it's fundamentally WRONG!

Invisible text is invisible text & it's spam.

Since many invisible text tricks utilize CSS positioning properties to hide their contents, you'll soon see (if not already) the search engines employing advanced algorithms to find hidden text in CSSs.

If you subscribe to the CSS theory you'll undoubtedly be revisiting your strategy or paying later by being blacklisted or removed entirely from the various search engine indexes.

Incidentally, before you roll the dice on this one you might want to consider the fact that the tool I just referred you to is only the beta version and the developer is already planning to add support for identifying invisible text in CSSs! Just how much more advanced and further ahead do you think the search engine techs are?

So what does it all mean to you & what should you do?

1.Check your cached pages for invisible text.

2.If you find Invisible text or advertising determine it's origin

3.Read every user agreement very carefully

4.Take action & do something about removing it!

The bottom line lesson here is simple. Trying fool the search engines with Spammy tricks or hocus pocus schemes has never worked for long in the past. Don't employ unethical spam techniques and don't become an unsuspecting victim yourself.

Copyright 2005 Lawrence Deon

Lawrence Deon is a Search Engine Optimization/Marketing Consultant Author and Developer of the popular search engine optimization and marketing model Ranking Your Way To The Bank. http://www.rankingyourwaytothebank.com

Analyzing The Competition Check Indexes

Writen by Halstatt Pires

The beauty of the Internet is the inherent open nature of competition. It is so open, you can check indexes when analyzing the competition to improve your site.

Analyzing the Competition

A key step to any search engine optimization effort is to analyze the competition. The simplest way to do this is to simply go to their site and look at the code. Most browsers let you do this by clicking the "view" tab and then selecting "source."

You competition isn't stupid. Many sites will bar browsers from showing source code using the above technique. If your competition takes this step, is there anything you can do? Yes, there is.

Indexes

Almost everyone knows how to check if his or her site is indexed in a search engine. Simply go to the engine and search for "site:yourdomainname." This technique can also be used to see what your competition is up to.

If you want to see a glimpse of how a competitor is pursuing search engine optimization, check how many pages are indexed in the relevant search engine. Do a search for "site:competitorsdomainname." You'll be presented with a list of their pages, the meta title and meta description. This works particularly well with Google.

The resulting list of pages can be analyzed in a couple of different ways. First, you can isolate the particular keywords being pursued by the site. These should then be compared to your site to ascertain whether you're missing anything. You almost always are missing a key niche. Second, you can analyze the meta description to see both the layout and particular formation of sentences and keyword placement they are pursuing. Again, compare it to yours. Using this process, you can get an idea of how your efforts differ from a competitor.

Importantly, this approach should not be overvalued. It is only a glimpse of the competitor's site, not a thorough review. It will tell you nothing about how pages are arranged, keyword density approaches and so on. You'll have to hunt and peck around the site for that information. Still, the meta information gained from this approach makes it worth a go if you are shut out from the code of a site.

Halstatt Pires is with the Internet marketing firm - MarketingTitan.com - an Internet marketing company in San Diego, which offers online database solutions through BusinessCreatorPro.com for ecommerce.

Google Pagerank Information

Writen by Nick Ibarluzea

PageRank - an exclusive technology developed by Google which can have a major impact on the success of your website. This article will attempt to explain the concept of PageRank and how your ranking can be improved without spending any money at all.

How is PageRank beneficial?
Google refers to the technology as a way of evaluating the usefulness, importance, and quality of a website. The PR of a webpage can mean different things for different people.

For a webmaster, a high PR is a sign of accomplishment. It shows that your website is moving in the right direction and has the potential to become successful. PageRank also directly effects your Google search engine listings. Acquiring a higher PR than your competition could mean more traffic for you, and less traffic for your competitors.

Visitors to your website probably won't care about the page's rank (most surfers have no idea what PageRank is). However, visitors who understand PageRank may use your PR as a sign of how credible your content is. Would you rather use the information from a website with 0 PR or a website with 5 PR and hundreds of other websites linking to it?

How is PageRank determined?
PageRank is basically determined by backlinks. A backlink is when another page links to your page. For every page that links to you, that page is "voting" for you. The more votes you get, the better your PageRank will be.

However, it gets more complicated than that because some votes weigh more heavily than others. The weight of the vote is determined by the PageRank of the page linking to you. This means that a couple links from pages with high PR could be more beneficial than hundreds of links from pages with low PR. But it gets even more complicated - each page can only transfer so much PageRank. The set amount of PR that the page can transfer must be split up between each "vote" that the page gives out. This means that a PR 7 page could actually give out as much weight per vote as a PR 3 page if it had too many outgoing links.

How can I improve my PageRank?
There are many different methods to obtain quality backlinks to your website. You will find that some methods work better than others depending on the subject and popularity of your site.

Directories
Submitting your website to directories is one of the best ways to increase your PageRank and even get some traffic at the same time. But submitting your site to just a few directories won't be good enough. You need to sit down and spend the necessary time to submit your site to a large amount of directories. This may seem like a painstakingly long process, but you'll be glad you did it when you notice results. I have taken the time to make a large list of free directories with high PageRank which you visit here. Although directories with low PR may seem like a waste of time, you should submit your site to them too because it still helps and they could eventually become a high PR site which charges money to submit to.

Link Exchanges
A very common practice to improve your PageRank is a link exchange. This is simply where two people link to the other person's website. It's best that you only link exchange with someone who has at least as much PR as you and the subject of the two websites are similar. If you receive a link from a website with a subject which has nothing to do with yours, you'll find that very little if any PR will actually be transferred to you.

Forum Signatures
If you are an active user on a forum or message board, it would be wise to put a link to your website in your signature. This could help improve your PageRank if the forum has a high PR, it could help improve your traffic from the forum members seeing your signature, and your site could get spidered more often because it is linking to a forum (forums generally have a lot of new content every day and search engines love new content).

Buy Advertising
Although it isn't the best of choices, many webmasters will buy text link ads on websites with high PR. Although this can be effective, it can be very expensive and only a temporary thing. If you purchase text links for just a couple months, after the months are over you won't have the backlinks which were giving you the "votes" you needed to keep your PageRank. So you have now spent a large amount of money on text links, but in the end you're right back where you started.

Articles
This is a method which not many people know about. Basically, you write articles about the subjects you know a lot about. You then let other people use these articles as long as they provide a link back to your site. If you wrote a quality article, you'll find many websites will want to use it, thus giving you plenty of backlinks. This method can work well with anything which you develope and give away for free such as scripts, web design, etc.

Stay On Google's Good Side
The most important thing to remember when trying to increase your PageRank is to not cheat and to always follow the rules. The people which run Google aren't fools and they have many ways of catching cheaters. Don't even think about using any of the "link farms" or trying to hide keywords on your pages. If caught, you may not get unbanned for many months.

Make A Quality Website
If you have a quality website which your visitors enjoy going to, then you will receive backlinks without having to do anything. Websites will link to you with the intention of informing people of a helpful resource, or showing off a cool new website they found, or any other reason other than trying to increase your PageRank. If you build it, backlinks will come...

This article is from PRchecker.net
Instantly check the Google PageRank, Alexa ranking, indexed pages, and backlinks of any web page! Also has detailed articles on webmaster issues such as improving PageRank.

Helping You Learn All Tips Of Search Engine Optimization Optimizing Your Title Tag

Writen by Stein Dozien

Optimizing Your Title Tag

Without question the title tag of your page is the single most important factor to consider when optimizing your web page for the search engines. This is because most engines & directories place a high level of importance on keywords that are found in your title tag. The title tag is also what the search engines usually use for the title of your listing in the search results.

What it looks like:

Here's the title tag of this page:

Where it belongs: The correct placement for the title tag is between the and tags within the HTML the makes up your page.

Tag limits:

We recommend that your title tag be between 50-80 characters long - including spaces! The length that the different search engines accept varies, but as long as you keep within this limit you should be ok.

Tag tips:

We recommend that you include 1-2 of your most important keyword phrases in the title tag, BUT be careful not to just list keywords. If you just list keywords you risk being viewed as a spamming the engines which can ultimately lead to you being blacklisted by the search engines. Your title tag should include your keyword phrases while remaining as close to a readable sentence as possible to avoid any problems.

Make your title enticing! Don't forget that even if you get that #1 listing in the search engines your listing still needs to say something that makes the surfer want to clickthrough and visit your site.

Since the length of your title tag could be a little long for some engines we suggest placing the keywords at the beginning of the tag when possible so that you do not risk having them cut off.

Each page of your site should have it's own title tag with it's own keywords that related to the page that it appears on.

Stein Dozien SEO http://www.instantnlimitedincome.com/

How To Measure Search Engine Marketing Roi

Writen by Charles Preston

According to the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), advertisers spent $4 billion in 2004 on search marketing programs and are expected to spend 39% more than that this year.

Search engine marketing appears to be a great way to advertise but is it right for you and your business? If you are not already employing search engine marketing(SEM) for you business is there a way to forecast the return should you decide to invest in it? Is there a way to measure the results you are getting if you have already invested in SEM?

The answer is mostly yes. By utilizing data discovered in recently released research surveys and with the help of a few free online tools you can put begin to take some of the guesswork out of search engine marketing ROI. By using Overture's free keyword suggestion tool (inventory.overture.com) you can get an idea of how many times a keyword is getting searched each month. Another free tool to use is called Good Keywords and can be downloaded from www.goodkeywords.com.

Let's say for instance that you are a mortgage broker in the Denver Colorado area and you are interested in getting more leads for your business. You have a website and are considering search engine marketing to bring in some new leads. You get a quote from a search engine marketing provider who can guarantee top 10 positions among the major search engines for 6 months for your keywords for $1,500.00.

The question now becomes is it worth it to you to spend the $1,500.00. To figure this out we need to look at some numbers.

Berrier & Associates estimate that 65% of all traffic generated by a search in a search engine will go to the sites listed within the first 10 results (first page) returned for that search. By using Overture's keyword suggestion tool you discover that the term "Denver mortgage broker" gets approximately 540 searches a month.

Using this criteria a first page position for "Denver mortgage broker" would bring you approximately 65% of 540 searches a month = 350 visitors to your site each month. Having a compelling title tag in your website's pages might even boost this visitor number since the title tag is what appears as the clickable link in the search results.

The formula we just used would then be applied to all the other keywords you are targeting such as "mortgage Denver" which gets approximately 2,600 searches a month or "mortgage company Denver" with 466 searches a month. A first page placement for any of those would yield similar results.

So let's say we just use the "Denver mortgage broker" key phrase as our example with its estimated 350 visitors a month for a first page position. You would now need to know what your website conversion rate is. The website conversion rate is the ratio of leads or sales you get per visitor amount. The average website conversion rate is about 1-2% or 1-2 leads or sales for every 100 visitors according to Shop.org.

If your website conversion rate is average then you would expect on average 2-3 good leads from your site each month for that one first page listing. Then depending on your sales conversion rate which is the number of sales per leads you get on average multiplied by your average sale price you can begin to calculate what your return might be.

So let's say as a mortgage broker you make roughly $2k on each deal you broker and your sales conversion rate is 1 sale for every 3 quality leads. In any given month then you could estimate 1 sale at $2k out of the 3 quality leads generated from your website which came as a result of the 350 visitors you got from being on the first page of Google, Yahoo or MSN for the term "Denver mortgage broker".

You paid the search engine marketing company $1,500.00 dollars for 6 months of first page listings. From one of those first page listings you stand to gain $2k x 6 months = $12,000.00. That sounds like a really good return for money invested.

In closing the methodology outlined in this article to calculate search engine marketing ROI is by no means 100% accurate due to several factors but it is a good way to get a "feel" for what you might get back for your marketing dollars. Its also a way to get business owners to start thinking about how to better track their e-business. I have just finsished building a quick and easy seo tool that will enable you to do these calculations automatically available for free at this link SEO Tool

Copyright 2005 Charles Preston. All rights reserved.

Charles Preston is an Austin based SEO with 7 years of industry experience. Charles is the President of Click Response an internet marketing company focused on teaching small businesses how to get the most out of their internet marketing. For a free consultation or more information about our search engine optimization service visit our website.

Optimizing Flash Files For The Search Engines

Writen by Mike Goldstein

What is a Flash Movie?
A flash movie, or shock wave file (SWF), is the file format published when a Flash movie is exported. A SWF file can also be exported by several other Macromedia or Adobe Products. The SWF is usually an animation, dynamic menu, or highly interactive web-based application embedded into an HTML page. Flash files, when exported correctly for the best web-based optimization, are compressed, thus making their file size lightweight. The SWF format is ideal for presenting vector-based, interactive and animated graphics with sound and video for the web. Vector images are ideal because they will not "pixilize" if stretched or compressed. Flash files can also contain text which can be animated, static or dynamically populated from external sources, such an XML file or a database. Text embedded in a Flash file, for many years, could not be read by search engines. However, recent updates by Macromedia are making this a possibility.

Problems with Flash and Search Engines
Historically, it has been difficult to get Flash content indexed and ranked by search engines. In the past, search engines, such as Yahoo and Google, did not spider Flash content as they could not read the compressed file and much of the text inside the SWF appeared as graphics to the search engines.

The main page of a web site, if Flash-based, rarely ranked well, unless off-page factors such as link popularity or link reputation were sufficient enough to carry the page. Flash files that were indexed by Google, Lycos and other search engines, which did not have any text or key words associated with them in the search engine results pages (SERP).

Techniques Used in the Past to Make Flash Visible to Search Engines
Traditional Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques would help your site get indexed, but not rank for search terms. Every web site needs at least one HTML page to load into a browser. For a web site developed completely in Flash, developers would embed their flash files into an HTML document and then create the meta tags in the head section of the HTML file. They would also add descriptive HTML text for the search engines in the body section of the HTML page, then use CSS positioning and percentages to load the Flash move in a pixel-perfect location over the top of text. This particular technique should not be used any longer, as search engines will view this technique as an attempt to add hidden text, and hidden text will incur a penalty from the engines.

Another technique which could help your Flash ranking is to not compress your SWF files. One of the reasons search engines could not read flash files in the past is that the files are compressed. If the SWF is uncompressed, search engines can read the static text. This technique can be accomplished easily. Upon exporting a Flash file, you can set the compression to "not" if you want your text inside the Flash movie to be readable by the search spiders. However, this is not a good practice, as not compressing your SWF will increase the file size, consequently negating a major benefit to Flash file – a lightweight file.

What Macromedia has Done to Make Flash More Visible to Search Engines
In the past, Google did index Flash files. Anyone can test this fact out by searching in Google using the "filetype" operator to restrict your search. For example, try the following search: "Casino Games filetype:SWF". The SERP will include over 200 Flash files, which are indicated by the "Flash" text to the left of the listing.

Some search engines are now using the Macromedia Flash Search Engine SDK (Software Development Kit). For example, Google, AllTheWeb, Lycos, and other sites can readily display links to Flash content. Flash Search SDK is and open source tool that allows search engines to modify it to suit their needs. With this level of customization, it is likely that the major search engines will modify SDK, making it difficult for website owners to know exactly what information will be pulled out of the SWF file or how it will impact actual rankings.

The Macromedia Flash Search Engine SDK can be found at http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/download/search_engine. According to the Macromedia/Adobe web site, The SDK includes an application named 'swf2HTML'. Swf2HTML extracts text and links from a Macromedia Flash SWF file, and returns the data to an HTML document. Swf2HTML is provided as a compiled application and as a static library for linked library implementation. SDK can interoperate any links that are in the action script so long as adhere to the following criteria:

• The link is contained within single quotes (' ') or double quotes (" "), and
• The link prefix is HTTP, and
• The link suffix is HTM, HTML, CFM, SWF, JPG, JPEG, MP3, or WAV

By default SDK extracts the following text from your flash file:

• Text on stage in the current movie (dynamic text, static text, or input text that has an initial value assigned)
• Text on stage in a movie that is called with movieClip.attachMovie()

Google can see certain text in Flash files now, but how and where certain text gets extracted depends on what you do with that text in the Flash presentation. For example, text that is static or is used in a motion tween can be read as a single instance with SDK. However, some animation involves converting text into a symbol and then using multiple copies of that symbol to achieve a desired effect. This will create duplicate instances of your text to the SDK output, which may be viewed as duplicate content and not given much importance by Google.

Using the SDK tool, any developer can get the text output from the SWF and see how search engines view the extractable text of any SWF. On a Windows operating system, you can go to the DOS prompt and execute the swf2HTML application very easily. The following is an example from the DOS prompt: C:sdkswf2HTML -o test.HTML C:sdkcrt_webfilestest.swf

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Techniques Used Historically for Flash
Each Flash file does not need to be uploaded independently and called as a SWF file; rather a Flash file can be embedded in a standard HTML document. One of the best techniques is to create a modular web site, where there are several Flash files which make up the web page combined with standard HTML elements. A hybrid site such as this, works especially well, if your navigation uses traditional HTML links. You can use cascading style sheets to give the appearance of flash text links. This type of hybrid site will always rank better than an all Flash site – all other factors being equal. It's also important to have your HTML page title correct, regardless of anything else. Several search engines look at meta titles first. In addition to the page title, you can add meta tags to the head of the file. Outside of the actual HTML page, off page factors are important. There has been much written in recent articles that reciprocal links are not as important any longer, but certainly, one-way links pointing to your site from highly relevant and high ranking pages will increase your page rank. In addition links from prominent directories, such as Yahoo and Business.com, placed in the most relevant categories will help. One-way inbound links from relevant sites is still the best way to increase your ranking with or without Flash.

There are programming techniques which work while in the Flash authoring environment. While you are in the Flash authoring environment, with your FLA open...click F12. It will generate the HTML page for you. Look at the code of the page; it creates a place for you to put the text and URL's used in the Flash.

New SEO Techniques for Flash
Today there are many techniques which can overcome the limitations of the past, where Flash files are concerned. With the inception of the new Macromedia Flash 8, there are techniques which can be implemented to greatly increase the ability of search engines to index Flash files and even rank for key words.

In the past, SWF files could not have titles. This is one important reason why Flash files didn't rank well. This title limitation has now changed. Flash 8 does allow you to input meta data. Flash 8 defines two fields with meta data for all Flash files. These two fields are Title and Description. You can access the meta data fields under Document Properties. To add meta data, fill in the text fields and the search engines will know what info to display about your Flash file.

SDK is fairly intelligent in terms of recognizing text and links that are embedded in the file. If text is static or dynamically driven by an XML or text file, it can be read. If your content is dynamically driven it must be done so using the latest version of ActionScript 2.0. The SDK does parse ActionScript 2 byte code looking for links. It could conceivably find the link to the XML file that way and hand it back to a search engine.

As referenced earlier, certain text can be modified into a symbol rather than strait text. For example, a button might have the text output two or three times. Alternatively, tweened text has motion associated with the action. Tweens result in a single occurrence in the output from the extraction process. You should also notice that the link text in the Google results page is identical to the first couple of lines of text at the very top of the text extracted by swf2HTML. Armed with the knowledge of how SDK parses your content, you can manipulate text in your Flash Movies more carefully and make your content key word dense, easily indexable, search engine friendly and, with a little more skill, even optimized.

This Article was written by Mike Goldstein. Mike is the SEO Manager at Rock Coast Media, a Boston-Area search engine marketing firm that provides results-driven custom search marketing solutions.

Seo 4 Offpage Optimization

Writen by Ahmed Omran

Yesterday you should have read the third course out of 6 courses that will help you get a TOP rank in the search engines and get EXPLOSIVE LASER TARGETED TRAFFIC for Free. Today we move on to course #4 and study off-page Optimization. Please read today's course very carefully and take some time to test what I'm about to tell you on your own webpage. Alright let's start!

Off-page Optimization

Unfortunately optimizing your WebPages is not enough; the search engines have developed a "system" where the ranking of a website is determined by its "Link Popularity". This system was first developed by Google and now many other search engines like yahoo search and msn are doing the same. So to get a top page ranking you must get as many websites linking to you as possible. Before I tell you how to increase your link popularity I have to tell you about the other major factors in off-page optimization.

1) Anchor Text: This is the text that is hyperlinked to send people to your website. Anchor text MUST contain a few of your main keywords because google uses it to determine your websites relevance to a particular topic.

2) The website that links to you: If the website that links to you is related to your site then that's a huge bonus to you. So look for websites that are related to your website's topic.

You now know that it's vital that you use an anchor text that includes your main keywords. For example if you remember from day2, the title that I chose was "Yo Mama Joke | Blonde Joke Online". Now a good anchor text that can include my main keywords would be that title! You also should know that in order to get a good ranking you must seek out websites that are closely related to your own website and get them to link to you.

To get your website on "its feet" you can start by submitting your website to popular directories. These directories are free but you can always pay for a guaranteed placement ($$). Now I have here some links that should be more than enough to get you started.

http://info.vilesilencer.com/main.php?rock=seo-friendly.php This website has links to hundreds of Search engine friendly free directories that you can add you link to. Beside each directory you can see the PR, this is very useful.

http://www.dmoz.org/ (PR 9!) YOU MUST submit your site to the Open Directory Project.

http://www.zeal.com (PR 8!) YOU MUST submit your site to Zeal, by being in their directory you will be indexed by LookSmart.

Now the next step is to look for link partners. I can't stress this enough, you have to find partners with websites related to your own website. What I have here are four link-exchange directories that you can sign up to and start exchanging links with people. These are great and will get you hundreds of sites that may link to you. I suggest you install a link directory script on your website and add all the websites that you want to exchange links with. After adding their link just send them an email and approach them professionally. You can use an email like this:

-------------------------------------

Hello my name is Ahmed Omran. I am seeking out possible link partners that our visitors would be interesting in visiting. I've found your website to be a very good fit for our visitors. I have already gone ahead and added your link to our links page at: http://youdomain.com/links

I am contacting you to see if it is ok to have done so. Also, I would like to ask if you mind linking back to us. If so, please use the linking details below and send me the location of our link on your website.

Here are our linking details:
Title:
Description:
URL:

We've got several PR6 and 7 websites, so we expect this site to become at least a PR5 within 1 month and will eventually become a 6 or 7 in 2-3 months.

I hope this can be a way for us to benefit our visitors with excellent content. Hope to hear from you soon.

Ahmed Omran
http://www.vdesignonline.com
--------------------------------------------

Alright here are some great link-exchange services:
http://value-exchange.sitesell.com
http://www.linkmetro.com/
http://www.gotlinks.com
http://www.infowizards.com

You need to work hard during this process because getting many links is not an easy task but its well worth it! That's it for today.

Tomorrow I will teach you how to analyze the Top Ranked Website on Google to outrank them! This will be an exciting day for you I promise (Every day is exciting)!

If you would like to contact me anytime and either complain (why would you!) or give me your testimonial then feel free to do so anytime. I'm there if you need any more help also.

Ahmed Omran is an experienced webmaster and marketer who owns Custom Website Design and Home Based Business Revo

The Matrix Help For Keyphrase Analysis

Writen by Aji Issac

Keyword analysis is a major part of search engine marketing. Choose the right key phrase,check the market and calculate the ROI in terms of time and money.

I am just trying to redefine "The Boston Matrix" in terms of keypharse analysis, hoping that it will help in your investments.

There are three steps to it,

1. Market

2. Competition

3. Conversion Ratio

Let me explain it one by one:-

Market:

Check different key phrases using suggestion tools like word tracker,inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ or www.espotting.com/popups/keywordgenbox.asp , it doesn't have to be perfect as we are just looking for keyphrases with high search shares.Choose as many as possible with promising market.Google's Adword can also be used.

Competition:

Search in Google or yahoo and see how many sites are listed under respective key phrase search.For example when I search for 'key phrase' in google it says, - Results 1 - 10 of about 4,800,000 for 'key phrase'- this gives the primary idea of the competition. Take the first ten websites in SERP and check the following factors:-

1. Back Links (directly proportional to PR)

2. Saturation

3. Ranked Page's onpage attributes like Title, keyword density e.t.c

Competition is directly proportional to Back Links, Saturation and onpage factors but I consider the back links more crucial as achieving better saturation level along with onpage optimization is comparatively easier to obtain.

Conversion Ratio:

If 100 visits are made to your website from a key phrase, how many will get converted (sigup or buy).For example the key phrase 'mortgage quote' will have higher conversion ratio compared to 'mortgage rate' as the person searching for 'mortgage quote' is more likely to signup.

Create your own 'Boston Matrix' for keyphrase analysis.

Create the matrix in the following way:

Take a blank paper and pencil. Draw a square about 10cm X 10cm in size. Divide the square into four equal parts(cells). Each of these cells will denote a type of kephrase.

Take X-axis starting from the bottom left corner towards right. Take Y-axis starting from the bottom left corner towards top.

Name top two cells as C and D . Name bottom two cells as A and B. X-axis denotes Search Market. Y-axis denotes Competition.

Values on X-axis will be from high to low from left to right. Values on Y-axis will be from low to high from bottom to top.

Thats it - now you are ready to analyse !

C:

These key phrases require high investment of time and money but will deliver high in long run. Proper strategy and resources are required.

D:

ROI is very low, its better to avoid such keyphrases in the initial stage of business but at later stage some keyphrases do well without any investment due to the improved standard of the site.

A:

Low Competition but high market. It is with High ROI.Target such keyphrases as it generates the money to survive and invest on other cells of the matrix.

B:

You may choose not to invest at the initial stages of business as many of these keyphrases will automatically make it to top with time without any investment. After making few A's and C's, check the investment required for B.

Summary:

In the initial phase of your business invest on 'A's,later invest on 'B's and 'C's. I will advice not to invest on 'D's until it starts appearing in top ranks with time. In marketing we say that retaining a customer is tougher than getting a customer. Similarly if making it to top ranks is tough,then tougher it is to retain the position. So do proper risk analysis at every stage of your online business.

About the Author:
Aji Issac
Site: HEDIR WEB DIRECTORY

Submit your internet marketing site at: http://www.hedir.com/internet.html

Abc On Getting Your Wisconsin Site To Score High Part 3

Writen by Johnny Smith

The objective of this article is to give you a basic understanding on how basic engine optimization for ranking high in the search results for Wisconsin related keyword phrases can be achieved.

In other words, what we will cover is how you can boost the ranking for your Wisconsin related site in the top search engines by getting your on-page factors fairly right.

We will also assume that you have your list of keywords that you want to rank high for ready. And also remember to only target one keyword phrase per article you write.

Ready?

When working on improvements in your search engine ranking you should always put the main keyword that you target in the page's title and description tag.

For the body text you want the keyword phrase inside the title and in the first paragraph on the page. Throughout the rest of your body text, the main keyword phrase should be used every now and then.

Don't care about writing with a fixed keyword density since that formula change over time.

The content you create by using these basic search engine optimization rules for ranking high in search engines for Wisconsin phrases must be of high quality and useful to your visitors.

Always remember, useful content will be king in the future.

Back in the days when Internet was fairly new to the general public, many webmasters tried to fool the top search engines by writing spammy pages and by adding a ton of unrelated keywords to the keyword metatags.

Today we can all thank God for the fact that the search engines have gotten smarter and a side effect is that the Internet has become a better and more informational place for all.

Johnny writes about search engine optimization as well as the NHL and ice hockey equipment.

Wordtracker A Must For A Search Engine Optimization Project

Writen by Marty Pukstys

While many factors influence the rankings of a web site, any search engine optimization effort isn't worth even a second of your time without one and single unknown: relevant and competitive keywords.

Let's examine an example: a local moving company decided to optimize its website. It knows (or assumes that it does) that the most popular keywords for their type of business are "movers" and "moving". At a first glance, looks like everything's fine: the keywords seem to be relevant, and should produce good results. However, there are two mistakes made here. The first one is keyword relevancy. What's the use for our local moving company of people that are looking for "movers" or "moving" in Denver, CO, Boston, MA or New York, NY, if they are located and offering services in and around San Francisco only?

Another mistake is keyword effectiveness. It'll take much more time and effort to get top rankings for such popular and competitive general keywords as "moving" and "movers" than to get same results for something more specific and relevant, such as "movers San Francisco" or "moving San Francisco". Not only are these keywords more likely to convert visitors to buyers, but also it's a much easier and less time-consuming task. If the world we live in consists of atoms, the smallest and most important particles in search engine optimization world are keywords. In fact, there's nothing complicated about them, if one remembers three things about keywords: relevancy, effectiveness and Wordtracker.

Wordtracker.com is an UK based company that offers an irreplaceable search engine marketing service tool: keyword research and analysis. It helps to find and pick keywords that are both relevant and competitive. Relevant mean that the keywords are related to your website, and that these are the words people are typing in Google, Yahoo or MSN in order to find your kind of business. Another important factor in determining a "good" keyword is its effectiveness. Let's say we have a keyword "movers" which has a record of appearing in Google search list for 1009 times; there are 15400000 different web pages competing for this keyword. This means that this keyword's effectiveness index is 1009/15400000=0.066. This index shows that the keyword is far too competitive and you'll probably end up somewhere in the middle of Google's search results if you try to optimize your webpage for this particular keyword.

A rule of thumb is to find keywords that are quite popular and at the same time have fewer webpages competing for them. A good keyword is considered to have an effectiveness index of over 100, although anything in between 10 and 100 can be targeted as well.

Needless to say, without having the right keywords that are both relevant and competitive it's impossible to succeed in any search engine optimization campaign. Without knowing your niche words, you'll probably end up competing against web sites with thousands of inbound links optimized by search engine optimization gurus and will be lost in millions of search results – no one will even ever find out you exist. On the other hand, all it takes to get your web traffic from 0 to couple hundreds a day might be something as simple and cost-effective as Wordtracker.

Marty Pukstys is a co-owner of Search Engine Marketing Service LLC and specializes in search engine optimization services such as meta tags optimization services