The Basics Of Search Engine Optimisation

Writen by Paul Duxbury

I am sure that it will surprise some people to hear me say that Search Engine Optimization isn't rocket science! Although it can feel complicated at times the aim is simply to ensure that your website is presented in the way search engines like and ultimately that your visitors will like!

At the end of the day Search Engines always try to give users whatever they can find that is relevant to their search. You need to appreciate that the majority of Search Engines don't work by moving the good stuff towards the top. What they do instead is to try to push the bad stuff towards the bottom, and hope that what's good will 'float up'. It is a frequently repeated truth that Content is King and good content which is well written and which is sprinkled with the appropriate keywords can get you good search engine rankings. This not only brings visitors to your site but also feeds the search engine spiders and crawlers. It is impossible to emphasise enough how well written and relevant content is key to good SEO.

One of the fast way to develop good content is to generate a series of articles regarding your topic. These items are very powerful in the world of SEO because they provide your visitors with something to read and they allow you to feature in the Search Engine results for some key words that you normally wouldn't. Let's say you are managing a website for Genealogists. A well written article about using a particular genealogy tool is more likely to generate a high position in the search results for "genealogy tools" than your home page. Therefore, if you write articles relevant to your subject but in more depth than you can put on your home page, you will find that you will benefit enormously.

Take a look at the sites that currently rank high on the search engines for your keywords or indeed for any keywords and you will generally find that they have simple designs with graphics that use minimal bandwidth, and they are generally easy to navigate. Simple, clean designs are what both search engine crawlers and search engine users like, as it lets them get the content they want without a lot of peripheral "fluff". This is what you should be aiming to achieve with your website.

Of course some websites will be ranked highly in search engines, even though their designs make them difficult to read and navigate. If the content of a site is relevant to what people are searching for then that's all that matters to a search engine. However, it's preferable to have a site that is user friendly and easy to navigate if you want to encourage return visitors.

Let's think about meta tags, keywords, descriptions, and titles. These are all important elements, even if they are not what will make or break your site. Whilst important they are just one part of your strategy. These elements need to be compelling and sprinkled with your keywords, as this will entice users to click through from the search results page to your website. It's best to start off slowly, gradually adding things in as you learn.

If you have any questions and you don't know where to go, then check out some of the forums on the subject. To do this you just need to go to your favourite search engine and do a search for 'seo forum'. The people on these forums are generally more than happy to answer your questions, or direct you to someone who can answer your question if they can't. Remember to be patient with yourself: learning something new takes time and effort, and SEO is no different.

Paul Duxbury is a UK based successful online entrepreneur. Invaluable advice on creating successful websites can be found at http://www.web-success.co.uk

4 Simple Steps To Seo

Writen by James D Day

Search engine optimization is the process of improving a website in order to acheive higher search engine placement. SEO is not a complicated process, it involves mostly common sense. This article explaines the 4 simple steps that will, if followed correctly greatly improve your search engine rankings and help you gain an inital foothold in the major search engines search results.

#1 Compile a keyword list: Target the most frequently used keywords on your page. Begin with around 10 keywords. Also use combinations of keywords for example: If your site sells video games and game systems, a good keyword phrase would be: video games and game systems or video game systems. Optimizing the word video games would be pointless because the competition would be so huge most websites will not be found in the search results, taking into account the age of the domain and the number of backlinks that point to a site, which will also dramatically affect search engine the rankings. Most searches made by internet users contain keyword phrases instead of just one keyword.

#2 Edit your title, meta description tag and meta keyword tag using the keywords from your newly compiled keyword list. The title should contain no more than 10 or 12 words, the description meta tag should contain no more than 150 characters. and the keyword meta tag should contain no more than 200 characters. Insert the keywords into the title starting with your three main keywords, keep in mind the number of words used, try to stay under 10 or 12. Next, edit your meta description tag using the same keywords, location of each word is crucial. Try to keep the title and meta description as similar as possible, not completly dublicated but as close as possible. It might sound a little strange but it works. This will greatly improve your search engine rankings. Stop words are also a factor than can affect rankings. Words such as: the, and, is, in, are, etc. are words that should not be used if at all possible. Removal of stop words is a guarantee of higher search engine placement. The location of your keywords in the title and meta tags will also affect your placement.

#3 Use keywords as links on your page, referring back to video games as an example, when editing your page use text such as video games, game systems and so on as links as close to the beginning of the page as possible. Keep in mind search engines read a page header first, then starting on the top left reading down the left side, after reaching the bottom of the page the content is read from the center of the page to the bottom. Then the right side of the page is read ending with the footer.

#4 Keyword placement: It is essential that all of your keywords are at the beginning and the end of your webpage. Keywords need to be placed in the first 50 words of a webpage. Keywords also need to be placed into the last 50 words on the page. Start with the header of your webpage, use keywords there first. Then place keywords on the left side of your page. Try not to repeat keywords, and do not stuff images with keywords. One keyword per image. Whenever possible use anchor text instead of images. To place keywords at the end of the page, use keywords in the footer and on the right side of the page. Remember how search engines read a page, header first, then top left reading down, center text reading down, top right reading down and footer last. If these 4 steps are followed exactly you can guarantee yourself excellent search engine placement even #1 on Google.

There are other factors which can improve your search engine rankings such as backlinks. When it comes to linking, reciprocal or one way links both are excellent ways to increase your link popularity. One way links however seem to be the way to go because there is no linkback required by you. Meaning no link pages to set up. Directory and article submissions are an excellent way to build quality one way links. You do not need thousands of useless links to gain high rankings on the search engines. Only a handfull of high quality and relevant links are needed to give you excellent search engine rankings. http://www.submit-site.org/

How To Stay One Step Ahead Of The Google Dance

Writen by Jeff Smith

It's taken you 6-months of hard work, constant changes, reading every shred of information on search engine optimization strategy not to mention thousands of dollars trying out web optimization tools and services.

Finally, you have a page rank of 5, you are listed in the top 10 on your major keywords, and you are seeing the benefit - some decent traffic from Google and other search engines.

Then, as quickly as your search engine optimization strategy begines working, it suddenly, and without notice, disappears!

You frantically look for evidence of dropped links, pages not working, it HAS to be something you've done!

Well, the truth is, it may not have been anything you did - turns out Google updates their algorithms every few months in an attempt to improve it's search engine optimization strategy.

In fact, Google has shown that they are not afraid to make major changes impacting tens of thousands of sites, businesses and corresponding sales and profits.

Even more concerning, everything points to the fact they will continue to make changes.

So what can you do to protect your search engine optimization strategy and the resulting traffic critical to the success of your online marketing?

There are some things you can do.

1. BUILD CONTENT WITH REAL, RELEVANT VALUE

Do you develop content just for search engines or just for your visitors and customers?

The answer is both.

Truth is, your customers search for information based on keywords. Use tools like Wordtracker (http://www.highertrustmarketing.com/part/wordtracker) to find those keywords.

Plan your articles around answering questions associated with each keyword. Over time, you will build highly relevant content that will be irrisistable to the search engines - no matter how they change them.

2. LINK FOR QUALITY, NOT QUANTITY

One single link with a Pagerank (Google's term for ranking sites) of 5 is worth 10 or more sites with a Pagerank of 3.

In addtion, as an important part of your search engine optimization strategy, make sure your links include a brief description (a URL only inbound link may be ignored), includes important keyword and appears on a relevant partner site.

Avoid FFA's and most link farms, they may actually do you more harm than good.

3. AVOID KNOWN MISTAKES

Common mistakes people make with their search engine optimization strategy are:

• Cross linking unrelated sites, recent discussion with master Affiliate Marketing pro James Martell recently brought this issue to light

• Submitting to link farms, in many cases this will eventually get your site penalized or even banned from the SE's

• Duplicate content. Many people feel the need to duplicate their pages and make small changes for each search engine (also called doorway pages) - however if this is not done properly, you will get penalized

• Trying to load your content with too many keywords. Focus on 1-3 keywords only

4. USE GOOGLE ADS

While still unproven, it certainly has been found by many in the search engine watch community that sites who use Google Adwords or Google Adsense tend to appear higher in listings.

5. VARY YOUR TRAFFIC GENERATION TECHNIQUES

Too many people rely on Google traffic for 99% of their traffic. It's true, search engine traffic is the most economical way to advertise online, but there are many other ways to vary your traffic generation strategy.

Add these traffic generation techniques to your search engine optimization strategy:

• Writing articles

• Running affiliate program

• Joint Ventures

• Viral "sticky" tools

• Press Releases

Yes - you need to dance with Google. By following these techniques, you can actually lead your traffic generation strategy rather than follow the Google dance.

About The Author

Discover how to create your own best-selling eBooks, Special reports or books to sell online ...AND keep 100% of the profits. Limited time complimentary access to 7-Part Minicourse will get you started quickly and easily. Visit: http://www.highertrustmarketing.com/

Search Engine Optimization For Affiliates

Writen by Karen Kari

Organic search engine optimization is a process that involves analysis of your website's structure, code, content, links and tags. Based upon the current algorithms used by the major spider-based search engines, such as Google, changes and enhancements are made to your site in order to push your site up in the rankings and deliver it earlier in the search results delivered by the engine. For your site to rank in the first page or two of sites delivered in a search, it's pretty much essential to use optimization software or a consulting service that keeps up-to-date on this fast changing industry.

So what will they do for you? Constantly monitor and adjust, things you don't have time to do if you're going to be marketing and advertising your site, adding content, blogging, creating partnerships and adding other merchants. By collecting site data and analyzing a huge number of sites, they identify patterns in the way pages are evaluated and achieve rankings. They understand the changes in the algorithms used by the major search engines. Your site and others receive continual reviews and updates, and changes in statistics are monitored.

These companies will identify the keywords that will bring buyers to your site. They will take care of submitting the pages of your site to the major search engines and online directories. They can also advise you and make changes to your linking, as links to other quality sites will help your ranking by the search engines. Because they see how so many sites rank, some can also help you in increasing the usability of your site and use and placement of ads, and merchant links. They may be able to advise you about reducing your drop-off rate (those who don't buy) or conversion rate (those who click to a merchant and buy).

It's an option worth real consideration you need to monetize your site to the best of your ability, and can't do everything. There's no sense in doing all the work related to maintaining a site and having nobody find you.

Karen Kari's articles and more information on the affiliate business can be found at:
http://www.affiliatebandit.com
http://www.advertisingcellar.com
http://www.billionfreeads.com

Affordable Freelance Writers Work Wanted How One Article Can Make A Webmaster Rich

Writen by Christopher Kyalo

More often than not, those who have wanted the work of an affordable freelance writer have failed to take full advantage of the potential benefits in terms of huge increased traffic and profitability.

The truth of the matter is that a single article can make a webmaster very rich. Wanted work from your affordable freelance writer can dramatically change your fortunes.

Here's how.

We all know that people hate to be advertised to online and will not hesitate to spend money to block ads. We also know that many people who come online are hungry for certain information. Work from your affordable freelance writer that produces an article containing valuable information badly wanted by a certain audience will tend to get a very high attentive audience. Especially if they use the sort of keyword phrases that will attract huge traffic via search engines. Many articles have ended up being read by millions.

These millions will tend to be your targeted audience and if your advertising message is somehow merged with the valuable information in such a way that nobody sees the ad and everybody appreciates the information, then chances of converting a reasonable percentage of those readers into paying customers are high.

Just five per cent of a million is 50,000, enough paying customers to make most webmasters very rich.

I know that this sounds like hype, but the truth is that it's happening all the time. This is precisely how your affordable freelance writer's work can easily yield the sort of sales you've always wanted.

Are you considering hiring a ghost writer? If so don't do anything until you've read a few more articles at the author's hire a ghost writer blog.

Beat Googles Dampening Link Filter With Article Pr

Writen by Glenn Murray

Links back to your site have a great impact on your ranking in the major search engines. Think of it like an election; your site is a candidate and every link to your site is a vote. Of course, it was never quite that simple (high ranking, relevant sites have more voting power) but now it may have gotten even more complicated.

The Dampening Link Filter

It seems that Google may have introduced something called a "Dampening Link Filter" into its indexing algorithm. I'll give you a layperson's overview of this filter, but for more intimate details, check out WebProNews.

More and more people are realising the importance of links back to your site (or "backlinks"). For some time, companies have been engaging in all sorts of link campaigns designed to generate thousands of backlinks. Many of these campaigns haven't really paid too much attention to the context or lifespan of these links. And Google knows it. Because these campaigns are designed to artificially generate the perception of a site's importance – to trick the search engines into thinking they're important – it's been suggested that Google has decided to put an end to it. Apparently, there's evidence to suggest that Google has introduced a new link filter to dampen the effect of new backlinks. So if your link generation campaign has just created 500 links in a day from seemingly irrelevant sites, Google will suspect it of being artificial, and refuse to pass on the full effect of those links – at least for a while. Well, that's how the theory goes, anyway.

It has been argued that you can avoid being penalized by this filter by generating links:

• more slowly;
• from relevant sites; and
• which have a long lifespan.

The wisdom of relevance and lifespan is already well established; the dampening filter is simply one more reason why people should start to heed it. Article PR (writing and submitting SEO articles for online publication) is one way to do so.

This article explains how article PR satisfies each of these three conditions. (For the basics of article PR writing, take a look at How to Top Google with Article PR - www.divinewrite.com/seoarticles.htm.)

Build Backlinks Slowly

Writing quality articles takes time. It's as simple as that. Even an SEO copywriter can't just bang an article together in a morning – it has to be well considered. It must be accurate, informative, interesting, well written, and topical. And once you've written the article, the real work begins. You then have to submit it to your favourite article submit sites. And as they all have different requirements and idiosyncrasies, submitting your article to 50 submit sites can take you all day!

Once submitted, even the best articles will only be published gradually. A good article can be published 2 or 3 times a day for a week or two, then interest tapers off. But still, over the course of 6 months a single good article can be published hundreds of times! And remember, each time is a link.

Build Backlinks From Relevant Sites

As soon as you choose the topic of your article, you define the type of site that will publish it. All online publishers have an agenda; they want to generate traffic. Whether for commercial or benevolent reasons, they want particular kinds of articles for very specific audiences. Your article won't be published on irrelevant sites simply because the publishers of those sites get nothing out of it.

Of course, your article may be published on sites that are only marginally relevant. For instance, this article may be published on general copywriting websites, advertising websites, web design websites, home business websites, etc. But the beauty of a well written SEO article is that you get to optimize it for the keywords that you want to rank for. So even if the keywords on the publishing site don't quite match your own target keywords, the page containing your link (i.e. your article) does.

What's more, you even have the power to optimize the links themselves. For instance, as an SEO copywriter, I can distribute backlinks throughout my article that use my target keywords as the link text (e.g. "copywriter", "SEO copywriter", "advertising copywriter", and "website copywriter" ;-). Some submit sites don't let you do this, but most will – at least in the byline.

And one other thing – other people link to good articles. This can increase the Page Rank of the site containing your article, which, in turn, can increase the page rank of your own site. It's a win-win situation!

Build Backlinks With a Long Lifespan

The quality of your SEO article determines the lifespan of your backlink. Write a very helpful article, make it easy to read, and choose a topic which isn't going to go away in a hurry, and your article will stay online for years.

In any event, most publishers tend not to clear out their article libraries simply because it's better for them to have lots of content available to both readers and search engines.

Conclusion

While it's no new phenomenon to SEO veterans and SEO copywriters, the use of article PR to generate backlinks is a tactic which offers much in the way of ranking. The possibility of a Google dampening link filter simply increases the value of that offering.

Happy writing!

* Glenn Murray is an SEO copywriter and article submission and article PR specialist. He is a director of article PR company, Article PR, and also of copywriting studio Divine Write. He can be contacted on Sydney +612 4334 6222 or at glenn@divinewrite.com. Visit www.DivineWrite.com or www.ArticlePR.com for further details, more FREE articles, or to download his FREE SEO e-book.

Search Marketing Must Look To Training To Help Develop New Talent And Fill Skills Gap

Writen by Damon Lightley

At present there's a real preference within the search engine marketing (SEM) industry to recruit team members with at least 2 years experience. However, this is proving difficult as the growth in search marketing activity is overtaking the growth of professional search marketers. So what can be done about the skills shortage?

Companies have two possible options. 1) employ the services of a specialist search engine marketing agency to develop and implement their search strategy, or 2) recruit talent with potential and train them up in the different disciplines of search marketing.

Search is in demand!
With more and more businesses placing search high up on their marketing agendas it would make sense for them to do both. Companies will always benefit from having the strategic support of specialist agency to help them get to grips with the latest developments in search and to help them integrate search into their marketing mix. However, many of the day to day tasks associated with both pay per click (PPC) and search engine optimisation (SEO) can be effectively managed internally, providing that person has the right levels of knowledge to do so.

In the current climate most organisations would probably be better off sticking with their agency but at the same time they should be thinking of developing a long-term training strategy to build up internal search marketing knowledge and skills.

Building internal knowledge takes time
Building a team with solid SEO and PPC skills isn't going to happen overnight and it does come with its risks. In a market that is short on supply of individuals with proven SEM skill sets, companies also face the prospect of a 'brain drain'. There is the possible risk of recruits that have been trained up with these skills are then lured away by bigger players who are able to pay higher salaries.

However, what is inevitable is that if the current trend continues and search marketers become few and far between then there will be a greater demand for agency support, and with demand outstripping supply, we could see companies paying a premium for search marketing agency services.

Investing in search engine marketing training must not be viewed as a costly outlay but rather an investment. Companies that seize the opportunity to develop internal knowledge now, could benefit in the medium to long term by gaining a competitive advantage that is hard to replicate in the short-term.

Damon Lightley is a director at SiteVisibility. SiteVisibility offers search engine marketing training which includes PPC training and SEO training, helping companies by training their staff in the discipline of search marketing.

For more information on search engine marketing training courses please visit Site Visibility.

The Science Of An Art

Writen by Sarah Manners

Selection of the appropriate keywords and phrases is essential for the promotion of any site. Though there are an abundance of keyword research tools out there, the ultimate selection of the keywords is more of an art than an exact science. The tools discussed in this article will enable you to get the science of keyword research down pat but ultimately the selection will be up to you.

When promoting a site knowing the industry in which it operates is essential. The Search Engine Marketing tools are undeniably important but common sense and the level of knowledge you have concerning the industry will help you format a keyword strategy that will elevate both your rankings as well as your end user's experience.

Wordtracker
With its statistics coming from meta-search engines only, Wordtracker compiles a massive database of keywords and phrases which online users search for. This program shows how often specific keywords/phrases are searched for as well as the number of sites for which these keywords and phrases compete. A useful addition to Wordtracker's suite of offerings is the related keyword facility. Often as search engine marketers we are not familiar with every industry we work with and facilities like this help us uncover many related keywords and phrases that we may never even have considered to be valuable. There will of course be many suggestions that are inapplicable, but it is an extremely useful and enlightening addition.

Wordtracker details, in an extremely user-friendly format, the number of searchers conducted per keyword per day, the keywords which compete with it and the KEI (keyword effectivity index).

One of Wordtracker's greatest features is its ability to differentiate between search terms that include capitalization, word ordering and plurality. As search engines do deliver results based on these factors it is easier to get unique as well as accurate data from Wordtracker as multiple search phrases are not combined.

Although Wordtracker results are underreported it is still amongst the most often used tools for keyword selection. SEO's usually consider the figures as guidelines rather than absolutes when selecting keywords.

Overture
Overture or Yahoo! Search Marketing as it being referred to of late offers a database which has been collected from the keyword/phrase searches performed on Yahoo! AltaVista, Yahoo, MSN Search and HotBot.

Overture has a greater database of search terms than Wordtracker but the results are often over inflated because unlike Wordtracker, there is no distinction between singular and plural terms, upper and lower case or between human queries and automated queries.

Queries from bid optimizers, position and ranking monitors and link popularity analyzers are registered as hits. These factors all influence the over-inflated results produced by Overture. Another of Overtures downfalls is that it registers a user conducting a single search on two of its influencing engines (Yahoo! and MSN for example) as two hits. While excellent at generating hundreds of keywords and illustrating their popularity on the web it is easier to achieve visible results with Wordtracker as the data is based on lower figures.

Digital Point's Keyword Suggestion Tool
This free keyword suggestion tool displays results from both Wordtracker and Overture to help you determine which keywords and phrases are searched for most often.

The tool allows you to enter a keyword/phrase as well as the market you wish to search that term in (i.e. USA/Japan), but the market-related search data is only relevant for Overtures results. Digital Point also offers a free keyword positioning tracking tool to monitor your placement progress once you have decided upon the keywords/phrases you wish to use in your copy.

Web CEO
Web CEO's powerful suite of software is fast becoming one of the most popular keyword research tools online. Web CEO is a suite of SEM software which combines a host of tools to take you from start to finish of the SEO processes.

The 10 different tools in the Web CEO suite will help you promote your site amongst the search engines, analyze your visitors as well as maintain your website. The 10 tools are: Keyword Popularity Research, Live Traffic Analysis, SEO, Search Engine Submission, Website Ranking Checker, Link Popularity Analyzer, Project Auditor, Web Page Editor, FTP Upload Manager and Website Monitoring.

It is easy to see why Web CEO is fast becoming one of the most preferred tools in the industry.

Hitwise Keyword Intelligence
Hitwise has begun using its web visitor data in its keyword search data making for more comprehensive and targeted results. Keyword Intelligence provides country-specific results which is extremely useful when it comes to promoting sites which are aimed at web users in a specific country.

Hitwise results show keywords that resulted in web users actually visiting a website rather than just viewing the websites listing on their search engine of choice. Though is quite costly to purchase, because Keyword Intelligence offers country-specific data it could be one of the most essential SEO tools for site promotion.

Trellion's Keyword Discovery Tool
This is a great tool which captures data from an impressive 170 international search engines. Compared to Wordtracker, which uses meta-search engines, Trellion's data is far more comprehensive. With the standard edition up to 1000 results are returned and up to 10 000 results with the enterprise edition. The two main advantages of using Trellion's Keyword Discovery tool are that suggestions for misspelled words/terms related to your search are returned and that it offers 12 months of data which allows you to track seasonal trends.

The only disadvantage is that because of the high number of search engines that data is captured from you are unable to establish which sites have been sampled in the results.

SEO Chat's Keyword Suggestions for Google
This free Keyword Suggestion tool for Google aids you in choosing relevant and popular terms that are related to the keyword/phrase that you enter. Like most keyword suggestion tools all you need to do is enter a keyword or phrase and this tool will return results from several Google searches, which it will use to determine popular and re-occurring terms used by websites in the same industry.

The keyword/phrase's relevancy is determined by the number of times a given term occurs in the displayed results. You will notice that sometimes related keywords/phrases return higher results, this is because they are searched for in Google more often that the keyword/phrase you entered.<

Tools and Trends
When it comes to the science of keyword research, the tools out there are invaluable. Wordtracker and Overture are undoubtedly the market leaders but the emergence of several other keyword research competitors has positively affected the SEM industry. Not only do SEO's now have access to a wider range of tools at their disposal, the industry leaders are having to up their game to remain in the lead.

Make sure you have your finger on the pulse of keyword research tools and trends as they are being constantly refined and improved upon.

Quirk is an Internet marketing company that provides innovative & cost-effective eMarketing services to the global business community. In addition to search engine marketing their knowledge of web development, email, viral & affiliate marketing allow them to offer businesses a complete Internet marketing solution.

Do You Have A Bad Seo Company Or Are You Just A Bad Client

Writen by Stoney DeGeyter

I admit it, our SEO services are pretty bad.

Speaking of bad, the Beatles couldn't sing a tune, John Grisham has never written a decent novel, Dell makes crappy computer's, TiVo's and iPods suck, the Lord of the Rings movies lacked imagination and video killed the radio star. (OK, that last one might actually be true!)

Do you see where this is going? To somebody, one or more of the above statements are true. Not to the vast majority, but some people do feel that way. No matter what the product or service there will always be those that are dissatisfied. Have you ever heard of a company with a 100% customer satisfaction rate (outside of their own marketing gibberish)? I haven't.

There have been a number of blog and forum posts and articles recently about what to do if you're with a bad SEO company. All good advice, but sometimes it's not the SEO that's bad, its the client. Yeah, that's right, sometimes the client's are just plain clueless, have unreasonable expectations, or fall prey to the "grass is greener" scenario presented by competition. Yes, sometimes clients are bad.

It's Not You, It's Me!

Like every other company, product and service on the planet, search engine optimization firms will always have dissatisfied clients.

Our firm has a significant number of very satisfied clients since 1998. We have also had a handful of clients that walked away dissatisfied with our services. I'm sure the same is true with every other SEO company out there. Does that make them bad SEOs? No, not necessarily.

Can good SEOs sometimes produce bad results for their clients? Absolutely. Happens all the time. Let me give you a few examples.

We worked with one client for several years. In the early phases of their campaign they selected some really poor keywords. We let them know this but they were insistent that we move forward. We were able to get most of their keywords ranked very well on the search engines, but as we suspected, sales did not increase. Every few weeks the client would call us asking if there was anything else that can be done to increase sales. We often made suggestions on how to improve their site along with recommending they change their optimized keywords. The site improvements they considered and often made. They keyword changes were considered but never approved. Eventually they left us.

We often find clients changing their website causing our optimization efforts to be overwritten with un-optimized versions of their pages. Those clients will then call us wondering why their rankings dropped. Duh! When this happens repeatedly with the same client you start to realize that you're just not going to get any good sustainable results. [Shameless plug: our new CodeMonitor tool notifies SEOs and/or clients when page changes are made.]

Still other clients have limited our ability to optimize their websites with all kinds of restrictions. Don't change this, can't change that. There is always a "good" reason, but when your hands are tied there is only so much that you can do.

So What's the Problem?

I recently had a client leave dissatisfied because his rankings dropped for a couple of weeks and he felt we just were "not working for him" anymore. The worst part about it is that he just canceled the contract without talking to me or anyone on our team to find out what's going on. I took me several emails and phone messages to find out why he left.

We often get calls and emails from clients asking why rankings dropped which affords us the opportunity to explain things and usually ask for patience as these type of fluctuations occur every now and then. One client did just that and once his rankings popped back into the top positions he emailed me just to say, "hey, you were right!".

We get a lot of calls (and clients) that come to us from other SEO firms that just didn't pan out for them. Before I go off telling them that their SEO company is bad I try to find out a few things. How long have they been optimizing your site? What changes have they made? Is their name Traffic Power? Etc., etc. A few such questions will usually give me what I need to know to determine if they have cause to jump ship or not. If they have been with the company only for a few months I usually tell them to hang tough and give them a chance to produce results. Unfortunately SEO does take time, especially when a site gets sandboxed, and you wont' always know that you're with a bad firm for quite some time.

Talk to Me, Baby!

Communication is the key. If you have difficulty getting calls and emails returned, or are not quite sure what your SEO company is doing for you, then there is a good chance you're not with a great firm.

One company came to us from one of the largest SEO firms after their one-year contract expired. We checked their rankings only to find sub-standard results. There were no penalization or sandbox issues, just lack of good performance. I was able to determine that their current firm simply wasn't doing a good enough job. Once this client signed with us we were able to get most of their keywords on the first page within the first two months.

nother firm came to us after their previous SEO got them banned from Google. Coming to us we couldn't guarantee any more than we would fix their site to make it compliant with search engine guidelines and work aggressively to get them back into the index. After fixing the spam issues, and several months wait… and several phone calls asking "when", Google finally re-included them, and with great rankings on top of it.

Denial is Often the First Sign of a Problem

Nobody wants to think they are a bad client, but here are some signs:

• Does not communicate concerns to their SEO firm
• Does not listen to advice given
• Refuses to change their site based on SEO recommendations
• Demands optimization for poorly targeted keywords
• Constantly overwrites optimization efforts with page changes
• Expects rankings to appear overnight
• Calls all the time to complain about lack of progress due to the above

The signs of a bad firm are pretty obvious, bad communication, spammy optimization, getting your site banned, etc. If you work with one of them then run away as soon and as fast as you can. It's usually pretty easy to tell a good from a bad. Communicate with (don't harass) your SEO firm. A trustworthy and respectable firm will keep open lines of communication. Just be ready to listen to what they have to say and implement recommendations that they provide, even if those recommendations are to be patient.

Maybe it's you. Maybe it's them. Get the facts before you do anything. You definitely don't want to be stuck with a firm that's just sucking your money away and doing very little work for it. On the other hand, you don't want to jump ship mid-way in what will turn out to be a substantially rewarding campaign just because things didn't happen fast enough. Before you dump your SEO, make sure the problem isn't you!

Stoney deGeyter is president of Pole Position Marketing, a professional search engine optimization and marketing firm providing SEO services since 1998. Stoney is also a part-time instructor at the community College in Reno, Nevada where he resides as well as a moderator in the Small Business Ideas Forum. You can read his SEM blog at (EMP) E-Marketing Performance. You can email him with any questions at stoney@polepositionmarketing.com

Agressive Linking Strategies Help To Get Your Site Noticed

Writen by Jason Morris

A good link building strategy has become an essential part of search engine marketing and positioning. It has been the topic of many web conferences around the world for quite some time now.

At the recent webmaster world search conference, Bruce Clay suggested what he called aggressive linking campaigns, be instigated following a few basic guidelines. He suggested that many uneducated link builders do foolish linking into multiple domain networks, which are all hosted either on the same server, or simply buy links from a series of sites hosted within a single C block of IP addresses. Bruce advised gaining links from a wide range of IP addresses that are hosted in different places, and that this would replicate natural links that will be gained over a period of time. This guideline was given as IP address – Different is Good.

With aggressive linking it is also advisable to vary the page rank quality of those sites you want to link to you. Again making things appear natural to the search engines. Be careful to not only link to sites with a high page rank of 8 or 9. You should also seek links from a good range of sites with both high and low page rank values. This is especially the case for new sites.

Some search engine optimisers recommend looking at your link campaign from a purely scientific view. Basically you need to find out what the visitors to your site are searching for, and then find out which phrases convert to sales and then target your link text towards these visitors. Once you have determined your highest value phrases, you then apply those phrases in the anchor text you request from your link partners. Using this method allows you to request links based on the highest Return Of Investment (ROI), as well as appearing natural to the search engine spiders.

By applying the aggressive strategies above, you will attain a linking campaign that is both relevant and highly targeted to your main search phrases.

Jason

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Jason Morris is co-author, search engine optimization and marketing consultant of Business Phone Systems Direct. An established communications company, offering advice and implementation of high quality business phone systems.
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How Search Engines Work Or How To Get To The Top Search Engine Ranking

Writen by Paton Jackson

These two questions are actually the same, because if one understands how search engines work, he will probably be able to get a site to the top search engines ranking. Think about it.

Unfortunately, the answer is a complicated, dynamic and a secret one. The answer has to do with SEO – Search engines optimization. In fact, very few SEO experts, SEO consultants, SEO software and SEO companies can actually give you a perfect SEO solution.

In the next few lines I will simplify how search engines work. To understand more you must contact and pay to a SEO consultant working with a popular SEO service:

1. The search engines visit your site occasionally and index new topics on your site.

2. The search engines measure the quality and popularity of your site by the number and types of links to your site by other website.

3. According to the site topics, quality and popularity and many other parameters the search engine rank the site for each keyword searched.

Now, I guess you have a website or developing one and you want to get it to the top search engine rankings. Well, If you have money I suggest you pay to an experienced SEO consultant working for one of the top SEO companies. Yet, if you do not have money, you can try doing it alone. But, be warned – a good SEO solution is time consuming. No matter which SEO software or SEO service you will be using, it will take you at least a couple of months to get your website to top search engines ranking.

Your first step would have to be reading more about the subject – reading about meta tags optimization services, keyword services, back links methods and organic SEO and using free SEO services like SEO toolbars and online SEO software. Good luck.

Find the best SEO tutorial only on SEO consulting from SEO experts. http://www.tigilet.com – Web Content Experts.

Seo Search Engine Optimisation

Writen by Harry Rockwell

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an ultimate demand for any small concern aiming to earn profit with a website. If any business house does not have the promotion allowances like any big corporate house, then the only way to promote your web site to the customers is through a search engine.

Let us check the methodology that are used in SEO; firstly the SEO makes it sure that a site is "readable" accurately by the "spiders". Spiders are programmes used by search engines to visit web sites and collect the data for the search engine to index. Spiders are also referred to as "robots" or "bots". An improperly indexed site is obscured in the search engine result.

SEO provides some 'on page' techniques like presenting the salient 'keywords' in the right places on each page. Another technique is to analyze the keyword that helps the optimizer to pick up the most generic search phrases for any business area.

Furthermore to these 'on page' techniques, another prime SEO operation is to link building, as there are some Search Engines' result criteria is based on the number of links from other sites to its customer's site. So it is very important for a SEO to provide high-ranking link building services, as sites often are punished for using the artificial linking approach detected by the Search Engines.

There are many websites that contain some conflicting design components, which are not permissible by the search engine spiders, and also having some deficiency in text composition for the visiting search engine robots.

These shortcomings often hinder the search engine spiders to indexing and also force the customer to get into the top 20 results for any consistent keyword input in a search engine. These lead to the business houses being unreachable by their target audience.

As the search engines conceal the searching algorithms, the SEO is a continuous procedure of analysis, observation and switching techniques. It is necessary to make a co-ordination between spider robots and the site building methodology to reach their criteria so that the customers can achieve a top 20 ranking for a long time.

The Search Engines make it confidential regarding what are the criteria they consider to list the result.

It is totally their business policy to dodge other competitors and also prevent the 'spammers' from unauthenticated knock. The most evil users in the world of web are the adult-sites. There are sites having abusive contents perform soberly; but there are some sites that make everyone's business difficult.

Sometimes it is so acute that the search engine and the users are staying in different poles. It may lead to the de-listing of any user site from the search engine result.

These are the reasons behind the secrecy maintained by the Search Engine technology.

The total SEO operation sometimes become very risky due to some blunders that guarantee a very low ranking in the search engine's result for any client site. Some of the errors are the following:

1. Omission of title on any page.
2. Usage of image or animation excessively on a page.
3. Confusing and complex menu system.

1. Omission of title on any page:

It is highly recommended that all the pages in a site must have an illustrative, keyword relevant title which ensures the site to be in the top 20 search results.

2. Usage of image or animation massively on a page.

The Search engine spiders do not visit web pages containing high-end graphics and animation movies. As Search Engines can't cognize the images or flash movies, so the textual contents should have the importance over the graphics and images. A page should be in the equilibrium of textual and graphical contents.

3. Confusing and complex menu system.

Search Engine 'spiders' get it difficult to go through the congested menu system. These types of menu systems are generally designed by the JavaScript or as a Java applet. Sometimes it is so complicated that the "spiders "can't make it out.

It is recommended to design menu systems in simple textual format and also use the sitemap to find the pages on the site even if the "spiders" fail to navigate the menu system.

SEO the absolute solutions for companies to promote their business successfully.

You Cannot Hide From The Public Record Search Engines

Writen by Mike Valentine

As a search engine optimization specialist, I often run across search engines of different sorts than most people are aware of. This week I stumbled across a free site that is used by journalists to do background checks and fact checking on sources of news stories. I am also an advocate for personal and financial privacy and find privacy invasion particularly offensive, so this search engine offends me.

The http://www.pretrieve.com/ Free Public Record Search Engine - Person Search is an example of the databasification of all public records. It's instructive to take a look at the results of a search for yourself in this free people search engine that is apparently used often by journalists. The linked page above takes you to the site home page which is a form allowing you to search for a person, business, address or phone number and the results pages can be frightening.

The results are listed as questions on the Pretrieve.com site in a row of tabs labeled "Property Info, Criminal, Court, Professional, Local Info, Miscellaneous" and the "Criminal" tab (Criminal) inserts your name or that of the person you are searching for in each possible source of criminal information under a link labeled "Registered Sex Offender Search" then a question with the searched name and state inserted: "Is anyone named (your name here) a registered sex offender in "your state here"? If you searched for your own name, it appears in that frightening position and startles you quite handily.

The arrangement of tabs with criminal info first must be done for the dramatic effect it has on what would otherwise be a rather mundane search of bland information. But when I went ahead and pressed that frightening link, I got a gratifying "no information could be found" result page. Whew! Then again on the link leading to the "Federal Inmate Search" I got a gratifying "Sorry. No Inmate Named (Your name here) Race: unspecified Sex: unspecified found." on the new window launched on the Federal "Bureau of Prisons" site search.

Since I write frequently online, there are hundreds of sources of information on me available in one of the results tabs labled "professional", I was happy to see that my occupation was correctly listed as "Search Engine Optimization Specialist" with sources coming mainly from resource boxes of my articles appearing across the web.

The interface of the Pretrieve.com result page also links you to organizations that have published information about you and fills in the name information, going directly to a search on the name entered at the new site. The interface of Pretrieve.com links you to their sources by launching new windows at different web sites and prepopulating the search forms with the name and state info.

The "professional" affiliations are tracked by a site called "Eliyon.com Business People Search" where links to web mentions are tied to the byline of my articles. Seems their forte is finding business mentions to connect with names. OK. But I was surprised to see that one company that I work with was incorrectly listed as being in Northern California, when they are in fact in Southern California. Oh, and they incorrectly named, but correctly linked to the web site of that company.

This type of error is probably common in online databases and is one of the biggest problems with this type of data aggregation. It is not kept current or accurate by all sources and there are others with the same name, etc. There is a prominent link on the Eliyon.com site labeled "Log in to Update your Profile" or the Didn't find yourself? Add your profile!" link is ridiculous. Why give them info they don't have so they give it to everyone else?

The Property Info tab is truly offensive as it gives you a link to the county tax assessors office record of any property owned by someone you've searched for. Plus their home address, square footage of their house, how much it is worth and amount of taxes owed on it. Oh, and phone number, street address, zip code.

The multiple other options take you to financial records such as bankruptcy filings, political contributions, defaulted loans and dozens of other possible financial records you don't want the world to see. Why is this acceptable - and the bigger question - why is this legal?

A very interesting note comes from the Pretrieve.com privacy page where they make this curious statement: "It may seem contrary for a company dedicated to making public information more easily accessible to be an ardent supporter of information privacy, but the fact is we take information privacy rights extremely seriously. We believe public information should be open and made available to everyone as adamantly as we believe private information should remain private."

But doesn't making all sources of public information easily available, make possible private information easily available along with it? Actually, this only applies to informaiton directly available on the pretrieve site, which is nothing other than your computer and connection info as they don't require registration to use their service. They do place cookies on your hard drive so the site will not work if you turn off that option in your browser. The information business seems to be full of contradictions.

Mike Banks Valentine © copyright March 9, 2005
http://PrivacyNotes.com/privacy_blog/

Mike Banks Valentine operates http://PrivacyNotes.com/privacy_blog/ Web Privacy Tutorial at: http://privacynotes.com/Phone_number_privacy.html And Performs Ethical Search Engine Optimization http://www.seoptimism.com/SEO_Contact.htm Press Release Optimization & Distribution Online If you've got news you can rank top for your search phrases

Five Tips For Search Engine Optimization

Writen by Jennifer Guinan

Search engine optimization sounds so daunting for most young companies. Who has time for dealing with metatags and keyword density when you're trying to get a company off the ground? Below is a simple list of five things you can easily do to improve your visibility on search engines.

1. You can afford free. Index your site with the Open Directory Project. It's free! The Open Directory Project powers core directory services for Google, Lycos, AOL Search, Netscape Search, and lots more.

2. Know thyself through thy customers' eyes. Remember that the words you use to describe your company are not necessarily the same ones that a prospect might use. Sometimes you need to go with the masses when it comes to keywords. Review your keyword list (if you have one), and see if your prospects would even think to search for them. You might even want to (gasp!) ask your customers about what keywords they use.

3. Stay on the up-and-up. Don't cram your keyword tag with dozens of keywords or repeating keywords. It doesn't work. Use 10 to 12 good, applicable keywords.

4. Put it in the Flash can. Don't let your web designer talk you into a Flash intro. Not only will everyone skip it because it's annoying and doesn't provide much in terms of information, it will stop the search engine spiders that crawl your site dead in their tracks.

5. Be more than a welcome mat. Develop unique titles for each of your pages. These titles appear at the top of the web browser window when your prospects or potential investors check out your site. So please, don't use, "Welcome to XYZ Company." This tells them nothing of value, except maybe that you have manners. Use the title to tell what you do, what problem you solve, and/or what the particular page is about. We're only talking about a handful of words per page (10 max), so it's not as painful as it might sound.

Jennifer Guinan, president of Sage Strategic Marketing, offers 19 years of experience in marketing, communications, Internet and search engine marketing, and PR for companies and organizations large and small. Guinan's background includes national and international marketing and communications executive management and strategy, PR and media relations, and consulting. Her experience spans multiple industries from financial, healthcare, and life sciences to technology segments including software, networking, telecommunications, embedded systems, and wireless. She has developed M&A communications strategies, executed crisis management campaigns, successfully launched a number of startup companies, and strategized and implemented company repositioning, product launches, and issues campaigns. Contact us: http://www.sagestrat.com | jennifer@sagestrat.com

10 Steps To A Spider Friendly Website

Writen by Shawn Snarski

The 10 steps below will ensure that GoogleBot and other search engine spiders are able to crawl your site with little effort when they visit you. The search engines job is to index as many pages as possible from the web and they do this by trying to find the most efficient pages to process so that they may move on to the next. You can ensure their favor by helping them to index your site efficiently and effectively.

Proper Nesting

Many spiders are built to parse the HTML on your page. One of the things that may confuse a parser or cause it to work harder is improper nesting of HTML elements on a page. These are tags that are opened and closed out of order such as abc...cab versus abc...cba In order to have the spiders crawl through your page flawlessly, visit validator.w3c.org and use their HTML validator specifically looking for error messages that say "end tag for '####' omitted, but its declaration does not permit this" or "end tag for element '####' which is not open". These are errors that signify improper nesting and while they may allow some spiders to visit your website, your site will lose valuable SEO points because the spiders cannot visit your site as efficiently as it can visit other sites. Remember, search engines need to spider many pages quickly to stay in their game.

Use of Frames

This is a spider killer if there ever was one. You simply cannot link to a specific page in a framed site with any effectiveness. If you link directly to a page within the frame, the rest of the framed page disappears. If you link to the main frames page, there is no way to link to the subpages and only your homepage(s) will show. I-Frames offer a slight advantage as they are contained within a page that has it's own URL, but many times the content within an I-Frame is inaccessible. Don't place your navigation or main content into an I-Frame.

SessionID's in Your URLs

These lead to a seemingly unending list of variations on each URL that have no real effect on the page. Every time a spider visits your pages, they get more and more versions of the same 'other' pages, but with different URLs each time because of the sessionID. If you want the spiders to feel at home on your site, then the barbed-wire fields of sessionIDs are not going to work. One way around this is to use a sitemap creation service like AutoMapIt.com that allow you to 'ignore' certain URL keys like the sessionID or keys used for sorting lists. This way, they have at least one link to each page that doesn't include a sessionID. Even if they are turned off at your sitemap, when the spiders visit, they will find the IDs again.

SessionID's may show up in otherwise friendly URLs. If your users have to log-in on your site or you use some types of tracking software, sessionID's are what helps your site to keep visitors logged in. They are usually stored in cookies through your browser and don't normally show up in your URL. If cookies are not available (like on most spiders), the sessionID then gets passed through the URL. You may want to turn cookies off in your browser and surf your site... do the sessionIDs show up?

Search-Friendly URLs

This goes beyond the sessionID's in the URL and appeal more to the actual URLs being used. According to Google Webmaster Guidelines, "It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few". Apache makes this easy through mod_rewrite and Windows servers offer Isapi-Rewrite to accomplish turning 'ugly' URLs into 'static' URLs. You should NEVER use id= in your URLs as Google does not to spider those pages. Change it to cid= or lmnopid=, but if you use id=, your pages are already doomed from the start.

Proper Meta Tags

Despite their value decreasing, and a lot of talk about them being of no use now, meta tags are anything but dead. Google uses your meta-description as the description on their SERPs. Yahoo uses description tags and prefer sites that have them. Many other search engines use the meta keywords as well. Even if they only verify that it is present and correct, many search engines won't touch your site without them. The meta robots tag is unnecessary unless it's restricting access to a page. It is the spiders natural state to index a page and follow all links from it. Using it to 'allow' spiders only increases your code:text ratio needlessly and may hurt your potential rank by a slight amount.

Javascript/Images/Flash

Use these sparingly to accentuate your site for users. You should never rely on these for critical website functions like navigation, content, or other vital page info. Even though 98% of the internet uses javascript, turning it off along with images and multimedia in your browser (or using the Lynx browser) will allow you to visit your site as the search engines do. This 20 minute task will alert you to potential problems that your site will have when the search engines visit.

Links

Most everyone knows that links into your website bring spiders to visit and help your rank, but the links within your site to itself and other websites are also very important. Google limits you to 100 links per page and most other engines are rather close (but perhaps more generous) and allow you 150 or so links per page. This is total for links within your site and links to other sites.

Keyword stats and code:text ratio

Your goal should be to have the most content possible (human readable) while limiting the amount of code used to deliver this. Keywords should be limited to a few select phrases and possibly some variations on those phrases. If you are at all considering any meaningful SEO work on your site, you should really invest your first few dollars into finding the right keywords. There are many free keyword tools such as Wordtracker.com to at least give you a start, but the few extra dollars for the upgrades are usually well worth it if you want to target the correct markets and find terms that you weren't expecting.

Standards Compliant/Accessible

This builds on the Validator tool used earlier from W3C. By making your website completely standards compliant, you remove any possible errors in the code that may hang-up a spider. While complete compliance is not as critical as parsing errors from open tags and truly broken code, it certainly helps to ease the process of being spidered.

Branding

The links within your site should all use the same www. or non-www. branding. Many search engines see those variants as two separate sites and Google will even apply different PR to a page based on www or non-www. This can be further enforced by changing your htaccess file to automatically switch versions if the other is visited. If you visit the non-www version of my sites, it will automatically be forwarded to the www version. This is not a critical step, but it is a major enhancement for not a lot of work involved. Why split your value in half when you can focus it like a laser? Just be sure to request links, add your link to profiles, and link to your own site from within your site using one version or the other, but not both.

Following these ten steps will help to ensure that your site is well-received by ALL of the search engine spiders and will not limit you to the bare essentials for only one spider (or bad ranking with all of the spiders equally). Let's face it, if you have ever tried to get better rank on a search engine, you know that any break you can get will help. These steps should be performed at the creation of your web site and continue throughout it's life-cycle to ensure that the spiders are always able to visit your site with as little effort on their part as possible.

Shawn Snarski is the CEO and creator of AutoMapIt.com Google Sitemap Generator and is a LAMP developer with over 7 years experience. His focus on standards compliance and optimized code has helped many websites increase their rank in the search engines while reducing load times and resource consumption on servers.

Why No Search Results Sorry No Information Is Available For The Url Is Shown Instead

Writen by Marc Brook

So you have heard of Google or Yahoo, fired up the trusty Internet Explorer and typed one of the following phrase's in the search bar, httpwww.google.com, httpgroups.yahoo.com, httpyahoo.com, or perhaps wwwgmail.com, hit search, "--" Eh, Nothing, WHY?

You are not alone, over 3,000,000 people a year type in httpwww.google.com, over 2,000,000 type in httpgroups.yahoo.com, and 2,600,000 enter wwwgmail.com, all with the same result, Nix. The problem is two-fold, the solution is easy.

Let us have a look at one phrase in particular and you can apply the same solution to the others. When you typed in httpwww.google.com, you will probably have entered this into a white text box somewhere in the top third part of your browser which may by default have an AOL or MSN webpage showing. This is actually a search text box where you need to type in what you are searching for as a word or phrase. Using httpwww.google.com as an example, if you had typed in just Google you would have found the search engine coming back with a myriad of pages that have the term Google on their pages and then you could have selected what interests you. The search text box is where you type in, as an example, a phrase like "acne and acupuncture". Hit the search button and bingo, several relevant sites will be shown. To illustrate the point, checkout a standard search box by clicking HERE

Httpwww.google.com is not a search term but an internet address. If you have a correct address and want to go to that site, you need to enter it in the address bar which is normally just under the top toolbar of your browser. You will see that most address bars have a go button on the right as opposed to a search button as in the search box described before.

The last part of the solution is in the spelling of httpwww.google.com. Httpwww.google.com should in fact be written as follows, http://www.google.com/ . You were mighty close, but computers are wickedly logical and a missing forward slash often equals despair.

In conclusion;

1- Search phrases go in the search text box,

2- Addresses go in the top address bar,

3- Addresses need to be spelt correctly.

Httpwww.google.com corrected is http://www.google.com/,

Httpgroups.yahoo.com corrected is http://groups.yahoo.com/,

Httpyahoo.com corrected is http://www.yahoo.com/,

Wwwgmail.com corrected is http://www.gmail.com/.

Happy surfing!

Marc has had practical experience with computers since the mono screen dos days. He is interested in many facets of life as can be seen on his developing website.http://www.healthywealthywiseonline.bigpondhosting.com/

Complete Website Ranking Optimization

Writen by Bill Naugle

Search engine optimization does not have to be complicated but it does require some work if you plan on having your Website in the top 10 on the major search engines. Many Webmasters want their Websites on the first page of Google, MSN and Yahoo when their keyword is put in the search. Unfortunately they believe one of two things. The first being that it is too difficult for them to do it themselves and the second is that there is a secret trick that will have to perform in order to get high rankings. Both of these statements are false.

Some Webmasters will pay thousands of dollars to a so-called professional SEO expert to have their Websites on top in the rankings. The truth is that you can get top Search Engine Rankings spending a little bit of money and doing the work yourself or paying a professional SEO company thousands of dollars to get your Website on the first page. Both will work the choice is yours.

There are many myths about SEO but I want to tell you the plain truth. The do-it-yourself person can accomplish just as much as the professional. You must be willing to do many tasks of Website Optimization if you want to succeed. There is much information on the Internet on SEO. Some will tell you that the secret to high rankings is creating and submitting many RSS Feeds. Others will tell you that you need quality reciprocal links. Is there just one way of gaining first page on Google?

What is required of Webmasters in order to achieve Top Website Rankings? Some believe that if they perform 3 major tasks of Website Optimization that their Website will soar to the top. I believe that you cannot just do a few works of optimization or come up with a secret trick to achieve a high site ranking on the search engine.

Complete Website Optimization is your best guarantee to having a high ranking on the major search engines. What is complete optimization? Using all of the information and tools to get your site noticed on the search engines with a high ranking for your keywords. If you really want a top ranking and only want to spend a little bit of money I will tell you the many things you will need to do in order to have the first page on the search engines.

Having complete Website Optimization will require many working tasks, tools and much researched information. I'm going to give you the many tasks that you will need to perform to accomplish high rankings.

1. Accurate Description of Website.
2. Clear Metatags relevant to your content.
3. Having your Text Body descriptive of your main Topic.
4. Finding reciprocal links.
5. Quality search engine submission.
6. Proper wording of document title.
7. Building high traffic Web Pages.
8. Tools for validation.
9. Creating and submitting RSS Feeds.
10. Writing and submitting effective articles.
11. Writing and submitting Press Releases.
12. Creating and submitting Blogs.
13. Building and submitting a site map.
14. Proper use of FFA sites.
15. Submitting to Web Directories.
16. Classified Advertising.
17. Effective email advertising.
18. Traffic boosting tools like toolbars.

After you complete all of the above then you can be sure that your Website will be on top.

Bill Naugle has been writing articles, press releases and ebooks to help Webmasters achieve success in search engine rankings. He has written on many subjects. He started writing on the internet in 2001. http://www.websiterankingtop.com/

Website Optimization Navigation And Visitor Tracking Explained

Writen by David Bain

What is website optimization?

SEO (Search engine optimization) is basically a set of methods aimed at improving the ranking of a website in search engine listings. Some optimization consultants aim to 'trick' search engines into artificially inflating a website's ranking by hiding 'keywords' in certain areas of a web page and swapping keyword links with irrelevant partners. Major search engines and other such consultants condem this approach. Although it might result in significant short-term gain, the risk is too great. If you want to maintain a strong, long-term relationship with search engines, you need to continually add original, relevant content to your website, clearly focusing on one topic and one set of keywords per page. All this has to be done within a good website design.

What is website navigation?

Poor website navigation is probably the easiest, quickest way to loose customers and keep them away. You need to make sure that both your customers and search engines can 'navigate' your website with ease. Stick to design standards. Make sure that every page uses that same template - same colours and basic design. Your customers will start seeing you as a brand. In addition, you need to make it very intuitive for your customers to find their way around. Use the top or left hand side of the page for any menus. It's also always good to include text links to each page and have a site map to make sure that search engines can find every page on your site as well.

What is website visitor tracking?

Visitor tracking will tell you where your website visitors are from, how long they are on your website for, which pages they viewed, who referred them to you and much, much more. This information will help you tailor your website content towards people who are already visiting you and help you improve on your conversion rates. There are several good free pieces of visitor tracking software that you can use such as Google Analytics or Statcounter if your hosting package doesn't offer an inclusive service. Once you're getting lots of visitors, you may choose to upgrade and pay for some additional statistics.

© Copyright 2006 www.BuildYourOwnBusiness.biz

David Bain is founder of the independent business articles resource, http://www.BuildYourOwnBusiness.biz BuildYourOwnBusiness offers the latest business news & management advice on how best to build your own business - business articles on Strategy, eBusiness, Change Management & much, much more.

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Local Search Optimization A Guide To Getting Started

Writen by Esoos Bobnar

While searching the web these days, it's hard not to notice all those little Local tabs sprouting up in the vicinity of the search field on virtually every major search engine. Within the past year, the race has been to integrate a plethora of advanced features into local search capabilities.

Already we're seeing features like customer reviews and ratings, storefront and product photos, detailed maps with directions, hours of operation, forms of accepted payment, integration with cell phones, and much more is promised to follow. Picture a million paper phone books combined - on steroids and capable of providing instant results for an information-hungry and time-challenged customer base. The potential for local search is really quite staggering!

So what exactly is local search, and how can you best position your business to take advantage of it?

In a nutshell, local search is essentially the Internet's version of the phone book. The difference being that this "phone book" is much faster and far more responsive. For example, suppose I'm in Boston staying at the Harbor View Hotel and in need of a haircut? No problem. I Just enter haircut followed by the zip code of the hotel where I'm staying - 02114 - and I instantly find Richard's Haircutting for Men a scant 0.4 miles east and with directions.

All that took about 30 seconds from concept to completion leaving me with a feeling of satisfaction that no regular phone book could ever provide. I'm now addicted to local search after only a single dose! Throw away the phone book, never mind the concierge.

Now, if that little demo hasn't yet convinced you, chew on this recent finding...

70 percent of U.S. households now use the Internet as an information source when shopping locally for products and services... Findings also suggest the Internet is poised to surpass newspapers as a local shopping information resource. Source: The Kelsey Group

Simply put, local search - including local search on mobile devices - is about to dominate the world of brick-n-mortar marketing. Ready or not, here it comes! ...we suggest you get ready now, before it starts costing you a fortune to negotiate the learning curve. Oh, and get used to the fact that the big yellow phone book is well on its way to becoming nothing more than a cheesy doorstop.

How To Get Listed In Local Search

The first step to getting your business listed in Local Search is (surprise) to buy a listing in the offline Yellow Pages (yep, that cheesy doorstop-to-be we just dis'd). Here's why:

Most search engines get the bulk of their local business listings from just two companies: 1)infoUSA and 2)Acxiom.

...or else from Internet Yellow Pages sites which also derive their listings from these two companies. Both have compiled enormous databases containing detailed information on most of the businesses and consumer households in the US and Canada. And much of their data is pulled from your basic Yellow Page and Business White Page directories (aka, the cheesy doorstops).

The good news may be that your business already has a listing in your local Yellow Pages - if not, then you should get one! Don't worry about taking out a big colorful ad with lots of information about your company. We haven't any reason to believe that expensive ads offer any advantage in local search rankings. Nor does lots of business information in your Yellow Pages ad seem to enhance your local search listing's comprehensiveness. It appears to us that any Yellow Pages listing at all will get you included in most local search engines just fine.

By the way, InfoUSA has the more user-friendly website of the two. They provide a way for you to actually check to see if your site is listed with them by using their Directory Assistance Plus web search. And, if you find your business is not listed or is listed incorrectly, you can use their add/update page to correct your listing.

How To Check Your Listing

Once you have a Yellow Pages listing (the cheesy doorstop version), then chances are you'll be found in most local search engines. To check your listing, enter your business name and zip code into the search fields at the following locations:

Google Local - http://www.google.com/lochp

Yahoo Local - http://local.yahoo.com/

MSN Local - http://local.msn.com/ - Still not yet quite as extensive as most other search engines. Don't be surprised if you're not listed.

Ask Jeeves Local - http://local.ask.com/local - Not quite as good at word parsing as Google and Yahoo. For instance, sees timeshare as different from time share. Be specific in your spelling and punctuation of your business name or category.

AOL Local - http://localsearch.aol.com/ - Divides its results into directory-like categories, so you may have to drill down a few levels to find your listing.

A9 Local - http://a9.com/ - Not really a local search engine, but A9 does have local features, as well as their own Yellow Pages. Type in your business name and zip code and see what comes up.

If you find your business is missing from any of these local search engines, most of them provide an interface to allow you to add your site. Look around for a link that says something like "Update Your Business" or "Information for Business Owners". Chances are good that even if your site is listed, your business information may be incomplete or inaccurate and you'll probably want to update and improve your local search listing.

Esoos Bobnar is a search marketing specialist and one of the head researchers at SearchEngineNews.com, a company which publishes an award-winning Search Engine Book, as well as a monthly report on the latest search engine marketing techniques.

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Keyword Research And Product Lines

Writen by Halstatt Pires

As you have probably heard over and over, keyword research is a pivotal step for success. Taken a step further, it can develop your product lines for you.

Keyword Research and Product Lines

Finding success in e-commerce can really be boiled down to one theme. Identify the needs of your prospects and provide a solution for them. It is that simple. You should write out that statement, print it out and hang it over your monitor. If you stray from this theme, you will have problems making money.

Keyword research is the key to identifying the needs of your prospects. When doing the research, you should identify the phrases they are using to search for solutions to their needs. Most people understand this concept, but fail to take the process to the next step.

More than a few people have said they do not want to pursue rankings under a set of keywords because they do not carry such products or provide such services. If you have ever said the same thing, you are blowing it.

Remember, we are identifying the needs of prospects. If we do not have products or services oriented to an easily identified need we identify through keyword research, what should we do? We should get products or figure out a way to supply the service!

Assume we have a site selling hiking and backpacking gear. We have backpacks, guide books, tents and so on. When doing our keyword research, we find out our prospects are also looking for writing journals in which they can record their hikes. Since we don't carry hiking journals, we want to avoid those keywords, correct? NO! We want to find a line of writing journals for hiking and add them to our catalogue of products. We value our prospects and that means providing them with solutions to all of their needs. By doing so, they will return to out site again and again when they need new hiking gear.

One of the more difficult things for online businesses to pick up is the fact that you should never design your site based on your view of your business. Your prospects should design it. By this, I mean that you should look to keyword research to identify all the product lines and/or services you are going to offer.

Find out what your prospects are search for and ignore everything else. Follow this guideline and your site will evolve into a revenue producer.

Halstatt Pires is with MarketingTitan.com - providing internet marketing services.

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9 Ways To Keep Google Happy

Writen by Rick Hendershot

A recent Google patent application has the SEO community buzzing. At a bare minimum this document reveals the direction Google is taking its future search criteria. Changes in the way Google will be evaluating pages for search rankings are intended to address two major problems:

- Search engine spam, and

- Ensuring that "fresh" documents score higher than "stale" ones

Here is a summary of some of the general principles outlined in the document. Most SEO specialists agree these are reasonable principles, and it is only a matter of time before they are adopted.

1. Anchor text of links is still very important. Focus on your anchor text. It should contain your most important keyword.

2. Google expects that anchor texts will vary. A lot of identical anchor text suggests an "unnatural" linking pattern. Anchor texts should vary, but contain related phrases.

3. Google will record when specific links were first discovered, and watch how they change over time. Links with a long life span are considered more valuable than links with a short life span. This adds support to the link delay theory -- that links do not start "counting" until they have been in place for a few months. So get working on those links right now, but don't expect immediate gratification from Google.

4. If a new website gets a flood of new inbound links, this will be an indicator of possible spam activity. Links should be introduced gradually and according to a consistent pattern.

5. Google acknowledges that there may be link "spikes", and so an influx of new links will be interpreted as legitimate if some of the links are from "authoritative" sites. Go after links from authoritative sites.

6. If a stale webpage continues to receive new incoming links, it will be considered fresh. Keep adding links pointing to important pages.

7. Links from fresh pages will in some cases be more valuable than links from "stale" or old pages that have not been recently updated. Get links from pages that are active. If you have high value links from important sites, develop a strategy for keeping those links fresh.

8. Google places more value on a site where link growth remains constant and slow. Slow and steady wins the race. Keep getting those links.

9. Pages with many inbound links will require proportionately more new links in order to remain fresh. The assumption is that the more links a page has, the more it should be getting in the future. Otherwise it starts slipping into the "stale" category. Focus more attention on your most important pages.

Regardless of whether of not Google implements all of these criteria, the general direction is clear. More importantly, these points make good SEO sense, and provide a very good place to start when planning a link strategy.

Rick Hendershot publishes the Linknet Network, a group of websites and blogs that offer web owners advertising and link promotion opportunities.

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