Wednesday, December 31, 2008

The Importance Of Copy In Seo Ontological Text Recognition

Writen by Fabio Braghi

The old days of SEO are gone. Just not too long ago, standard SEO practices would place a site in the graces of the major search engines. Let's examine what these standard techniques are before I venture into the copywriting/ontological part of SEO.

-Clean code and use of a CSS. It is still imperative to write in clean code and avoid proprietary tags or server side extensions such as the ones created/required by certain web design programs. Use a cascading style sheet to reduce attribute clutter.

-Keyword density. The accepted parameters call for keyword presence on each page in order to rank well for the particular term. Too little density and the search engines will not rank the site well and too much will be viewed as spam.

-Unidirectional and reciprocal linking. The more sites linking to one and the better the site will score. Note: reciprocal links are being discounted by Google in particular because of rampant, free for all link exchange abuse. Make sure anchor text reflects the keywords being targeted when conducting a link campaign.

The standard above guidelines are what many SEOs are focusing on to help websites in the top rank arena.

While these are still the basics, we are seeing a a shift in the ranks where sites rank extremely well for a keyword without such term even being present on the page. How is this possible? The only possible explanation is the contextual text relationship or theme of a site.

Google seems to be at the forefront of this technology: the sites that are doing well even for terms that are not present in the text or anchor links are very rich in related content. Also, very important, the site relates to the particular key phrase. Let's try an example: when searching for "market timing", a site is in the top 3 in Google. The site has hundreds of pages indexed and deals with market research for stocks, stock buying and investment decision tools. A human being reading through the site found by searching for market timing will find the site extremely informative and pertinent to the search. Then, how is it possible that Google could rank it high if it is just blindly indexing the text to find the exact keyword? The answer is ontological text recognition. By reading the contextual relationship between words and paragraphs, Google is capable of "understanding" that the site, without mentioning a particular keyword, will be relevant when a user searches for it.

What does this mean for you? Simply put, a lot. Copywriting is king. Well written content, informative article writing in conjunction with standard SEO techniques are the new search optimization reality. It means more work but also the advantage of maintaining more solid ranks over time as no competitor site can just easily tweak some code to rank higher. We have been focusing heavily on this new aspect to find the best way to create user friendly and rich content that will be positively received by search engines and searchers alike.

Fabio Braghi is a SEO specialist who owns seotampa.com, a search engine optimization company.

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Blog And Search Engine Optimization Tips

Writen by Johnny Dell

Your favorite thing about having a blog may soon be this - they naturally attract search engine traffic. Blogs already have optimized site architecture. Most are set up with a clear navigation, where every page is set up to link back to the other main pages. They also have the inherent potential to be well-linked.

Blog and search engine optimization tip 1: Lucrative Keyword Choices

You have a choice. You can target a general high traffic keyword you have little chance of ranking well for and get barely any traffic. Or you can shoot for a keyword that gets a moderate level of targeted traffic resulting in more subscribers and sales. I like to call this a "lucrative keyword". Whatever you call them, here's the most important thing: They may not get you the most traffic, but they often bring the most profit.

High Traffic Equals High Sales? Maybe Not You may be surprised to learn that there isn't always a correlation between high traffic and high sales. Many of the most profitable sites in the world get moderate traffic because their lucrative keywords result in a much higher ratio of visitors to buyers.

Length of Query is a Factor
A recent article in Information Week stated that the highest conversion rates from search engine traffic comes from people who do four word queries. The great thing about your blog is that it can get so well-indexed that you have the potential to show up for any number of four word phrases that are relevant to your industry.

Target Your Blog

It isn't just the four word phrases that get converting traffic - there are two and three word phrases that can bring you traffic and sales. Targeting your blog discussion to a two or three word phrase that has a high yield of traffic, and yet has little competition, is not a dream of past Internet days. Another recent study revealed that surprisingly high percentages of search engine queries debuted as late as 2004.As long as there are new developments, new products, services and trends, you'll never have a shortage of these terms if you learn how to discover them.

Blog and search engine optimization tip 2: Keyword Placement Your blog can be set up to repeat the keywords that you want to target just enough times to establish a theme. You can take full advantage of this in your post titles, your category names, the pages URL names, or even a combination of Technorati tags and the text of your permanent links that appear after each post.

Blog and search engine optimization tip 3: Timely Posting

Instead of pinging at 15 minute intervals when your site hasn't been updated, or even pinging after every single post, you can actually get better results if you update or ping just once during one of three sweet spots in the day. Here's one that you can use today.

Keep Track of Your Stats
Check your web site statistics.if you're getting spidered every two weeks or even monthly, you can increase your number of spider visits by blogging on the anniversary of the period that the spider comes to your site. It takes a bit of monitoring, but you can often predict when the date of your last spider visit was. An even faster way is to ping at a time when the spider is reading a page that carries your update.

Blog and search engine optimization tip 4: Get Linked

Turn on your site feed(s) and use them to promote your blog. Robin Good's guide can get you some great one way links.If you sparingly include the lucrative keyword you selected in tip two in your title and description, all those link backs will contain the keyword term you most want attention for, which is often noted by the spiders as they follow the link through to your site.

Once there, if you use these and other tips to skew your blog a little more to the search-engine-friendly side, the synergistic effect is better, more profitable traffic. Frequent blog updates is more important for better search engine optimization.

I have been helping people for best earch engine tips, started a blog visit here: Make money blogging online you can Cheap laptops reviews at Cheap & Discount laptop computer review.

Link Building Still Good For Search Engine Optimization

Writen by Christoph Puetz

Different strategies for search engine optimization have been developed over the last few years. One strategy that always comes back as a response when asking what works, is to build additional back links to a website that needs to be promoted. This advice is old (old in Internet days) but still very valid. Until Google.com finds a different way of calculating the search engine results the back links will still play a big role and no webmaster should ignore them. The assumption still is that if a site has valuable content or services to offer that other webmasters will link to that particular site. The higher the number of links becomes the more value is being allocated to that website by Google. Google pretty much allows the Internet community to decide or better - help deciding what is good and that it should show up high in search results.

Since this fact became public knowledge people are eager to follow these 'unwritten rules' of Google's search index. Link farms, online link directories and other link collection type of sites have been populating the Internet in increased numbers since then. What the value is of these sites needs to be determined. Plain link farms do not carry any real value for the user. All they are really there is to help to increase the number of backlinks to a site and nothing else. There is no value content-wise whatsoever. Link Directories carry a little more value, but overall the usage of link directories is steadily going down. Search engines are stepping up and provide better value and offer more convenience for the user at the same time. Other websites use their value to sell text links. Users buy these links and basically pay for the link and the hope to gain a higher Page Rank from it. This can work up to a certain limit. It becomes problematic if the seller of the text links stretches the limits on how many outgoing links a single page will carry. 5 - 10 links are probably most common. However - sometimes you run into websites and web pages that carry 20-30 of these outgoing links. The value of these kind of links is questionable. There is no technical reason for a page to carry that many outgoing links in 95% of cases. It's not exactly clear at this point if search engines degrade the value of inbound links coming from those page already. If they don't - the day that they will put less value on those links is probably very near. So, users buying text links should verify that the pages the link will be placed on do not carry too many outgoing links to keep the value of this link alive.

About the Author

Christoph Puetz is a successful entrepreneur and international book author. Websites of Christoph Puetz can be found at Pregnancy Announcements and at Highlands Ranch Colorado.

This article can freely be distributed and re-printed as long as the links in the author's section remain active and clickable. This comment about the re-printing permissions does not have to be published.

Monday, December 29, 2008

The Seo Paradox

Writen by Kerry Walker

Could spending thousands of dollars, and months of effort to improve your page ranking, lead to your URL being penalized or even black listed from a search engines index?

If you are foolish enough to resort to questionable SEO strategies, or hire an SEO consultant who does; the answer is a resounding yes.

There are no shortcuts to improved performance at the search engines, no guaranteed formulas for overnight success. Promises of instant results, or a cast iron top listing should be greeting with a healthy dose of skepticism.

If you choose to forego the task of optimization yourself, there are plenty of reputable consultants online to choose from, but you would be well advised to ask what methods they will employ. If you or your consultants are tempted to consider the use of hidden text and keywords, hidden links, keyword stuffing, link farms or cloaking, you might want to think again.

If an SEO consultant suggests submitting your URL to 10,000 search engines and directories wouldnt you want to know exactly where it will end up? After all, we're talking about the credibility and reputation of your Web site.

Trying to artificially boost your ranking at the search engines is poor strategy. Their algorithms will not differentiate between a premeditated attempt to trick your way to a top ranking, or your innocent use of a consultant who employs such methods, but the result may be that your site suffers either way.

If you are flirting with questionable SEO methods, you should ask yourself a few questions before you proceed.

  • What are you trying to achieve?
  • Does your strategy add value to your site and does it help those searching for the content you provide?
  • Is your site simply a collection of commercial and affiliate links, or does it deliver valuable content and good information to your visitors?
  • Would you feel comfortable explaining your SEO strategy to the owner of a competing site?
Google are constantly manipulating their search engine algorithm, in an effort to deliver a better product; Information that is more accurate, more relevant and delivers increased value to their users. Rather than try to do an end run around the Google search engine algorithm, consider embracing that doctrine.

A good, solid and ethical SEO strategy requires plenty of hard work and patience. The potential rewards are not limited to your site alone, but also to those of your link partners and most of all, the internet users who are searching for the service or information that you provide.

You can always fall back on the services of an SEO consultant if all else fails. You may find however, that a sustained effort focusing on some simple fundamentals, delivers the results you are looking for.

Keep it simple, make sure your site is well built, easily navigated and that your URL, page titles and headings are human reader, as well as search engine friendly. Simple text which describes the content of your page is most effective.

Content above all else, will start the traffic snowball rolling. Create good, original content, update it regularly and keep adding to it. Not only does this provide your readers with the incentive to refer your site to others and visit you on a regular basis, but it also attracts the attention of search engine spiders. The spiders will return to your site more often if they notice that you frequently update or add fresh content.

Quality content is also a primer for effective link exchanging. Approach other good quality sites related to your theme and explore the value of a link exchange agreement. Search engines dont just look at the number of links pointing to your site, but also whether those links come from sites containing content which is related to yours.

If you havent submitted your sites to the major search engines, do so by following their submission guidelines. You should also consider submitting your site to the Yahoo Directory and the Open Directory Project, but again, be patient, it can take months to get listed and with both Yahoo and DMOZ, a submission is no guarantee that your site will be accepted.

Questionable SEO strategies will always exist, as will the many people who choose to use them, but a far greater feeling of satisfaction will result, through the use of an ethical approach which leaves your credibility and the reputation of your site intact.

About The Author:

Kerry Walker is the Managing Director of S3 Consulting Ltd.

If you would like to create a Web site for pleasure, or as a foundation for an online affiliate business driven by quality content; follow the step by step guide at Build-a-Web-Site-Guide.com.

The right to reprint this article without prior consent from the author is authorized, provided that the article is used in its entirety, includes the resource box, and that the URL link is live when posted online.

The 7 Points Of Doityourself Seo

Writen by Gordon Goodfellow

Ever felt intimidated at the convoluted, jargon-ridden information about Internet marketing for small businesses available on the Net? Ever been horrified by the huge fees the experts charge, putting search engine optimization beyond your own means? Ever thought: What exactly is search engine optimization anyway, and can I do it myself?

The answer is: Yes, you can! The basics of search engine optimisation in applied web marketing are simple. It's all to do with the keyword content of your text copy, and can be summarised in seven points.

1. Register a good domain name which reflects what your site is about. Even if you are an established business, don't register www.FredJones.com if you make widgets. Rather, you want to register something like www.BestWidgets.com because that would inspire confidence in people looking for quality widgets who would not necessarily have heard of Fred Jones the widget-maker.

2. Name your page URLs based on reasons similar to the above for your web promotion, except now you can be more specific. Search engines like to know what your page is about. Name a page after a product (BigYellowWidgets.htm) or a service or action (Buy-Widgets-by-Post.htm) on one of the sales pages.

3. The text in the title tag is crucial in letting search engines know what each page is about. Put your important keywords in your title tags, using both the singular and plural versions (people will search for both) and make these tags different and specific for each page. For example, "Widgets and After Sales Widget Services". Whatever you do, don't call the home page "Index", but treat it almost as a mini-description.

4. The other tags (at the top of the html page) between the two "HEAD" tags are not as important as the title tag, but the description tag is still used by some search engines in displaying what you would like web users to see when they scroll down a page of search results. Some search engines don't use the description tag at all; others, like Google, sometimes use part of it together with part of the main body text surrounding prominent keywords on your page. So you may as well treat the description tag seriously; make it brief (about 25 to 30 words) and as comprehensive as possible in the short space allowed. Make sure you have your popular keywords included within your description tag. The ALT tag is used for a very short description of an image or graphic file, and is what is displayed if you allow your mouse pointer to hover above a graphic. These days it is not considered important for search engines. The COMMENT tag is never displayed on the body page, and is used by coders and designers as an instruction or reminder to themselves about what that section of html coding should be doing; in the past, some webmasters in their quest for website promotion and search engine ranking used to stuff keywords in the comments tags, but now it is generally acknowledged that the main search engines pay little or no attention to these.

5. Keyword density. Each search engine has its own preference as to how many times a keyword phrase appears on the page in order to signify the relevance of that keyword phrase (in other words, in order to help the search engine understand what the page is about). Around 5 to 8 per cent is a rough guide as to the optimal level. Don't overdo it, otherwise it will be seen as spam or keyword-stuffing. Also use your keywords in the headings tags H1 and H2. There is an H3 tag as well, but it is doubtful whether search engines bother with that, as it is perceived as less prominent on the page, therefore less relevant to what the page is about.

6. Don't forget good linking in your website marketing. Search engines will judge the importance of your web pages to some extent on the number and quality of incoming links from other sites. Ask other webmasters with sites on similar themes to yours for a link, in exchange for a link back. These sites should not be in competition with yours, but should be similarly themed. You may occasionally be asked by other webmasters if they can link to your site. If this is so then have a look at their site; make sure that their site is relevant, that it has at least some Page Rank, and that it just "feels" good, and has no nasty surprises like redirects or unexpected popups. You don't want to be associated with a "bad neighborhood"!

7. Make sure that important keywords are included in the anchor text within inbound links from other sites. This is crucial to search engines when they try to figure out the relevance and importance of your pages. The inbound link from the other site should take the form of something like this (I'm using normal brackets instead of angle brackets so as not to use compromising html): (A HREF="http://www.Yoursite.com")your important keywords included here(/A). You should definitely avoid something like (A HREF="http://www.Yoursite.com")click here(/A), which tells search engines nothing except that your site is about "click here". Be careful!

Gordon Goodfellow is an Internet marketing consultant and practitioner He lives and Works in London, UK, and has helped companies in many industry sectors with clients worldwide. His main site, http://www.applied-web-marketing.com is an introductory resource on Internet marketing for small businesses.

Sunday, December 28, 2008

The Huge Response From Text Links Within Articles Shocked Me

Writen by Christopher Kyalo

I don't quite remember where I first started reading about text links, but I had always ignored them. Those ugly-looking highlighted words buried in the text of something interesting that I was reading online.

I ignored to use them that is, because looking back, I do remember that I always had a tendency to click on them a lot. Sometimes my click through would end up in total disappointment as I landed on some totally irrelevant web page that I had no interest for. But most times I would end up at a highly informative page that would greatly add to the information I was looking at.

When I started using text links for the first time, in my articles in my blogs and in high traffic article sites where I distributed them, I was absolutely overwhelmed by the response I received. It has gotten me really excited and I now have a number of clients that I have introduced this amazing concept to.

Why Are Ugly Text Links Within Articles So Effective?

So why do we click so much at the hyperlink text we come across? Why are they virtually irresistible? The answer is simple. It is the same reason why search engine PPC (pay-per-click) ads have worked so well and are at the center of shifting advertising dollars online at a rate that has many offline advertising mediums very worried. It is the same reason why TV spots did not transfer too well online.

You see it was always assumed that the Internet was an advanced Television medium. Some people still think in these terms. If this were true then TV ads should have made a killing online, instead of causing a record number of bankruptcies. But if you take the Internet to be the most advanced telephone in the world, then suddenly everything makes sense.

Pop up and pop under ads are similar to a situation where you are having a telephone conversation and somebody rudely comes online, interrupting your conversation to ask if you'd like to buy some baked beans. Banner ads are like some advertising jingle playing in the background as you are having your telephone conversation. Probably less annoying but still intrusive.

When you are having a telephone conversation, you tend to be interested only in what is relevant to the current conversation. So even if you are currently in the market for a new car, this is just not the time for somebody to give you that information. The key thing here is relevance.

Text links within articles are even more effective than PPC ads. My tests have clearly shown this. The traffic they attract to sites tends to stay much longer (always remember that relevance is very important here).

Text Links In The Middle Of Relevant Articles Are More Effective Than The Old Classified Ads

In those offline days, nothing helped to prop up more start-ups and small businesses than classified ads in local newspapers. Those tiny small fonts that were best read with a magnifying glass, were super effective in creating valuable sales leads for many small businesses.

The text link is the online answer to classified ads. But it is even more effective. Classified ads were usually stuck at the back of the newspaper. These online classified ads (text links) appear right in the middle of interesting related stories. Information is the main currency online and all you need to do is to ensure that your text links are placed in well written and informative online writer's articles.

Text Links Create Valuable Links For Your Blogs/Sites

Search engines place a lot of weight on links to a site. In fact keywords used in text links to a site are so effective that they will work better than keywords actually used in the content at the site when it comes to ranking a site. So apart from creating immediate traffic, they will also have a huge impact on your search engine positioning. Relevant text links are too effective for you to ignore them any longer.

Christopher Kyalo is a successful online writer and entrepreneur. Find other valuable and effective online marketing tools at his blog; Internet marketing using free articles. He can be reached at strongwallafrica at yahoo.com

Saturday, December 27, 2008

Quality Content Smart Technologies Out Of Google Sandbox In Days

Writen by Nickolay Bokhonok

So many people talk these days about Google and its sandbox. They complain that they have to wait up to 2 months for Google to index their sites and new pages on them.

My personal experience shows that Google sandbox is fading as a myth. Why? Because quality content combined with RRS technology and sitemaps makes your new pages indexed by Google in days. IN DAYS!

That is why if you suffer Google sandbox and its long time to index your site, then most probably you are still in 20 century.

But you can easily catch up with new strategy to get indexed by Google and Yahoo in days.

STEP # 1. Quality and Fresh Content.

The core of my web sites is content. Quality, relevant, daily updated content. That is why on almost all my sites article directory is a must. Articles are great, they have super content, they are automatically arranged into necessary categories of directory and updated regularly.

If you made a safe stream of good, regularly updated content to your site, you can go to step # 2.

STEP #2. RSS Feeds.

This technology is super. It catches all changes about content to special RSS feeds directories. And it helps search engines (Yahoo and MSN) to index all changes about the content and index new content very fast.

So, in my article directory I create special RSS feeds files and these files are updated with any changes of content. New article appeared in my directory, and search engines learn about this new article on my site, and - index it.

STEP #3. Sitemap.

And the last kick to sandbox - Google sitemap and Yahoo sitemap technologies.

Properly made and submitted sitemap is a sure way to get indexed super fast.

With the same article directory I create sitemap file (not me personally, the software does it) and submit it to Google and Yahoo. That's it! Now these search engines are indexing all changes of content on my old article pages and index new article pages.

There is much beyond these three steps, but even they will help you to forget about sandbox routine and months to wait before you see your site and its pages indexed.

PROOF.

I run many sites. Among them Forex educational web site. With my article directory, RSS and sitemaps it gave 700+ pages indexed by Google and 600+ by Yahoo in some weeks.

Getting dozens of pages indexed every day is real. You just have to care about the quality and relevancy of content.

EASY?

Yes, it is very easy. You don't have to manage all these things with content, sitemaps, RSS feeds manually. Today there are ready made solutions that automate all this job. You just install the script on your site, make settings, run it and enjoy. Technologies work, people profit.

Nickolay Bokhonok, inventor and owner of Internet marketing tools. Give a peek to latest content tool from Nickolay.

http://www.autocontentpublisher.com

Friday, December 26, 2008

Forget Conventional Marketing Embrace The Web

Writen by Lee Traupel

Tactical marketing processes are once again undergoing fundamental shifts from traditional to web-based processes. Many traditional marketing firms/agencies are still touting the tried and true to their clients; i.e. Tradeshow attendance, Print, Traditional PR, TV and Radio. However, these conventional marketing processes work best for broad market awareness and/or branding, especially for a Fortune 1K company with significant resources to spend on demographic analysis, test marketing and more test marketing. It's much more difficult for a smaller company (startup to $50M per annum) to leverage the economies of scale that are typically available for a larger company for the media buy and operational efficiencies.

It's obvious that lifestyle and business processes are shifting towards a much greater dependence on digital media - people are traveling less due to cost issues and the ever-increasing speed of business is underscoring the usage of the Internet for information and research. If you're a small to medium sized business the chances are that you've probably cut your marketing budget significantly - by eliminating or scaling back tradeshow attendance, trade magazine advertising and/or direct mail in favor of response driven marketing on the web that can be deployed faster and more cost-effectively than traditional marketing methods.

Capturing leads from a web site generated by opt-in e-mail, newsletter inserts, text link advertising and/or other forms of pay per click marketing is still the absolute best way to generate leads that are quantifiable as soon as they are generated. You have the ability to easily track where the lead came from and via what interactive advertising process; assuming this has been setup for you by your interactive ad agency or with the online publisher. And, there are typically no lead times like more traditional marketing processes – we've created and deployed campaigns (creative, media buy, testing, ROI analysis, etc.) for our clients in 3-5 working days in some cases.

There are some pitfalls to web-based lead generation and follow through that you need to be aware of as you deploy an interactive campaign. Here are five of the most important "gotchas" that you need to think about as you build an interactive lead generation program around your web site:

1. Don't make it difficult for people to contact your company - make sure your web site really communicates with your prospects – by "communicating" I mean by providing telephone contacts, e-mail address and/or a lead capture form that is short. Note: this form has to be supported by a published Privacy Policy ("we won't divulge your info to a third party under any circumstances") and it absolutely must be short; i.e. don't request any more than baseline information, name, phone, e-mail and address, augmented with a comment box.

2. Your marketing objectives have to be supported by your sales team – the sales team has to be incentivized to respond to inbound e-mails and requests for information via a contact form in a timely manner, within 24 hours or sooner. If you have a geographically dispersed sales team then make this clear on the web site by providing specific contact points for states, regions and countries.

3. Make sure you IT person/department attends your marketing planning meetings with your sales team – your web site will need some type of a lead capture setup that redistributes leads based on function and/or geographical responsibility. Your IT staff has to create a database solution that captures, stores and distributes leads – this does not need to be done in-house, products like Act (the market leader in contact management software) are now web-enabled, you can capture leads via a web server and share leads with others via a browser and very inexpensively.

4. We don't advocate popup advertising for most of our client's advertising campaigns. But, we have "crossed over to the other side" and we do (highly) recommend using popups on our clients' web sites to present opportunities that in turn capture leads. Studies have shown effective popup lead captures increase lead generation by 40-85% depending on the market segment. Popups can be set so they only launch on a frequency basis per session (visit to a web site) or a number of times for a specific visitor – they don't have to setup so they are intrusive and annoying.

5. Last but not least (drum roll) – make the customer's usability experience the most important aspect of yourweb site. Create a user interface ("experience") that is pleasant for your visitors; i.e. use standard universal (top of page and local page left) menus, utilize 2-3 sentence paragraphs with lots of white space, don't overload your pages with graphics that slow down load times and make sure your contact points (phone, e-mail) are readily available from every page.

So, to summarize; advertising is shifting from traditional to web-based or interactive if you will – so, to get on board this tsunami build a web site that communicates with your prospects/customers, provide contact points via telephone and e-mail via the site, involve your IT and Sales staff with the lead capture process so they are all stakeholders and utilize popups to accelerate your lead capturing.

He is well known Author writing Articles about Online Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization on http://www.intelective.com

Thursday, December 25, 2008

Yahoo Listing Still Worth It

Writen by Dan Thies

In October 2002, the Yahoo! portal changed the way it delivers search results. In the past, the most prominent results were exclusively culled from websites listed in the Yahoo directory itself. Since October, sites listed in the Yahoo directory no longer enjoy this privileged status.

The Google search engine now drives the primary search results on Yahoo. While this is certainly an improvement for users of Yahoo search, it's a disaster for many businesses that counted on their Yahoo listing to deliver substantial traffic.

This change has also led many site owners to question the value of a listing in the Yahoo directory. In this article, I will outline the pros and cons of maintaining, or paying for, a Yahoo listing. In the process, I will delve into more details of the recent changes.

Argument #1: Yahoo Listings Mean Link Popularity

Pro: Even if the Yahoo listing itself delivers little or no traffic, other search engines will rank your website higher if it's listed in Yahoo. Because Yahoo is so important, a link from Yahoo counts more than a regular link. Thanks to its higher "PageRank," Yahoo means even more to Google.

Con: Yahoo listings do not deliver nearly as significant a contribution in this area as you might think. You can verify this by doing a "backward links" search on Google for any Yahoo-listed website. The most important links are listed first, and the Yahoo listing is rarely even on the first page of links for top ranked sites on Google.

Argument #2: Listed Sites Look Better In The Search Results

Pro: Websites with a Yahoo listing show up in the combined Yahoo/Google results with their title, description, and category from the Yahoo directory. This may boost the response when the site appears in the search results. This applies when the URL listed in the results is the same as the URL in the Yahoo listing.

Con: Results listed with Yahoo information include a link to the site's category, which may prompt surfers to pass over your listing and go to the category. Sites without Yahoo listings have the more inviting "search within this site" link, which leads to more results exclusively from your site.

So, Is A Yahoo Listing Worth It?

If you have a non-commercial site and can get listed for free, of course! If you're not one of the lucky few, though, you have to evaluate whether it's worth $299 a year for what amounts to a better than average incoming link. Everyone must make their own decision. If $299 is small compared to your total marketing budget, it may be easier to just continue paying. My own listing expires in March, and I don't intend to renew it.

How Can You Profit From The Changes At Yahoo?

The obvious answer is that you must take steps to improve your own position in Google's search results. Google's rankings are made up of many factors, but the dominant factor is "PageRank," which is based on the number and quality of incoming links from other websites.

Therefore, the first step in improving your position on the Google search engine (and now Yahoo) is to improve your site's link popularity. This takes time, and trying to take shortcuts can get you into real trouble - Google doesn't like "link farms," or any program designed to artificially boost your link popularity.

Finding Quality Link Partners Through Google

Since only links from quality sites will count for much with Google, let's take a quick look at how you can find these sites. Start by targeting the sites that link to existing top-ranked sites. You can do a backward links search for any site by typing "link:http://www.domain.com" in the Google search engine.

An even faster method is to use the Google toolbar (http://toolbar.google.com/), which requires Internet Explorer 5 or greater, running on Windows. With the toolbar's advanced features enabled, you can conduct a "backward links" search from the "Page Info" menu for any site you visit.

Since Google lists these results in descending order by "PageRank," you can quickly determine the best places to get links by doing backward links searches on the top 10-20 sites for your desired search terms, and seeking links from the top 10-20 places that link to them.

Links Are Not Enough: Optimizing For Google

While "PageRank" is the dominant factor in Google's algorithm, it's not the only factor, and you still need to optimize your web pages. This can be a complicated topic, but the most important factors are:

  • Keywords in the title of the page

  • Keywords in headings on the page (H1 or H2 tags), especially the first heading.

  • Keywords in the body text of the page, particularly the first paragraph.

Don't Complain, Act!

By some estimates, Google now controls 2/3rds of the searches conducted on the Internet in a given day. Not only is Google.com extremely popular in its own right, but Google also controls the search results on popular portals like AOL and Iwon.com - not to mention Yahoo.

A lot of website owners are complaining bitterly about this change. All the more reason for you to take action now, while so many of your competitors are busy licking their wounds. With a little planning and effort, you could be in a dominant position on Google before they even get started.

I wish you success...

About The Author

Dan Thies is the author of "Search Engine Optimization Fast Start," the ultimate beginner's guide to higher search engine rankings - available today at http://www.cannedbooks.com

The Wonders Of Wordtracker Its More Than A Hunt For Keywords

Writen by John Alexander

For me personally, Wordtracker.com is not just a tool for looking up keywords. Sure, that's one good use for it, but what I want to distinguish is another influential and exciting use for Wordtracker as an SEO resource.

"Keywords" for use in your Meta tags are probably the least influential element in search engine optimization these days. However, hunting for keywords still seems the most popular use for Wordtracker. After all, it contains over 336 million queries within its database, which is no older than 60 days. An SEO can spend long periods of time doing research and hunting for keywords. But let's really try and get our minds around the keyword hunting issue for a minute, and I'll explain a few other tips for using Wordtracker.

Identify your target audience's "surfing behavior" Is there any greater discovery than having an understanding of a target audience's "surfing behavior?" It's like a light coming on in your mind. It's like flipping on a switch to an idea generator! Wordtracker will give you absolutely AMAZING detail if you take time to think about it laterally and outside of the context of just a "keyword hunt."

Later in this article, I'll explain how you can use WordTracker to identify your audience's surfing behavior.

Move beyond the "keyword universe" function.

In speaking with many search engine optimizers, I have learned that so many seem to get stuck in the "Keyword Universe" feature. The ability to generate lists of keyword phrases using the built in thesaurus is nice, but you must not get stuck there and let it do all the thinking for you. As you move on to discover other features within Wordtracker, you will also have the opportunity to perform a "comprehensive search" or an "exact search" or utilize the "top 1000" report.

Tips to identify human behavior?

Where you'll find most of your "revelations" or "insights" are in the "comprehensive search" feature of Wordtracker. Try entering one part of a search phrase and letting "comprehensive search" figure out the best "full use" of the phrase. Another technique I like to use is to examine the top reports for a "high performance" keyword or topic related to my client and then cut and paste it into comprehensive search to get streams of currently "hot topics." I define a hot topic as a popular topic in high demand, which may also have lists of related keyword phrases also in high demand.

Let's study a real life example . . .

Now let me give you a recent example of understanding behaviors. I wanted to pull additional traffic into a site selling baby furniture. The site sells strollers, baby furniture, cribs and other baby products. The client explained that they wanted me to find ways to pull in their true audience. Sometimes you'll discover the true audience is not what it first may seem. By true audience....I mean "targeted audience" or the folks most likely to "BUY" or "respond" to the Web site.

If you just think only in "keywords" mode, you may miss this.

Performing a comprehensive search within Wordtracker by typing in the word "baby," Wordtracker returns interesting results. Do you know what I learned? The target audience for baby strollers is NOT people who have babies! You heard correct. The "true audience" for those buying strollers and baby cribs ARE NOT "folks who have NEWBORN BABIES!" Here is the catch....if you are targeting folks with newborns, to sell them a stroller....you're too late! The true audience are people who are "soon to become parents."

Once Mom and Dad know a new family member is on the way, they start buying BEFORE the baby arrives. Better yet...often it's not even the parents who are buying...it's the grandparents. Perhaps you have pages scoring tremendously well for things like babies, strollers, cribs and baby furniture...... but now your client wants even more.

Here's an example strategy:

One behavior of the true target audience which I discovered by using Wordtracker was as follows. As I entered the term "baby" into "comprehensive search," the first thing I noticed was the top phrase "baby names" which had been requested on major search engines over 34,350 times in the last 60 days. It became very obvious when I noticed the incredibly high demands on major search engines for the phrase "baby names," or how about "meanings of baby names."

This was indeed like a light coming on! I thought, imagine this, "soon to be parents" are researching their unborn child's name by using the Internet. What better time to connect with folks than before the baby is born.

Finally, build a strategy based on the identified behavior

Suppose we were to build a little library of themed pages right into your client's site to attract the TARGET audience. They are searching for baby names so it is essential that this is what you MUST give them. Give them lists of baby names to choose from, right? Don't ever trick your audience or they will simply never buy. Give them exactly what they are looking right up front. In this example, you could create pages that offer baby names and meanings of baby names AND subtly offer a few product listings or links to your client's store front. It is essential that you always provide content related to their search first, and then you might offer some links to other appropriate products within your client's site.

Test these unique ways for using Wordtracker yourself, and learn how effective they can be.

Good luck!

About The Author

John Alexander is the Co-Director of Training of Search Engine Workshops with Robin Nobles. Together, they teach 2-day beginner, 3-day advanced, and 5-day all-inclusive "hands on" search engine marketing workshops in locations across the globe. John also teaches online search engine marketing courses through http://www.onlinewebtraining.com, and he's a member of Wordtracker's official question support team.

john@searchengineworkshops.com

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

21 Reasons You May Not Be Listed With The Search Engines

Writen by Craig Dawber

After you have compiled your website and hosted it, your primary concern is that it should be visited by, more and more people. For this, you try various tactics to promote your site. One way of promoting your website is to submit it with various search engines.

At times, you have submitted your website to the search engine, but you find that you are not indexed or in other words, your site is not appearing in the searches. There could be many reasons for it. Let's look at some of these reasons:

1. Allocate adequate time - After submission, indexing a website is a time consuming process. Some people in hurry to be indexed, ignore this time period and start expecting their site to appear in the search results, much before the time lapses. Actually, this index time ranges from one to eight weeks depending on the search engine. Some sites such as AltaVista also charge extra if you want to get your site indexed faster.

2. Use Paid Domains – If you have hosted your site on a free domain, you may come across problems in indexing your site. This is because nowadays the search engines either don't index free sites or index only a limited number of free sites. Therefore, it is always better to host your website on a paid domain with a paid service.

3. Select creditable hosting service: It is very important to host your website with a good hosting service. This is because if at any stage the search engine visits your website and finds that it is not functioning then your website will be simply removed from their database. Therefore, make sure your hosting service is a creditable one, which keeps your website up and running most of the time.

4. Frame-based site - Having a frame-based website can also be a roadblock. In a frame-based site, there are different pages in the same page. As a result, it can happen that your text page is indexed but not the menu page. To solve this problem, you should ideally have a non-frame based website. If not then you can try optimising your frame-based website for a better result.

5. Low Ranking in Searches - It is quite possible that you are indexed on a search engine but you are not aware of it. This could be because your site is getting a very low ranking in the search results. Most people expect that their site to come up in the first few listings. As a result, if their site does not do so then they don't bother to look further and assume that their site is not indexed. Matters are not helped by the fact that most search engines don't inform you after indexing your website.

To get a good ranking in the search results it is important for you to optimise your website according to the search engine guidelines.

6. In-complete Website – Before submitting your website ensure that your site is complete and there are no missing pages. Otherwise, your website may not get indexed.

7. Avoid complicated pages – Sometimes in an effort to have a very dynamic website web developers use complicated scripts such as JavaScript and VB scripts etc. However, the search engines don't always handle these dynamic pages well. As a result, your site could suffer and get a low ranking in search engine results. Therefore, it is advisable to limit the use of such scripts on your site.

8. Link pages from home page - Some search engines follow the policy that they don't show pages which cant be accessed from the home page. To avoid this kind of a problem you can try to limit such pages or submit them separately.

9. Limit page size: Take care that your website pages don't become so heavy that they take a long time to load. In such a case, the search engine spider will not be able to fully index your content. Generally, it is recommended to keep your web pages around 50 k and with images etc. around 70 k. This criterion has been set particularly in view of the users still using the dial-up connection.

10. Link your site externally - Another guideline which some search engines such as Google follow is that they don't index sites which don't have external links with other sites. At times, they even allocate you a time period of around 30 days to get the external links. If you are not successful then your site may get pruned. You can also take the help of a free service to check the popularity of your website links through http://www.linkpopularitycheck.com.

11. Maintain quality: Make sure that you keep a quality control over your website. This is particularly important in cases where you are submitting your website to directory site like Yahoo, Open Directory, Looksmart etc. This is because, at these sites, they have personnel who carefully analyse the submissions, and omit any, which do not have a good quality.

12. Search Engine spider blocks - If your website requires forms, passwords or registration for access then the search engine spiders will not be able to index it. This is also the case with sites having a searchable database. In such a scenario, you can try to submit those web pages on your site which are simple and don't have these complications.

13. Sharing IP - Nowadays another problem that you can face is that sometimes the website hosting services give the same IP to multiple websites. As a result, if any one of these websites, using the same IP is involved in any illegal dispute then the search engine de-bars the IP itself making all the associated sites suffer. Therefore, make sure that you have an independent IP and are not sharing it with anyone.

14. Submitting within limit: Some search engines have limits for accepting submissions, for a particular domain, per day. Therefore, before submitting check that you are within limit prescribed for your domain or your submission will go waste.

15. Limit non-indexable content: It is important that you submit only the kind of content that the search engines can index. For example, search engines cannot index embedded text, content in media files, Java applets or in XML coding.

16. Submit link pages separately: Search engines don't take the trouble to fully index your website. They will simply index, one or two links further than the page that you have submitted. Therefore, if you want some particular pages to be indexed it is advisable to submit them separately.

17. Avoid using spam - It is very important to develop your website with full sincerity. Spam, is very seriously looked down upon by the search engines. Make sure that your site is spam free and you don't use any tactic, which can be considered spam such as, excessive repetition of keywords etc.

18. Avoid redirecting: If your website is redirecting the viewer to another site then at times this can hamper your indexing process. This is because search engines are wary of being tricked by "cloaking" or IP redirection technology. If they find out that this is the case then you can be sure that they will not index your site.

19. Allow for fluctuations in index time: You will not believe it but there have been cases when the search engines, after indexing sites for some time suddenly stop doing so for months on end for no particular reason. They do restart the process after some time but the wait can get quite frustrating for the web developers. You can however, try to find out the real-world situation through http://www.marketposition.com

20. Technical errors: Besides all these, there are also some technical reasons because of which websites don't get indexed. These may include technical bugs and errors that arise from the sheer magnitude of the submissions and re-submissions that people make.

21. Submit limited pages: Most search engines have some kind of limits for the number of pages that they will index for each site. The quantity varies from engine to engine. However, if your website is very popular then the search engines stretch this limit for you.

Keep all these guidelines in mind while you are submitting your website to any search engine and allocate ample time for the indexation process.

This article was written by Craig Dawber of smarket-associates.com Need advice and guidance with your online business check out the resources found in this website.

Internet Home Business Site Linking And Search Engine Strategies Key Rules

Writen by Jeff Casmer

Linking your internet home business' website to other similar sites is important because it helps in getting search engines find and index your website. Linking to different unique site will advance your web site page ranks and link popularity. Link popularity is a key tool used by search engine algorithms to rank and list website URLs.

What is the benefit of being indexed by search engines? If you can be found on the search engines under your keyword searches, and thus will get free traffic send to your site by the search engines. For your internet home business succeed, you will need a lot of traffic.

For you to be indexed by the search engines, and listed high on the list of search engine results displayed to surfers searching for specific keywords, there are certain rules you should follow. Listed below are the key common search engines blunders which you must avoid, and some key steps you must take to ensure success with your internet home business.

· Do not submit your internet home business URL to search engines more than once in one month. If you submit your site to search engines more than one a month, this may be considered as spamming, and you can get your website penalized.

· Do not try to trick search engines. For example, on your internet home business URL, do not repeat keyword phrases next the same keyword phrase in your metatags or page copy. This can be considered as spamming.

· Do not have a home business website with duplicate content. Some internet home businesses that involve affiliate tend to have website with the same content. Have unique content on your website, and you must regularly add fresh content to your website. Having unique, fresh and useful information on your internet home business URL is the best way to get indexed and ranked high by search engines.

· Link your site to high ranking sites that are similar to yours. You can approach owners of similar internet home business sites about having reciprocal links. With reciprocal linking, your get to put their main links on your site and they put your main link on their site. You can do this manually, or if you can afford it, you have purchase a tool that automates this, such as The Link Machine.

· Creating one way links to your site is also very important and potentially more effective than reciprocal links. You can create one-way links to your site by submitting articles that have a link to your website or participate in forums. The more links you have pointing back to your website, the better. These links will be related to your keywords, so that means you will get some traffic that will be good for your internet home business.

· Keep your site simple. Keep your pages on one or two levels of subdirectories. This makes it easy for search engine to reach all levels of your site.

· Be patient! The process of establishing your internet presence, creating links back to your site and links with other similar sites takes time. Search engines do not index your site overnight. There are billions of other web pages that compete with yours. If you consistently follow the recommended strategies above, your efforts will soon start to pay off as you get index by search engines, and get some traffic send to your site, which will boost your internet home business.

Internet home businesses rely on a good and steady flow of traffic for you to make some sales and earn some profits. Follow the strategies outlined above, and your site will soon get indexed by the search engines.

Jeff Casmer is an award winning entrepreneur, keynote speaker, and internet marketing consultant with career sales over $25,000,000. His "Top Ranked" Earn Money at Home Directory gives you all the information you need to start, maintain, and prosper with your very own Internet Home Based Business in the 21st century.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Website Submission What You May Not Know About Search Engine Indexing

Writen by Michael Turner

Getting your website listed in the search engines is relatively easy if you submit it, but even if you don't you can still get your website indexed by the larger search engines by following a few simple tips. The reason for this is the search engines spiders search the web on a daily basis looking for new websites to index, old ones that are no longer valid, and the like. So, if you follow these simple steps, the search engines spiders will pick up your website and index it without you even having to submit it. As a matter of fact, you will generally see your website appear in the search engines faster by simply using other methods to get listed instead of submitting your URL. Follow these suggestions and the spiders will pick up your site when they are out making their rounds.

Tip #1 - Links

Links to your web page on the Internet basically tell the search engines how popular your website is. So, if you have tons of links, your website will be considered very popular and as a result be ranked well with the search engines. The fewer links you have makes your site less popular so if you want the search engines to index your site without submitting it, make sure you have a lot of websites linking to you.

Tip #2 - Keywords

Keywords are another thing the search engines look for and you'll want to include them on your website. The more relevant keywords you have on your website in meta tags, titles, and the beginnings of paragraphs, the quicker your site will get ranked well for your desired search phrases.

Tip #3 - No Frames

If you really want the search engines to pick up your site without you having to submit it, you better be sure you have a website that does not use frames. The reason for this is that websites using frames create problems for the search engines and a lot of times the site is not recognized, not to mention indexed. Avoid frames at all costs because the search engines hate them... there really is no use for them.

Tip #4 - Fully Constructed

You will also need to make sure that your website is fully constructed with no pages still under construction or waiting to be completed. You may not get indexed by the search engines with an "under construction" website because they only want to index complete web sites that are ready for visitors.

Michael Turner reveals his foolproof way to increase website traffic in his free 7 part mini-series. Grab it free right now at http://www.powertraffictactics.com/

Monday, December 22, 2008

How To Make A Title Tag That Search Engines Will Love

Writen by Frank Kilkelly

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

Include keyword phrases in your title tag:

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

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

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

Order these keyword phrases effectively:

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

* ABCDEF Electrical - Hi-Fi Systems
* Hi-Fi Systems - ABCDEF Electrical

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

Make your title enticing to the eye:

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

Which is easier on the eye?

1. XYZ COMPUTER HARDWARE
2. XYZ CoMpUtEr HaRdWaRe
3. XYZ Computer Hardware

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

Try to keep title tags as unique as possible:

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

Common title tags mistakes:

* Do not leave your title tag blank, ever!

* Do not use 'Untitled' or default text in your title tag. If you are using a web page editing application it may place some default text in the title tag. Make sure you always check your title to make sure this doesn't happen.

* Do not write title tags that are not relevant to the content on the page. Search engines compare text in the title tag against actual textual content on your page to rate relevancy. If the two are not related this will decrease your ranking. Also it is annoying to a person who visits your page when the title tag they saw going into your page does not relate to the content on the page. This will ensure that this person leaves your site and maybe never comes back.

* Do not stuff your title tag with repeating keyword phrases. This may be looked upon by search engines as spamming and they may penalise your ranking.

Summary:

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

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.

Sunday, December 21, 2008

How Important Is Pagerank Really

Writen by Bradley James

Webmasters can spend most of their waking hours doing everything they can to raise their Google PageRank. It is common knowledge that PageRank, which is largely based upon the number and quality of backlinks a webpage has, is an important factor in how well a particular webpage ranks within the Google search results. Since webmasters spend so much of their time worrying about PageRank, an important question is: how important is PageRank, really?

Many webmasters will tell you from experience that other factors besides PageRank, such as keyword density and placement, have recently taken a larger role in website ranking. No one will argue that PageRank has become irrelevant, but there is significant evidence to suggest that PageRank is not quite as important of a factor in website ranking as it once was.

To illustrate this point, I utilized a very useful tool you can find at prlookup.com. The tool returns regular Google query results with one interesting addition – they also give the pagerank for every webpage. Thus, you can type in any word or phrase and see the pagerank of those webpages that rank well (or not so well) for that keyword. Looking at the results, you probably notice something almost immediately. Some sites with low PRs do surprisingly well in the results, while some higher PR sites do quite poorly. Some of this difference can be contributed to sheer content – that is, how many times, and in what manner, the keywords you entered actually show up on the webpage. Google takes a close look at keyword usage and density in determining ranking. However, some pages clearly have very close keyword densities, yet in some cases the page with the lower pagerank will somehow still receive a better ranking.

Let us take a more quantitative look at this. Taking 20 of the most popular keywords from rankpulse.com (for this particular day), and entering them in prlookup.com, it is possible to get a better feel for the importance of pagerank. Looking at the first five results only, I wanted to see how many followed in order of highest PR to lowest PR. Surely, out of the results for 20 keywords, a good portion of them will display such an order, right? I have listed the number of webpage results that appeared in correct PageRank order for each keyword (i.e. 5 would indicate that 5 out of 5 results were in order of highest to lowest pagerank). You can see the table with results at Google Advisor.

Although limited by sample size, the results indicated that PageRank is not an overwhelmingly dominant component of website ranking on Google. If it were, the average of correct PageRank order for these keywords really should be somewhere around 4 to 5 (the real average was about 2.15). Thus, other factors including keyword density in webpage content, title, and even the URL, play a significant role in webpage ranking. I want to mention that, while looking over these results, I noticed that about 4-5 of these keywords came up with at least one webpage within the first 10 results (first page on Google) that had absolutely no PageRank at all (PR 0). In addition, a couple keywords came up with results with exactly reverse-order PageRanks – that is, the first result at the lowest PR and the fifth result had the highest (for example, PR8, 7, 6, 6, 5 or something similar).

So what does this all mean for the average webmaster concerned with SEO? The first lesson is that keywords and other non-PageRank factors can be absolutely crucial. They can put a PR6 site above a PR8 site (if you don't believe me just use the tool I mentioned above). Does this mean that website owners should not worry about links? Not at all. It's just that all the time people spend on exchanging and acquiring links for the sole purpose of increasing PageRank may be better spent developing website content and keyword strategies instead.

As far as keywords are concerned, we discovered that having keywords in the website title and URL can help a site rank much more competitively. Good content tends to have the fortunate effect of both increasing your one-way in-bound links (people like to link to sites they find interesting, thoughtful, informative, or helpful), thereby improving your PageRank, while at the same time producing keyword rich webpages good for both human viewers and search engine spiders.

The take home message here is that PageRank is important, but it certainly is not worth obsessing over; there are many other factors involved in website ranking that should be given nearly equal consideration. In addition, simply building a good website is the best thing you can do to attract visitors, even without a great PageRank. PageRank, however, will likely follow – consider it a welcomed byproduct of your hard work.

Bradley James is Webmaster of GoogleAdvisor.org, an informational site providing free information to casual searchers and Webmasters about the Google search engine.

Reciprocal Linking Scams What To Look For And How To Avoid Them

Writen by Brian Osborne

Reciprocal linking scams have increased immensely during the past year. Initially we thought that this problem only related to gambling and casino related websites but an audit of our commercial link partners suggests that it is a serious problem within the broader online community.

Over the past eighteen months, we noticed that our page rank was slowly declining despite the fact that we were continually adding new link partners to our link directory. We had slipped from a five down to a two before we finally identified the exact cause of the problem.

Out of the first 100 links on our anchor site, only seven were still being reciprocated.

We recrawled the sites where no link was found with a second spider and got exactly the same result. Then we started manually checking the sites where no link back was found and started discovering patterns of deliberate link fraud.

The scams in order of popularity amongst the scammers – 1. The link on the home page to the link directory remained but clicking on it or specific directory links produced a template style page with a few casino banners or simply a page with no directory content – This scam was most popular with the owners of multiple domains with the .co.za and .co.uk suffixes

2. The link on the home page to the link directory remained but clicking on gambling or casino related links returned a list of links to sites owned solely by the same person or company. The worst offenders in this group preferred domain extensions of .biz, .us and .md

3. The link directory index page remained but the link directory had been severely pruned and most remaining links were to the site owners other sites or to casinos. This one is common across all suffixes.

4. Links not clickable – links to the directory and various pages within the directory remained intact. At the time of their link exchange campaign, their links were clickable but at some stage after that the code that makes the link clickable was removed and the site name was placed in bold text so at a glance it appeared to be a legitimate clickable link. This scam is most favored by sites that place a miniature screen shot of the index page of your site beside your back link.

5. A variation of the previous scam. When you run your mouse pointer over the page, the 'links' change color but no URL displays in the search bar at the bottom of your browser window. Right click has been disabled on the page so that most people looking at the page cannot see the code. If you use Dreamweaver MX or later, highlight the part of the page you want to look at and then using Control C copy it to the clip board and then use Control V to paste it into the design side of a basic Dreamweaver page. When you click on code you can see what they were attempting to stop you seeing. It may work in the later versions of similar authoring programs. Worst offenders are a poker room and a media company operating out of India.

6. One way link exchanges – usually you are contacted by a search engine optimization company or the SEO person for a large group of websites offering you multiple one way link exchanges with half of their sites if you will link back to the other half of their sites. After a few weeks or months the links to your sites are deleted. The worst offender in this group is a prominent search engine optimization company located in India.

7. Your link starts out on a page with fair page rank usually attached to a domain with high page rank. But after a few weeks is moved to a boon docks page with no page rank that will never be indexed. – common amongst higher PR sites.

8. The link directory is on another domain with no page rank. When you click on the link to the directory on the home page, always watch the bar in the bottom of your browser window and see that the link you clicked is in fact on the domain with which you are exchanging links – watch especially for domain names that are very similar e.g. one letter different in the spelling or a .net instead of a .com and link pages that are hosted on the domain of a link management company. Also watch for redirects. If suspicious go back and click the link again. Often the redirected URL flashes up for only an instant or it just takes an inordinate time for the page to load compared to other pages on the site. If in doubt search for a site map - very popular with some owners of multiple bingo sites.

9. Sub domains of domains with no page rank. Sub domains are supposed to always rank lower than the parent domain. (Of late I have found a few sub domains with up to PR3 attached to a domain with no page rank) If the parent domain has a page rank of zero then link pages attached to that sub domain will almost always be zero so why trade a good link for a dud link?

10. We have never fallen for any in this group but many novice webmasters do so regularly. Beware of high PR sites offering you a link exchange on one of their inconsequential internal pages with the same PR as your index page in return for you placing a graphic link to their index page on your index page. This is a deliberate attempt to steal your hard earned traffic. A variation of this one is they have a number of new sites listed on their index page each month and visitors are encouraged to vote for the site they consider to be the best and you are asked to ask your visitors to vote for your site at the high ranked domain. The purpose is still the same as in the first example in this group.

11. We no longer trade links with sites using Linksmanager unless the link to our site is to be on a hard coded page. You can search in their search box for their link to your site and if they are still linking to you, your URL and site description will be returned but no information to show which page your link is on. Google usually indexes only a few pages in each category of dynamically generated link directories. If your link has not been added to an indexed page, it is unlikely to ever end up on one. When we had a large number of indexed back links, no link manager links were ever returned in a back link querry.

12. Be wary of link exchange requests from webmasters using anonymous e-mail addresses because when they delete your back link they also delete the anonymous e-mail address.

13. Beware of webmasters with PR 5 or above sites offering you a link exchange with a high PR site and an inspection of their link directory suggests that your link will end up on a non indexed page i.e. a useless link that is unlikely to ever improve. If the link exchange was with a PR 2 or 3 site there is at least reasonable potential for the PR of the page to increase if the link directory has been fairly constructed.

Reduce exposure to link scams

To reduce your exposure to such scams it is essential to carefully vet all potential link partners in the first instance. Enter link back partner details in a database. As an absolute minimum, enter their URL, the location of the link back on their site, the page rank of the page on which your link is located, the date of the link exchange and a real e-mail address for the contact person.

Use a good link checking program monthly and contact offenders as soon as you find your link is missing from their site. This is now essential to keep link partners honest. This problem is a direct consequence of the current page rank system and fierce competition for top rankings. It is easier to retain existing link partners than to continually find new ones.

Points to look for when Assessing Potential Link Partners

Before trading links, look carefully at the other site – 1. If there is no link to the link directory on the index page –Reject. You will get no traffic from that site.

2. Look at the structure of their link directory and count the number of clicks from their index page to where their link to you is likely to be located and then deduct that number from the PR of the site's index page. If that page is PR3 and there are three clicks to get to the page on which your link will be located, that page will have a PR0. That link will be worthless unless the site gets a minimum of a PR4.

3. If you have not already done so, download Google's tool bar. If the page rank bar is grayed out, when you are looking at a site, never trade links with that site. The grey bar is said to indicate that the site is banned by Google. I do not know if that is true but I have only ever seen two sites produce grey bars.

4. A growing number of sites with dynamically generated link directories have no page rank on any link pages even though the directories are often constructed in such a way that you would expect the page to rank to be 2 points below the home page. I do not know how most are achieving this. The visible way is to have multiple folders and index pages leading to the links pages and the number of clicks from the home page destroys any potential page rank for the link page. A rare method is to add a no index command for the link directory in their robots.txt file.

Just remember links to such sites are one way links from your site to their site. You give them a good link and they give you a worthless link. A link on a page with a PR0 is a non indexed link and carries no value regardless of the page rank of the index page of the site to which it is attached. When you do a back link check on your domain in Google, you will notice that very few links to your domain that are on Google indexed pages with a PR of less than four are returned in your list of back links. This is why I and others consider that Google now discounts the value of such links.

For indexed pages, count the number of links on the page. The first factor in determining the value of the link is the page rank of the page on which it is located. The second factor is the number of links on the page. The value of the link to you is roughly the page PR divided by the number of links. Of course no one outside of a chosen few at Google knows the actual formula but that is a rough approximation and the reason most webmasters will not trade links with sites with more than 40 links to a page unless the page has a very high PR.

A link on the bottom of a good content page is always better value than a link on a directory page as more people are likely to click on it.

When on the receiving end of a link exchange request, do not hesitate to ask for your link to be placed on a specific page and do not hesitate to reject link requests from sites that do not adhere to basic acceptable linking practices. When considering link requests from new sites, look at any other sites that belong to or have been built by the webmaster proposing the link exchange. Most importantly, look to see if existing link pages have been indexed and the structure of the directory. This will be a good indicator of what to expect for the new site.

When you create your own link directory, consider a hand edited directory with the links at the same level as the rest of the pages on your site. That way your link pages will be only one point below your index page and you will attract more link requests because of that. Many high PR sites will not trade links with you unless you can place their link back on a minimum of a PR4 page. That way you can start shooting for the top once your index page makes a 5 as opposed to a 7 with the way many link directories are set up.

When you are shooting for the top, it helps you get those high pr links you need to make it to the top.

Article by Brian Osborne. Brian is an I.T. professional and the webmaster at http://www.winnersrun.com, a site focusing on gambling strategies that also includes some articles of interest to webmasters.

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Practical Advice For Developing Your Seo Strategy

Writen by Christopher J Enders

Search engine optimization (seo) is a process of manipulating a website for the purpose of achieving desirable search engine rankings through the use of an seo strategy.

Search engine optimization is really the way to go if you can actually craft a strategy that will effectively boost your search engine ranking in search results that are displayed for internet users who are seeking what you have to offer.

The reason that search engine optimization is so important is that the majority of internet users use the search engines when looking for products, services or information on the internet.

Also, if you achieve a good ranking through the process of search engine optimization, it is said to be an "organic" listing in the search engine.

In layman's terms, that means that your website is listed in the search engine results for free and you are not paying for the listing. Thus, organic placement in the search engines is truly free advertising.

Because search engine results are based on keywords and keyword phrases that the internet user uses to find websites they are interested in, the traffic that is generated to a website from the search engines is usually highly-targeted traffic which is extremely beneficial to a website operator because they will receive website visitors from their target market who, in many cases, are ready, willing and able to make purchases from the website or to take other actions that result in revenue generation from the website.

In order to take advantage of these benefits of search engine optimization, an effective seo strategy is necessary.

While there are many things that contribute to an effective seo strategy, it should definitely take into consideration the techniques that are constantly productive in the search engines.

You see, the search engines change their rules about how websites are ranked in the search engine results quite frequently.

However, there are a few techniques that remain constant in producing positive results and these techniques should most definitely be part of every seo strategy.

The techniques include the use of appropriate keywords and keyword phrases that are relative to what the website provides and are popular in terms of their use by your target audience.

The keywords and keyword phrases need to be strategically placed in your website's html and meta tags as well as being included in your website content.

Keyword research can be conducted using tools provides by pay- per-click advertising services such as Google AdWords or Yahoo! Search Marketing, or by using independent keyword research tools like WordTracker.

These tools will enlighten you as to the popularity of certain keywords or keyword phrases as well as letting you know what people are paying for the use of them in the pay-per-click programs.

The tools also make suggestions for alternative keywords and keyword phrases that may be easier for you to optimize.

Another continually effective search engine optimization technique that should be included in an seo strategy is a linking campaign.

The number of links coming into a website from other websites, and the relevance of those websites to your website has an impact on your website's potential for getting listed in the top of the search engine results.

Trading links with websites who offer products, services or information that is related to the content of your website is one way to increase your link popularity and link relevance at the same time.

Another strategy that is effective for increasing link popularity and link relevance is to write expert articles which contain a link to your website and distribute them as free content giving other website owners the right to republish your article.

Copyright Christopher J. Enders. Are you at the end of your rope, fed up and confused by all the scrambled internet marketing advice you're getting? Whether you are new to internet marketing, or a website owner who wants to make more money from your website, learn the proven strategies that will sky-rocket your internet business at http://BiznessTips.com

Friday, December 19, 2008

Been Banned By Yahoo

Writen by Shawn Hickman

It is interesting to watch the varied reactions to the new Yahoo! search. As a spectator I can sit back and take it all in and form my own opinions. I can then apply my ideas to my clients and watch them succeed. One such topic of interest of late is Yahoo!'s policy on spam in the index.

To quote what Yahoo! considers unwanted:

"Some, but not all, examples of the more common types of pages that Yahoo! does not want included:

Pages that harm accuracy, diversity or relevance of search results

Pages dedicated to directing the user to another page

Pages that have substantially the same content as other pages

Sites with numerous, unnecessary virtual hostnames

Pages in great quantity, automatically generated or of little value

Pages using methods to artificially inflate search engine ranking

The use of text that is hidden from the user

Pages that give the search engine different content than what the end-user sees

Excessively cross-linking sites to inflate a site's apparent popularity

Pages built primarily for the search engines

Misuse of competitor names

Multiple sites offering the same content

Pages that use excessive pop-ups, interfering with user navigation

Pages that seem deceptive, fraudulent or provide a poor user experience

Yahoo!'s Site Guidelines are designed to ensure that poor-quality pages do not degrade the user experience in any way."

As you can see, there is a lot of grey area here. While most points are pretty straight forward, some like "Pages in great quantity, automatically generated or of little value" could include dynamically generated database driven pages (like a storefront or e-commerce site) while "Excessively cross-linking sites to inflate a site's apparent popularity" could include sites which use legitimate link building strategies to help their rankings.

So what do you do? How do you know if your site falls into these categories? In other words, how do you determine if your site may be considered spam?

I would suggest taking a critical look at your site. Does it follow the guidelines listed in their help section on pages which Yahoo! does want included in its index? For example, are they original? Built for humans primarily? Contain useful information? These are all questions you need to keep in the back of your mind as you assess your site.

If you have concerns that perhaps you could be violating some of these rules, perhaps you need to look at what is needed to ensure you are in full compliance with Yahoo!'s recommendations. I would strongly suggest you do this review. If you do get removed from the index because of the spam policy it could be very difficult to get re-indexed according to Yahoo!'s own spam police.

So should you convert your dynamic site to static?

The simple answer is no. There is no need to scrap that content management system you've likely spent months and years developing. Perhaps simply adding more useful content to some of the pages is all that is needed. By following Yahoo!'s own rules you should be able to reconstruct some of your pages to ensure they don't get banned.

Does this mean you should quit doing link building or remove your links page?

I don't think you should discontinue link building, but if you are doing reciprocal linking, take a look at the site to which you are linking as well as those sites linking to you. You may need to reassess the quality of your link partners using the same tests you put your own site through.

With regards to your link partners, again, assess them for quality. Are they in related industries? Are they worthy of linking to? That is, do they also follow the Yahoo! guidelines? If not then perhaps you will want to consider temporarily removing their links from your site. You may even go so far as to contact them and suggest they perform their own analysis of their site based on the new Yahoo! rules.

So what if you think you have already been removed for this reason?

There is an email address (webmasterworldfeedback AT yahoo DOT com) to which you can send a request for review. This is only a temporary fix, as they plan on implementing a full review process in the coming months.

Also keep in mind that Yahoo! search is still in its infancy. As time goes on it will get better. Perhaps their filters are over filtering sites which are legitimate, but it should get better with time. They can't anger too many people early on, as they are trying to build a competitive search engine. If they start alienating webmasters or legitimate site owners they risk losing search customers to other engines such as Google or MSN.

Find more articles at http://www.searchengineoptimizationworld.com

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Understanding The Google Dance

Writen by Lawrence Andrews

What's the Google dance? Well, it's really just a fun phrase for when Google updates its index. This occurs regularly, once a month, and can cause a lot of movement in rankings, meaning that it's come to be feared by many in the SEO industry and anticipated by others. The update isn't just one sudden switch, though, as each index update takes several days to complete. During this update the searches seem to 'dance' between the old index and new index – that's the Google dance.

So why does it happen? Well, Google pulls its results from over ten thousand servers, and they can't all be updated at once – Google would have to go down for the update. Instead, each server is updated with the new index, one at a time. This can cause very strange behavior in the page rank process if two major sites located on separate servers happen to have a close linking bond. These sorts of separations are interesting and can contribute to a great deal of change and motion in page ranks. The most important thing to keep in mind is that eventually Google will get you into your proper place. Generally, if you behave, you will not be thrown down for long by the odd activity that can occur when Google is in the process of updating its index for your server (or for the servers of your favorite link partners.

One common misunderstanding is the idea that Google controls which server each kind of information is coming from, and so stores similar information on the same server. Google's index doesn't work this way – it's a big, disorganized mass of information that Google searches very quickly. This is a blessing in disguise because it allows your site to remain reachable via other sites that are related to it when the index is taking place. Your site generally won't suffer for too long when an update is taking place anyway, but if you are heavily dependent on Google results, you will see a slight drop for a short period of time. This drop is often followed by a slight spike especially if your page rank has increased since the last index.

The 10,000 servers that Google uses are distributed between seven datacenters all over the world. Google doesn't keep all of those eggs in one basket – they want to be able to lose one datacenter and have the rest survive. If part of Google goes down, people can still use the search engine and as I said before, this allows your site to be accessed via related sites if the server holding your sites index happens to go down. The datacenters that Google has put into play are enormous in comparison to most datacenters around the world. Google rivals some of the largest datacenters in the world with each of its datacenters and is probably the largest in the world if all were combined into one.

You see, the 'time-to-live' for www.google.com is only five minutes – that means that Google's IP address can change every five minutes. This allows them to switch between their datacenters regularly, spreading the search load between them intelligently and routing around any damage. If you constantly entered the same datacenter with every search that you placed it would almost certainly fry within twenty four hours. Considering the number of users on Google each and every day, it is surprising that ten thousand servers is enough. A server can only handle so much traffic in a day and Google insures that it can hold more than any other service on the internet.

The datacenters updating their indexes at different times causes Google to do its dance. Unless you're looking for your website's ranking, you'd never notice this as your site is normally available at all times. The unfortunate bit is that often times you will lose your page ranking for a short period of time or your site will seem to have a lower number of pages indexed by Google. If you insure that you have several hundred pages available on Google at all times you will most likely be able to provide all of your content at all times either directly or indirectly.

About The Author:

Lawrence Andrews is an ePublisher, software developer, consultant, and author of numerous books. Visit his Private Label Content and Software site at http://www.lmamedia.com for more information about SEO and PRL.

You may use this article freely on your website as long as this resource box is included, a link point back to my site, and this article remains unchanged! Copyright 2005 Lawrence Andrews

Why Articles Are Not The Route To High Search Engine Rankings

Writen by Priya Shah

If you have any interest in getting high search engine rankings for your website (and who doesn't) you've probably been sold the idea that writing and publishing your own articles will do it for you.

Here's why that's not entirely true.

Imagine the following scenario...

You write an article around a keyword or keyphrase you want to rank well for.

You submit that article to all the article submission sites and directories and ezines you can find.

Your article gets published in hundreds of places.

You now have hundreds of links pointing back to your main site...

But your own site never shows up in the top ten results for that particular keyword or keyphrase.

Instead you find that there are lots of other sites carrying your article that rank better than yours.

You've completely missed out on an excellent opportunity to get high rankings for your keyword or keyphrase.

Even worse... you just handed your precious keyword-rich content on a platter to possible competitors who happened to publish your article on their website, and may have lost some of your most targeted visitors and sales to them.

So where did you go wrong?

Your mistake lay in using your precious article - the keyword-rich content you toiled for hours to write - for entirely the wrong purpose.

You failed to use the power of the medium of article publishing to give your site an unbeatable advantage over others.

Here's how to use your articles the right way to boost your search engine rankings.


1. Publish Unique Content On Your Website

When you make an article available for reprint, the article, by virtue of it being published on hundreds of other sites, now no longer qualifies as unique content.

In the eyes of search engines, those pages with higher Pagerank (and hence greater importance) than yours will now rank better than you for the keywords your article is optimized for.

Instead of making your article the main course, use it as an appetizer to direct search engines and readers to a UNIQUE, keyword-rich, well-optimized report or white paper on your website, and you'll see dramatically different results.


2. Use Your Article As Spider Bait

Think of your articles as simply the conduit that leads search engines to your website.

Publishing your articles all over the web is like leaving scraps for a puppy (a.k.a. the search engines) that follows them all the way back to the kennel (a.k.a. your website) where it can feast on the main course - your UNIQUE content.


3. Use Keyword-Rich Anchor Text In Your Resource Box

Use your main keyword or keyphrase in the anchor text of the article resource box that contains a link pointing back to your unique content.

This will create hundreds of keyword-rich links pointing back to the well-optimized report on your website, and give your pages a powerful edge over other websites.

Often this factor alone is sufficient to take your website to the top of the search results, especially with search engines like Google and MSN.

The guidelines above include few of the steps you need to take to get high rankings for the keywords of your choice.

 

Copyright 2004 Priya Shah

Priya Shah is author of the search engine optimization ebook, Number One In Your Niche, that shows how to use your articles and content to get long-term, top ten rankings for your website.