Search Engine Optimization Seo Boost Your Website Traffic

Writen by Rory Canyons

Search engines bring more than 80 percent of the traffic for small to medium websites. This tells exactly how important it is for small and medium websites to optimize their web structure and pages for search engines. Optimization of your website for search engine includes many aspects: website content, keywords, URL, meta-tag, back links, etc. Let's explain it one by one.

Select the right keywords. You can pay a visit to your competitors' websites (only those with top-ranked search engine placements). Through analyzing their web contents and meta tags, you can easily find out the keywords they are using. Overture keywords selection tool can also provide you valuable information. Open your favorite browser, enter http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/, type in the search box your keywords or phrases and see how many times they were searched last month. Select those with high search frequency. Google also has a similar keyword selection tool at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordSandbox. You can have a try of both of them and balance the search results.

Target your web site content at selected keywords. After finalizing the keywords, you can now build up your web pages with them. But, be careful, don't overuse any keywords on your web pages. Overuse of keywords may make search engine spiders think you are spamming and get your website banned. How can I judge overuse or not? Go to http://www.gorank.com/seotools/ to have a check of your keywords density, make sure it is within a reasonable range.

Make search engine friendly URLs. Although some of the search engines can follow all dynamic URLs, like http://www.scriptmenu.com/detail.php?id=25257, some of them still prefer static URLs ended with html, htm, etc. To make search engine friendly URLs, you can create real static pages, but you don't have to. The web server URL rewrite engine can make this job much easier by reinterpreting the URLs before getting actual pages. If you need more help or tips on how to implement URL rewrite model, follow the link http://www.scriptmenu.com/detail_24379.html and get a tutorial.

Get quality backward links to your page. Although keywords optimization of your web pages can improve significantly your search engine placement, it is still far from sufficient to get your pages top ranked. You have to get some quality backward links to your websites. You need at least 35 quality back links to make google going to your web site and take a look at you. You can get these quality links by submitting your site to high-ranked web site directories or by writing some quality articles and then submitting them to the high-ranked online article archives. Many other ways exist, but remember, only backward links from quality web sites count. Websites poorly indexed or with very low search engine ranking have no value to you.

Keep on improving your website. By keyword optimization, URL optimization and quality backward URLs, your website should have gotten remarkable search engine placement. However, the placement is not static, you competitors are optimizing their websites and trying to kick you out of your current position. To maintain a good search engine ranking, you have to keep on improving your website. Keep on optimizing your website navigation, content and structure. Keep on getting more quality links from top-rated sites…. The battle for top search engine positions will never end. Good luck, :-)

Rory Canyons is the founder of ScriptMenu.com. For more information, visit http://www.scriptmenu.com

Keywords Or Bust

Writen by Addie Scott

If you have already built a website, you know the importance of your keywords. If you are in the process of building a site, you have probably heard a lot about them. If you haven't, you will. Keywords can make or break your website.

In essence you will find that you may, in fact, build everything around these keywords. They will lead you where you want to go. Choose the wrong keywords and rather then rising to the top, you will be left in the dust. It is a time to choose wisely.

If you can take a step back and put on your creative cap, you should be able to come up with some unusual and profitable keywords. The idea is to come up with words that will sum up the purpose of your page; words that are unique enough that others aren't using them in the combination that you choose. With that in mind, it is also a good idea to come up with groups of keywords, or phrases if you will, rather than single words. Single words prove to be much more competitive and much more expensive.

There are tools out there that will help you with the process of choosing your keywords. These tools can tell you what words are popular; which words and phrases people are actually searching for. These tools can also suggest alternatives. By researching what keywords or phrases are searched for and how many results these keywords produce, you can help determine the success of your game plan.

I would definitely suggest dedicating significant time to this process. I can't express strongly enough how important this research is. A lack of time here can result in a tremendous amount of work later on. Many a webmaster/webmistress have tried to rearrange the wording on their site to work around their keywords, when it should be the other way around. When this happens, you end up with wording that is clunky and unattractive. If you choose your keywords wisely, they will be your foundation. You can, then, build from the ground up, rather than doing demolition work later on.

Take your time, use the tools available to you and build a successful website - a site which will bring in traffic, attract backlinks and that the search engines will love. You can, ultimately, have a finished product that will work for you and consequently result in a tremendous amount of traffic. Be good to your website and your website will be good to you.

It is a learning experience that will only make you stronger and wiser. Good luck!

For an ABSOLUTELY AWESOME and FREE SEO eBook, go to: http://www.flirtdirt.com/ebooks.htm

Addie Scott is also the author and illustrator of a soon to be published children's book and is working on a how-to internet business ebook. You can visit her website at: http://www.flirtdirt.com

Six Reasons Why Your Alexa Rating Is Still Important

Writen by Tinu Abayomi-Paul

1. Additional Exposure For Your Site.

At the end of 2003, Alexa.com's results were being closely linked into the listings of its' parent company, Amazon.com. This currently means that when someone reviews your site, it is linked to their amazon profile, which can be accessed when people browsing for books look to see what reviewers like them suggest. In the future, it could mean that amazon.com will integrate your web site in other ways, such as showing a list of websites related to popular topics such as marketing.

2. Alexa's relationship with Google.com

See if you can name one major partnership that Google.com or Amazon.com has had where the other party came out worse off in the end.

Yahoo? I don't think so. Though their relationship has soured for reasons that aren't common knowledge, and Google.com does not supply Yahoo with search results any longer, it certainly didn't make Yahoo.com less popular a destination online. If anything, more webmaster like you and me, who could not afford the $200 fee for a commercial review to be listed, rush to Yahoo to see if our Google listings really were coming up number one there, too. Can't think of any other one, can you?

Let's discuss how this is relevant to you.

This little known advantage to having a good Alexa rating is fairly new. I was doing some research on Google, at the end of last year, to see what was the fastest, cheapest way to get my brand new site good ranking and fast inclusion in Google's database. Using Alexa.com, I was able to discover one of the biggest secrets online that showed me how to get a visit from the Googlebot spider and included in their index in under a week. The Googlebot spider now visits the home page of my site every day, re=spidering my site when I make significant changes.

While I was at Alexa, I noticed that very quietly, without a lot of hoopla or publicity, Alexa Internet began to include a Google search right in their toolbar at the end of last year. Upon further investigation, I realized that Alexa and Google were getting quite chummy. This relationship directly led to the idea I had which uncovered a way to get Alexa and Google to help me get free, unlimited traffic for any keyword related to my site's topic.

The idea was so simple, so cheap, and so profitable that I started to write a book about it, which I finished this past January. Everything was great, I was getting great traffic. Then I woke up one morning and checked my email, and most of my online colleagues were ticked off about something called the Florida update, which caused many small commercial websites to have their listings drop in ranking or disappear altogether.

Of course, I went to check on my site.

Not only did my ranking not drop, I had additional listings and improved exposure. One of the several factors that appeared to be the reason for my improved rankings, not just in spite of, but because of the Florida update, was my Alexa ranking. Further testing on other commercial sites of fellow small business owners confirmed this.

This experience taught me to pay a lot more attention to my Alexa rating, as well as to have a new appreciation for the ratings of all my sites.

Your Alexa rating is still relevant to you because it appears to be a factor in your page rank at Google. Generally, anything that is important to Google is important to me, because I wanted to learn how to make the site an excellent source of traffic for me. And it worked.

Working to have a rise in my Alexa rating helped me in my quest for free quality traffic as well- every increase in my Alexa rating has coincided with a rise in both the number of keywords I rank for and the likelihood that my site will appear on the first page of search results, first at Google, then with other search engines.

You'd never know that I haven't ever submitted them my link.

3.Your competitor's awareness is increasing.

Those of us who have been online since the early 90's, before the graphical interface we now call the World Wide Web, are well aware of the Alexa toolbar, and there are many schools of thought as to its effectiveness as an indicator of your site's traffic.

Whether you believe it's effective or useful, the fact remains that you can use the Alexa toolbar and the resources at Alexa.com to give your site a competitive advantage. Your competition knows this if they have any marketing savvy at all.

While not as compelling as the fact that Google is now tied to Alexa, it's no small issue that other webmasters are beginning to show interest in Alexa.com again. Now that Alexa is being positioned to have a closer integration with Amazon, has improved their toolbar to include a free pop-up blocker and Google search results, as well as given webmasters incentive to install the Alexa toolbar, many site owners either offer the toolbar or display their Alexa ranking proudly on their sites.

So, no matter what your personal feelings about the Alexa toolbar are, it may be a good idea to gain the advantages it offers, before your rivals do.

4. Client awareness is rising

Even if you're not a commercial website, and don't really compete with other sites for anything other than traffic, you still have to deal with the fact that your visitors are becoming more aware of the Alexa toolbar again. Alexa allows you to customize a version of their toolbar and allow you to offer it as a free download from your site. Not only can you profit from their amazon.com purchases, but when regular visitors return to your site with the toolbar installed, it can help maintain your ranking.

The way things are going, the situation of having clients checking your Alexa reviews and ratings before they buy from you to one day be routine. Do you want to be ahead of that possible trend, or wait, and push it when everyone else finally catches on?

5. Alexa's Perceived Importance

The whole reason for this article is that in answer to the last article I wrote about Alexa, I got a lot of feedback questioning whether Alexa Internet and its toolbar were still important to webmasters. So far, at minimum, for the last two reasons I stated, the Perception of Alexa being an important webmaster tool is increasing.

So even if you don't think it is important, if your visitors feel it is, then it may be time for you to at least pay attention to the recent changes.

6. Alexa's Actual Importance

As Alexa's perceived importance is growing, it's actual importance seems to be moving at the same rate. Here's why.

It would be one thing if all the hoopla about Alexa took place and everyone installed or re-installed the toolbar, and everyone found out that both the site and the toolbar were useless. Remember when auto-surf exchanges first became popular? Everyone jumped on the bandwagon for about a month, then several articles came out about six weeks later, stating that they were ineffectual because real humans weren't viewing the sites anymore.

Look around the Net for about an hour and see if you can find any new negative press about Alexa from webmasters since November. All I've seen are the same questions there were before- is my Alexa rating important, and why? Are Alexa's traffic stats accurate?

And I still have the same answers. Your Alexa rating is important to you if you have a commercial website because it is important to Google and to your competition. And whether your site is commercial or not, it is becoming important to your visitors, which is why your site exists- to cater to them, you should make your site's relationship with Alexa.com a priority.

As to Alexa's statistical accuracy, I can't say for sure. It's a much debated topic. But it's pretty much indisputable that getting into the top 100,000 sites is a significant achievement, though perhaps not as difficult as some think. And having a top 50,000 site is not something that can really be cheated or faked. So perhaps it is not perfectly exact as a comparison of your site to another unrelated site.

But it is the closest thing to a universal, impartial 3rd party measure of traffic we have. And more importantly, it can give your clients yet another reason to trust you enough to buy from your site. Testimonials in the form of reviews on their site, as well as fast access to your contact information from outside your site can mean the difference between a browser and a buyer.

If you haven't had the chance to download the Alexa toolbar, you can get it from http://www.freetrafficdirectory.com/alexatoolbar - or you can get the Alexa Snapshot from www.alexa.com if you have Netscape or if you're not on a PC. It's a free resource, and all you have to lose- or gain- is more free traffic.

About The Author

Tinu is a free traffic FANATIC. She has been offered treatment for this condition but says it just saves her too much money! For more free traffic secrets, subscribe to the Free Traffic Secrets Ezine by sending any blank email to ftdsecrets-subscribe@topica.com - bonuses for subscribers include free access to a resource that gets you free advertising for life in 9 minutes a day. Or, get Tinu's free Google optimization guide at http://www.freetrafficdirectory.com

Seo Trade Secrets 8 Great Tools For Search Engine Optimization

Writen by Glenn Murray

About 80% of website traffic comes through search engines. And research shows, if you're not on the first 2 pages, most people won't find you.

This article isn't about how to achieve a high ranking. That topic has been done to death over the past few months. We all know the basics now… Submit your site to the major search engines, scatter a generous helping of the right keyword phrases throughout your site in real sentences, then get a lot of other relevant sites link to your site. That's it.

This article is about what tools to use to make your job easier.

1) Choosing Keyword Phrases (costs approx USD$7.50 per day)

To decide what keyword phrases to use, subscribe to http://www.wordtracker.com for a day and do some analysis. Simply enter a keyword and WordTracker tells you how often people have searched for that keyword in the last month or two, how many competitor sites are using that keyword, and how many searches it expects in the next 24hrs.

2) Measuring Keyword Density (FREE)

To measure the density of the keyword phrases on your page, go to http://www.gorank.com/analyze.php and type in the domain and keyword phrase you want to analyse. It'll give you a percentage for all the important parts of your page, including copy, title, meta keywords, meta description, etc. The higher the density the better.

3) Check How Search-Engine-Friendly Your Site Is (FREE)

Search engines send out spiders (or robots) to investigate your site. These tools allow you to see your site from the spider's point of view. - http://optimiser.123promotion.co.uk - enter your URL and a keyword phrase and it gives you a great summary of the things you could improve. - http://www.1-hit.com/all-in-one/tool.search-engine-viewer.htm - enter your URL and it gives you a summary of the things you could improve. - http://www.gritechnologies.com/tools/spider.go? - Poodle tells you how many links the spider will see and investigate.

4) Check How Many of Your Pages are Indexed (FREE)

Go to just about any search engine and type "site:www.yourdomain.com". The search engine will then tell you how many of your pages it has indexed.

5) Monitor Your Position in Google (FREE)

No need to waste time clicking through hundreds of Google search results looking for your site. This tool allows you to enter a keyword and a domain name, and it searches Google to see where your domain is positioned. Go to http://www.cleverstat.com/google-monitor-query.htm to download the setup file. Then just install.

6) See How Important Sites Are (FREE)

The Google Toolbar is an indispensable tool. One of the things it can tell you is the "importance" of every site you visit (in Google's eyes at least). You've probably heard a bit about PageRank or PR. PR is Google's measure of the importance of a site. Basically, the higher your PR, the higher your ranking. This tool gives you a snapshot of the PR of every site you visit. Go to http://toolbar.google.com. TIP: It's good to get links from other sites with high PR – especially if they contain the same keywords as your site. WARNING: Apparently the Google Toolbar monitors your internet usage. As yet, it's unclear what it uses this information for.

7) Monitor What Sites are Linking to Yours (FREE)

Google News Alerts (http://www.google.com/newsalerts?hl=en) and Google Web Alerts (http://www.google.com/webalerts) will tell you who's linking to your site. Simply set up an alert to be notified when Google finds www.yourdomain.com.

8) Getting Help (FREE)

If you're new to SEO, the first thing you should do is check out Google's guide to SEO at http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html. If you already know the basics, there are a number of forums you can subscribe to to post questions. These forums are free, and they're frequented by countless SEO experts. And when I say "experts", I mean EXPERTS! Some of these people do SEO all day, every day. And like many technical experts, they're only too happy to help – for free. The best forum seems to be http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3, but http://searchengineforums.com/Forum28 is ok too. If all else fails, you can try sending Google an email. Go to http://www.google.com.au/contact/index.html, but don't hold out much hope of help here. They'll eventually answer, but there's no guarantee on the quality of their response…

This is just a snapshot of the tools available out there, but these will certainly get you started.

Some additional resources: • http://www.123promotion.co.uk/promotion/tools/website-promotion-tools.html - Various Web Promotion Tools

Enjoy!

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

Benefits Of Article Submissions

Writen by Andre Bias

People with websites are always looking for a great way to build links to their website. They do that because they no that link popularity is a very important part of where a website ranks on search engines. To increase link popularity people usually get link exchanges, submit their website to free directories, and buy link space on other websites. Those are all great ways to build links but one of the best way is by submitting articles to articles directories. Submitting articles to article directories are great because you are allowed to place your signature at the end of each article. That will give you a one way link back to your website. One way links are a lot more beneficial than link exchanges.

Writing articles does not have to be hard. Most recommend writing articles on subjects that relate to you website. If you have a difficult time writing about that then just write about anything you are familiar with whether it be sports, television, or just life in general. The best thing is that you can get multiple one way links to your website from one article because others get articles from article submission directories and post them on their site. That gives you a link from the article directory and from the other sites that have posted your article. Next time you are optimizing a website make sure to include article submissions in your plan. Submitting one or two articles per day to a few different directories can do a lot in a short time.

Andre Bias is the owner of the websites http://www.enlargementdeals.com, http://www.goodbyeacne.net, and http://www.inkjetdealz.com