PR 6 Links for $10

PR 6 Links for $10? Yes! With 3 lines of relative anchor text. Give your website a boost! Quality Inbound links are the single most important factor in performing well within the top search engines. Now you can can get a powerful PR 6, one way, seo friendly link to your website for only $10.
( Normaly $60 per month! ) PR6 Links available here:
http://houstoncharitycenter.org/auction-houston.html

Link popularity is an off-site process of promoting website rankings. It is assessed by the number and quality of external incoming links to your site. External incoming links are links on other sites that point to yours.

Search engines consider link popularity important because they see links from other sites to yours as a kind of recommendation or guarantee of the worth or valueof your site.

Link popularity arose as a ranking factor because so many people used spamming techniques to position their site higher in the rankings. Engines started to use link popularity as a means of dampening that impact. Assigning a link popularity value to a website based on number of incoming quality links pointing to it was deemed an effective way to determine whether a site had useful content or not because if other people think it does, then surely it must.

Page Rank

The above text mentions that link popularity involves both the number and the quality of inbound links to your site. The term PageRank refers to the quantification of these factors. PageRank or PR is a measure of how important a page is. Note that I said ‘page’, not ‘site’. A page has PR, not a site. The quality of a link has great influence on PageRank. A quality link is a link coming into your site from a site that itself has a good page rank (PR4 or above). In other words, if a popular site links to your site it really helps your popularity.

PageRank is the “second” part of a two part search engine algorithm. Part one pertains to ‘on the page’ ranking criteria like the title tag, the metatags, keyword position on the page and so on (standard optimization variables). The second factor involves link popularity meaning 1) the number of relevant inbound links from other sites, 2) where the links come from (i.e. high PageRank pages) and 3) that the Anchor Tag Text contains your keywords (more on this below). Simply put, if all else is equal or near equal, then the page determined to have the best Page Rank will rank higher.

How Link Popularity is Built

One-Way Links

One-way links are just what it says. You get a link without having to give a link back. One-way links count a lot more than swapping links. They appear to be a truer endorsement of your site, an endorsement that says your site must really be good because there was no quid pro quo (i.e. no reciprocation).

About the Author:
Learn more about Leland B. Smith at: PR 6 Links for $10? Yes!
Article Source: ArticleWarehouse

Creating a Positive SEO Experience

The Negative Perception of SEO

You hear a lot about the negative perception that many in the business world have of SEO. I think a lot of this is inevitable for any new industry just emerging. For years SEO has been relatively easy to jump into and "expert" SEO firms were known to appear overnight, only to disappear months later. I often cringe when reading forums where somebody with a online name of "SEOprophet" (I pulled this name out of my hat, I apologize if it's yours!) asks a basic SEO question that not only has been asked and answered many times over the past few years but is completely irrelevant to the optimization process today.

Many of these SEOs found ways to get businesses to lay down their money only to prove that they could not meet the expectations they portrayed they would. Expectations are a two way street and its important for any SEO to lay them out clearly and early so the client doesn't think she'll be getting something she won't. In most cases, the high/impossible expectations come from the SEO themselves as they try to sell their service on the unsuspecting business owner. Promises are made which the SEO knows they can't keep, but closing the sale is more important than full disclosure.

Fly-by-night SEO “gurus” are not the only reason that many businesses have soured on SEO. There seem to be a few big companies that do pretty much the same thing. These companies stay in business by employing a host of telemarketers who sign dozens of unsuspecting clients daily. Sometimes these firms do their job well, but just as often clients are found to have fallen through the cracks of the machinery. These firms have so many clients that none get the individual attention they deserve.

Balancing the SEO Expectations

We often find ourselves signing up clients that have come to us from other SEO consultants or firms who didn't serve them well, or as well as they had hoped. One of the things I'm most amazed about is that the clients often don't even know what their SEO is doing for them. They get periodic ranking reports, maybe the SEO asks them to make a change or two here and there, but by and large, the client has no idea how much (or how little) effort is being put into their website for optimization.

SEO is often hard to quantify and the amount of hours spent on any one client can fluctuate wildly from month to month depending on circumstances. I think those that perform SEO but initiate very little contact with their clients do so simply because they don't want the client to know exactly how much time is spent from one month to the next. If an SEO puts in 100 hours one month for a client, the client may expect to receive 100 hours of work EVERY month. This goes back to the whole idea of communicating expectations up front.

A lot of work that is performed for clients stems from hours of research and the continuous education that is necessary to keep up with the search engine and their technologies. Even if the SEO is not an algorithm chaser, it's their job to stay educated. These hours cannot be considered as "billable" time as one would pay a lawyer performing research that pertains to a particular case. A large portion of research hours performed by SEOs is hours spent on forums, blogs, studying search patents, testing, etc., and cannot be attributed to any one particular client. This is why the SEOs time working on an account is so much more valuable, and why the good SEOs charge a lot for their services.

Creating a Positive SEO Experience

When it comes to communicating with clients, we have found that the more you do, the better. Not only will the SEO have a better relationship with the client, but the client will have a more positive experience overall. Communication causes the unachievable expectations to be put down, while the client becomes more aware of the total process and can therefore better appreciate the work that is being performed on their account.

Our client management/communication/reporting system is built in such a way that allows us to be inconsistent communication with our clients about the progress and status of their campaign. It's not just a matter of providing monthly reports, but offering a transparent system of communication that keeps the client "in the loop" as to who is working on their account and what in particular they are doing.

We don't have to be overly specific in a way that creates more unwarranted expectations, but we do make sure the client is aware when each team member works on their account and they are kept updated of ongoing progress. On average, our clients get two to three email updates each week. If I work on their account, I document this and the client is emailed this documentation. Whenever any team member works on their account the same thing happens.

Even clients that are performing strongly still get their updates because we continue to work on their account regularly. We don't believe that a strong performing account should rest so we are constantly analyzing, linking, adding and tweaking. We have found that this matters just as much to the clients that are performing strongly as much as it matters to those that may not be performing as well as we would like at any given period of time. Clients performing well need justification to keep paying us just as much clients who may feel that their campaign has not progressed as they expected. In both cases, this constant communication let's them know we are on the job, and problems or not, we're working diligently to overcome any barriers to continued long-term success.

Inevitably, there will come a time, even if temporarily, when a client questions the value of the services being performed. Whether it's the thought processes of, "I'm doing well so I don't need you anymore," or "Why aren't we number one and Google, MSN and Yahoo this week for our ultra-competitive phrase," effective communication helps establish a relationship that can smooth over any bumps in the road. Not only will the SEO be more likely to keep the client for the long-term but if client does leave, they won't necessarily be soured on the whole SEO industry.

About The Author:
Read this article and more at the E-Marketing Performance Blog. Stoney deGeyter is president of Pole Position Marketing, a search optimization marketing firm providing SEO and website marketing services since 1998. Stoney is also a part-time instructor at Truckee Meadows Community College, as well as a moderator in the Small Business Ideas Forum. He is the author of his E-Marketing Performance eBook. (eza)
Article Submitted On: October 24, 2006
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/

Benefits of Good SEO

Good SEO can make or break your business or professionals website. Not only do you need people to visit your page, but you also want to establish your presence on the Internet so that you can stand out from the competitors that you have and the new businesses that wish to take your place.

More visitors that really want to look at your website

The object of SEO is to place your business in the rankings with other similar businesses. However, the modern Internet user doesn't like to spend as much time looking for things that they want – they want to find whatever they are looking for immediately. This means that you need to be one of the first search engine results when your potential customer goes to search for your product or service.

But you also need to bring in the right customers to your website, not just someone who is slightly interested in your product. With the correct SEO, you can narrow the visitors that come to your site and maximize your ROI – return on investment. Because you want each of your visitors do take advantage of what you have to offer, but if they're not the right customers, you are wasting their time and your money. However, sometimes it takes more than just knowing what the search engines are looking for.

Readable and interesting website

While you could just fill up your website with keywords and hide other keywords so that you shoot up to the top of search engine results pages, are you really offering the customer that comes to your site something worth their time? You don't have to rely on tricks when you work with someone who understands SEO. You can have quality articles and information on your website that educates your visitors and makes the case for your product. A customer will be able to tell when you've just tried to fill up your website with useless information.

Better reputation on the Internet

Along the same lines, you need to establish yourself as a legitimate business when you're on the Internet. When you provide good content on your website as well as use SEO in a way that helps guide the right customers to your website, you will begin to create a reputable image for yourself. This reputation will lead to referrals from other websites as well as other customers. While this is an electronic medium, there's nothing wrong with a little word of mouth advertising for a well-done website.

In the end, all of these benefits of SEO will lead to increased profits and a more successful business. When you bring more customers in that are actually interested in your site, educate them and showcase your intelligence about your business and product, as well as establish yourself as a business that truly wants to be of service to their customers, you can't help but succeed in whatever you do. Good SEO isn't just about being ranked highest on a search engine page; it's about being ranked highest in the minds of your customers.

About the Author:
This article was written by Sytsma Morris-Reeves. Mr.Morris-Reeves is a highly respected Denver SEO Expert since 10 years, and he constantly develops and stays current with all the latest SEO and Link Building Techniques.
Added: 19 Oct 2006
Article Source: http://articles.simplysearch4it.com/article/39825.html

The World of Duplicate Content - Use of a Filter

The World Wide Web is like a running race or marathon where websites compete to reach the finish line first. In this case the finish line is higher ranking. And in this race for supremacy it is important to avoid duplicate content and its penalties.

To facilitate the efficient functioning of directories search engines have been armed with content filters. This removes or filters duplicate content from pages it's indexing. And the most hurtful penalty is lower rankings.

Unfortunately, these filters not only catch rogues but web pages that are genuine too. What webmasters need to do is understand how filters function and know what action is to be taken to avoid being filtered out.

When a search engine sends out spiders the filters leave out or sieve:

Websites that feature identical content. And when within a site the webmaster includes many copies or versions of pages to cheat the search engines. Filters are also extremely sensitive to "doorway" pages.

Content masked by different packaging. Known as "scraped content" this duplication of pages with little or no relevant changes falls prey to filters.

Product descriptions featured by e-commerce sites. Most e-commerce sites publish alongside a product the manufacturer's description of the product and this content then appears on zillions of e-commerce sites falling victim to filters.

Articles distributed widely over the net. While some engines are programmed to find the origin of the article there are others who may not be able to source the origins.

Pages that are not duplicates but contain the same core material written by different people.

To get the better of filters you need to:

Use a tool like the Similar Page Checker http://www.webconfs.com/similar-page-checker.php to ensure that the pages in your site are not mirroring content from elsewhere. In case there are other URLS with similar or identical content the tool will reveal them to you and you will be able to make changes in your pages.

Be vigilant and know who has "helped" themselves to your content. By using www.copyscape.com you can determine which websites have stolen or copied your work.

Even if you do use distributed content you can add a commentary or make changes to the page focusing on its relevance to your site. By making any content your own you are making it unique and different and this will ensure that the pages are not filtered by search engines.

Even if you are running an e-commerce site you must include product descriptions that are distinctively yours and not run of the mill.

Lean as much as you can about duplicate content and its dangers. Read the issues that were discussed at the SES 2006 New York Session and other forums. Remember most search engines, Google, Yahoo, or Open Directory Project do not want to be flooded by duplicate content and web pages.

Jake Baillie, President of TrueLocal listed the duplicate content mistakes to be: circular navigation; printer friendly pages; inconsistent linking; product only pages; transparent serving domains; and bad cloaking.

It is important for sites to get high ranking through fair and not foul means

About the Author:
Antony Zimmer owner at My First Dating and Promo Tips sites with much of interesting and useful information.
Content Provider: http://www.my-articles.com

10 Things To Expect From Your SEO Copywriter

From the perspective of a business owner, webmaster, or marketing manager, the change exhibited by the Internet is profoundly exciting, yet profoundly disturbing. The information (and misinformation and disinformation) it offers, the business benefits it promises, and the rules it is governed by change at such a rapid rate that it’s almost impossible to keep up.

These changes have led to a growing appreciation of the value of quality web copy. This appreciation has, in turn, led to an influx of opportunistic ‘copywriters’ promoting themselves as website copywriters or SEO copywriters. Don’t get me wrong, there are quite a few excellent SEO copywriters out there, and you should definitely shop around. The purpose of this article isn’t to scare you; it’s to help you find the SEO copywriter who’ll deliver honest service and excellent results.

So with that in mind, take a look at the following ten tips. These are the things you have a right to expect from anyone wearing a name badge that reads “website copywriter”, “SEO copywriter”, “internet copywriter”, or “web copywriter”… (See also http://www.divinewrite.com/websitecopywriter.htm and http://www.divinewrite.com/makethemost.htm.)

1) An understanding of SEO

Obviously, your SEO copywriter must have a solid understanding of the essentials of Search Engine Optimization. They must know that ranking is essentially the result of a website’s relevance (i.e. keywords) and importance (i.e. inbound links). There are a whole lot of other factors involved, but if your SEO copywriter doesn’t understand these two basics, you should look elsewhere. If you’d like to ensure your SEO copywriter knows a little more than just the basics, take a look at http://www.divinewrite.com/SEOCEO.htm, http://www.divinewrite.com/seocopy.htm, http://www.divinewrite.com/seotradesecrets.htm, http://www.divinewrite.com/webcopyenough.htm, and http://www.divinewrite.com/seoarticles.htm for some clues as to what you might like to ask in order to assess their knowledge.

2) Proven experience

The proof is, as they say, in the pudding. It’s not enough that your SEO copywriter can talk the talk; they must also be able to walk the walk. Ask to see some examples of websites for which they’ve obtained some good rankings. Note that it may be very difficult to find an SEO copywriter who has actually worked on both keywords and link generation, so if you find one who has, and they write well, snap ‘em up! They’ll have a very broad and useful working knowledge of search engines.

3) An understanding of how many keywords to use

You don’t want to fill every page up with every keyword you’re targeting. This simply dilutes your site’s relevance and reduces readability. Ask your SEO copywriter how many keywords they would recommend targeting on each page. Hopefully they’ll suggest no more than 3, preferably 2. By targeting 2 keyword phrases per page, you can use them a lot without impacting readability.

4) Clear agreement on who will provide keywords

Someone needs to perform a keyword analysis in order to figure out what words you should be trying to rank highly for. Your SEO copywriter should be able to do this for you, but it’s quite often more cost-effective if someone a little closer to the business does it. Either way, make sure your agreement with your SEO copywriter makes it very clear who is performing this task. Don’t assume the SEO copywriter is going to do it, because they may assume you’re going to do it, and then you’ll blow your budget.

5) Keywords or keyword phrases

Expect your SEO copywriter to offer some advice regarding how specific you should be with your keywords. In most industries, the competition for keywords is so fierce that you’ll be forced to target very specific keywords in order to rank – at least at the outset. For instance, if you’re in IT, you probably wouldn’t start out by targeting the keyword “IT”. The competition is immense (at the time of writing, there were approx 3,240,000,000 results for this search in Google.com) and the IT giants already dominate the search engines for this keyword. Instead, try using a more specific keyword phrase like “IT infrastructure consulting new york” (at the time of writing, there were only around 4,000,000 results for this search in Google.com). The other benefit to targeting more specific keyword phrases is that you’ll generate more relevant leads.

6) Agree on word count per page

Always make sure your SEO copywriter gives you an indication of the number of words they expect to write per web page. While it’s necessary to have a decent body of words on most of your web pages, you certainly shouldn’t have too many. What “too many” is all depends on your industry, the objective of the page, and the needs of your audience. It’s always a delicate balance, but it’s certainly possible to rank highly with only 100-200 words per page. So don’t be fooled into paying for copy you don’t need!

7) Density targets & measure

SEO of a web page is NOT guess-work. A good SEO copywriter will talk about density measures. This is a measure of the number of time the keyword phrase appears on the page. It’s expressed as a percentage of the total word count of the page. So if your page has 200 words, and your keyword phrase appears 10 times, its density is 5%. As a rule of thumb, your SEO copywriter should be aiming for a density of approximately 5% for your primary keyword phrase and 3-5% for your secondary keyword phrase. If your density measures are much higher than this, readability will be reduced, and you’ll risk being perceived as spam by the search engines. Make sure your SEO copywriter understands keyword density, is prepared to state the target density for each keyword phrase, and is also happy to be measured by that standard (should you decide to measure).

8) Where to place keywords

The question of keyword placement has been the subject of much debate amongst SEO copywriters. While it is still unclear how much impact placement has, there is a general consensus that it has SOME impact. Be sure that your copywriter is aware of this impact. Popular opinion has it that keywords are more effective if they appear in headings, bolded text, links, and generally toward the beginning of the page.

9) Some comment on structure & links

Websites are generally better indexed by search engines if their spiders can traverse the entire site using text links. This means your SEO copywriter should be linking each page to every other page using text links. If your site is complex, this may be impractical, so your SEO copywriter will need to create a hierarchical structure for your site. First, they should break your subject material down into categories. Then for each category, they should write a summary page. These summary pages should be accessible from higher level pages via text links. They should also be accessible from each other. Each summary page should link – using text links – to a number of pages discussing the finer details of the category. And each detail page in a particular category should link to every other detail page in that category (once again, using text links). This way the spiders are able to travel from the top of your hierarchy to the bottom, and from left to right across any level.

10) Don’t believe grand promises

SEO copywriters can play a significant role in increasing your search engine ranking. But they can’t do it overnight. By optimizing your site for your target keyword phrases, an SEO copywriter is simply declaring the relevance of your site. If you engage an SEO copywriter to write helpful articles containing a byline with a link back to your site, you can then submit these articles for publication on the Internet, and this will steadily increase your ranking. But if an SEO copywriter tells you they can dramatically increase your ranking in a matter of hours or days, be wary. NOTE: Your SEO copywriter should be able to submit your articles to various submit sites on the Internet. These sites are closely watched by hundreds of thousands of publishers of e-newsletters and article pages from all around the world. High quality articles are quickly snapped up and published prolifically. And each time your article is published, you’ve got another link back to your site, thus increasing the importance of your site (to the search engines). If you’d like to submit your own articles, your SEO copywriter should be able to sell you a list of 50 or more submit sites for as little as USD$99.

Conclusion

An SEO copywriter is a valuable addition to your marketing function. But you need to make sure you choose wisely. When you know what questions to ask, the battle is half won.

Happy hunting!

About the Author:
* 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 http://www.DivineWrite.com or http://www.ArticlePR.com for further details.
Article Source: www.iSnare.com

Kick Start Your Sales With Organic Seo Services

Millions of dollars are spent annually by companies whose online marketing strategy includes reaching out to attract new customers via e-mail shots, rich media advertising, pay-per-click and even old-fashioned banner advertising. But there is another class of marketer who is spending significantly less by focusing on letting their prospects reach out to them instead.

These are the companies that understand the secret of how business is really being conducted on the web these days, and that secret is: Search Engines.

Recent studies show that 85% of Internet users depend upon search engines to help them locate web sites selling the products or services that they are looking for. Companies who have built their web pages using search engine optimization best practices are finding that search engine-driven visitors are more likely to convert to paying customers than any other type of prospect.

Yes, search engine optimization is a hot topic these days, but not every online marketing agency understands how it works. There are far too many supposed "SEO Experts" who think that they can fool Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL and other big search engines into giving their clients the coveted "Top 10" ranking by using what Google calls "Black Arts". While doing search optimization wrong might result in a temporary pop in rank, most sites get banned from the search engines altogether once they get caught.

That's why businesses need to rely upon experts that practice what is called natural search engine optimization services. The term "natural" refers to a process where each web page is legally optimized to the particular search engine that the online marketing agency is targeting.

One of the best ways to optimize a page is to include content containing key words that are relevant to the products or services being offered.

For example, if the goal is get a top rating for an Arizona SEO Company that offers natural search engine optimization services, they might craft some content that read like this:

Our Arizona SEO Company offers natural search engine optimization services to businesses Arizona and around the world! Click the SEO Services link to find out why we're the #1 Phoenix Optimization Firm and the #1 Scottsdale Marketing Company according to a new survey conducted among e-tailers who were seeking an Arizona SEO Company!

It takes more than just good key words to get the job done, but copy like the example above is a great place to start.

About the Author:
Optimizex
Natural Search Engine Optimization Services
Submitted: 2006-10-23
Article Source: GoArticles

SEO With Google Sitemaps

What is a Google Sitemap?

A Google Sitemap is a very simple XML document that lists all the pages in your website, but the Google Sitemaps program is actually much more important than that. In fact, the Sitemaps program provides a little peek inside Google’s mind – and it can tell you a lot about what Google thinks of your website!

Why Should You Use Google Sitemaps?

Until Google Sitemaps was released in the summer of 2005, optimizing a site for Google was a guessing game at best. A website’s page might be deleted from the index, and the Webmaster had no idea why. Alternatively, a site’s content could be scanned, but because of the peculiarities of the algorithm, the only pages that would rank well might be the "About Us" page, or the company’s press releases.

As webmasters we were at the whim of Googlebot, the seemingly arbitrary algorithmic kingmaker that could make or break a website overnight through shifts in search engine positioning. There was no way to communicate with Google about a website – either to understand what was wrong with it, or to tell Google when something had been updated.

That all changed about a year ago when Google released Sitemaps, but the program really became useful in February of 2006 when Google updated it with a couple new tools.

So, what exactly is the Google Sitemaps program, and how can you use it to improve the position of your website? Well, there are essentially two reasons to use Google Sitemaps:

1. Sitemaps provide you with a way to tell Google valuable information about your website

2. You can use Sitemaps to learn what Google thinks about your website

What You Can Tell Google About Your Site

Believe it or not, Google is concerned about making sure webmasters have a way of communicating information that is important about their sites. Although Googlebot does a pretty decent job of finding and cataloging web pages, it has very little ability to rate the relative importance of one page versus another. After all, many important pages on the Internet are not properly "optimized", and many of the people who couldn’t care less about spending their time on linking campaigns create some of the best content.

Therefore, Google gives you the ability to tell them on a scale of 0.0 to 1.0 how important a given page is relative to all the others. Using this system, you might tell Google that your home page is a 1.0, each of your product sections is a 0.8, and each of your individual product pages is a 0.5. Pages like your company’s address and contact information might only rate a 0.2.

You can also tell Google how often your pages are updated and the date that each page was last modified. For example your home page might be updated every day, while a particular product page might only be updated on an annual basis.

What Google Can Tell You About Your Site

Having the ability to tell Google all this information is important, but you don’t even need to create a sitemap file in order to enjoy some of the perks of having a Google Sitemaps account.

That's because even without a Sitemap file, you can still learn about any errors that Googlebot has found on your website. As you probably know, your site doesn't have to be "broken" for a robot to have trouble crawling it's pages. Google Sitemaps will tell you about pages it was unable to crawl and links it was unable to follow. Therefore, you can see where these problems are and fix them before your pages get deleted from the index.

You can also get information on the types of searches people are using to find your website. Of course, most website analytics tools will give this information to you anyway, but if the tool you use doesn’t have this feature, then it’s always nice to get it for free from Google.

But the best part of the Sitemaps program is the Page analysis section that was added in February of 2006. This page gives you two lists of words. The first list contains the words that Googlebot associates with your website based on content on your site. The second list contains words that Googlebot has found linking to your site!

Unfortunately, Google limits the number of words in each list to 20. As a consequence, the inbound links column is partly wasted by words such as "http", "www", and "com" – terms that apply equally to all websites (hey Google, how about suppressing those terms from the report?). That said, this list does provide you with a way to judge the effectiveness of your offsite optimization efforts.

When you compare these two lists, you can get an understanding of what Google thinks your website is about. If the words on your Site Content column are not really what you want Googlebot to think about your site, then you know you need to tweak your website’s copy to make it more focused on your core competency.

If, on the other hand your inbound links don’t contain any keywords that you want to rank well for, then perhaps you should focus your efforts in that direction.

Above all else, you really want these two lists to agree. You want your inbound linked words to match up to the site content words. This means that Google has a clear understanding of the focus of your website.

Additional Benefits of the Sitemaps Program

Google has even started notifying Sitemaps-participating Webmasters if they are breaking any of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. This can be very valuable information if your site suddenly becomes de-listed on Google and you don’t know why.

Only Sitemaps participants can get this information, and it is only provided at Google’s discretion. In fact, Google will NOT notify you if you are creating worthless websites that offer no original content, or if you are creating thousands of doorway pages that are redirecting to other web sites. Google doesn’t want to give the sp@ammers any clues as to how to improve their techniques.

How Do You Get Started with Google Site Maps?

The first thing you must do is obtain a Google Account. If you already have a Gmail, Adsense, or Adwords account, then you are all set. If not, you can register an account by visiting the Google Accounts page (https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount).

Building your sitemap file is pretty easy to do if you are familiar with XML, and if you aren’t you can always use a third-party tool such as the ones that are listed on Google’s website (http://code.google.com/sm_thirdparty.html). Google also has a "Sitemap Generator" that you can download and install on your server, but unless you are fairly adept at managing Python scripts, you should probably stick to the third-party tools.

At any rate, once you have your Google Account and your Sitemap file built, the rest is very easy. All you have to do is:

1. Log into your account (http://google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/siteoverview)

2. Type your website’s URL into the "Add Site" box and click on "OK"

3. Click on the Manage Sites link for the website you are adding, and add your sitemap file to your account.

Google Sitemaps – An Excellent SEO Tool

Google Sitemaps help Googlebot quickly find new content on your website. They allow you to tell Google what’s important, what’s new, and what changes often. The tools provided to webmasters through the program can play a vital role in helping you understand how the search engines (especially Google) view your website.

Using this information you can dramatically improve the position of your website and quickly clear up any issues Google finds. You can also use the tools provided by Google to gauge the effectiveness of your off-site optimization efforts so you can better focus your time and energy on activities that bring you the most success.

About The Author:
Matthew Coers is an Internet marketing expert. His website, ProfitChoice.com contains online courses designed to teach entrepreneurs how to build a website and make money online. Download his FREE Internet Marketing report, 7 Days to Website Success.
Article Source: http://www.articles411.com

SEO-What Am I Doing Wrong?

When I first put my website up I anxiously waited with high anticipation for the traffic to arrive. And let me say, I waited, and waited -- and got excited when I saw some clicks, before realizing they were my own. Then my patience turned to frustration. I had to find a way to get traffic to my site--for my own clicks were definitely counterproductive.

As with most newbies, I did not have a lot of money to work with, so I was looking for a free option to get my website moving. That's when I came across this thing called Search Engine Optimization. It was free, required a lot of work, but the rewards would be long term. At least that was what I read.

So, what am I doing wrong with SEO?

First, most people tend to want to shy away from Search Engine Optimization. Why? It's seems complicated, they're not quite sure where to begin or they feel the results are too long-term and not immediate (usually). Well, all I can say is, take a deep breath, step through your fear and tackle the monster of SEO, or your online business will suffer.

The first mistake many webmasters make, I included, is to assume that you only need to optimize your home page. Not true, you should optimize for traffic on all your web pages. If you have in the beginning, say, 20+ pages, do you want people to just hit your home page or all 20+ pages? I bet you're saying all 20+ pages. If not, you should be. You must make your website accessible to your target market, thus, open the entry points where you want them to enter.

Second mistake, many webmasters do not fully understand the importance of keywords in their meta tags. Thus, SEO begins first with optimizing your meta tags with your keywords or keyword phases.

Meta Tag Title -- your keywords should be in the meta tag title. Well, let's see, what did I have -- my index web page had the welcome title that I used on the web page.
Well, this could be a good thing if it has your keywords in it -- but if it doesn't you're losing the search engines and traffic. Translated, what title you have on your web page for visitors to view, doesn't necessarily have to be the title in your Meta Tag Title.

Meta Tag Description -- your keywords should be included in the description as well. It's almost like writing a concise ad to draw the search engines and traffic. If you go to Google and type in one of your keywords, you may very well see the meta description drawing people to your site. It depends on what the search engines find to be relevant.

Meta Tag Keywords -- some say that the search engines ignore the keywords, while others believe they are giving the competition an unfair advantage. I personally use the meta tag keywords, both as a personal reference and for any of the search engines that may still use the keyword meta tags.

Alt tags -- not all search engines utilize the alt tags, but some still do. So, don't ignore the images, where you can put a keyword in an alt tag. It's rather simple, just put alt="keyword here" within the image.

Content -- you should have keywords within your content. For me, emphasis should be audience first, then keywords. So write your content first, then try to incorporate your keywords.

Things To Avoid

To keep you in good standing with the search engines you should avoid some of the following:

1. Blackhat tactics -- No hidden keywords. Which means, having keywords that are the same color as your background and are not visible to the human eye.

2. Keyword stuffing -- Stuffing your keywords into your copy. You can tell rather easily by the fact that the content does not flow smoothly and may have little or no learning value to the reader.

This is a good starting point, and if you're new to SEO it will keep you busy for a while. So, create the mindset of "getting it done" with long-term goals and you should begin to see traffic coming your way for years to come.

To Your Success.

About the Author:
Vickie J Scanlon She has been working on the Internet as an affiliate marketer and an avid researcher -- learning and sharing information on all the facets of Internet Marketing.
Visit her site My Affiliate Place at: http://www.myaffiliateplace.biz
Added: 21 Oct 2006
Article Source: http://articles.simplysearch4it.com/article/40045.html

Getting Indexed in Google – Quick and Easy

Google is the dominant search engine on the net, controlling more traffic than Yahoo and MSN combined. This means you need to get your entire site into Google as fast as possible.

Getting Indexed in Google – Quick and Easy

Millions upon millions of dollars have been made by sites getting ranked highly in Google. Of course, these sites are optimized to get the rankings. While optimization is critical, it is also vital that you get all the pages of your site indexed in Google.

The good news is it is fairly easy to get Google to suck up the pages of your site. There are a couple of different ways, but you need to do one thing before worrying about getting indexed.

Site maps are rarely clicked on by most visitors to a site, but they are critical nonetheless. A site map isn’t vital because it helps a visitor get around the site. It is vital because it helps the search engine indexing robots find all the pages on the site. In this case, you want to create a site map for your site to make sure the “Googlebot” finds all the pages you have labored to put up. Google actually has an xml site maps tool, but I prefer to actually make sitemaps since I want Yahoo and MSN to index the site as well.

Once you have a site map, the easiest way to get the attention of Google is to create a free blog. Go to Blogger.com and open a free account. Just follow the three or four simple steps and you will be ready to go. Once the account is open, create your first blog entry. Type anything you want, but make sure to include a link to your home page and your site map in the entry. Hit the enter button and you are on your way. Why? Google owns blogger.com, so it regularly canvases the blogs and links. Within a week or two, your site should start appearing in Google.

A second way to get indexed in Google is to write an article. Create one on a subject relevant to your site. Make it about 400 words long or about a page in length. Open an account with an article directory. The account should be assigned immediately after opening the account. Login and go to your member profile. Add the domain to your site in the appropriate box and save it. Then submit your article. Make sure to include an author byline where indicated and include a link to your site. The Google indexing robot will crawl the site at least once a week, find your links and follow them to your site. Within a few weeks, you should see your site indexed in Google.

You can also add your domain directly to Google, but this is really a waste of your time. So many people do it on a daily basis that it may take three months for Google to get to your site.

You can use any of the above techniques to get the attention of the Google indexing bot. Regardless of how you do it, keep in mind it will take a few weeks for your site to appear. There are millions of sites on the web, so the robot has a lot of ground to cover.

About the Author:
Halstatt Pires is with MarketingTitan.com - providing internet marketing services. Visit us to read more internet marketing articles.
Article Source: http://www.articles2k.com

Blogging as an SEO Tool

Search engine optimization is a very detailed process that requires you to take advantage of every available opportunity to increase your web site traffic ranking and drive visitors to your web site. Many of the common search engine optimization methods include keyword-rich content development, link exchanges, and other technical methods that can help make your site more accessible to the search engines. One method that is now being used for SEO is relatively new but very popular in terms of generating traffic and getting exposure for your business. This SEO method is blogging.

Blogging Defined

Blog is the shortened form of “web log.” Blogs can be personal or professional and have a variety of features that make them excellent SEO tools for many businesses. In addition to having posts that can promote your business, blogs are also the perfect place for links to your web site and gathering feedback from customers. If you’d like to use a blog to market your business and improve your SEO efforts, there are several aspects of blogging that can be helpful.

Blog Content

Just like your web content, blog posts can be optimized using keywords that you choose and analyze using keyword research tools. Once you have selected appropriate keywords, you can use them in each blog post that you make on your web site. Since blog posts are usually conversational in tone, you might have to work a little harder to incorporate the keywords naturally within the text of each post. If you can manage to do that, you’ll have an effective SEO component that can help drive traffic to your web site.

Links

Blogs are a great way to have many links to your web site. If you have a blog that is directly on your site, you will have many links that you can use to boost your search engine placement. If your blog is hosted off-site, you will have a perfect opportunity for placing one-way links to your site in each post that you make. While link exchanges can be beneficial, one-way links carry more weight in terms of search engine rankings. You can also use your keywords within your blog links for added impact on your SEO results.

User Interaction

One of the greatest things about using blogs as a marketing and SEO tool is that they allow for interaction with users. Visitors can often leave comments and ask questions that allow you to keep them coming back to your site for answers. If a visitor finds a particularly interesting post on your blog, he or she may link to your site from theirs, increasing your link popularity and contributing to your SEO efforts. Allowing users to interact with you is a great way to promote your business and it also lets you make adjustments to your web site and business policies when users let you know their opinions.

Professional SEO

The SEO Team is a professional SEO firm focused on getting you results. Please visit our web site to find out how we can help you with SEO consulting and SEO web site design.

About The Author:
Bryan Garcia and his team of Internet marketing experts have been delivering TOP search engine results by using their unique formula of search engine optimization, Web site development, professional copywriting, and conversion consulting for a combined total of 20 years. Visit http://www.theseoteam.com to learn how your site can get to the top of the rankings.
Article Submitted On: October 18, 2006
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/

Top Four Key Issues - You Need To Consider When Choosing Keywords For Your Domain

I have spent the last three weeks working with one of my new clients. They have been building their own website for over three years, spent $20,000 and have virtually no traffic. Like many people on the internet, they saw an opportunity to license some material from another company and did so in the promise they would make money. Yet to their distress they have never ranked well online and have never had high levels of traffic.

This particular client has spent thousands of dollars on building email lists using Adwords to assist in driving traffic their way. They are fast running out of money and becoming very distressed. The client has spent lots of money paying other people to get search engine traffic but has never achieved a good ranking and in some search engines did not even register an existence.

Two weeks ago we worked out what keywords would suit the licensed products that the client had purchased, built a website based on the sales pages the licensor had provided and using the right keywords this client has now achieved the most outstanding results.

The client achieved within 1 week of the site being live a #1 ranking in Yahoo.com on a keyword. A number one ranking is predicted to bring about 50 hits a day. The website also achieved a number 2 ranking in Google.com on a keyword which is predicted to bring about 150 hits a day. The reason our client achieved these outstanding results was simply because of the process we followed in choosing the right and appropriate keywords for the domain and key webpages. I should note that whilst the client will only pull about 200 hits a day on this one key world, we expect to make 3 to 5 sales a day for a $300 product. If you look at the numbers from the best case scenarios, the sales will pull $1,500 a day US which works out to about $10,500 a week and about $500,000 a year. Not bad for one single keyword.

There are four key issues you need to consider when trying to choose the right keywords for your domain name.

Issue #1 – Identify The Actual Words Your Customers are Using To Search For Your Products

One of the biggest mistakes many people make is to not do the research to identify the actual keywords your customers are actually searching on. In fact I have found that often what a client thinks their customers are using to search for their products is totally different to what their clients actually search on.

There are many tools on the market to help you do this and there are new ones coming out every week. My team and I use a range of tools like WordTracker and Overture to develop lists of keywords our clients customers are actually searching on. I find that Wordtracker is a fantastic tool for this.

When you are trying to use Wordtracker, I recommend that you start your searches with just a single general word about your product. This will give you a full list of all the words and a range of important information.

Issue #2 – Identify the Right Keywords with Minimal Competition

When you work with Wordtracker the system will give you a range of information about your keywords including the number of competing sites by search engine, the total number of hits per day in total to expect and a prediction of the number of hits per day by search engine. There are two issues you need to consider. One is the number of competitive sites for the keywords and the second is the number of hits you can expect.

The number of competitive sites is the most important issue to look. Keywords that have few competitive sites are much better to go after than those keywords that have lots of competitive sites as it can take a while to rank well. For example, my team and I have been going after a general term which currently has about 900,000 competing sites. The downside is that it takes a lot of work, lots of articles and a lot of time to achieve a number one ranking. In particular it has taken us 4 and half months to rank in the top twenty and we expect it to take another 2 months to get into the top five.

I know of one company that wanted to rank well for the keywords "wholesale hats" and that it took them 6 solid months of writing articles and building back links to be ranked well in the number one position. When you are starting out, you will want to make sure that you choose low competition websites. Now here is the interesting issue, just because a keyword has 1 million competing webpages does not mean that its going to be hard to rank well. What you need to do is to identify how many backlinks the top competitors has for the keywords. If the top competitor's webpages have only a few links to their page or even their site then you may find it very easy to top those webpages.

One of the aspects to consider when choosing your keywords is to make sure that your general keywords are in fact included in the domain name. For example if you were creating a website on Asthma, then in your domain name, you would want to include the keyword Asthma but it is unlikely you would get Asthma.com. However you would want to include the term asthma as the search engines give a better ranking to those that have the keywords in the domain, simply due to relevance.

Remember one key issue, the more relevant your keywords and domain, the more likely your website will rank highly.

Issue #3 – Identify Keywords with Good Daily Hits

The next issue you need to look at is the number of daily hits you can expect using those keywords. If the only keywords you can get with low competition webpages have 10 to 30 hits per day, then it is going to be a long haul.

The best type of keywords are those where you have a couple of hundred hits per day, preferably a thousand plus a day and only a few competing webpages. One of the sites we did for one of my clients had 350 daily hits per day but only had 104 competing webpages. This number of competing webpages is minute and it will not take a huge amount to get a top ranking position.

Issue #4 – See What Your Competitors Are Doing With Your Keywords

The next issue you need to look at is which keywords your competitors are using. When you are trying to work out your domain name you need to weigh up what your competitors are using to secure your customers, what keywords they are using in the keywords section of their meta data and what keywords they are using in their webpages and the text in their hyperlinks and their domains.

With all of this information you need to then balance out which keywords will give you the best results. Knowing what keywords your customers are searching on, which keywords have the least competition, what keywords your competitors are using and the total number of hits per day on your keywords will help you choose the right domain.

Oh and there is one other issue in all of this that you need to consider, is the domain with the keywords you have chosen still available?

Look the bottom line is that you want to build sites that are relevant and bring value to your customers and also to the search engines. If your websites do not do that then you will never be truly successful. All of the most successful websites in the world actually follow this credo.

About the Author:
Chris Le Roy
If you are looking for more information on Marketing an Online Business or if you are looking for quality material to help you with copywriting - Free Example of Sales Letters or you just want more info visit Your Online Marketing Business Opportunity
Content Provider: http://www.my-articles.com

SEO Trade Secrets - 8 Great Tools For Search Engine Optimization

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:http://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 http://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!

About the Author:
* 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 http://www.DivineWrite.com or http://www.ArticlePR.com for further details.
Article Source: www.iSnare.com

Benefits Of A SEO Sitemap Generator

Sitemap generator programs can be downloaded from various sources on the Internet. Sitemap generator programs have two fundamental purposes. Sitemap generator programs help surfers navigate a site effectively. At the same time, a sitemap generator program encourages search engine spiders. Google offers one of the most popular sitemap generator programs ever to hit the Internet.

The sitemap generator of google makes it possible for a website to get listed and get updated by the google search engine. Setting up the sitemap generator helps speed up the addition of the web pages of a site to the google listing. The sitemap generator also makes it easier for a site to get noticed by online surfers. In addition, any changes made to a website that has a sitemap generator is immediately picked up by google. The sitemap generator also helps keep online information fresh and up-to-date for users.

Visibility is key to sitemap generator

Visibility is a major concern when using a sitemap generator. A website that is completely indexed has better chances of getting top search engine placement in page results. Many of the popular browsers used by searchers and that support java recognize sitemap generator programs. These include firefox and Internet explorer.

An online consumer that searches for a specific content on the web can immediately be directed to any one of the web pages of a particular site. The sitemap generator makes it easier for a search engine to provide accurate results from web pages they are familiar with.

Who can benefit from a sitemap generator?

A sitemap generator is highly recommended for websites that often do repeated modification of their web pages. A sitemap generator can be used for websites of any size, regardless of the number of web pages a site may contain.

Although using a sitemap generator is not a guarantee of increased site rankings, it does however provide a website a better opportunity of getting listed on a search engine.

Working with a sitemap generator

Most of the available sitemap generator programs available on the web make use of extensible markup language or XML. Similar to hypertext markup language or HTML, XML is used widely in blogs and syndicated feeds on the Internet. Each line of a XML code for a sitemap generator has a specific purpose.

The location or identifies the name of the web page of a website. The line indicates when the web page was last modified. The format for can either be dd.mm.yyyy, dd.mm.yyyy hh:mm, dd/mm/yyyy or dd/mm/yyyy hh:mm. Shortcuts can also be used to simply the assignment of dates to the cell.

advises the search engine of a specific time frame when the web page is regularly updated. This can either be done on an hourly, daily, weekly, monthly or yearly basis. For web pages that are not updated, the value 'never' is used. indicates the level of priority that a search engine should give a particular web page of a website. These levels range from 0.0 for least priority to 1.0 for high priority.

Creating a dynamic sitemap generator

Creating a dynamic sitemap generator is useful for websites containing various web pages. The google search engine makes it easy for users to adapt their google sitemap with the help of a python script.

The python script generates a sitemap using sitemap protocol. This creates a sitemap from either access logs, URL lists or from web server directories.

Tips for using a sitemap generator from google

As one of more popular search engines offering a sitemap generator for websites on the Internet, google offers a few tips for its loyal users. Using the google sitemap url encoder/decoder is helpful for submitting sitemaps to google. For websites that have numerous web pages, creating a sitemap can be a tremendous task. For this situation it is best to click on the column title in order to make it easier for a URL list to get sorted.

The google sitemap generator allows users to save their settings after creating a sitemap. Users can use these saved settings as a guideline for succeeding sitemap generator updates. The sitemap generator also recognizes the use of robots.txt files.

Using a sitemap generator is a positive move in getting top ranking on the Internet's top search engines as well as high visibility among online users.

About the Author:
Mr. Christian Kameir is the CEO of San Diego's Web Agency Colizer Inc. His Blog about Search Engine Technolgy can be found at www.kameir.com.
Submitted: 2006-10-22
Article Source: GoArticles

Title Tags That Search Engines (and your customers) Will Love

In my previous Title Tag article, I introduced the title tag and told you what it is and why it's so important. Now let's discuss how to write a tag that Search Engines (and your customers) will love.

There are two competing forces pulling for your title tag's attention. First, the search engines use your title tag to help determine where in their engine your website fits. Second, your customers will see and use your title tag to help them determine if your site has what they're looking for and to remind them what your site is about when they see it in their bookmark list. A good title tag takes care of both.

First things first. You need to find some good keywords for your site. I'll write more about keywords later but for now just pick the top word that you can think of for your industry. What do people search for when they want what you've got? A very quick example would be a mortgage broker. Obviously, "mortgages" would be a great keyword. But, that's a very competitive term. If the broker only does business in Texas then "Texas Mortgages" would be even better. If that broker wanted to only focus on Austin then "Austin Texas Mortgages" would really narrow the field. More on this later. For now, let's work with "Austin Texas Mortgages" as our example term.

So, assuming you've got the best keywords, you just put that as the title and your done...right? If that's all you did then you'd be OK but you'd miss out on the full value that a title tag can bring. Let's start with that, though. Our title tag looks like this:
Austin Texas Mortgages

Now, that works for search engines but not so much for customers. Sure, they'll know that you sell mortgages but they may not remember which company. You always want them to remember who you are. So, you could do this:
My Mortgage Co | Austin Texas Mortgages

OK. That's Good for your customers but it moves the really good keywords out of the first position. (Search engines assume that the most important words come early in the title tag.) So, how about this?:

Get Austin Texas Mortgages at My Mortgage Co
Well...now you're optimizing for the word "Get". Not so good.
How about this:

Austin Texas Mortgages by My Mortgage Co
That's pretty good. The keywords are front and center and the company name is right out there where everyone can see it. You could also put a separator of some kind instead of the word "by". Like | or - . I think it's more of a personal preference than an important SEO point.

Now, go write your own!

About the Author:
Ben Finklea is the CEO of Austin-based SpryDev SEO & Web Marketing About the Author - Text: Ben Finklea is the CEO of Austin-based SpryDev SEO & Web Marketing. Visit SpryDev at http://www.sprydev.com/
Article Source: ArticleWarehouse

Introduction To SEO

Over the last few years, search engine optimization (SEO) has been needed and used more and more, although it has been around for much longer than most people think. With new development tools being used to create websites that are heavy on Java, Flash and images, it’s important to have something that the search engines can read. If the content can’t be read by search engines then they can’t index it, and if your site doesn’t get indexed then it won’t be found when people search for it on Google, Yahoo, MSN, or anywhere else. This article will outline what SEO is, how it works, and some unethical SEO methods that you should avoid.

What is SEO?

SEO is a way of analyzing your site and modifying it to allow search engines to read and index it more easily. SEO is all about maintaining and building websites that get ranked highly on the major search engines.

You see, when people use a search engine, they generally don’t look beyond the top 20 or so results. If you want to make any money from your website, you need to get ranked in the top 20 out of potentially hundreds of websites.

How Does SEO Work?

Search engines maintain a huge database containing information from individual websites. Most of the information search engines collect isn’t listed on their results pages, but it is taken into consideration when it comes to deciding those results’ rankings.

It is very important that you encourage the search engines to rank your website in a high position, and you can do this through the keywords that you use on your website, as well as when you submit it. If the keywords you use in your submission tool don’t match the ones on your site then you could harm your rankings – be sure to have all the keywords you want to use on the website itself before you submit it.

Most websites don’t focus on their topic well, and so keyword lists containing 50 or more phrases per page are recommended. By focusing some of the pages of your site on keywords, you will score higher with the search engines.

Free Search Engines.

The major search engines on the Internet are still free, and it’s not hard to take advantage of this free advertising – you can do it in as little as an hour.

There are several companies that provide free SEO tools, or you can pay a professional to take care of it for you. Looking around on the web will turn up all sorts of useful resources.

What is Unethical SEO?

Unethical search engine optimization techniques can be unlawful, unscrupulous, or just in bad taste. You’d be surprised how many people use these methods. A lot of what is now called unethical SEO used to be accepted, until people went overboard and it started to have a negative affect on the web as a whole.

Keyword stuffing is when your site consists of long lists of keywords and nothing else. Don't do it. There are ways to put keywords and phrases on your site without running the risk of getting banned.

You may have seen ‘invisible text’ if you’ve been selecting the text on a page and found words that are the same color as the background. This text is often lists of keywords put there in the hope of fooling search engine spiders while hiding the words from visitors. This is considered unethical, and you shouldn’t do it.

A doorway page is a page that isn’t designed for real people to see – it’s purely for the search engines and spiders, in an attempt to trick them into indexing the website in a higher position. This is a big no-no and should be avoided.

Even though unethical SEO is tempting, and does work, you shouldn’t do it – not only is it annoying to users, but it’s likely to get you banned from the search engines sooner or later. You sites’ search engine rankings just aren’t worth the risk. Use efficient SEO techniques to get your site ranked higher, and stay away from anything that even looks like unethical SEO.

SEO is a set of techniques used in order to attract visitors or prospective customers to your website, and the goal of a search engine is to provide high quality content to the users of the Internet. These two objectives are not in opposition, if you do SEO the way it should be done.

About the Author:
Anton Cheranev Has Created An Ultimate SEO Spy Software Available At ==> www.TheSeoDetective.com
Article Source: http://www.articles2k.com

Are You A Black Hatter?

Are You A Black Hatter? If you are using these techniques, you are a Black Hatter (arranged alphabetically).

- Buying Expired Domains: Basically checking on expiring domain's DNS record and PageRank and later buy them when they expire and replace the pages with links to their pages. (I don't know if any isulong seoph entries are doing this, but where do they get their PR if they have just recently registered their domains? hmmm.)

- Cloaking: Presenting a different content to search engine spiders than you display to user's browser. This can also be used in ethical SEO (No known issue from any isulong seoph entry yet)

- Doorway Pages: Nonsense pages full of keywords for the purpose of sending a visitor to a page. Also known as landing pages, jump pages, gateway pages, entry pages, bridge pages, portal pages and many more. (Any isulong seoph entry using this method? let me know)

- Duplicate Content: Copying other site's written work with little or no changes. This usually depends on the content used, if it's freely redistributable or copyrighted. (Some isulong seoph entries use this method to have some content on their site and some prefer to write their own content to prevent Duplicate Content Penalty)

- Hidden Text and Links: Text that is the same color as the background or the font is too small to read. (We all know who used this method and this technique is only a short term solution to get to the top, since Google will eventually ban the site)

- Keywords that are unrelevant to the site: Optimizing keywords which are not related to your site (Some are submitting isulong seoph entries but the content are totally not related to the keyword, although the term isulong seoph could mean anything)

- Keywords Stuffing: Excessive and repeatitive keywords in alt tags, meta tags, content, etc. (isulong seoph, isulong seoph, isulong seoph, isulong seoph, isulong seoph, isulong seoph, all for the sake of 3-7% keyword density)

- Link Farms: A network of pages on one or more Web sites, with the sole intention of improving the search engine ranking of those sites. (Some isulong seoph entries are subscribing to these services to get their sites exposed to the rest of the link farm in no time flat)

- Multiple Domains without Redirecting: Using multiple domains and not redirecting to a single domain will cause duplicate content penalty. (Buying multiple domains for isulong seoph entries, for example isulongnaseoph.com,isulongnaseoph.net and isulongnaseoph.org all having the same content, instead of redirecting the other two domains to one site)

- Pages that contant spyware and viruses (Providing spyware, porn, and viruses. Who would do something like that?)

- Google Bomb - It's targeting a specific site by creating links to it using a specific keyword. (For example, promoting an isulong seoph entry site by creating links everywhere, adding this link: isulong seoph, no wonder there are over 500,000 results when searching "isulong seoph")

- Google Bowling: Also known as Google Sabotage, Submitting competitors sites to link farms to get them penalized (This is a way of black hatting an isulong seoph entry to remove him on the top spot. Be warned, someone might hire a cheap european hacker and sabotage your site)

- Scraping: Pulling information from other websites voilating copyright law and uses them mainly for monetizing the site using advertising. (This is when a site has no real content and uses a scraper tool to get content from other sites)

- Selling PageRank: Providing links to other sites is good, but selling for the sake of PageRank is not. (It's better to get links normally than to buy one)

- Using small images: Using blank images and stuff it with alt keywords or hidden links. (If you see a very small image on an isulong seoph site with an alt tag = isulong seoph, he is using this black hat method)

- Spam Comments: Posting fake and random comments on blogs and guestbooks with link to your site (This is the most common black hat method ever done by an isulong seoph contestant, check their backlinks to see the victims)

- Spam Emails: Telling everyone about your site knowing they are not interested. (Email spam is very common nowadays, I doubt any isulong seoph contestant would embarass himself by sending unsolicited emails)

- Spam Referer: Commonly known as Referer Spam, this involves involves making repeated web site requests using a fake referer url. Search engines base the importance of sites by the number of different sites linking to them. With this, a referer-log spam can be used to increase their rankings of the spammer's sites, by getting the referer logs of many sites to link to them. (This is already an issue on one isulong seoph entry)

- Spam Ping: Commonly known as Sping, this involves sending pings from blogs to a ping server excessively in a short span of time. (This is done by very excited isulong seoph bloggers who want to blog all the time and want their site listed on ping servers right away)

- Sybil attack: A spammer may create multiple web sites at different domain names that all link to each other, such as fake blogs. (Now, I am sure many isulong seoph contestants have set up their own blogspot,wordpress,blogsome,etc sites that all link to each other)

- Too Many Links: A page with more 100 urls will drain your PageRank (It is recommended to have less than 100 links since more than that can drain one's PageRank in the long run, unless all the links are good high PR and relevant reciprocal sites)

- Using unauthorized software to submit pages, check rankings and other automatic queries. (Lazy people use easy to use tools to do their job, unlike ethical SEOs who are working for days and nights promoting the site)

- URL Redirection: Redirecting to another site without a user's intervention. This is acceptable by using 301 redirect, but using Meta Tag redirect, CGI and Javascripts will be a SEO problem. (No known isulong seoph issue so far)

If you are guilty with any of these, you're in BIG Trouble dude. Black Hat SEO is very common to SEO newbies who have no idea what are the right methods to optimize their sites. They want everything done as fast and easy as possible. This is very understandable, but they should stop doing these illegal methods immediately.

REPORT A BLACK HATTER: Reporting a search engine spam is a legitimate means of eliminating unfair competition and making the search engines a more effective resource. Google: http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html

Yahoo: http://add.yahoo.com/fast/help/us/ysearch/cgi_reportsearchspam

MSN: http://feedback.search.msn.com/default.aspx

RECOMMENDED LINKS TO MAKE YOUR SITE SEO FRIENDLY: By simply following these guidelines, you will have no problem getting properly indexed. The right way is usually the hard way.
Google Webmaster Guidelines: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769
Yahoo Content Quality Guidelines: http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/basics/basics-18.html
MSN Guidelines for Successful Indexing: http://search.msn.com/docs/siteowner.aspx?t=SEARCH_WEBMASTER_REF_GuidelinesforOptimizingSite.htm

BANNED IN SEARCH ENGINES? VISIT THESE SITES TO BE REINDEXED: Don't lose hope if your site is banned in search engines, visit these sites to learn more.
Google Request Reinclusion: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35843
Yahoo Review Request: http://add.yahoo.com/fast/help/us/ysearch/cgi_urlstatus
MSN Request Reinclude: http://search.msn.com/docs/siteowner.aspx?t=SEARCH_WEBMASTER_PROC_ReincludeYourSite.htm

So, will you still use Black Hat Methods? Don't tell me I didn't warn you. Good luck!

About the Author:
Visit this site to learn more about other SEO tips: Isulong SEOPH
Alfredo Palconit is an outsourced web designer from the Philippines. You can visit his portfolio site at Web Design Philippines and seo site at Isulong SEOPH
Added: 20 Sep 2006
Article Source: http://articles.simplysearch4it.com/article/37262.html