SEO - Description Tag Tips

If your title tag is considered the headline then think of your description tag as the ad copy below the headline. A good description tag will compel the reader to visit your website.

Google cuts off the displayed description tag at about 150 characters, but may index up to 185 characters. Other engines may go up to 250 characters, but will still only display about 150. Therefore, try to say what you've got to say in 150 characters or less, but feel free to use up to 180, and even up to 250 if you're not concerned with the entire thing getting indexed by all the search engines.

Your description tag is not only sales copy for people to read, deciding to click your ad or not, but it's also food for the hungry search engine spiders. There's probably no stronger or more important meta tag than the description tag.

However, one mistake I see a lot is people trying to stuff too much information into their meta description tag, then reusing that meta description in multiple places on their website. Don't describe your whole business, just describe the page in question.

For example, let's say you're a contractor, and you provide plumbing, remodeling, and electrical work. You would want to have a completely different meta description tag on each of your service pages. Don't make the mistake of using one description for all your pages.

Use your primary keyphrase in the beginning of your description tag too. This gives a higher keyword prominence percentage to the search engines and your site will rank higher. Don't OVERuse your keyphrase though, or it can be considered webspam. Higher then zero keyword prominence is good, but higher still is not always better.

Use natural sounding language, proper grammar, and try to peak interest in the subject. Remember, you want the reader to click your ad, not just to be found. how many times have you skipped over a search result because the two lines of text you see in the SERPS were just gibberish.

Finally, if you're a local business, i would encourage you to put your address, including your zip code in your description meta tag. I usually put it after the 150th character, but complete it before the 180th. the reason for this is that there's strong evidence to suggest that this will help your local search results. as more and more search engines are trying to determine what their visitors want, local search matters now more than ever.

About the Author:
Scott Hendison is an internet consultant that specializes in search engine optimization and internet marketing. He has written over 100 articles that are available on his website. He has also developed a tutorial area for beginning search engine optimization, at 'SEO101'
Submitted: 2006-10-23
Article Source: GoArticles

Top Five Tips for Successful Link Building

Good search engine optimizers (SEO´s) understand the importance of building a network of incoming links to their page in order to improve ranking results in the major search engines, but in their scuffle to push their web pages to the top, some of them are forgetting the old adage “work smarter, not harder” and they end up wasting countless hours getting links that do little - if anything at all – to help.

Here are five shortcuts that will help anyone engaged in a link building campaign to get better results, faster.

1) Remember The “Link Building Exponential”

Google has many ways of telling when a webmaster is creating an artificial network of links to a page, but savvy SEO´s will avoid trouble by considering the “link building exponential”. This is a measurement based on the premise that incoming links to a page should increase more or less at the same rate as the popularity of the page. In other words, adding too many links too fast to a page that does not seem to merit them blow-up in your face. Avoid this setback by taking your time and get quality links.

2) Get Links From Pages That Are Closely Related To Your Own

My experience has shown me that some of the most valuable links you can possibly get are from web pages that use not only the same key words that you do, but which have links from the same pages that link to you. Get links from these “perfectly related” pages and the effect on your rankings will seem almost magical.

3) Identify Directories That Are Relevant To The Content Of Your Page

There must be tens of thousands of directories on the web and that number will only continue to grow. Some SEO´s waste their time by registering their web page in any directory that will accept the listing, but I have found that it is worth spending the extra time to register the directories that have a direct relationship to the web page I am trying to place. I do not get as many links, but the links I do get have a much stronger effect on my rankings.

Finding the directories that are a good fit for the page you want to place is easy if you use two of Google´s operators: INURL and INTITLE.

Say, for example, that you are trying to position a web site dedicated to graphic design, logically you would want to find all the directories that have a “Graphic Design” category and see them ordered by relevancy:

INURL: “phrase” – returns all of the pages that contain “phrase” within its URL.

The search in Google would be:

INURL: “web design” + “add url”, or, INURL: “web design” “add url”, or, INURL: “web design” + “add your site”

Another option to find directories relevant to your web page is to use the operator “INTITLE” which shows all the pages that have the keywords in the title.

In this case the search would be:

INTITLE. “phrase” , which returns all the pages that contain “phrase” in its title.

The search in Google would be:

INTITLE: “directory” + web design

These simple steps can save countless hours in finding the right directories, and the links you can build from these focused sources will give your page more weight.

4) Position For Certain Regions Or Countries

Google determines the location of a page by the extension of its domain (ex. .uk, .es, .com.ar, etc). In the case that the domain has a generic suffix, (such as .com, .biz, .net, .org, etc.), Google will assume that the country of origin is the same as the country where the page is being hosted.

Depending on the content of the page I am working on, I will sometimes want to position the page in international AND country specific search engines. If this sounds like a strategy that would help you, simply concentrate your efforts on obtaining links from pages and directories which, in the eyes of Google, “reside” in the country you want to target.

5) Vary Your Anchor Text

Too many SEO´s use only their main keywords in the anchor text that links to their page. I have found this to be bad practice, since search engines interpret these links to be “unnatural” when they find too many of them.

Get around this by switching the order of the key words in your anchor text to create new variations. For example, say you want to build links to a web page that specializes in link building, your anchor texts could read: “link building service”; “cheap link building”; “effective link building”, or “link building company”. Get 500 links using these four different descriptors, and you will get more than twice the effect as 1000 links using only “link building”. This strategy has worked for me, and it should work for you, too.

About the Author:
Carlos Marruffo is in charge of link building at BeGlobal.biz, an e-commerce firm that specializes in search engine optimization and web page translations.
Article Source: http://www.articles2k.com

Yahoo SEO Techniques

Different Search Engine Means Different Algorithm

All search engines have their own algorithms to determine the value and, therefore, positioning of websites. While the majority of SEO work tends to concentrate on Google because of the sheer weight of searches they receive it would be foolish to discount or ignore the other major search engines. Yahoo is considered one of the big three along with Google and MSN and by concentrating a little more time and effort on Yahoo optimization it is quite possible to gain a good amount of traffic. With ultra competitive keywords it may actually provide an easier way to generate search traffic than gearing all your efforts solely towards Google.

The Most Important Yahoo Optimization Factor

The first, and most pertinent point is that Yahoo judges content to be the most important factor in their algorithms. They do still consider inbound links and other factors but they are attuned to the way of the content site and they love sites that provide keyword-optimized content in large mass. While that may make it sound easier than concentrating on generating a huge base of inbound links as you would for Google, Yahoo optimization presents its own challenges and its own unique quirks that you should consider.

Looking At Keyword Density

Because of the relevance that Yahoo places on the content within your site, the keyword once again becomes a vitally important aspect of your research. While Google have been striving to promote sites that use organic content and webmasters and SEOs have been optimizing with around 2% to 3% keyword density Yahoo prefers a much greater density level. The danger, of course, is that giving Yahoo what they want may cause Google to deem your content as being keyword stuffed but there is another difference between the two algorithms that can help to counteract this problem.

Using Stems, Inflexions, And Variants Of Keywords

Yahoo is very heavily language based. This means that it is, strictly speaking, more aware of the nuances of the written language. It will include synonyms and inflexions of a keyword when considering your keyword density; something that Google does not consider to the same extent. This means that it is possible to optimize for both without diminishing your ranking with one another.

How To Optimize For Yahoo Without Getting Penalized By Google

Google likes a density of around 2% and Yahoo likes a density as high as 7% or even 8%. This means that you can effectively use 4 variations of a single keyword or phrase and a density of 2% for each. This offers further advantages. With Google you are now gearing your content towards four different keywords and offering the level they want, and you are still providing Yahoo with the much higher density rate that they require. Because you can include plurals and further stems of keywords this means you can write in a much more natural tone.

Using The Near Forgotten Meta Tags

One area that a lot of SEO professionals and webmasters alike now tend to overlook is the Meta tag. However, Yahoo appears to still give consideration to the keyword and description tags in particular. This is quite rare in the case of most search engines and Google certainly do not look for keywords in your Meta tags. Do not attempt to dupe Yahoo, though, and only include keywords that genuinely appear on your page and are relevant to your topic.

Regular, Fresh Content Is King

You’ve probably heard the saying that “content is king” and this is even truer when considering Yahoo optimization. The more content you provide the better. This may mean making regular additions to your site but it will generate the kind of results you are looking for. Blogs are also a very good way to continue adding relevant content to your site that Yahoo will smile down on.

The Lazy Yahoo Bot

Compared to other search engine spiders the Yahoo bot is a comparatively lazy animal. It doesn’t crawl as often as other bots and it certainly doesn’t crawl as deep into your site to find all of your pages and index them. This means you should pay extra attention to creating a legible sitemap and keeping it updated as regularly as possible. Yahoo has a sitemap submission feature that is similar to Google’s and using this is heavily recommended to try and ensure that Yahoo stays on top of the infrastructure of your site and ranks you accordingly.

Inbound Links And Controlling Them Yourself

Inbound links are still important to Yahoo, but again a lot of emphasis is placed on content. Textual relevance seems to be one of the most important factors so having control over your inbound links and being able to determine the pages where they appear and the anchor text of each is important. Perhaps the best way to generate inbound links for Yahoo optimization is to use the article directories to your benefit.

Yahoo Optimization Conclusion

Google may be the search engine that everyone talks about and optimizes for but ignoring Yahoo would be foolish. This is especially true because while the Yahoo algorithm is quite different to the Google one and other algorithms, it is still quite easy to optimize for both. The most important factors to remember are to use relevant Meta tags for every single page of your site, include as much content and update your site with new content as often as possible, and update a sitemap both on your website and with the Yahoo sitemaps function.

About The Author:
Matt Jackson
About WebWiseWords
WebWiseWords specializes in SEO writing geared toward any search engine or any SEO guidelines. They can create website content pages, articles, blog entries, and more that utilize search engine optimization rules to help promote your site with all of the major search engines, not just Google.
Article Submitted On: October 19, 2006
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/

How To Improve Conversion Rates On E-commerce Sites

As competition increases in the online market space, more companies vie for Top 10 placement on the search engines, driving up costs per click. In such an environment it is imperative for companies bidding on top positions to convert as many visitor clicks into customers as possible. This article discusses a few measures all companies can take to improve conversion rates on their e-commerce sites.

1. Keyword Research

• Ensure that your keyword research is thorough. If you only select the most obvious keywords, you will pay more, since all your competitors will also be bidding on them.
• If you select only generic keywords, you will suffer low conversion rates since visitors typing such words in are often not yet ready to buy.
• If you miss out the unique keywords which no one else is bidding on, you will miss the opportunity to sell to visitors that search on these keywords.
• Use negative keywords to discourage irrelevant searches from displaying your advertisement.

2. Effective Ad Copy

• Ensure that your ads describe your product or service precisely.
• Do not lie in your ads to attract visitors. If visitors don't find what your ad promised on your site, they will leave, making your conversion rates fall.
• Use your ad to discourage the wrong sort of people from clicking. E.g. if you sell a premium product, don't use words like "cheap" or "bargain".

3. Consistency

• Deliver what your ad promises. Always.
• Make sure that your offline and online advertising image is consistent.
• Most importantly, for e-commerce sites, ensure that the price quoted is consistent throughout your site and through the entire checkout process.

4. No Hidden Costs

• Make customers aware of any extra costs at the very start of the checkout process.
• VAT and postage should be clearly mentioned as extras.
• If the amount quoted at the start is unexpectedly different from the final total, customers will abandon the checkout process and shop elsewhere. This will make your conversion rate suffer greatly.

5. Comprehensive Search Engine Marketing

• Customers often browse and return for products. If they can't find you when they return, you will loose the conversion.
• Top 10 placement in the natural and paid listings often reinforces customer trust in your brand, making them more likely to buy from your site.
• Ensure that your search engine marketing campaign also builds a brand in the minds of browsers, so that when they are ready to buy, they will come to your site since it is the only one they recognize.

When you increase conversion rates on your e-commerce site, you can automatically afford to bid more per click without suffering a loss. If you find CPC's rising and profitably diminishing rapidly, the first step you should take is to review your site to ensure that you are converting as many visitors as possible. The maths is very simple:

If you currently pay £1.00 per click on Google, convert only 1% of these clicks, and the profit you make on each conversion is just £100, your total cost = total profit, meaning you just break even.

If you have to raise your CPC to £1.10 per click in order to maintain your top 10 position, you will suffer a loss.

However, if you just raised your conversion rate by 1%, you would actually find yourself making a profit, since your cost would now be £110 for 100 clicks but the profit made from 2% conversion, i.e. 2 sales would be £200!

Other articles to read:

• The advent of RSS advertising
• Website accessibility important for disabled visitors

SEO Weekly

About the Author:
Farhad Divecha
Before founding AccuraCast, Farhad worked for and provided consulting services to a number of large and medium sized enterprises in the UK and USA including 3Com, Proctor & Gamble and Household (HFC, HSBC). He has over 7 years of experience marketing products and services online and offline.
Added: 24 Oct 2006
Article Source: http://articles.simplysearch4it.com/article/40260.html

The Advance Of Algorithms – New Keyword Optimization Rules

Major search engines like Google are constantly striving to ensure that sites at the top of their result pages offer invaluable information or service to their visitors. However, webmasters who are looking to make quick money while offering very little quality content are always finding new ways to beat the search engines at their own game. For this reason, search engines regularly change the methods they use to determine relevancy and importance of your site.

Evolving Search Engines

The first step you should take is to ensure that your website will do an effective job of turning visitors into money. The content needs to be optimized so that both search engine visitors and human visitors both deem it to be a useful website. Once upon a time, effective optimization entailed cramming content with as many keywords as possible and while this once generated good search engine results it invariably put visitors off. It is also now frowned upon and penalized as being spam by all of the major search engines.

The Evolution And Improvement Of Algorithms

Search engines use specific algorithms to determine the relevance of your website. The calculations from these algorithms determine where on the search engine result pages your website will appear. In order to keep the unscrupulous webmasters guessing and ensuring that results are always up to date, major search engines regularly update their algorithms.

Recent Advances

The result of some of the most recent changes has seen the impetus move away from optimizing websites for search engines and instead the algorithms are now geared to promote websites that give true value to visitors. They’re not only changing, they are evolving into more intelligent and accurate algorithms. While the use of keywords based around the relevant topic is still important, it is also important to ensure that visitors are your main priority.

Keyword Optimization

Keyword optimization is now more heavily guarded. Those who include keywords too often will have their sites labeled as spam, whereas not enough instances of the appropriate keyword means you won’t receive the desired results. However, the algorithms have become particularly smart and as well as the keywords you want to target you should include other relevant keywords. Including inflexions of keywords is one excellent way to ensure that your site is deemed to be relevant. Inflexions are slight changes to your keyword. For example, inflexions of the keyword “advertising” include advertise, advertised, advertisement, etc…

Keyword Inclusion

Weight is also given to keywords that are included in certain sections of a page. These sections include the title tag, meta tags (only relevant to smaller search engines now), header tags, image alt tags and formatting tags (e.g. keywords in bold or italicized) of your text. With image alt tags and hyperlink title tags it is important that you don’t simply fill these with keywords because this will be ignored at best, and penalized at worst.

Natural Content Writing

One of the most effective ways to ensure that your site is keyword optimized properly is to write the content naturally first. Once you have done this, go through and ensure that any relevant keywords are included throughout the text. Only place them where they would appear naturally and remove them from anywhere where they appear awkward. Once you’ve written the content you should also check the remaining factors to ensure everything is ok.

SEO Keyword Checklist

Below is a keyword checklist to ensure that you have fully optimized your web pages to the current, generally accepted search engine algorithm rules.

URL
Get your primary keyword as close to the beginning of the URL as possible.

Title Tag
The title should be between 10 and 50 characters and include one or more keywords while still being descriptive.

Description Meta Tag
The description meta tag should be insightful and useful but it should also contain one or two of your more important keywords.

Keyword Meta Tag
It makes sense that you should include all of your keywords in the keyword meta tag. Do not include any words that don’t appear in the body of your text.

Keyword Density
Your content should be made up of all of your keywords and other text. A total keyword density (all keywords) of around 15% to 20% is the maximum you should aim for and anything less than 5% is unlikely to yield good results.Density for a single keyword should be between 1% and 7%. 1% seems too low, and 7% a little too high. Wherever possible aim for approx 5% with the primary keyword and 3% with secondary and subsequent keywords.

Header Tags (e.g. H1 and H2 tags)
More weight is given to keywords that appear within H1 tags, then H2 tags and so on.

Text Formatting Fonts (e.g. strong, bold and underline)
This may not offer much weight in algorithms, but generally if you bold the first instance of your keywords and the last instance of your primary keyword you should see some positive results.

Beginning Of Text
The closer you can get your keywords to the beginning of your page content the better. Try to include your primary keyword within the first sentence or two and also within the last paragraph.

Key-Phrases As Whole Phrases
If you are targeting Internet Marketing as a key phrase then do not split the words up if possible. Some effect is noticed if the words are split, but much more benefit is received by including the phrase as a whole.

Alt Text
Include your keyword at least once in the Alt tag of any images. Ensure that the text is relevant to the image and gives some information.

About The Author:
WebWiseWords is a freelance copywriting service offering any style of writing on any topic. Whether your business needs a website content copywriter, an article copywriter, an SEO copywriter, a press release copywriter or any other style of copywriter WebWiseWords gets your words written.
Article Source: http://www.articles411.com

SEO Made Simple

Search Engine Marketing
Very few topics have inspired as many tangents, as much false information . . . incurred as much abuse as search engine optimization. With the few shreds of information search engines reveal about their actual methodologies, optimizers struggle to get that extra edge over the competition, armed with esoteric theories of keyword density, precise meta-tag length, optimal internal linking, and just about any other detail that a search engine might happen to factor into its rankings. Before you find yourself scrambling to create ten more content-less pages to avert that worst than death curse of decreased PageRank, try to take a look at the big picture. Barring design factors that may not be search engine friendly, a strong foundation based on four factors will give your site good success. These factors are the holy grail of optimization:

1. Get relevant links to your site anchored to keyword rich text.

2. Write focused body text that targets specific keyphrases or that is focused on a specific topic (This occurs naturally when someone is communicating useful information. This can be a problem because a lot of businesses don’t have anything useful to say. Be detailed. Be helpful. This can naturally accomplish what automatic text generators try to accomplish through keyword density and keyword proximity calculations).

3. Write concise titles focused on useful keyphrases.

4. Be patient. You may not be using the best strategies, but you’re using strategies that work over time. Continue to get links and create more content.

Find the Words
Before you can write good, keyphrase-focused body text or titles, you need to find the phrases users search. For good keyword suggestion tools, search Google with (surprise, surprise) “keyword suggestion tool.” Digitalpoint.com has an excellent tool that compares Wordtracker and Overture keyword results. Judge from the search volume how competitive each word is (not even close to the best method, but it’ll have to due). Be specific. Pick words with large search volume and search with geographic terms if you serve only a specific area. From the list of keyphrases, start thinking about the topics you’ll want to target. Find a few phrases for each page in your site. Remember to focus on phrases and not separate words – make sure these phrases appear in your body text.

Titles
HTML titles go between the title tags in your site’s code. Write short titles that use one or two keyphrases. Don’t use the name of your company unless you are trying to brand the name. Include location if you target certain areas, and make sure your pages repeat this location information in the text. Your body text should be written to fit the phrases in your title.

Body Text and Navigation
Be specific about what you are talking about. In your navigation don’t use generic linking text like “home” or “about us.” Use specific phrases. Instead of “home” use the name or category of your main service/product, and make it obvious from the context that this is your main page. Instead of “about us” use a phrase like “A (main product/service) Company.” This communicates more information to the user and includes a keyphrase. Where appropriate, make the same type of substitutions in the body text. Use variations of nouns and verbs, including plurals and different conjugations.

If you can, use the heading tags (h1, h2, etc.) to write text titles. Try to communicate as much as you can in text – search engines don’t see the text in images, or fancy media like Flash. Alt tags are useful, but search engines don’t put as much weight on them as visible text. In general, whatever has a greater chance to be seen by the user is going to get greater weight from the search engines (Except for those things produced by JavaScript, or Flash, or written into an image – use common sense).

Build Links
It is remarkably easy to get your site indexed by the search engines – just submit to some of the many free directories. To find some of these directories search for “free directory list” in Google. Be careful to read submission guidelines, and be very careful about what you submit to large directories like DMOZ. Generally, titles should not be a list of keywords. Most directories only want your homepage and the “official title” (somewhat ambiguous term) of your site with a short description. Descriptions should be factual, and they should be written in complete sentences or meaningful phrases. Some optimization companies will rip you off by charging you money to submit your site to the major search engines – this is a waste of time. Start building links, and the search engines will find your site naturally, submitting makes no difference in your rankings.
It is important to get links from sites that are related to yours. Write webmasters requesting a link, find niche sites that offer free submissions, write articles for sites that allow you to put down a signature link, or post comments in forums that allow you to put down your signature.
If you exchange links, be careful who you trade with. Get listed wherever you want without fear of penalty from the search engines, but be careful who you link to. Your site can get penalized for linking into bad neighborhoods spamming the search engines.

It Never Ends
Expand your site and continue to tell people about its content. It’s an ongoing process. The older your site gets, the more credibility it can gain with the search engines. Keep your content fresh. Check the search engines to see what they have indexed (search site:www.domain.com). Be patient and keep up with search engine changes.

About the Author:
Steve Loszewski contracts out to Pure Visibility ( http://www.purevisibility.com ) managing search engine marketing campaigns.
Article Source: www.iSnare.com

The ROR Advantage: No Spider Discrimination!

Search engine optimization is a very complex science, but at its heart is the simple rule: to format your website in such a way that spiders can immediately recognize and index its content. If they can’t “see” you, you might as well not exist—and if they can’t understand your code, no amount of keywords can get you in the Golden Top 20.

The problem that many website developers used to encounter was that search engines worked differently; so you could end up with a high ranking in Lycos but languish at the bottom of Google. How exactly should you optimize your site so you perform well in all search engines?

Enter ROR (short for Resources for a Resource), an independent XML format that translates your content in a way that all search engines can understand.

Think of it as a web spider’s Cliff’s Notes. it describes all the objects, services, discounts, images, podcasts, etc. If it’s on the site, it’s on the ROR feed, but in a format that’s easy to process and removes all risks of skipping or ignoring a link.

ROR calls its “magic file” structured feeds, which guide search engines as they scan the text. Unlike Google Sitemaps, it’s universally understood—and very easy to process. It’s also more detailed. It doesn’t just give a map or “table of contents”, it actually summarizes what’s inside. It’s also been in existence far longer than Google, so its reliability has been proven by time.

Though it’s been around for a long time, ROR is by no means outdated. The majority of the file formats are already available in ROR, although it is currently being updated to keep up with the growing number of website innovations. But to avoid being too unwieldy, the ROR system tries to re-use existing data structures. It boasts of being very streamlined, a strength that makes it one of the more efficient ways of indexing a site.

Usually the ROR feed is located in the directory, and is named by default ror.xml. It is possible to rename the file, and the search engines will still find it. The only thing it needs to have is a < link > tag in your main page (between the < head > and < /head > tags). Another alternative is to create a smaller ror.xml file which will direct the search engines to the ROR feed. You can create this file in the ROR sitemap generator.

About the Author:
Philip Nicosia
XML-Sitemaps.com has an online sitemap generator that creates XML, HTML, text and ROR sitemaps and also provides some useful SEO tools.
Content Provider: http://www.my-articles.com

Seo Primer

The objective of this tutorial is to educate and update webmasters and website builders with search engine optimization techniques. The ultimate objective of all webmasters and web developers is to get a good Google page rank. This tutorial will help achieving this objective by explaining and implementing SEO techniques.

The techniques explained in this tutorial are the most comprehensive and efficient. The aim of this tutirial is to help webmasters and web developers do their own search engine marketing using these techniques in the best possible way.

This tutorial is logically organized page by page and each page deals with a specific topic concerning SEO. The pages are arranged in such a way that the flow is exactly like the process flow of SEO implementation. This in itself is a guide to what is to be done after what in SEO implementation.

This tutor assumes that there is a plan to build a website and it needs to be optimized using SEO techniques. However, complicated issues like flash and frames are covered towards the end of the tutorial. These complications are best handled by SEO experts than the users themselves.

Our sincere hope is that the webmasters and developers going through this tutorial would enjoy the process of SEO and put it to good use. All the Best,

SEO begins with building your website. It is important to understand and implement a few SEO techniques while you are still building your website, instead of waiting for it to finish and start editing it again. Once you are thorough with planning your website complete with blueprints, SEO implementation begins by segregating your website into two different and distinct criteria - On-Page and Off-Page. Both these criteria are equally important from SEO point of view and no partiality is to be shown.

On-Page criteria are those that one can see on the webpage. They are Title, Headings, Meta Tags, Content, Keyword etc. This will be elaborated at a later stage.

Off-Page criteria are links coming to and going from your webpage. They include anchor text, reference tags and attributes. You will learn these in detail at alter stage. The Off-page criteria are weighed and analyzed by Google page rank. So the importance of off-page content is not less then that of the On-Page.

Step by Step approach to building an Optimized Website

Embarking upon building a website is preceded by some necessary ground work which will help plan the site properly and as per the target audience. Your website will showcase your products and services, so you are in the best position to know what will be the basic persona of a target visitor. A target visitor is a visitor who visits your site with a genuine intent of buying, difficult to visualize, putting it in SEO terms a targeted visitor is the visitor who has a very high chance of buying your products or services.

So when you plan your website do not get into techniques of high traffic generation or using hot terms. Instead, build it using targeted terms and an objective to attract targeted traffic. This is getting a little too complicated, let me explain.. High traffic is of no importance if none of the traffic converts, but targeted traffic is bound to have a good rate of conversion. High traffic is not going to generate high sales; it will certainly generate higher bills due to bandwidth.

Optimizing your site for your products, services and brands only, do not generalize. The fine balance between your product descriptions and general ones in the industry should be maintained or your site could end up generating traffic to you competition. Similarly hot terms means the industry jargon that you use in daily life everyday, you don't expect your customer to understand that, do you? Targeted terms are terms used for the industry generally. So knowing your target audience is of prime importance.

About the Author:
David Davis, is the lead developer and project manager of Redfly Marketing Search Engine Optimization Ireland. For more information visit http://www.redflymarketing.com
Submitted: 2006-10-18
Article Source: GoArticles

Organic SEO And Link Building

Organic SEO or search engine optimization is a slow and steady process. Achieving top rankings takes time and link building is a big part of that effort. If you are to have a successful web site and obtain high search engine rankings you will need quality relevant web sites linking to your web site. The amount and quality of links you need will depend on the competitiveness of the keyword phrases for which you are optimizing. More web masters are focusing on quantity and getting several links fast. This is bad because it can be seen as manipulating the search engines. Check the guidelines for the search engine you are trying to optimize for, this will give you a good idea of what and what not to do.

When obtaining links from other sites focus on the quality of the link. Is the page on topic and relevant to your site? What is the position of the link? Is it off to the side with a bunch of other sites? Does it look natural and like it belongs there? What is the anchor text of the link? These are the questions you need to ask yourself when optimizing off site links. Reciprocal links have some value, but with software that automates the process it seems to have gotten out of hand. Plus do you really want a link on these low quality directory pages? How much value do they add by linking to you?

There are some easy ways to get permanent one way links. Directories are the best first step and may be all you need if your key word term is not competitive. They can also be a good source of relevant traffic. Directories are a human edited trusted link source, look for directories that have a good reputation and are well established. If you can, get listed in a niche directory to increase your relevance.

Companies whose products you use or sell are a good source of links if you can get them. The company whose shopping cart I use has a link to me and all I had to do was ask. Maybe offer a testimonial in exchange for a link back to your web site.

Writing articles is another good way to get incoming links, plus you will gain traffic. There are several free web sites that you can submit articles to. The links are valuable on article pages because there are usually very few links on the page, plus the article will be relevant to your product or service offering.

Write a press release to announce your business, new service offerings, or any news that is important. You may end up getting several links, plus press releases are usually available for a long time on the internet.

Do you want to know the best way to obtain inbound links to your web site? Build a web page this is so great, people will just want to link to it. Sounds easy, we all wish it were that simple. Frequently asked questions or tips pages are good candidates for natural links, if they are useful. Giving useful information is probably the best way to obtain organic links. Don’t be afraid to give away some information. We created a common SEO mistakes page to provide useful tips, information and help potential clients. When your potential client has enough information to make an informed decision they will be ready buy your product or service. Other web sites want to link to good information; that is why it is call the World Wide Web. Don’t be a dead end, if you know of a great site let others know about it.

Keep your link building slow, steady and from a variety of sources and keep repeating those steps.

About the Author:
John Tourloukis is the founder of Fast PC Networks an internet consulting and organic SEO company.
Article Source: http://www.articles2k.com

How to SEO for beginners

Selecting Key Words: This is probably the most important point. You need to choose keywords that best describes your website so if someone types your keyword in a search engine, your site will come up. Now don't just pick a few keywords which best interests you.

Try this Keyword Suggestion Tool:
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/

Lets say your site is about Games. Now don't just make 'Games' as your keyword because it is searched 99, 000 each day. There is very little chance your site will appear in a search any where near the first page. I suggest you pick more specific keywords such as 'PlayStation Games' or a name of an actual game like 'Grand Theft Auto'. These names are searched not as much so there is a lot of chance your site will appear near or on the first page of a search engine.

Domain: You should have a a suitable do0main name. It is not as important but still works. Going back to Games site again. You are better off with a domain name such as www.games.com rather than www.yourhostname.com/games.com. The domain name has nothing to do with your search engine optimism, you can still reach page one with or without a good domain name.

Title Tags: Very crucial in Search Engine Optimization. Going back to the Games site. You are better off with a title such as:

Game - Grand Theft Auto

rather than:

Grand Theft Auto - Games
or
Grand Theft Auto
or
Whatever

Header Tags: Header tags are very important because they are used to identify words which are more important than the rest of the text on the page. The Header Tags sum up the topic of the page. When you are placing Header Tags, use 'H1' tags.

For Example, lets go back to the Games site again. You want your Header Tag as 'Games' then you will do the following:
Games

Easy URLs: Very important in search engine optimization. You want to have simple URLs, no long complicated stuff.

For Example in stead of this:
www.games.com/GrandTheftAuto/index.php

You will write:
www.games.com/GrandTheftAuto/

Easy URLs: make sure you use correct keywords. For example going back to the Games site, make sure you mention something or probably everything related to games. When a search engine spider comes and sees that your page is suppose to be about Games but you haven't mentioned about Games, he/she will think your site is not important. Have a paragraph or two about your site on top of your page, making sure you state the correct keywords that best matches your website.

Link Building: Make sure you have lots of links coming to your site. When a search engine comes to a website and notices that in it's links there is a 'Games' link. He/she will click and it will lead him/her to your site. This will make him/her think that your site is very important. When you are building links, make sure you use correct keywords that best describes your website.

A Few Tips: A few tips by the professionals:
-For start ups use things like : Digit, reddit and ma.gnolia they all give a little traffic if your site is new
-Quality Backlinks and Trusted Links
-Putting the keywords in the title
-One Way links

Learn more about SEO, Adsense and money making sites at http://www.moneymakingsites.biz

About the Author:
Falco P. author of Moneymakingsites.biz
Added: 24 Oct 2006
Article Source: http://articles.simplysearch4it.com/article/40282.html

SEO: Flash Is Evil - Five Big Reasons Not to Use Flash

Building Flash-powered websites is wrong. Storing your content in Flash movies is wrong. Implementing site navigation in Flash is wrong.

Then why are there so many Flash sites? They look pretty with all those neat vector graphics, gradients, animations and cool sound effects. Flash is the favorite toy of big designer studios and numerous amateur graphic artists alike. Flash is visually attractive, and in general attractive websites are more successful than the ugly ones (notable exceptions: craigslist.org and plentyoffish.com). But this is not the case of Flash websites. All the benefits of the nice outlook are overridden by the disadvantages in terms of SEO and usability.

Flash requires bandwidth Despite of the DSL Internet access being available almost everywhere, there are still lots of people surfing the Net via dialup or other limited bandwidth connection. Flash files, especially those using sound effects, embedded movies or bitmap images, can take a while to load.

Disabled back button Some Flash designers use meta refreshes or other tricks to disable browser's Back button. As the famous usability expert Jacob Nielsen says, "Back button is the second most important navigation element after hyperlinks". People not able to use Back button will click the third most important navigation element - that X button in the top right. Besides, if you are going to promote a Flash site via PPC, you should know that Google AdWords doesn't approve pages with disabled back button.

Flash ignores users needs

Whereas the ground rules of marketing emphasize the concentration on the users’ needs, Flash websites ignore them. Take the infamous site intros and splash screens that are as much annoying as the 45 minutes of advertising and previews in cinemas. Or another example: the sound effects - they are can be especially inappropriate and harmful when you are browsing the Net from a cubicle in a quiet office or from home in the late hours.

Problems with third-party Flash developers

Unless you do Flash yourself, you might face some serious troubles with developers. Some of them code their project to prevent them from editing, thus making you to hire them over and over again as you need to do even the smallest modifications. Aaron Wall in his SEOBook (a highly recommended SEO reading) describes a case of a Flash developer who disabled the back button and then asked $4000 from his client to re-enable it, although the problem was caused by his own incompetence.

Search engines do not like Flash And perhaps the most important: not every search engine is able to crawl and index the content of Flash movies. Even those that can often do it with errors. This is in particular the case of a website fully implemented in Flash as a single file. Search engines just wouldn't be able to direct visitors to the proper page within that file.

What is Flash really good for? Banners and ads - it provides far more useful features then the traditional gif animation. Online games - remember the 'Yeti Sports'? Flash technology - the Flash videos - for video blogs.

But as a website engine - Flash is evil!

Originally published at Five Big Reasons Not to Use Flash

About The Author:
Oleg Ishenko, SEOResearcher.com Get more useful info on search engine optimization at our SEO Guide
Article Submitted On: October 21, 2006
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/

Keywords And SEO. The Facts.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is essential for the success of almost every website. The majority of traffic to websites is brought in by search engines. Keywords are an important part of SEO. Unfortunately, many website owners overdo it. Keywords are one of the most important tools in ranking high on search engines. Abuse them and you will suffer the consequences.

Many novices read about places to add keywords, such as ALT tags, anchors and other areas. While these are meant to be used if you want to help boost your keywords, they should be relevant to the image or the place where you are linking. Many people try to stuff keywords into every possible place. There is no benefit whatsoever in doing this.

As a general rule, I would say you can optimize one page with 3 keywords or phrases. I would recommend starting with one or two. Depending on who you talk to, your percentage of keywords in your text should be between three and five percent of the total content on the site. I have seen site tops with percentages as high as ten. There are some free online tools that can tell you the percentage of each word on your site. This one is http://www.googlerankings.com/ultimate_seo_tool.php This tool will also show under which of those words your site comes up on.

One huge mistake I see all the time is repeated keywords in the keyword tag. Here is an example: shoes, brown shoes, blue shoes, and red shoes. There are two things wrong here, Do you know what it is? First, of all, the use of the word “and” is not needed. This is called a stop word. Search engines ignore these type of words. Some common stop words are and, the, because, this, that and there. The second thing wrong with the keywords is the word “shoes”. It is repeated four times. You do not need to repeat shoes. The corrected keywords should read; shoes, brown, blue, red. The search engine will know you are offering shoes and will match the color with the word shoe. Repeating “shoes” will just penalize your site.

One final tip on using keywords. Make sure you use your top keywords in the TITLE of your site as well as in the description tag. Do not load the title with keywords. These are the first places the engines will scan. Your description tag is usual what is displayed on search engines when relevant keywords are typed in. So, be sure they are there. Do not just type in key word phrases. No one will know what your site is about. What is the point of coming up in rank if no one understand the description.

About the Author:
Joe Balestrino
For more information on SEO visit http://mr-seo.blogspot.com Or, http://mrseonewz.blogspot.com/ for the latest on SEO news. For a free web site evaluation visit http://www.mr-seo.com Joe is also a merger-partner of Web Presence, a full-service web design firm exclusively serving small businesses nationwide. Visit his web site at: http://www.jnb-design.com
Article Source: www.iSnare.com

On Page Optimization Techniques

As every Internet user knows, search engine optimization, or SEO, is incredibly important. You can’t get visitors without a high ranking with the search engines, and this is where search engine optimization –SEO- comes in. You have a web site because you want to have visitors, and without visitors there’s really no reason to have a web site at all – right? If you want your site to work, you have to know how to make search engines work for you.

But search engines can be a tricky thing, and not everyone knows how to really use them. A lot of Internet users go to a search engine first, no matter what they might be looking for online. The thousands and thousands of sites that the search engine doesn’t find simply don’t get visited, because no one knows that they exist. Anyone who has ever had a web site knows a little something about SEO, but not everyone knows exactly how to make the most out of it. Search engine optimization can be used to get you more visitors than you ever dreamed, and that’s the whole point of the Internet.

Your web site consists of many different pages, and every single one of these pages can be maximized for search engine optimization. Using your search engine techniques on every page will definitely increase you web traffic and your ranking with the search engines. The tips below will help you turn your site into a number one:

- Internal links
First of all, search engines like sites that have lots of links. Put links on every single page of your site. Internal links are the best, because these links will keep your visitors within your site no matter how much they click around and choose different links. Internal links can even link to different places on the same page of the site. Putting your links within content on the page will also help increase your ranking with the search engines. Placing lots of internal links on your site is a great way to optimize your site for the search engines.

- External links
You definitely want to have fewer externals than internal links. External links will only lead visitors away from you site, and you don’t want that. However, search engines give higher rankings to sites that have both kinds of links – so be sure to include some within the pages of your site. These links can be buried at the margins or at the bottom of the page, if you wish, but they should still be present.

- Keywords
Naturally, your keywords are the most important part of your web site. Each and every single page of your site should be optimized for keywords. Whatever your keywords are, you want them to appear at least four times per page of your site. Keywords must always appear within content, meaning with other text, on the site. Search engines, while they can’t read, can scan text. The more content you have, the better, and you want your keywords to appear frequently within that text on your pages. Optimize every page for keywords, and you’ll get a much higher ranking with the search engines.

Everyone with a web site knows how important search engine optimization is. Search engines will bring in visitors, and a web site must have lots of visitors to thrive. By optimizing every page of your site, you’ll increase your chances of getting a high ranking. High ranking with search engines means more visitors. More visitors mean more profits and more business for you. That’s why SEO is so important, and that’s why it’s something that you absolutely have to do!

About The Author:
Charles Preston is the president of Click Response. Click Response offers small businesses a search engine optimization service that guarantees 1st page ranking at an affordable price.
Article Source: http://www.articles411.com

Factors That Decide Directory As a Quality Directory.

Directories are best way to get one way links. Especially for new sites.

There are hundreds of directories but there are also a lot of directories out there where submission is worthless. Avoid your site from submitting spammy directories to stay away from devaluation of your site in search engines. There are certain factors that when combines makes a directory a quality directory. Here are fewer…

[1] Age of directory/Domain:-

It is said that Google give more weight or consider those directories as trusted directories which are older. So if your site is linked from older directories it will help you in ranking better in SERPs.

[2] Page Rank and incoming links:-

Page rank on Google toolbar and incoming links for other search engines. Especially when unique IP links that point to directory It has better value than if it has No. of back links from one IP. Also quality of those links is important. Page rank should consider for both for home page and from sub page which link to you,

[3] Cost:-

If it is paid directory than you must consider cost. It is not advisable to pay for $$ for 0 PR Directory. Also consider that for what are you paying? Is it cost for one year or for lifetime listings?

[4] No.of links/Category and No. of categories:-

It is not recommended to submit site which has no of links (say hundreds)/category.
It will not help you to get a boost in search engines. If directory having enough and all major category available, it will create relevant results.

[5] No. of page indexed in search engines and SE Rankings:-

Suppose any directory is banned by Google than it is worthless to submit there. (Why you are submitting to directories?) Search engine rankings and No. of pages indexed by search engines may decide how quality back link it will give to your site.

[6] Traffic:-

Generally directories are for search engine ranking but if it can provide you a little traffic it is better deal.

[7] Type of links:-

Before you submit you can check weather directory is SEO friendly or not. What type of URL it has. Directories that can not provide you direct HTML Links may be worthless to submit.

[8] Category of directory:-

Niche directories are better for getting more relevant links. Example, if your site is related to real estate than you can submit to specific real estate top directories.

[9] Time for review:-

Most of paid directories review any listing within 24 hours. You can expect faster review time when you are paying.

[10]Other factors:-

Like weather directory allow anchor text or not, content of directory (linking from duplicate may adversely affect), No of Scrap listings or quality of outbound links, No. of dead links, editors and quality of editing, type of sites accepted by directory, Submission process, should not be loaded heavily with banners and ads

About the Author:
Manish M Mathukiya is Webmaster of Inetzeal Website Submission Service. He offers SEO Related Services like Manual Directory Submission Service. He is also webmaster of SiteMatrix Directory.
Content Provider: http://www.my-articles.com

Internet Marketing With Seo Tactics

Hearing the acronym SEO is not new for most Internet marketers. In fact, it is one of the unwritten protocols that must be learned and kept in mind by every aspiring Internet marketer. Thus, if you are unfamiliar with SEO, you will experience difficulty in terms of achieving your Internet marketing business objectives.

Before discussing SEO to Internet marketing beginners, let us first tackle search engines. If you are familiar with Yahoo, Google, or MSN, these are some of the widely used search engines on the Internet. If you are looking for any information on the Internet, search engines will always be your first and probably your sole option. You will just type several words that are related to the information you are looking for on the search box, and when you click the "search button", you will be redirected to a page that contains listings of websites containing the words that you type on the search box.

Because of the popularity of search engines to Internet users, Internet marketers consider it as one of the primary tools in getting online buyers. Thus, it paved the way to the birth of SEO as an essential attribute on Internet marketing. The acronym stands for search engine optimization, which is the art of producing web pages that will have high rankings on related search engine results. It is accomplished through optimization of several sections or elements in the HTML coding of every web page. Search engines specifically interpret such sections, and the latter will rank the former according to its level of optimization.

There are various methods and opinions on how a certain webpage should be optimized. Such methods and opinions will heavily dependent on the type website you have, its contents, the purpose of its existence, and the existing competition. However, when speaking about general SEO, it heavily depends on the proper use of certain keywords and/or key phrases that are used to describe your website's content.

Probably you will wonder how these keywords affect the SEO performance of your Internet marketing website. When you search for needed information using several words, you will notice that such words are "highlighted" when search results are displayed. The words that you type on the search box serves as the "keywords" that is utilized by webmasters in optimizing their websites. Although it may not be of importance to an Internet user, but it is as good as "gold" for Internet marketers who want their site to be shown on the top pages of every related search engine result.

Keywords that are used in SEO have standard placements on a website. For instance, such keywords must appear on the title section of your webpage's source code. Moreover, it must appear on the META description section wherein the page is described in an accurate manner by repeating the selected keywords. The META section often contains the keywords that are used to describe your site's content and its product or service.

If you will carefully analyze the previous discussion, you will notice that the performance of the site's SEO heavily depends on the keywords that you are using. Thus, the main keywords or key phrases must appear on the first 2 paragraphs of the content of every page, and then scatter it throughout the rest of the page. In scattering your main keywords, make sure that it will be an integral part of the content itself. It must appear as if it is among the original content of the page.

In addition, the last paragraph of each page must be keyword-rich. One of the unwritten rules involving keyword placement is that the keywords density of your page must be between 5 to 15 percent. Although it is advised that you maximize the use of your keywords, avoid using it excessively. A content with keyword density above the standard will not help on the optimization of your website.

Another consideration in SEO performance of your site is the placement of relative back links, or hyperlinks directing to external sites. It is relatively important since search engine spiders navigate through links. In addition, the text of your page relating to external links may also contain keywords.

If you are one of the aspiring Internet marketers who want to take the challenge of earning on the Internet, do not ever forget the acronym that will lead you to the success of your Internet marketing career-SEO.

About the Author:
Jeremiah Patton is a online author and professional internet marketer. For more internet marketing advice visit http://www.jeremiahpatton.com
Submitted: 2006-10-20
Article Source: GoArticles

Benefits Of Article Submissions

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.

About the Author:
Andre Bias is the owner of the websites http://www.enlargementdeals.com, http://www.goodbyeacne.net, and http://www.inkjetdealz.com
Article Source: ArticleWarehouse

Kneoteric: - Website Optimization, SEO Marketing Experts and Consultants India.

Kneoteric is a leading Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Company providing Web Promotion services including Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Directory submissions, Link Building and Pay Per Click (PPC).

With satisfied clients from all over the world and solid experience in Search Engine Marketing, we have a proven track record of our success with Search Engine Marketing in the past.

Search Engine Marketing, if done correctly, has a very high Return On Investment (ROI).
Kneoteric provides its clients with custom crafted Search Engine Marketing campaigns based upon their requirements.

A typical Search Engine Marketing campaign begins with the requirement and competition analysis by the Search Engine Marketing experts. Based upon the Search Engine Marketing analysis report, a strategy is defined and a custom crafted plan is proposed. The goal is to optimize the Search Engine Marketing process so as to increase targeted traffic and maximizing the ROI (Return on Investment) while keeping in mind other important requirements like budget and time.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a powerful technique which is used to secure an organic high ranking across major search engines including Google, Yahoo and MSN. A high ranking on search engines help in reaching prospective customers over a wide demographic effectively and at a relatively much cheaper cost.

Search engines consider various factors while ranking any given website. These factors change rather frequently as search engines evolve and get smarter by the day. Search Engine Optimization aims at strategically optimizing the websites continuously to drive highly targeted traffic to your website and open up a constant revenue stream.

Kneoteric is a leading Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Company providing Web Promotion services including Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Directory submissions, Link Building and Pay Per Click (PPC).

Kneoteric offers world class submission services to its clients. We submit websites only to authenticated and relevant search engines unlike other companies offering websites to thousands of useless search engines.

Regards

Webmaster
http://www.kneoteric.com

About the Author:
Kneoteric is an Website Optimization, SEO Marketing Experts and Consultants India based in India which provides Seo services.
Added: 25 Oct 2006
Article Source: http://articles.simplysearch4it.com/article/40412.html

Creating Sitemaps For Google, MSN AND Yahoo! - The Easy Way

If you own or maintain a website or intend to own one, wouldn’t it be great if you get frequent visitors who find satisfaction in getting exactly the information they need from your page?

While that satisfaction largely depends on the contents of your website, how you get to be accessed by website users is the most critical factor of website development. For if your website can’t be reached universally, you defeat the very purpose of the internet: that is, to make information available to any website user from across the world.

How you get to be accessed is actually a matter of presentation style, organization, and most importantly, how fast and extensive search engines get to lead users to your website. Unless your pages are indexed in the search engines they can’t send you the free visitors you are all looking for.

Fortunately, the search engines want your content too and there are a number of ways you can help them, which they encourage you to do - by creating sitemaps of your website. Sitemaps created for the various search engines will enable these search engines’ spiders to crawl faster, more systematically, and more extensively into your website’s pages.

By doing so, you get the maximum exposure you can. Such exposure will boost your pride in having your pages viewed, read, and used by more and more visitors the way you intended them to. On the financial aspect, the more visitors your website gets, the higher your website’s potential advertising value.

Now with the vast expansion of websites on the internet, it has become necessary to create different types of sitemaps, each having its own complexity in setting up.

HTML Sitemaps

Creating an HTML sitemap linked to and from your home page is something savvy webmasters have been doing for years and perhaps is the simplest to create. This sitemap is simply a list of pages contained on your site and enables the search engines spiders to easily find your pages, especially the ones that are linked deep in your website that they may have trouble finding otherwise.

TEXT Sitemaps

A text sitemap is simply a list of the URLs of your site in the form of a text file. These can then be submitted to search engines such as Yahoo! to notify them that all the pages exist and by doing so invites their spider to visit.

XML Sitemaps

Google launched Google Sitemaps as a way for webmasters to give them information they could use to better crawl their sites. This involves creating an XML Sitemap for which they provided their Google Sitemap Generator. This can be the most complicated to set up using the tools provided by Google as you need to be running Python on your server. It’s perhaps the most important one too given the current dominance of the search engine.

Setting up all three types of sitemaps may seem a daunting task but luckily there are websites that take the strain out of this and you can create all three within a matter of minutes.

XML-Sitemaps.com is one such site. Originally developed to easily create Google sitemaps for webmasters without an understanding of Python, it has evolved through demand for new features.

It offers the Sitemap Generator that lets you build your sitemap online in four simple steps, for free! The Sitemap Generator is easy to use and user-friendly even for average computer literates. Just type in your URL and other parameters (e.g. frequency of change or update that your website will likely undergo, the priority of a specific URL relative to the other pages on the same website, etc.) and follow the ensuing instructions until you get to add your URL to the Google Webmaster account. You will then be given the options to download your websites sitemaps in XML, HTML and TXT format. If still you get stuck with a step, you may enquire and get assistance from its technical support.

Go check xml-sitemaps.com for more details or better yet, to get started!

The only limitation of the free sitemap Generator is that it allows only up to 500 pages per website. Still, this limit is high. Statistics show that out of the more than 64000 sitemaps generated using this service, the average website size was only 155 pages, way below the 500-page limit. This figure is represented by 78% of all webmasters who have used the Generator.

However, in case your website falls beyond this limit, you may check out the PHP Sitemap generator script. Offered at a very reasonable price, this stand-alone script is intended for unlimited-sized sitemaps, which is beyond the capacity of online services.

Whichever search engine or for whatever search purpose, sitemaps are clearly the fastest and most efficient way to navigate this digital highway. The best thing about it is, with these easy-to-use sitemap generators, you don’t have to be a computer geek to help keep this internet traffic moving.

About the Author:
Philip Nicosia is the webmaster of XML-Sitemaps.com, a site specialising in sitemap software that generates XML, HTML and TXT sitemaps for webmasters.
Article Source: http://www.articles2k.com

Reciprocal links are dead!

I've been reading a lot of nonsense on various SEO forums about reciprocal linking being dead. People screaming and crying because their sites no longer rank well after Google's last update. I thought it would be timely for me to write an article about what REALLY happened, and what you can do about it.

Reciprocal Links Aren't Dead

First of all, reciprocal links aren't dead, not by a long shot. It would be foolish of any search engine to ignore links from one authority site to another just because that other site points back to it. That, in fact, reinforces the value of both sites!

What really happened is that Google got smarter about reciprocal links. They are harder on link farms now, and bogus "directories" of links. So the people who are crying foul probably had most or all of their links coming from these kinds of shady sources.

From my own experience with my many sites, however, it seems clear that reciprocal links have been devalued by Google. All that means is that they don't count quite as much as they used to, but they are still very valuable.

If you follow my philosophy of optimizing for keywords that are not super competitive, though, then you may have already guessed that my sites weren't affected much, since most of my "competition" isn't really competing for the keywords I'm targeting anyway.

Reciprocal Links Have Always Been A Short-Term Solution

Besides, reciprocal links should ALWAYS be looked on as a short-term boost to get a site going. You want to get those reciprocal links so that you can get ranked for some less competitive keywords. Once you're getting some traffic, if you're offering high quality content to your visitors, you'll get more links into your site naturally.

This happens because if a lot of people value your site, you are bound to get talked about in forums and message boards that are related to your site topic. And other webmasters who visit your site and like it will add links from their sites to yours. Your link popularity will grow naturally–as long as your site content is high quality.

But a site needs the initial momentum that reciprocal links provide to get started. Just the act of emailing webmasters for reciprocal links will result in people who are in your area of expertise looking at your site. So whether you get a link or not, if you have a quality site, you've put it in front of a person who has the opportunity to spread the word about you. And believe me, quality sites get talked about a lot.

Getting More Links

Since it's true that reciprocal links have been devalued by Google, that could mean that you need to get more links to stay competitive (though that really depends on what keywords you're targeting).

Personally, I find SEO Elite to be a huge asset in this regard, because it automates the process of getting people to link to your site. I also highly recommended Jack Humphrey's Power Linking methods.

Summing It All Up

If you're building quality content and using reciprocal links as they should be used (to get a short-term boost that launches a new site), then changes in the valuation of reciprocal links will not be a problem.

If you're a link spammer, or if you're relying on shady directories or link farms, then yes, you're in trouble. Stick to the methods I've outlined above and use software-assisted link gathering tools like SEO Elite and you'll be on top of the search engine game for many more algorithm updates to come.

About the Author:
Jonathan Leger is a well known AdSense authority who runs an AdSense Tips blog filled with AdSense, SEO and Internet Marketing advice.
Content Provider: http://www.my-articles.com