Do It Yourself SEO Software

If you’re strapped for cash and you want to perform search engine optimization, you may be tempted to use one of the many pieces of do-it-yourself SEO software that are available on the market. The makers of each software program tout easy-to-use features and an inexpensive price as major selling points for these programs. While they may be easy to use, these programs can also be a waste of money because of a lack of features. Knowing the basics of do-it-yourself SEO software will help you to make a good SEO decision and save money for professional SEO efforts.

Features

SEO software programs can have some features that make SEO a little easier for business owners. However, these programs often lack features that make it easy to track your SEO results. When you do keyword research and implement SEO strategies on your site, you will want to be able to track your results and easily make changes to your strategies. When you purchase a piece of software that lacks these reporting and tracking features, you are making SEO even more difficult than it has to be. In this case, it may be a better financial investment to hire an SEO consulting firm that provides full search engine optimization and analyzes return on investment and results on a regular basis.

Ease of Use

Do-it-yourself SEO software programs are often advertised as being easy to use by even beginners. The interfaces of these programs may be easy to use, but how is it possible for a program to be simple for someone who does not know a lot about SEO and is just doing it for the first time? In order to be truly easy to use, these software programs need to have tutorials, help pages, and informational articles that explain how to use each feature to add to your SEO efforts. If you find a piece of software that does not have these help capabilities, it is best to save your money and use it to hire a professional SEO consulting firm.

Price

SEO software programs may seem inexpensive because their prices are low. However, you need to analyze the cost of the program in terms of the results you will realize once you have used the software to optimize your web site. If a software program is only $199 but it is difficult to use or your find that your traffic only increases by 5%, it may be a better investment to hire an SEO consulting firm that will increase your traffic by 20%. The whole goal of search engine optimization is to make your site more accessible to search engines so your page is ranked within the top 10 of sear results for your keywords and phrases. If an SEO consulting firm can make your site so accessible that you see a 20% increase in site traffic, the SEO may pay for itself with the increase in profits you see when you convert these new web visitors into buyers.

Optimizing Your Site

The SEO Team is a full-service SEO consulting firm that can help you optimize your web site and skyrocket your traffic. If you’d like us to help you accomplish your SEO goals, visit our web site and find out how we can help you get increased web site traffic.

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/

Build SEO Links & Web Traffic With Content Distribution

Many website owners and SEOs (search engine optimizers) believe that trading links is the most effective way to build the hundreds of links necessary for good search-engine ranking. But there's another way to build links that deserves your attention: content distribution.

A time-honored way of getting one-way inbound links to your website is to distribute content, usually articles, for other websites to publish in exchange for a backlink. Most often, the backlink is included in an "author's resource box," which is a brief "about the author" paragraph promoting the author's site.

Content distribution has usually been thought of as a website promotion strategy rather than an SEO or link-building strategy. But there are good reasons for adding content distribution to your SEO toolkit.

SEO Benefits of Distributing Content vs. Reciprocal Linking Alone

* Links come faster. You send an email with your article to a relevant website owner. That's it. No adding links to your site and then checking and re-checking for compliance. That means you can get more links from the time and resources you spend on link-building.

* Links are not always available through reciprocal linking. Many website owners simply refuse to do reciprocal linking. Content distribution is one way to reach this large segment of website owners.

* Links are one-way. Many SEO experts believe that reciprocal links may be "dampened" by the search engines; i.e., they will not help you rank as high as one-way links. Of course, reciprocal links are still valuable, there's a just a question of how valuable they really are.

* Links per page are fewer. Many SEO experts believe that the higher the number of links per page, the less SEO value each link has. When a website publishes an article, the author's backlink is often the only live link to another website on that page.

Distinct Non-SEO Benefits of Distributing Content

What makes content distribution a truly special method of link building is that it's the only method where the non-SEO benefits may even outweigh the SEO benefits:

* Website building. If you create special content for your link-building campaign, you can publish it on your site. As a general rule, the more content your site has, the more search engine traffic it will receive. Just publish the article and get it indexed in search engines before distributing it, which should help you to outrank your republishers in search engines for that same content.

* Traffic generation. The links in distributed content generate traffic in the form of highly qualified leads: people who liked what you had to say. Distributing content gets you traffic even when it doesn't get you a link. If your article gets picked up by a large-circulation email newsletter, you will get a flood of highly qualified traffic.

* Authority. Distributing content is the only linking campaign method that can make the recipient website and its owners appear authoritative. There are thousands of internet gurus who owe their lucrative reputations entirely to the articles they've distributed.

* Mindshare. Distributing articles is the only linking campaign method that can help you spread an idea. This makes article distribution invaluable for launching new products or services.

Drawbacks of Content Distribution

Of course, nothing good ever came easy. Any website owners who are looking for SEO magic beans will be disappointed by content distribution:

* Desired anchor text is not always available. Unfortunately, the content management systems most widely in place today make it easier for website owners to accept content as text rather than HTML. This means that many website owners simply have their content management system convert a URL into a live link, rather than taking the time to code in the anchor text. Still, an experienced content distributor can usually find ways around this problem to make sure that many if not most of the links use anchor text.

* Results are variable. Content distribution is not quite as sure a thing as reciprocal linking. The site that publishes your article has to like not only your site, but also your article. This is especially true for the passively-generated links that come from content clearinghouse websites. But results can vary the other way, too: an article that catches on will yield more links than you ever could have gotten through the same investment in reciprocal linking. In order to minimize the risk of content not catching on with website owners, you should make sure your content is high-quality, and also plan for a large content distribution campaign: the more content you try, the more likely you are to find a winner.

* Requires significant investment. You need high-quality content, expertise in content distribution, and quite a few work-hours to distribute the content and track the results. Of course, the cost has to be weighed against the cost of reciprocal linking, which is also significant. These costs can be mitigated by outsourcing the entire process from soup to nuts to a content distribution specialist. Costs of outsourcing content distribution compare favorably with costs of outsourcing reciprocal link building.

* Requires special expertise. There are numerous newbie pitfalls to distributing content, from improperly formatting articles to writing a bad introductory email to accompany content submissions. You generally have to have done numerous campaigns to truly get the feel for it. Again, this requirement has to be weighed against the real-world requirement of special expertise in other link campaign methods. Again, this drawback can be mitigated by outsourcing your project to a specialist.

In short, there are benefits to both reciprocal linking and content distribution. All things being equal, you should use both. Still, content distribution is the only one method that carries substantial non-SEO benefits as well. Plus, a professionally managed content distribution campaign may even yield greater SEO results than reciprocal linking would for the same investment.

You owe it to yourself or your clients to add content distribution to your SEO-toolkit--before the owner of the next highest-ranking site finds out about it.

About the Author:
Joel Walsh is the owner of UpMarket Content, offering a fully managed content distribution campaign guaranteed to get you at least one hundred one-way inbound links for every three pages of content: http://upmarketcontent.com/website-promotion-package.htm [requested HTML anchor/link text: website content distribution]
Article Source: www.iSnare.com

Keywords Finalization Methodology

To arrive at the set of keywords that:
Describe business correctly (are relevant)
Attract traffic (are popular & are searched for)
Have less competition (are relatively un-optimized for )

Steps

Step I:
Lets start by saying that the for the keyword finalization of a web site the first step is to device the theme of the web site. The keywords then should be generated which are in sync with the themeing structure of the site. The home pages & the other higher level pages should target more general(main theme)keywords. The deeper pages (embedded in subdirectories or sub domains) should target more specific & qualified keywords.
Once the sites themes & sub-themes are done, lets start by looking for the keywords

StepII:

The finalization of the keywords for any given site can be done in the following way:
Generation of the seed keywords for the site (theme keywords).
Expansion of the seed keywords into key-phrases by adding qualifiers (sub theme keywords)
Generating a larger set of keywords by word play on the key-phrases generated in step II.(sub theme targeting)

Lets take them one by one:
SEED Keywords/Primary keywords:
The seed keywords can be generated by either of the ways mentioned below:
The client provides the terms he feels are relevant to his business.
The SEO firm generates the seed words by understanding the business domain & the business model of the client.
Some outside domain consultant provides them.

Another way of generating seed keywords is to look for the meta tags of the competition web sites.
WARNING: do not place any unnecessary emphasis on these tags. Use them just to generate you seed keywords list.
If one has certain set of keywords then tools like WT & Overture can also be used to arrive at the other relevant seed keywords.
Typically seed keywords are single word.
A good number of seed Keywords is between 10-12.

SUB theme Keywords (add Qualifiers)
Now to these seed keywords add qualifiers.
These qualifiers can be anything location/sub-product/color/part no/activity/singular etc.
By utilizing these qualifiers one can expand the list of the seed keywords.
Say a good number would be anywhere between 20-30.
Typicaly a sub theme key phrase could be of 2-3 -4 word length.
One recent study suggests that
The typical searcher often uses longer queries. Many contain more than three words. Within three different search engines, keyword distribution data tells a compelling story:

Words in Query LookSmart (%) Ask.com (%) Teoma (%)
1 27.00 12.76 38.04
2 33.00 22.46 29.59
3 23.00 19.34 18.13
4 10.00 11.89 8.00
5 7.00* 7.86 3.51
6 - 6.19 1.39
7 - 5.47 0.63

LookSmart does not report beyond 5 search terms, instead grouping five or more terms into one category.

Approximately 40 percent of queries in LookSmart have three or more words. About 32 percent in Teoma have three or more. Ask Jeeves has an even higher skew, nearly 62 percent, because of its natural language focus. Within FAST, the database that powers Lycos and others, the average is 2.5 terms. That suggests a similar frequency distribution to LookSmart and Teoma.

Hence we can keep the average length of sub theme keywords at around 3.

About the author:
Vikas Malhotra
I'm an eBiz consultant and owner of Mosaic Services- an SEO Company. I regularly write and submit articles on various SE specific topics.
To find more articles, please visit my site http://sem.mosaic-service.com
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SEO – How to Use Keywords Effectively

Keywords are search terms that are entered into a search engine for finding particular items of interest or topics relating to your website. You will need to optimize your website with relevant keywords in order to get the best possible placement. You should use your keywords and keyword phrases effectively within your site so when a search engine spiders your site, the keywords get picked up. There should be a variety of keywords and keyword phrases used.

Within the HTML of your site, you should use keywords in the title tag. These keywords should be used in a descriptive sentence for each page within your site. The most relevant keywords and keyword phrases should be used in the home page title. You should repeat the keywords phrase two or three times but make sure that the title makes sense.

Use of Meta tags is also important. You should place all relevant keywords and keyword phrases in your Meta tag. Check back on this often as you add content to your site. Using keyword phrases as opposed to single keywords is generally helpful as single keywords can be very competitive. Avoid overuse of a keyword. This can actually hurt placement with some search engines if it is used too often. Use commas or spaces to separate the keywords but do not use both. It is also helpful to add common misspellings of a word as well as both the singular and plural forms of the word or phrase. It is also advisable to upper and lower case words and phrases.

In the Meta tag description, use your keywords and keyword phrases and repeat them two or three times. The Meta tag description should be relatively short and not exceed twenty five words. It should also make sense and entice users to click to your site when they view it on a search engine.

Content of your site is the most important part of keyword placement. Search engines often concentrate on the first 250 words for relevancy and density so use the majority of your keywords there. Try to get a five to seven percent density but do not go over this. Search engines will consider this spamming and it will damage your placement. Make sure the content makes sense without sounding too repetitive. It may be helpful to write your content without using keywords first, then modify the content to incorporate your most relevant keywords.

About the Author:
Ricardy Banks is a Certified Internet Consultant with WSI and has over 20 years of experience in the IT industry.
WSI Internet Consulting & Education
rbanks@easywsiwebsolutions.com
Article Source: http://www.articles2k.com

Outsourcing Your SEO "Grunt Work" To Maximize Profit

When you have a full time online business to run, you see that there are a few problems that can arise that will take up much of your time. When creating a new website, you want to make sure that you can maximize profit from the virtual real-estate by increasing traffic. So, you are sure you need more traffic because you know your site converts its visitors into sales or at least newsletter subscribers. Now it is time for you to use all the strategies that exist to get traffic to your website.

There is one problem now that you have reached that point isn’t there? Everyone has this problem and most people don't know or don't want to admit it and it is that they have no clue what they are doing. Many will say, "I want traffic", but few know how to traffic and how to keep it coming down the road. For this reason exist services that you can outsource you SEO work to. Which one will you choose though?

This is one of the harder questions to answer. Much of this depends on your budget and other factors. How much do you have to spend and what do you want them to do? Do you want them to do everything your site needs to create traffic or do you want them just to help with your article submission?

You have a few basic methods of increasing traffic that should be done by everyone. These methods also happen to be great for SEO. These methods are; article distribution, press release distribution, blog writing, and, forums posting. All of these strategies increase traffic and search engine placement. They also increase links to your website.

Article distribution can be done simple by writing a few articles every week and sending them to article directories like ezinearticles.com. Every article has a link to your site in the signature (or it should) or some way of getting people to come to there website. Every time somebody finds it they will place it in there site with a link to yours. Over time, you will create hundreds of links to your website. The problem is that you have to spend all the time researching and writing and if you do not know how, you will be in trouble.

Press release distribution is similar to article distribution and is overlooked by many internet marketers. This is because most of them don't know how to write news or they don't know were they can be broadcasted. This can be done at prweb.com. Again, every press release has a link on it. The problem arises if you do not understand how to write a press release.

Blogging is an amazing way of increasing links and traffic. Whether your blog is on your site or on another site, every link to your site will add favor with search engines. The content is loved by both people and search engines. The problem is that people don't know how to start a blog or they don't know how to use the anchor text to correctly optimize there websites.

Forum posting and posting on other interactive sites like blogs and yahoo! Answers is another great way of increasing search engine traffic as well as increasing traffic from those websites. This is a very time consuming method of increasing traffic and is supposed to be used gradually to learn and not to spam. Every post has a link to your site.

All of these are great methods of increasing traffic, improving search engine ranking, increasing your "expert" status, and much more. They are all time consuming and if you are running a business, time is money. To optimize your time for more important activities, most successful internet marketers choose to hire a service or freelancer to do the work for them. There are many services to choose from and they range in prices. Some SEO companies chare $1000+ when they are doing jobs for people.

The choice is yours, do you choose to do the work yourself and hope you are doing it correctly, or do you wish to have another, third party, do the job for you?

About the Author:
George Christodoulou
If You Are Searching For A Service That Can Increase Your Sites Traffic, Increase Your Websites Standings With Search Engines And Much More, Please visit, http://www.internetbusiness-tips.com To learn More About Our Blogging And SEO Service For A Very Low Price. Your Site Will Be Taken Good Care Of By One Of Our Amazing Search Engine Optimization Specialists
Article Submitted On: October 17, 2006
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/

How important are back links?

When setting up your website for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) on Google there are several factors you need to look at in order to obtain a high rank on their search engine. Of course your content and meta tags must be inline with positive density percentages and reciprocal links. Google then takes your website and performs a mathematic equation and places a numeric value on your website depending on one of the most important features, reciprocal or back links.

A back link and reciprocal link are identical. They both say the same thing to the Google engine, that your site should be ranked higher in the order because other people find value in what your website has to offer, thus they provide a link to your site. In turn, you keep a closed loop by reciprocating the favor to the other website by extending the same courtesy of a back link. Thus creating a solid network connection. Google likes to see interconnectivity and will reward your website well for planning it this way.

There are drawbacks to the equation. As things change a website that you are affiliated with may drop a hyperlink or a page may get accidentally deleted. When the Google robot goes through your website and finds a dead link it notes that you aren’t keeping good care of your website and punishes your web rank by reducing its point value. If you wish to know what your sites current point value is download The Google Toolbar and search for your website www.yourwebsitename.com in the box and perform a Google web search. Upon reading the full URL, Google will go directly to your site first thus pulling up your home page. There on the toolbar will be a page rank for your website between 1 and 10. 1 being a less visited and noted website and 10 a site that screams traffic 24/7.

Some of the individuals you share reciprocal links with may in fact scan all their links for continuity, should they receive a bounce back for a broken link on your website you can be assured you will receive an email from them. Keeping your website in balance with other sites you share links with will keep the Google engine happy. If you go off and add a company that is not Google friendly, meaning they have no back links you may also lose points.

About the author:
Jakob Jelling is the founder of http://www.sitetube.com Visit his website for the latest on planning, building, promoting and maintaining websites.
Circulated by Article Emporium

Beat Google’s Dampening Link Filter With SEO Articles

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

The Dampening Link Filter

It seems that Google may have introduced something called a “Dampening Link Filter” into its indexing algorithm. I’ll give you a layperson’s overview of this filter, but for more intimate details, check out http://www.webpronews.com/insiderreports/searchinsider/wpn-49-20050407GooglesNewLinkFilter.html#google.

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

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

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

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

This article explains how SEO articles satisfy each of these three conditions. (For the basics of SEO article writing, take a look at http://www.divinewrite.com/seoarticles.htm.)

Build Backlinks Slowly

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

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

Build Backlinks From Relevant Sites

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

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

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

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

Build Backlinks With a Long Lifespan

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

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

Conclusion

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

Happy writing!

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

Affordable Search Engine Marketing for your online business

Almost every business these days has an online presence. Having a web presence on the World Wide Web is one of the best ways through which you can attract lots of customers to buy goods from your business through your site. There is no dearth of competition in any field, and it is up to you to tackle this competition in the best possible way.

The idea is to present your products as unique, so that the customer is compelled to buy goods from you. Marketing on the web is very different from the marketing of goods that is done in the traditional way. Affordable search engine marketing is the best means for you to market your product and earn profit.

Well it will not work if you just place any search engine marketing strategy to make your product popular. There are two ways of going about doing anything. One is the correct and the lengthy way, while the other is the incorrect and the easy way. So it is up to you to choose the proper way out to do affordable search engine marketing. You must make sure that your search engine marketing is affordable in the real sense of the term.

Be very careful about the kind of marketing strategy that you use for the marketing of your product on the web. Make sure that the marketing strategy is completely in tune towards reaching out to your targeted audience. You will make the biggest blunder if your marketing strategy is not able to give you the desired business results. Always make use of those strategies that will help you in making your business all the more popular on the web.

The internet is the one source which people make use of, to find information about anything on the web. So if you want that more and more internet users have access to your site, you must put together all possible efforts to make your site easily available to online visitors. Search engine optimization is one search engine marketing technique that you can utilize for making your site easily accessible to visitors. Search engine optimization is nothing but the different methods that are used for making a site popular on the web.

Keyword research is the basis of a successful affordable search engine marketing for any product on the web. If you are actually able to identify the vital keywords of a product, the entire task will become very easy for you. Make sure to undertake meticulous keyword research for being successful with your online business. Keyword research is also very important for doing pay per click advertisement campaigns. This is an advertisement method that is done by using the proper keyword that best describes your goods and services.

It is important for you to adopt an affordable search engine marketing strategy, simply because the marketing strategy should not be a strain on your finances. You must be able to afford for this without any worrying even a little bit about your finances.

About the Author:
Steve Waganer is expert in Search engine optimization, Affiliated Marketing,Affordable search engine marketing and Organic search engine optimization.To get his expert advice for your website to get high rank and top position in major search engines visit www.cometsearchenginemarketing.com
Added: 19 Oct 2006
Article Source: http://articles.simplysearch4it.com/article/39904.html

Is Your Website Invisible? The Google Sandbox Solution

What is the Google Sandbox?

It’s the mysterious, possibly non-existent web purgatory where millions of sites languish without rankings, visibility, or traffic.

How Do You Know if You’re Stuck in the Sandbox?

Here’s a rough set of criteria for you.

§ Your site is indexed and appears with the proper title, snippet, and url (www, or no www whichever you picked) – type site:www.yoursite.com into Google to check this.’
§ Your site has PageRank (use the google toolbar, or nichebot.com to find this)
§ It is regularly crawled, displaying cache dates not more than 10 days old
§ On your keyword, you rank in the top 20 for allinanchor, allintext, and allintitle. To check this, type, e.g. allinanchor: and see if you’re in the top 20.
§ You do not rank within the first 1000 places for the keyword the site was designed for

Does the Sandbox Really Exist, or is it Just the Google Algorithm?

This is a big controversy. Everyone has a different opinions.

Don’t listen to guys who handle bluechip companies - they optimize older, high PR sites. It’s your everyday mainly-new-sites webmaster who knows this problem intimately. In fact, all the big sites need to do is place the keyword in the title and they're on the first page. This gives them an unfair advantage not unlike what the “media elite” has enjoyed for decades.

Regardless of whether the sandbox is a separate phenomenon from the algorithm, the degree of prejudice against new sites has hurt quality of Google’s search results. This is especially true with products and topics both new and urgent. The bigger sites may not be covering it, but searchers end up there without high quality answers.

The common wisdom now is that if you’re looking for new websites, go to MSN or Yahoo instead. Neither of these sites is using this kind of filter. Many websites rank in the top 10 (for their targeted keywords) on these two search engines, yet are nowhere to be found in Google.

Why Would Google Do This?

Google frowns upon SEOs who try to overly influence ranking, so they needed to find a way around SEO factors to deliver quality results. So they’d look for signs of SEO in websites, e.g. how consistent the addition of backlinks is, and how repetitive (vs. natural) the anchor text of backlinks is, and they consider the age of the site and its backlinks.

Redesign Penalties

Similarly, websites that have made the mistake of too comprehensively redesigning their look, content, or navigation have been shocked to find that they get penalized for this updating. Google seems to prefer a “frozen in time” or “moving like molasses” kind of internet. But to be fair, this is something that had to be included to beat spammers who were buying old websites and refueling them with keyword spam.

Why Do You Get Sandboxed?

Some sites have gotten out of the sandbox in a week, while others can take up to a year or more. No one knows if any one contributing factor gets you out sooner rather than later. Some point to the age of inbound links, or the frequency with which your site acquires them. Some say that getting too many inbound links too quickly appears artificial, and is flagged as spam. But others argue that Google can’t know how fast a site should acquire links. A website that received national news coverage, for example, could acquire hundreds or thousands of links in a day.

It’s likely that no one outside of Google fully understands how the sandbox works. The problem has been noticed and discussed for nearly 2 years, and no one has given a satisfactory answer. What’s crystal clear is that Google has made it so complex that it cannot be reverse engineered.

How Long Will You Be Making Sand Castles?

The delay seems to vary anywhere from four to 11 months. Since we don’t know exactly upon what and to what degree the filter depends, it’s likely a different magic combination for every site- and this fits with webmasters’ experience. So keep your head down, develop content, get inbound links, and eventually you’ll get out.

Some suggest that when you come out of the sandbox, you are not fully free. They notice a “rationing” or gradual increase in traffic from Google. In the meantime, older sites may rank better than you, regardless of the quality of their look, feel, and content. Deal with it. Keep your head down and keep working.

Another wrinkle: some webmasters suggest that sandboxing can occur at the page level, not simply at the site level, and that it is the bigger money/traffic keywords that get sandboxed. Again, this could simply be due to the level of competition on that keyword, as the entire site is not sandboxed if you’re getting rankings and traffic from other keywords.

Is There a Way to Trick the Sandbox Filter?

Some webmasters have talked about finding cracks in the algorithm… and they mainly involve backlinks. For a while, there was a lot of linkspam on blogs, but everyone – Google, bloggers, and blog providers – have cracked down on that exploit.

The real sandbox solution is not a trick - unless you define everything done by the SEO-aware as “tricky”. The answer is to grow your content and backlinks naturally over time. Don’t look for the quick buck, the quick ranking, or the easy way out. Go back to basics and build websites that people can use and enjoy. Exchange links with quality websites.

To avoid frustration, I’d suggest, if web building is what you do full time, that you begin a new site every month or two – eventually, if you’ve worked consistently on all of them, you’ll have one after another emerging from purgatory and flourishing in the rankings.

About the Author:
Brian Carter
Since 1999, San Diego SEO Consultant Brian B. Carter, MS, has reached more than 2 million readers online. Brian's second book, "How I Made $78,024.44 in Six Months Using the Newest Secrets of AdSense and Overlooked Keywords" will be available in October, 2005 from his website, Ranking High on Search Engines
Article Source: http://www.articles2k.com

Choosing an SEO Consulting Firm

If you’re like many business owners, you’re just learning about the awesome power of search engine optimization. You may have read about the increased traffic gained using SEO or you may have heard something about keywords and content. If you’re not sure how these concepts can help you get more web site traffic, you should consider hiring an SEO consulting firm. A professional SEO consulting firm is in the business of search engine optimization. Instead of struggling to learn about keyword analysis or trying to get links to your site placed on other sites, you can delegate those tasks to the SEO firm that you choose so you are free to run your business. Knowing what to look at when you choose a consulting firm will help you to make the best decision for your business.

SEO Methods

When you’re choosing a firm, learn about the methods that they will use to optimize your web site. If the person you speak with talks about a lot of paid SEO and tricks to help you get web traffic, you may want to continue your search. If the person talks about organic or natural SEO, you may want to add the firm to your list of prospects. Natural SEO is the best way to optimize your site and make it more accessible to the search engines.

Sample Work

SEO results are a little more difficult to review than the portfolio of a graphic designer or the completed works of an architect. However, SEO consulting firms should be willing to show you the results that they have achieved since they have been in business. Ask them to show you some sites that they have optimized. Review the site in detail and make a note of the keywords used on each site. Visit several search engines and use these keywords in each search box. Make a note of the rankings for each site and compare them to any rankings that the firm has listed in their marketing materials. If you find several sites in the top ten of the search engine rankings, chances are that the SEO consulting firm gets good results.

Client References

While you may find that the SEO consulting firm has gotten good rankings for its clients, you’ll want to ask for some client references to find out how well the company works with clients. Some companies have employees with good technical skills, but the staff members lack the client service skills needed to keep clients happy. Ask for the names and contact information of several references so you can check the company’s history of client service. Ask references about how long it takes the company to return phone calls, how thoroughly their questions were answered by staff members, and what their overall level of satisfaction was with the company in question.

Choose the Best

The SEO Team is a full-service search engine optimization company with the experience to optimize your site and meet all of your web design and internet marketing needs. Visit our web site to learn more about how we can increase your web site traffic.

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/

SEO One-way Web Links: 5 Strategies

With so much talk about search engines putting a damper on direct reciprocal links, the hunt for the elusive one-way inbound link is on.

As someone who works with small business website owners, I've heard just about every inbound-linking scheme there is. In the end, I've only seen five strategies that really work consistently for getting hundreds of links.

Less Effective One-Way Link Strategies

Yet there's perennial interest in alternative linking strategies. They range from bad to OK, but none offer as much potential as the five major ways of getting links.

* Link farms never seem to die. The latest variations try to pass themselves off as viral marketing, but are really a sort of endless pyramid scheme: you link to me, so I link to someone else, who links to someone else, and on and on down the line. Link farms can get you delisted from search engine indexes, so don't even try them.

* Affiliates can provide you with one-way inbound links if you use affiliate software that links directly to your site rather than through a redirect. But many, many affiliates are now placing all their affiliate links in redirects of their own invention, to help protect their commissions from pirates who will simply apply to the program themselves to get a discount.

* Posting to web forums and blogs regularly will get you one-way inbound links, but they'll only have search-engine value a small percentage of the time. Many blogs and bulletin boards use search-engine-unfriendly dynamic file formats, automatically encase links in script, or use robot instructions to prevent spiders from following links.

* Many one-way inbound linking strategies fall into the great-if-you-are-lucky-enough-to-get-it category, such as winning a web award or being featured on a high-PageRank website just for being so great.

* Other one-way incoming link strategies are in the this-will-take-forever-to-get-anywhere category, such as offering to provide testimonials to all your vendors in exchange for a link to your site. (Hint: If you can get more than twenty links that way, you probably need to simplify your supply chain.)

Now, on to the five major ways of getting large numbers of one-way inbound links. Some are better than others, but they all have more potential than some of the more madcapped strategies. Of course, none is a good strategy all on its own. You have to understand all five strategies in order to really gain a distinct advantage in the one-way link hunt.

1. Waiting for Inbound Links

If you have good content you will eventually get one-way inbound links naturally, without asking. Organic, freely given links are an essential part of any SEO strategy. But you cannot rely on them, for two reasons:

* Unfortunately, "eventually" can be a very long time.

* Worse, there is a vicious cycle: you can't get search engine traffic, or other non-paid traffic, without inbound links; yet without inbound links or search engine traffic, how is anyone going to find you to give you inbound links?

2. Triangulating for Inbound Links

Search engines will have a tough time dampening reciprocal links if the reciprocation is not direct. To get links to one website you offer in exchange a link from another website you also control. This would seem to be a mostly foolproof way of defeating the link-dampening ambitions of Google and the rest. If you have more than one website, you probably are already employing this linking method. There are only a few drawbacks:

* You need to have more than one website in the same general category of interest or the links won't be relevant.

* The work required to set up this kind of arrangement and verify compliance is not insignificant. The process cannot be automated to the same extent as direct one-to-one reciprocal linking.

* As with traditional reciprocal links, a very big drawback is that the links are mostly on "Resources" pages that are just lists of links. There's only a small chance of getting significant traffic from these links. Plus, any "Resource" page may well eventually become an easy target for link dampening, if that hasn't happened already.

3. Submitting to Directories

They are the legendary fairy lands of SEO: PageRank-passing, no-fee-charging, and actually well-run directories of relevant links. Yes, they really do exist. An SEO acquaintance tells me he knows 200 good ones just off the top of his head. Plus, there are other kinds of directories: directories of affiliate programs, of websites using a certain content management system, of websites whose owners are members of this or that group, of websites accepting PayPal, etc. etc.

Ah, a link in a PageRank-passing link directory: it's a good deal if you can get it. But let's say you do get links from all 200 such directories and a hundred more from the little niche directories--now what?

4. Paying for Inbound Links

Buying and selling text links on high-PageRank web pages has become big business. Buying good traffic-generating "clean" links is a great alternative to pay-per-click advertising, which confers no SEO benefit. But, there are a number of pitfalls of relying primarily on paid links for SEO:

* The cost of the hundreds of links required for substantial search engine traffic can become prohibitive.

* As soon as you stop paying, you lose your link--you are essentially renting rather than owning, with no "link equity" building up.

* Google is actively trying to dampen the impact of paid links on rankings, as revealed in various patent filings. A website can try to mask the fact that the links are paid, but how well it does that is out of your control.

* Given Google's mission to dampen paid links' effectiveness, paid link buyers have an interest in verifying that a potential paid link partner is "passing PageRank." But identifying appropriate PageRank-passing paid link partners is quite a task in itself.

* Google also has a stated mission of dampening the value of any "artificial" links. Having most of your links on PageRank 3 or higher web pages would seem to be a dead give-away that your links are "artificial," since the vast majority of web pages (note: not necessarily websites, but their pages) are PageRank 1 or lower. Meanwhile, buying PageRank 0 or 1 links would have so little impact on a site's PageRank that it would not be worth the expense.

5. Distributing Content

All of the above four inbound-link-generating methods really do work. But it is the fifth method of getting one-way inbound links that is the most promising: distributing content

The idea is simple: you give other websites content to put on their sites in exchange for a link to your site, usually in an "author's resource box," an "about the author" paragraph at the end of the article.

The beauty of distributing content for links is that the links generally generate more traffic than links on a "resources" page. Plus, your article will pre-sell readers on the value of your site.

The downside, of course, is that it's no small amount of work to create original content and then distribute it to hundreds of website owners. But nothing good ever came easy. And on the internet, one-way inbound links are a very good thing.

About the Author:
[Formatting: for web, please use "website content promotion" as the link's anchor text (visible link text)] Joel Walsh is the head content writer for UpMarket Content. Get more information on website content promotion: http://upmarketcontent.com/website-promotion-package.htm
Article Source: www.iSnare.com

Inbound Links Role In SEO

SEO or search engine optimization is one of the most important aspects of owning and operating a web site on the web today. While some people are still trying to ignore this procedure, the experts cannot stress how important the issue is if you plan to make a play for the top spot in the search engines. Then one must consider all of the different roles that are in play when it comes to SEO. Take the inbound links role in SEO. Many people are overlooking the inbound links role in SEO and that is a big mistake to make in this day and age. Just because you believe that you site is unique does not make it so. Over all there is a big deal when it comes to the inbound links role in SEO and one that should not be ignored by anyone who wishes to be successful in the world of ecommerce from any stand point.

When you are looking at the inbound links role in SEO one must think about doors. Doors are a passage or entry into a building. A house will most likely have only two doors, a front and a back. This is due to the fact that there is not a lot of traffic going in and out of the doors and therefore more is not needed. But what about a large retail establishment? They have a big reason to have more then one door to their place, so they can allow more customers to come and go all at the same time. The same is true of inbound links and your web site. An inbound link is a link that is housed on another web site and points to your web site. So in all truth this is a passage or a door to your business. Much like a live brick and mortar business, you want to have as many doors as possible to your site. This is the inbound links role in SEO. There is the matter that having more ways to get into your site will make it more friendly and appealing to not only the customers, but also the search engines.

The more sites that the search engines find with your inbound link on them the higher the ranking in the search results the site will get. This shows that the site is popular with a lot of people and they are willing to point the people that visit their site to the doors of your site.

About the Author:
Wisam Abdulaziz
Directory INC Free listing web directory
Submitted: 2006-10-27
Article Source: GoArticles

Top 5 On-Page Search Engine Optimization Strategies

I reckon one of the most rewarding things you can do is to build a webpage and see it rank well on the internet, in particular search engines like Google, Yahoo or MSN. Most internet newbies are absolutely ecstatic when they finally see one of their webpages rank well. To rank well there are a whole range of issues that you need to look at which include both on-page optimization and off-page optimization strategies.

The key strategies we will look at today in this article are on-page search engine optimization strategies. In reality, most on-page search engine optimization strategies will only make small changes in placement, but each small change will add up to larger changes.

There are five key elements you need to look at for on-page search engine optimization.

Item #1 – Use Your Keywords In Your Title Meta Data

One of the most important things you can do when it comes to on-page optimization is to use your target keywords in the title. For example if your page is about home loans in Florida, then you need to put into your title the keywords “Florida Home Loans” or “Florida Investment Property Loans”.

Item #2 – Use Your Keywords In The Meta Data

Whilst many search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN may not use the Description Meta tag and Keyword Meta tag, other smaller search engines do still use this information and because of this you need to ensure that you still use these meta tags. You also need to ensure that you use the keywords in the Keywords meta tag and as well ensure that you use the keywords in the description meta tag.

Further to this make sure that you when you are choosing the keywords for a webpage you only use one or two keywords in the page. From experience we have found that trying to use more than two keywords in a page just does not work and never results in good search engine positions.

I had a couple of building clients come and talk to me this week about helping them build more effective websites and we found their previous website builders had used general keywords that they were never going to rank well. In fact it turned out this one website developer had five other building companies in his stable and he was customizing his highest paying client to be ranked well and the rest were ranked poorly.

Ninety-Nine percent of the issue with the website was that their webpages were developed using generalized words which would never bring in quality traffic. The keywords where as the highest paying clients website were using specific terms, but on his site that were using terms like homes, home, builder etc. This meant that our clients could never in a million years rank well. Apart from that, even if they did rank well most of their traffic would be irrelevant anyway as they only build homes in Australia and in particular North Queensland.

Item #3 – Use Keywords In Your WebPages

All of the major search engines look at the material on each of your webpages and then assess its quality and ranks it according to that quality. If your webpages are not targeted to a certain issue then your webpage will not rank well. Your key objective in creating a webpage is to target your webpage to your customers and then optimize that page to the keywords your customers would use to find that page.

To make your webpages relevant, you need to include the keywords your customers are using into their webpages. In doing that the search engines will help you to get that message out, when we professionally develop a webpage we use keywords our clients customers are searching on but we ensure that we only have a keyword density of between 2 and 6 percent. Any more than that, your customers are going to consider you are using high pressure tactics and more so, the search engines call it keyword spamming and that can cost you big time.

Actually, it can have you and your website banned.

Item #4 – Use Keywords In The Title On The Webpage

We talked about Keywords in the Title Meta data but I also recommend that you use your keywords in the title of your webpage plus at the end of your webpage. When using HTML the easiest way to make your titles standout simply set your Title in a H1 format. If you are not familiar with H1 this is one of the standard formats in HTML.

Item #5 – Use Keywords In Your Page Name

One of the most misunderstood things people when creating their webpage do not do is to use their webpage keywords in the filenames of their webpages. The most recommended place for your keywords is in your domain names however in reality, you will find that you want 100 or so keywords for your website and the easiest way to use the keywords is to use them in the filename of your webpages. This way the search engines will still give you credit for using the keywords in this area.

To summarise there are five top on-page search engine optimization strategies you should be considering:

Item #1 – Use Your Keywords In Your Title Meta Data
Item #2 – Use Your Keywords In The Meta Data
Item #3 – Use Keywords In Your WebPages
Item #4 – Use Keywords In The Title On The Webpage
Item #5 – Use Keywords In Your Page Name

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

A Quick Guide To Google Analytics

Google, the best search engine ever built, has been famous for everything that it provides – free of course. It has even increased the size of the Email (G-mail) storage to 2.6 GB. Since then, it has started launching a huge variety of products & services, which contains 50 online services. It was in May 2005 that Google acquired a company named Urchin Software Corporation which provided a web service called ‘Urchin on Demand’. Henceforth, the service was renamed to Google Analytics.

Google Analytics is an excellent solution for all the website related needs, starting from the source which brought the visitors to your site to how they interacted with your website. Hence, it provides good results as to how the site should be designed/ modified so as to attract more visitors or how to do better marketing for your product online. Some of the features of Google Analytics are given below.

Firstly, it is much easier to use. With the special AdWords feature, Google provides more flexibility with the keywords and also provides you immediate ROI results. It also provides good suggestions as to which keywords can make the site or product more attractive. Nextly, it focuses on only those modifications (in your website) which will gain you profits. As the service is available in many languages (English, German, Spanish, Korean, etc.) there is a wider scope for improvement of the site along with the marketing campaign.

As Analytics is powered by the same server which runs Google, it can be reliably used for even top corporate projects. Also, it is very much easy to use. For e.g. instead of purchasing or downloading some software or script, just pasting the tracking code in the web pages directly begins the tracking. Google Analytics also provides Executive summaries of the conversions, traffic directly to you so that you don’t have to hunt for the reports. You can then comfortably compare keywords, revenue & basically, the performance of the website. It also provides you the comparative reports of the performance, for e.g. if you need to compare this weeks performance with last week’s you can very well get the entire tabular data. This service extends so much that you can tally this winter’s reports with last summer’s reports. Google Analytics can also be used for e-commerce websites, as you can compare revenues, arrange & modify campaigns & get a whole view of the metrics.

Another special feature of Google Analytics is the Funnel visualization. Sometimes it so happens that a visitor starts exploring your site but quits in the middle. Mostly, it is due to puzzling or maze-like data or irrelevant information on the site that confuses the visitor. Google tracks the positions of the quitting & hence provides you the opportunity of modifying that particular area of the site. Google also provides you the segmented visitor report, which includes sorting of visitor information by location, by action, by new versus returning visitor, making it easier to compare the keywords and the traffic. Geotargeting helps in tracking the location of the visitor and also gives your information about markets in various areas & their potentials. Hence, it provides you a better option of the market analysis & gives you more options of setting up or modifying your campaign in order to increase the market value of your website.

About the Author:
Jakob Jelling is the founder of www.sitetube.com. Visit his website for the latest on planning, building, promoting and maintaining websites.
Article Source: http://www.articles2k.com

Benefits of Article Distribution

Are you familiar with the benefits of distributing articles? If not, you will want to become educated as soon as possible so that you can start making this service work in your favor.

The biggest question that most people have is how they are going to distribute articles. Fortunately, this answer is quite simple. There are hundreds of articles directories that you can submit articles to; each one offerings its own level of benefits.

Everyone’s experience with article distribution is different. Some people are very successful, and others only get a bit of added exposure this way. But if you decide that you want to put the time into this, you should be able to garner results in no time at all.

Listed below are a few benefits that go along with distributing articles.

1. When you submit an article to a directory, it is going to get placed on the site for the entire internet world to read. In addition, you will be able to add your author bio box to the bottom of the article. This way after somebody is done reading your article they can then visit your site to learn more about your and your services. This is a great way to get targeted traffic to your site.

2. Distributing articles will make you look like an expert in your area; even if you are not as experienced as you want to be. When somebody reads a well written article by you, they will then assume that you know what you are talking about. And the more well respected you are, the better chance you have of garnering additional business.

3. Articles that are submitted to directories can be picked up by other sites as well. This is not always the case, but the majority of the times this is true. So in turn, you could write one good article, and it could then be published on several other sites. Subsequently your author bio and link is also published which means that you are getting even more exposure than you initially thought.

4. Most directories have a way for the reader to choose an author and then see every article that he or she has written. This means that if you submit enough articles, you will begin to get a nice following of people that check back to see your work. Over time these people can grow into clients; this means more money in your pocket.

5. Distributing articles is one of the best ways to market yourself or your business without having to spend any money. The only thing that you have to do is take the time to write the articles. And if you do not want to do this, you can hire somebody to do so for a small fee.

About the Author:
Robert Palmer
To distribute your own articles an receive all the benefits mentioned in this article, go to http://www.articletrader.com/distribution/
Article Source: ArticleWarehouse

6 Tips For Raising Your Search Engine Rankings

Whether your site is profitable or not with PPC advertising, search engine rankings are an important factor to consider in improving profitability. The higher you are on a variety of search engines, the better off your profitability.

1. Site Navigation

The navigation menu that appears on your website should include your page’s titles if possible. Also, your sites navigation should be consistent and on every page so that not only people may easily navigate your site, but search engine spiders as well.

2. Choose Less Popular Keywords

Don’t just use the most popular keyword phrases – the market is so competitive that you should be sure to include some special keywords relative to your website. This is especially true if you are just starting to market your site on the web.

3. Choose Related Links

Make sure that you don’t have a lot of irrelevant links on your site. The more closely the links on your site are related to your site, the better the chances of being ranked well in search engines.

4. Update Your Content

You need to periodically update the content of your website, even if it’s only a slight change. Search engine spiders give better rankings to sites that update content often.

5. Don't Over Submit

You need to consider the fact that many search engines don’t like automatic submissions or multiple submissions. Therefore, submit only once and don't use a whole slew of submitting software.

6. Subscribe To and Read Search Engine Relevant News.

Always be on a look out for SEO news – staying up to date and using the latest techniques will help you stay one step ahead of your competitors.

When it comes to massive profitability, high search engine rankings can’t be beat. Keep on top of the game and you will be happy you did.

About The Author:
Halstatt Pires is with MarketingTitan.com - providing Internet marketing services.
Article Source: http://www.articles411.com

What Is Page Rank?

Page ranks are defined numerically, from 1 through 10 - 10, being the highest. Very few pages have a page rank of 10, and anything above a 6 is considered very good. There are many factors that determine a page's rank, but the main variable seems to be based on how many websites link to your page. The higher page ranked sites that link to your site, the better. In other words, 10 links to your page from high ranking sites like CNN.com, Yahoo.com, etc, will easily outweigh five times that amount of links from unknown sites with low page ranks. And, just to make it trickier, the amount of "credit" your site gets from incoming links, is also divided by the amount of sites you link OUT to.

Equally important, is your site's actual content. It needs to be information that people can use and take active interest in. Having content that matches your keywords should also go without saying.

Why Is This Important?

Page rank is extremely important, in that it determines how high you get on search engine results. And just as it's helpful to have your incoming links be from reputable, trusted, relevant sites, your outbound links will also be more valuable to those pages you do link out to. This is important when negotiating for link exchanges with other sites. The higher your page ranking, the more desirable a link from your page will be to others - Including those willing to pay for said link.

Are There Ways To Generate Better Page Rank At No Cost?

Absolutely! To follow are some of the simplest steps you can take.

Build more pages: The more pages your site has, the more content it is generally considered to have. If your site only has 3 pages, the maximum page rank would be a 3. Make sure to have at least 8 relevant pages including the main page, in order to have a healthy amount of content.

Avoid Dead-end Links: Let's say you've worked real hard to get 8 good pages. Your page rank ideally has the potential to be a page rank of 8. However, if half those pages are not leading anywhere, you've got a problem. When the search engines "crawl" your site, they want to go from one page to the next. You can have a really great page, but if it has no other link on it to go somewhere new, it will be considered by the spider to be a dead-end page, which will hurt your site's page rank. Make sure every page has a door out, other than a back button (which to the bots, will generate the equivalent of a good old "Nothing more to see here" type statement). Combat this by making sure you at least have a link back to the index - or better yet, a site navigator at the base of each page with choices between the main pages of your site (ie. FAQ, About Us, Contact Us, etc). Again, these are pages that add convenience to your human visitors as well.

Create Internal Links: Remember to make links to yourself whenever relevant. For example, on your About Us page, don't just mention your online ordering system - hyperlink to the page where your visitor would need to go in order to begin an order. Not only are you creating another link for the crawler, you're also making it convenient for your guest to find that page right then and there, if they so desire.

Utilize Free Directory Listings: They may not always be big high ranking sites, but they are an easy way to get your name out there. You never know when someone might end up using one, and thus find you in the most unexpected of ways!

How To Generate More At Cost: Getting a high ranking site to link to you isn't always the easiest thing to do. Sometimes it is necessary to buy that privilege via ads. There are literally 100's of different options to choose from, however the most effective method these days is by purchasing text based links to your site. For the largest comprehensive list of quality paid link directories along with page rank statistical information visit: http://www.helpmyhits.com/paid-web-directories.php Some tips to stretch you advertising dollar as far as it will go would be linking to different pages of your website (not just the index) and also using different keywords in those links.

As you can see, page rank is a very real and vital aspect of web development that should always be kept in mind. Without it, your chances of being found easily on search engines is compromised. With it, you'll be on your way to a highly successful website.

About the Author:
Kimberly Bodane - http://www.helpmyhits.com
Added: 21 Oct 2006
Article Source: http://articles.simplysearch4it.com/article/40066.html

Forget SEO – It’s All About Conversion!

Which SEO hat do you wear? Is it white or black? Or perhaps it’s a subtle shade of gray. Well, wherever you are on this spectrum, if you are like 99% of the SEO-fixated webmasters out there, you are doing all you can to get visitors to your site. Where you used to optimize your keywords meta tags, you now worry about anchor text and XML site maps.

So, you finesse your site, schmooze the algorithm du jour and begin to climb the slippery search engine rankings pole. But this is where you have to leave your SEO tricks behind and start thinking conversion.

Whoa there! Conversion? That’s all about making sales on shopping sites. My site’s a forum! I don’t sell anything. What has conversion got to do with me?

Everything, my friend. Everything….

SERP Conversion

You want visitors to come your site, right? That’s why you climb greasy SERP pole, after all. (And why you lay awake at night wondering when the next Florida, Hilltop or Bourbon algorithm earthquake is going to hit.) But what does it matter if you reach the peak, but no one clicks through to your site anyway?

The fact is that you have to convert prospective visitors even before they arrive. You have to pique their interest, tweak their curiosity and make sure they click your link and not the other guy’s. And all you have to use are words. No technical tricks will help you now – your only tools are plain ol’ words.

The SERPs will show words from two of three places. Two of these you can control and one you can’t:

1.Your title tag.
2.Your meta description tag.
3.A directory description.

(For example, Google is known to use DMOZ descriptions in their SERPs, and Yahoo uses their directory descriptions in theirs.)

Now, there’s not much you can do about how Yahoo or DMOZ editors describe your site, so don’t worry about number 3. But do what you can do: Place your value propositions clearly in 1 and 2, and use them to lure searchers into your website.

So you have to convert people before they even get to your site. But that’s not all…. You want them to stay, right?

Flash Conversion

No, this has nothing to do with being blinded by bright lights on the road to Damascus. Nor am I telling you to go and make a 100% animated website.

This “flash” is that split second, that tiny window of opportunity that opens up when a searcher arrives at your site and decides whether they have actually found what they are looking for… or not.

Typically, you’ll have a couple of seconds to persuade the new visitor to stay and hang out. That’s all you get. It’s the ultimate in speed-dating. So, how do you wow your “date”? Do you show him a page of scraped “content” interspersed with Adsense ads? Not if you want this to be a lasting relationship.

Follow these tips and be sure to impress your “date”:

1. Have a clear theme

Ranking high for “blue widgets”? Then be sure your visible title, copy and images are clearly focused on them.

2. Have a clean design

Imagine you are taking a first date to a movie. Do you pick her up wearing your pajamas in a dirty, trash-filled car? Or do you clean the car, wash your face and dress to impress? Of course you want to impress her, so you make sure you look (and smell) good.

It’s the same with your site: Clean design, a nice text size and pages that don’t scroll from here to eternity are going to float your first-time visitor-date’s boat.

3. Write clearly and focus on your “date”

Waffle on about yourself and your date will get bored. She wants you to be interested in her. And in terms of your site, that means giving her what she wants to know as quickly and succinctly as possible. This comes down to your ability to write and communicate. So, if you are like Steve Martin in “Roxanne”, make sure you get a someone else (a copywriter) to compose the lines to wow your “date” for you.

OK, so let’s say you have successfully wooed your first-time visitor date. He’s here and he has decided to stick around. You’re going steady, getting to know each other a little more. That’s all you want, isn’t it?

No, it isn’t! You want to pop the question, of course!

Getting hitched

You’ve made all this effort and spent money on getting your “date” this far, so you want to get the most out of your investment, right? You want to hear those sweet words, “I do”:

I do… want to click your Adsense ads. I do… want to become a forum member. I do… want to buy that cool digital thingy.

So how do you turn a whirlwind romance into a successful proposal? Try these ideas for size:

Have clear navigation

You want to make your date dizzy with excitement, not frustration! Make sure you have clear, consistent, well-labeled navigation and make your visitor-date’s time with you a pleasure, and not a reason to reach for the Advil.

Have a clear proposition

What do you want your visitor to do? Buy something? Sign up for something? Join something? Whatever the point of your site is, it does have a point, right? So don’t beat about the bush, and don’t hold back waiting for the right moment: Make your “proposal”, and make it clear and direct.

Happily Ever After…

You thought that was the end of the story? Wait a minute, it’s not over yet! I thought you were in this for a long-term relationship, not a one night stand?

I know, you were thinking that having made all that effort while you were dating, you could ease off now that you’re “married”. But don’t you know that the real rewards start here?

So what are the secrets of a long, blissful relationship with your visitors?

1. Feed them!

You convinced him to come visit once. But how often will he come back if all you give him are the same old leftovers? Cook him up something juicy and delicious, and have him salivating for more:

Enliven your content with new, relevant pages and, not only will you set the search engine robots drooling, but you will also find you have a hoard of visitors coming back for seconds. And in this age of fast-(visitor)-food creation tools called blogs, there’s really no excuse anymore.

2. Shower them with gifts

Everyone likes a gift - and not just on birthdays, anniversaries and at Christmas:

Money talks, and if you are selling anything through your site, then discounts and other offers to previous visitors and customers will draw them back like magnets. Throw in tempting freebies as well and you will have a potent marketing mix.

3. Send them “love” letters

Anyone who has been in a long-distance relationship (like my wife and I were for a year and a half), knows that if you can’t be together, the next best thing is a letter or email. For your website, this means an interesting ezine that is light on sales pitch and rich in information.

4. Start a family!

Not literally! But you can create a “family” atmosphere by adding a forum where your visitors can interact with each other – not just with you and your site. People are social animals, so use a forum to keep them coming back.

OK, so perhaps I overstated it a little in my title. SEO is not dead, so don’t forget about it quite yet. Just remember that it will only get you so far: If you want to actually achieve anything with your site, then you need to focus on conversion like a laser.

About the Author:
Stephen Munday lives in Japan. He works for Provide Cars (http://www.providecars.com/), who buy cars at japanese car auctions and sell them to japanese car importers around the world. This article is (c) Stephen Munday 2005. Permission is given to reproduce this article in whole with the URLs correctly hyperlinked.
Article Source: www.iSnare.com

SEO: How to get started on the success road

The term SEO, which refers to Search Engine Optimization is a vital aspect of Internet marketing strategy exclusively created to perk-up website ranking in search engine listings. In other words, it’s a marketing strategy that aptly involves utilizing the global power inherent in Internet by webmasters. The final objective is to, ultimately, access and profits from unlimited organic search results or search engines on a continual basis.

But before a website owner can achieve upward listing on search engine and profit thereafter, he must apply wide spread relevant keywords, in order to WOO search engine robots to accept and optimizes the web-pages. Once this is done and top listing is achieved, then quality visitors (warm traffic) will eventually be attracted to click his website, which will increase their inclination to take positive action such as opt-in to newsletter, order products/services, make solid enquiries and so on.

From the above summary, we can readily decipher, therefore that, SEO is a great way for webmasters, not only to market their businesses, but to intensely empower them to leverage their SEO campaigns for continuous sales and profits. This fact, has however, induce search engine optimization to continue to attract wide interests and creating phenomenal issues at every twist.

Two major problems most people encounter in SEO campaigns -

Although, there are several hiccups, but in this article we shall deliberate on two that easily come to mind and which must be avoided at all cost. One, you must not run foul of any search engine’s rules, regulations and policies. Going off regulation easily increases the risk of being punished – either being banned partially or permanently. For example, you could wake-up tomorrow to the blasting news that google.com has decided to place ban on websites they fouled their regulations.

The second mistake to avoid is commonly caused by website owners themselves in the course of creating SEO campaigns. It is not uncommon for webmasters, especially the new entrants, to plan and design their websites contrary to what search engine expects from them. In this article you’ll discover best approach to adopt, and automatically avoid this problem. You will be taken through some basics, but very vital ideas that will put you on advantageous starting lane.

Is your website designed for search engine or yourself? If your website must attract search engine listing and bring quality visitors to your website, then the pages must be professionally designed. However, ‘professionalism’ does not imply fazing web-pages with overbearing colors, images/photos, flashes and all sorts of bells and whistles. No! Although, they may allow you parade fine-looking website, but it will load slowly, waste visitors’ precious time, discourage them discourage from exploring any further, and leave them with no other choice than to click “CLOSE.” Off to another website!

Prepare to work hard

Don’t get hoodwinked into the so-called “quick and easy” SEO success. So you must prepare to work hard and play with patience when submitting your websites to search engine. You must also, continually keep monitoring and tweaking when it’s appropriate to do so. Let’s now consider some valued reasons these advices will aid you from the beginning to success level.

Good content is king

For the search engine, especially the three majors – google, yahoo and MSN – writing good, quality content is not negotiable. Remember, people visit search engine for information. So that’s what you must provide for them in order to find you from the mass market. Your content must be based on proper research, knowledge and facts, which will uniquely provide the educative need of your targeted visitors. Again, good content will systemically assist you to bring in “repeat visitors” and also, with time, encourage others to link to your site.

Always update your content. Once your website gets indexed by the search engine, don’t rest on your oars; keep adding more and more contents on a regular basis. And if you cannot write? You can outsource to freelancers. But bear in mind that the benefits of fresh content is endless. One, search engine robots will constantly ‘kiss’ your web-pages and more often than not, get those new pages indexed without any inhibition.

There are other vital stuffs such as good spelling of every text on your website. Also ensure page title is clear, simple and descriptive so as to relevantly, influence search engine to properly place your website and assist visitors determine what your website contain upfront. Another vital idea is to fight for external links; but you can only achieve if contents are of high quality and fresh.

Submission must not be underestimated

The last sane advice is to submit carefully, and avoid those promising you “submission to 1,000,000s of search engine in 5 minutes” at all cost. Instead, download and carefully read submission guideline of each search engine and follow it when to submit your web-pages manually.

About the Author:
Dwayne Taylor
The author also owns the following related resources - www.squareoneseo.com www.squareoneseo.com/aboutus.html www.squareoneseo.com/services.html www.directorysquare.com www.directorysquare.net www.dirdirdir.net/ www.links20.com www.featuredlinker.com www.reindir.com
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