Keywords are for humans not search engines

It seems keywords are making the top of SEO list time and time again. The problem is that some optimizers do not understand the rightful purpose of keywords. Keywords should not be solely embedded for the purpose of reaching the top of search engines. Search Engine Optimization should not be the primary focus of any website. The primary and number 1 focus should always be the visitors. If you create a website for your audience and for your visitors then you should rank fairly. I can't see why any legitimate website can not rank properly within search engines, after time and dedication. Search Engine Optimization main purpose is ranking faster within search engines. Instead of gaining a good balance of traffic within 1 or more years, it is possible to gain a good balance of traffic within 6-9 months with SEO.

Keywords play a major factor in SEO and search engines in general, but the question is are keywords for the search engines or the visitors? The visitors are the ones who are trying to find your site by typing in a keyword, but the search engine is the one locating your site and delivering your site to the visitor based on the searched keywords. Therefore I would have to say, keywords, visitors, and search engines all work hand in hand, but if you focus on the visitor and not the search engine, then you will reap greater rewards. A webmaster should have a plentiful of quality and researched keywords, which becomes the sites core. To receive a good balance of keywords you need to think like your visitors or know how your visitors think. It boils down to research and tracking your visitors. Tracking visitors on your site is business-wise and is not an unethical practice, it’s your website (business). In an offline business you are well aware when a visitor opens the door to your business and comes in the store, the same applies online. It becomes unethical when you continue to track visitors when they exit your site, when you invade visitors’ privacy, or when you intentionally collect personal information about a visitor without their consent or knowledge. Tracking a visitor within your site does not need to be intense, the common web log files are helpful enough. With the web log files you should be able to track the keyword used to find your website, track where a visitor came from to find your site (the referrer), track the total number of unique visitors, track the total number of all visitors, track how many pages were viewed, track the path visitors take within your site, and much more information is available through the web logs. There are many tools that can translate your raw web log files into graphical and legible text, such as: Nihuo or Web Log Expert which both offers a free log analyzer download as well as an inexpensive analyzer for more detailed stats and more features. There are other upscale web log analyzers which are mostly for enterprises or larger sites but are extremely detailed and rewarding, such as: Web Trends, Deep Matrix, or Urchin (which has recently been acquired by the search engine giant 'Google'). Knowing your visitors can only benefit your site. If you have a new website without any visits then you will not have the benefit of knowing your visitors and you will have to create your visitors habits, by using good judgment and research to determine which keywords best suits your site. Your best effort should provide you with at least 250 keywords and keyword phrases, depending on your site category.

Once you have tracked your visitors and/or have completed researching keywords, you are ready to make informed decisions and begin the process of elimination. Many argue to stay away from popular or general keywords because the market for popular and general keywords is flooded and over-crowded, you will never be able to compete. My sentiments exactly, but remember keywords are for visitors, not search engines...so yes, I recommend including popular and general keywords as long as the keyword(s) show room for opportunity. Meaning, it has been used by your visitors...as a solitaire keyword or within a keyword phrase. Creating keyword phrases is important because at least 95% of internet users search using keyword phrases, not many use one word. With that said, you should still include a few solitaire keywords. Use singular and plural expressions for keywords. Once you have gathered all your keywords make two lists, one list can be titled active keywords...keywords which you are currently using or plan to use in the near future. The second list can be titled inactive keywords...keywords which have been eliminated and may never be used. Eliminate keywords based on your research, visitor data, and site category. Regardless how general your site is try to have only one focus audience, this zooms in on your target, makes marketing the site easier, and more successful. When done eliminating you should have a plentiful of keywords and keyword phrases. Generally, the goal should be to have at least a combination of 100 keywords and keyword phrases. This number may be greater or lesser depending on your site category/niche market. Keyword research can be accomplished a number of ways. I would recommend using best judgment and sticking to your site topic. If your site is about “the rules of playing baseball” then anything pertaining to the rules of baseball should be included as keywords. Remember think like your visitors, if you were a visitor looking for 'the rules of baseball' how would you search...your search words would probably be something like "rules of playing baseball"...."baseball playing rules"...."playing baseball rules"....rules of baseball"...."baseball rules"...."how to play baseball"...."baseball and the rules"...if your site contains the 'rules of baseball' then each of those keyword phrases will be sufficient for inclusion into your active keyword list. A few links that can help with keyword research are: NicheBot, Wordtracker, Google Keyword Tool, Digital Point Keyword Tool. Some of the main attributes which you want to research is how often the keyword/keyword phrase is searched for within search engines, how much competition there is for the keyword/keyword phrase, and if you are considering pay-per-click then you would probably like to know the average cost per click for each keyword/keyword phrase. You should not rely 100% on any of these reports or other reports from any third-party because there are many deterrence which may offset the reports, you should collect data from each of them and derive a census report which will allow you to make an informed decision.

Think about your visitors each step of the way when using keywords. Which keywords will catch their attention, directly or indirectly? Meaning, if a user searches for 'baseball rules' then when the search engine searches through billions of web pages...it should pull your web page into the results because you have a entire website dedicated to baseball rules and the entire site is centered around keywording. When the search engine crawls through the billions of web pages it should see that your web page title has "baseball rules" within the title, your meta-tag description has “baseball rules” within the description, your meta-tag keywords have “baseball rules” within the keywords, the link to the page is titled “baseball_rules.htm”, and the content on the web page itself has a proper amount of keyword density, basically, the keyword phrase "baseball rules" is plastered throughout the web page mostly leading towards the top of the page. I know most of what I have just mentioned is Search Engine Optimization practices and techniques, yes, that is true, but in actuality the entire process is for the visitors not the search engine. If you create your site easier for the search engine to find then the visitor will also find it easier and faster, but at all times it is important to keep the visitor in mind. Many SEO practitioners would include any keyword about baseball such as: "baseball"..."major leagues"...."major league baseball"...."minor leagues"...."minor league baseball"...."atlanta braves"...."new york yankees"...."baseball players"….etc. Those keywords are for the search engines not the visitors. If a visitors enters "atlanta braves" as a search keyword and your link is displayed as an result the visitor will be disappointed when he clicks on your link and does not find any solid information pertaining to the "atlanta braves"...instead he/she is greeted with "baseball rules". The visitor will immediately back out without referencing your site or indexing it for later retrieval because it does not pertain to their search quest. Once in a while you may become lucky and get someone who stays because it does mention baseball, but if you tracked conversions, it would surely sink, using this method. The better you target your visitors the more success you will have on the web. Properly using keywords to target your visitors and not the search engines will aid in more ways than one. It will create a healthy online circuit and greater chance for success. Imagine if each time you search the web...you had a perfect search! You only needed to search once, because exactly what you were looking for was found in the first results.

About the author:
Ant Onaf is the owner and founder of www.JournalHome.com He is an online internet marketer, web advertiser, and IT consultant. Ant Onaf has years of IT-related experience and Internet-related experience. His ingenuity, dedication, and passion for technology & internet marketing have made him a monumental icon in the World Wide Web. His blog can be visited at http://www.journalhome.com/AntOnaf
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High Paying Lateral Keywords

If you run AdSense on your site you know that some words pay more than others, much more in fact. More than likely you have also learned that terms like "structured settlements" and "mesothelioma" can produce incredibly high PPC revenue, if they show up on your site at all. Unfortunately hundreds of thousands of other webmasters are "on" to this practice judging by the number of sites created regularly to capitalize on the phenomenom. So, where does this leave you? Out in the cold? No, by going after "lateral" keywords and terms you can produce a site that is even more profitable than these other sites. I will show you how you can do just that.

What do I mean by "high paying lateral keywords?" Essentially, these are words, or terms, that webmasters dismiss as not being relevant or are unrelated to certain high paying keywords. For instance, you know that the term "free adware" has a nice payout. You gear your article or page accordingly to have AdSense produce the lucrative ads and, instead, you come up with ads that are relevant but not big payers. Should you give up? No, of course not. Instead, research similar terms that can also serve up high paying ads and go with them. In this case the following could be considered:

adware blocker

adware removal

lavasoft adware

free adware removal

adware spy removal tool

remove adware

get adware

adware search and destroy

As you can see, each term contains the keyword "adware" but other words are added. In a recent survey that I conducted some of these "lateral" keywords/terms paid even more than the "free adware" terms. In addition, some nice ads were served up too.

What about mesothelioma? Isn't that a hot keyword? Yes, and an overworked one. Lateral keywords for your consideration here can include:

lawyers

attorneys

asbestos cancer

lung cancer

personal injury lawyer

personal injury attorney

The common thread with these keywords? Mesothelioma wasn't even mentioned. Sure, when you think "attorney" or "lawyer" you think of ambulance chasing terms like: bextra, malpractice, and physician neglect. Heck, if other ads are served up instead of mesothelioma ads, do not despair. Chances are that the deep pocket lawyers give a nice payout per click for these keywords too!

Alright, one final example before I turn you loose to do your own research. The keywords: credit cards.

student credit card

airline credit card

business credit card

Visa credit cards

credit card consolidation

rewards credit cards

online credit cards

0% interest credit cards

cash back credit cards

credit card counseling

The options for some keywords are obviously greater than others. If you write your own articles and/or web content you may need to experiment in order to produce the highest paying keywords. Still, these "lateral" keywords will push up your profits almost as much as standard keywords. Now, go and do your own research!

About the Author:
Matt Keegan is The Article Writer (www.thearticlewriter.com) who covers topics as diverse as: aviation, business, customer service, driving, ezines, first aid, global issues, high paying keywords, internet, and more.
Article Source: http://www.articles2k.com

High Rankings - How do Search Engines fit into Your Business?

Even if you’re clueless when it comes to Internet marketing, you probably already know about search engine rankings and the importance of being near the top of the list when people search for key words related to your product or service. Although there are other ways to get attention and drive customers to your website, rankings are still an important part of the online marketing puzzle. The rules often change, and it can be difficult to keep up with the crowd, but if you follow a few tried-and-true tricks of the trade you will be more than likely to meet with success.

So what is the best way to optimize your site without getting into trouble with the search engines? Set up to constantly work against spammers and provide search results that users can trust, Google and Yahoo! work with search algorithms in order to come up with relevant search results. They change these algorithms on a continual basis to stay one step ahead of those looking to exploit the methods employed by search engines and reach the top of the list unfairly. But there are legitimate ways to optimize your site without landing in hot water with Yahoo! and Google.

One method of achieving a good rank in the major search engines is to optimize your site’s content using keywords, although this technique is losing ground in favor of newer ranking systems. Including particular keywords in your site’s content makes it easier for the search engines to find you on the web. You must also keep up with relevant keywords over time and continue to optimize accordingly. Keep in mind it’s best to focus on Yahoo! and Google search engines because they are the top 2 in the search engine world and will drive the most traffic to your website.

Keywords can help improve your rankings, but you have to be careful when using them. Only use keywords that are relevant to your site’s theme because inserted keywords that are unconnected to your site are a cause for penalty. One great place for a keyword is in your domain name. Just be sure that the keyword shows up in the root of the URL, rather than the stem, as some search engines do not take kindly to sites that include keywords in a URL’s stem.

Also add keywords to any content you have on the site. Other places to put keywords include: title tags in your source code; in the meta description of your site; and in your meta keyword tags.

But now the best way to become popular in Google and Yahoo’s books is by proving your popularity in the online world. The way the search engines determine a site’s popularity is by analyzing how many other sites link to it. So let’s say you run a website selling cookie cutters. You will rank high in the search engines if a lot of other quality websites, related to your business in some way, contain a link back to your site. For instance, you might ask the person running a site selling cookie dough or baking accessories to place a link to your site on one of their pages. Getting your link on a site offering cookie recipes, baking tips and other cooking information might be a good idea as well. In turn, offer to list their websites, and you just might start showing up higher in the rankings.

Of course, the pure number of links you have is not the only test of popularity. In fact, the major search engines mostly look for quality links. If you have a bunch of links to irrelevant websites, you won’t really turn up in the search engines. But if your links show up on high-traffic, quality websites relevant to your own site’s theme, the search engines are going to pay more attention to you as a trusted site.

Another effective way to rise in the search engine rankings is by including high-quality content on your site, such as articles. Good information related to the theme of your website will ensure that real people find your site useful and want to link to it. Sprinkling keywords throughout the text naturally is also a good way to make use of the content on your site as a way to attract search engines.

Next, submit your site to online directories, such as Yahoo! and the Open Directory Project. Search engines also scour these directories so being listed in as many places as possible can’t hurt.

You can also create several sites all related to your overall theme or product as a way to boost rankings. This establishes a community of sites that is easier for the search engines to sniff out. Then use your group of sites to link to one another, thus making all your product sites more popular in the eyes of the search engines.

If you work hard to establish your site and avoid the pitfalls that can get you kicked out of the search engines, your site will climb the search engine ladder before you know it.

About the Author:
This article was written by Katerina Mitrou sponsored by templatedogma.com/. Template Dogma offers a huge selection of professional, ready to use website templates and custom products too. Build your professional website in minutes with the help of Templatedogma.com. Reproductions of this article are encouraged but must include a link back to templatedogma.com/
Article Source: http://www.articles411.com

Importance Of Search Engines And Designing A SEO Website

The vast resource of information available on the internet today is in the form of various classes. For example, when we talk about a mosquito repellant – there are websites that market the product, websites that offer manufacturing know-how, websites that provide simple information on the topic and websites that just simply talk about mosquito repellants. The importance of information posted on a business website is always to the end of selling and making profits.

Therefore, the information which is business oriented should be displayed to the customers at all times. Now that all this is taken care of, how to make sure that a particular website is found by the visitor? There could be millions of websites dealing in the same product. This is where the concept and process of search engine optimization comes in. The need to develop or design the site to be search engine friendly takes the drivers seat here, in an effort to optimize a particular site out of the billions on the internet today.

Search engine majors like MSN, Google, Yahoo and AltaVista crawl through the internet perpetually by using programs called bots or spiders. Their function is to read the websites and file them into a category and finally index them in a huge catalog. When a visitor accesses a search engine and types in his search criterion, the search engines scan their indexes for a match and display the results, out of which the visitor can select a website to visit. Exactly how this index is made is still a puzzle that many professionals are trying to solve. However, thank god for small favors, some secrets are known.

Using these known secrets, it is possible to design a website by keeping them in mind to ensure that the website ranks highest in the search engine results. In this multi-pronged advantageous process, the higher a website is ranked, the higher is the traffic. Moreover, if the website stays there continuously, it builds credibility amongst potential customers and the traffic builds automatically.

The whole process of search engine optimization generally takes about 3 to 4 months after the design phase is over. This is the time taken by the crawlers to finalize the index after numerous visits. Submissions to search engines is another option but not necessary because, all search engines automatically crawl and find new websites on a continued basis.

The demand for search engine optimization is immense today.

About the Author:
Todd Lange
For more information on this topic please visit SEO Website.
Article Source: Free Articles Directory

Designing a Site Map for SEO

Search engine optimization involves many components including linking, keyword research, content development, page titles, and other methods used to improve your search engine rankings. All of these methods can increase your results piece by piece but there is a way to combine many of these elements into an SEO method that can improve your web ranking and drive targeted traffic to your web site. This method is designing a site map to be used with your other search engine optimization efforts. Knowing how a site map can help you improve your SEO results will help you to better design your site map and make it conform to the guidelines of ethical and successful SEO.

Site Maps Defined

A site map is a graphical or textual representation of each of the pages on your web site. Site maps can be very complex and include professional graphics and they can also be very simple and have only text. A site map helps people find the information they are looking for on your web site. You can use a site map to incorporate some of the major components of SEO and improve your search engine rankings in the long run.

Site Maps & Text

Text-based site maps are the most effective for search engine optimization purposes. This is because you can use your chosen keywords in both the content of the site map and in each link to other pages within your site. If you have carefully chosen your keywords, implementing them into your site map can benefit your search engine optimization efforts and help improve your search engine rankings.

Site Maps & Links

Links are a very important part of successful search engine optimization. When search engine crawlers visit your web site, they look for links that can be used to help determine the relevance of pages and assist with search engine indexing. If you build a web site and have a link to each one of your other pages, this can improve your web rankings and make it easier for search engines to find your site when people search for the keywords you use on your web site.

Site Maps and Content

You can also use site maps to your advantage by writing keyword-optimized descriptions of each page that you are linking to from the site map itself. Your descriptions can include several keywords that describe your products and services and make it easier for people visiting your web site to find what they need. In addition to helping you optimize your web site, site maps are a valuable resource for visitors to your site.

Professional SEO Consulting

If you’re not sure how using a site map fits in with your search engine optimization strategy, you should consider hiring a professional SEO consulting firm. The SEO Team offers a wide variety of web design, SEO, and internet marketing services for web sites of all levels. If you’d like to know more about our services, visit our web site and learn how we can improve your web site SEO.

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/

The Ultimate Free Google Ranking Tool

The first months my website was online, I was constantly checking the search engines to see if my site was listed under the keywords that I was targeting. And always with the same negative results.

The truth is that the keywords that you are targeting are often not showing your site the first months at all on the first 200 search listings. OK, if you try to get your site listed for hoooohjgaagga or something like that, it could get you a first place in no time. But who wants to target that keyword?

In fact, I get a lot more traffic from keywords that I haven't thought of using as a keyword in the first place. One tool that I have found online can easily show you the keywords that your site is ranking well for.

You can find it at:
http://www.googlerankings.com/ultimate_seo_tool.php
Here you simply enter your domain name and hit the "Analyze Keyword" button. If you want to, you can change the different settings on this page before you hit the button. But I usually leave this at default.

Then on the next page you can see a detailed report on keywords that are found on your site. You can see their numbers and density. It shows the number of 2 Word Phrases and 3 Word Phrases.

Step 2 Create Position Report

Now to the cool part of this tool. When you hit this button, the tool will search Google for the keywords and keyword phrases that it have gathered from your site. After a few seconds it shows your position for each of them. So now you don't have to wonder if your site is listed in Google.

But as I said, the first months you shouldn't be worried if you don't find your site under any keyword at all. Google use a lot of time to index new websites. I have found that MSN are a lot faster to show my pages under the keyword that I want.

I hope you'll find this tool as useful as I have.

Copyright 2005 Torgeir Sunnarvik

About the author:
Torgeir Sunnarvik, Norway mailto:webmaster@everypleasures.com Torgeir Sunnarvik is the owner and webmaster of http://www.everypleasures.com/ His site offer free ebooks, ebooks with reprint rights and review of business ebooks.
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Simple SEO Tips to Optimise Your Page for the Big 3

Search Engine Optimisation is a big scary topic for a lot of people, but it doesn't have to be. The principles behind it are all pretty simple, and these tips will take less than an hour to implement, but should boost your rankings significantly!

1-Don't shoot for the moon. By that I mean don't go out there and choose the most competitive keyword in your field. Chances are that the #1 ranked site for the most competitive term has been there for some years. Why should your site suddenly come along and oust them in short order? Instead, focus on longer, less competitive phrases. Use keyword selection tools to help you find them. You will find longtail phrases are more targeted also as it means the searchers have a more focused idea of what they are looking for.

2-Make sure you put your main keyword/phrase in the page title, and also in the footer. The title is the first thing the search engines will look at, so it's important to let them know exactly what we are about as early as possible, and it's also good to make the main phrase the last thing they see. A fundamental tip, but something 99% of webmasters do not do.

3-Switch your navigation. Most web pages have the navigation bars on the left or along the top. This is not good from an SEO point of view. Search engines read pages in vertical strips, starting on the left, then gradually moving across. The problem that the navigation presents is that 98% of web navigation menus are the same or very similar-this means that with the navigation in the same place as everyone else's, we are telling the engines that our web site is the same as everyone else's. They will see our super relevant page title, and then read our navigation links, which are not likely to be keyword relevant at all, and then conclude that this site is not all that relevant to their beloved searchers, and consign it to page 558 or something. This is NOT what we want! If we put the navigation on the right instead, we can then put lots of interesting content on the left, so it's the first thing they see after they read our page title.

4-Make sure your content is original, and READABLE. Who stays on a website after they realise the content is nothing but keyword stuffed garbage? I certainly don't, and neither will your customers. It's very important that your keywords are in your content, but make sure it's in a relevant fashion-I think the best term I have heard for it is "sprinkled." Sprinkle the keywords through the content of the page. It's also useful to embolden them occasionally and italicise them, as the search engines then assume they are important words regarding your site and content, which is exactly what we want them to think.

5-Use the heading tags, etc. That's what they are there for, and yes the search engines do pay attention to them. It's especially useful if you can use your main keywords as headings, or part of headings. For example, if your site is about extreme skydiving techniques, your heading may be "My favourite extreme skydiving techniques" or something like that. A good technique in certain cases is to combine two phrases, but you need to be careful as you don't want to damage the readability of the phrase- For example, you may have "Top Rated Extreme Skydiving Techniques" as a heading if your targeted phrases were "extreme skydiving techniques" and "top rated skydiving techniques," and you would likely get ranked for both these phrases from doing that. Be careful though, as it's easy to get carried away and reduce the quality of the content in this fashion.

6-Don't put all your eggs into one basket, or one keyword.phrase. As we said before, it's unlikely for a new website to choose the most popular phrase in a category and come straight in and take #1 on Google. The sites that rank #1 for such phrases are very established and will have thousands of backlinks built up over the years, and for that reason alone will be very difficult to oust. What we can do though, is choose ten less popular phrases, and make a different page for each one, or each pair. We can have the same items for sale etc on each page, but you can make the content custom written for each phrase. This is a great way to exponentially get more traffic, as you will have multiplied your market presence by ten. Obviously, the sky is the limit with this strategy; you could have 50 or 1000 subdomains all pulling in search engine visitors for different phrases. You only need 5 or 10 visitors to each page, and if you have a hundred pages that's 500 or 1000 visitors each day.

So there you have it-these techniques will take less than an hour to implement, and will guarantee an increase in your search engine rankings-What are you waiting for?

About the Author:
David Raybould has been an internet marketer for just over a year and in July this year was able to quit his day job through online earnings. He is eager to help others buck the trend of the dreaded day job and you can find useful info and resources at his site http://www.no-more9to5.com, and join his newsletter by sending a blank email to no-more9to5@getresponse.com
Submitted: 2006-10-28
Article Source: GoArticles

Yahoo! Sponsored Results Now In Shortened Format

Yahoo! Sponsored Results Shortened

Overture has announced that sponsored results on Yahoo! will be streamlined to make them easier for customers to read. The new ad style is very similar to Google's. We have a copy of Overture's email to all their advertisers, informing them of the change.

Dear Advertiser,

A new look is coming to the Yahoo! search results pages that will translate into more clicks for your listings. Yahoo! will introduce a streamlined design that will make the search results displayed on Yahoo! even easier for consumers to read. Our research has shown that by improving the search experience in this way, advertisers can generally expect to see an increase in clicks, while maintaining their conversion rates.

How this change impacts your listings:

• Yahoo! will display shorter descriptions for Sponsored Search listings
• You don't have to make any changes to your listings; they'll be automatically shortened for you when displayed on Yahoo!
• If you'd like to optimise your listings for Yahoo!,begin your description with one short sentence that includes your keyword and focuses on your most important information in the first 70 characters
• Over time, we will fine tune the exact character count that we believe works best for advertisers and search users

Yahoo! is taking this step to improve the search experience for its users. By continuously focusing on delivering highly relevant search results in a user-friendly format, Yahoo! also gives you the best possible platform for reaching customers interested in what your business provides.

Best Regards,

Overture UK

The new ad format will be very similar to what Google currently hosts, which is why most advertisers are welcoming the change. However, for those advertisers who took the time to meticulously craft descriptions to differentiate their listings, this change will probably mean them having to scrap their hard work and go back to the drawing board. How these changes affect Overture's conversion rates and click through rates will be the ultimate evidence of their effectiveness.

Google changes ad format too

Surprisingly enough, Google has chosen the exact same time to start testing longer ad formats. Which format stays will be determined by consumer reactions to the new ad style. In the meantime, advertisers will have to play and watch!

Other articles to read:

Google + Pay Per Click management agencies killing SEO

Search engine optimisation for London businesses

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: 22 Sep 2006
Article Source: http://articles.simplysearch4it.com/article/37432.html