Diversify Your Traffic – Web Directories & Niche Sites

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. It’s the age old saying that encourages you to mitigate your risk by spreading yourself out instead of relying on one thing only. Ask any stock broker and they’ll tell you putting all your money in one company is very risky and is rarely the right move. When you only rely on one source, if something bad should happen you have nothing else to fall back on. At the end of the day, most people would agree this is basic common sense.

Enter the Google era, where many webmasters seem to have tossed this conventional logic aside in favour of a Google-tunnel-vision. It is true that Google is the most popular search engine in the world today reaching 380 million unique users per month. According to ComScore Media Metrix they have a 42.3% share of the search market. These numbers should make webmasters stand up and pay attention, but it should not make them neglect everything else.

Many SEOs (search engine optimizers) will exclusively talk about obtaining a high ranking in Google, as if that is the one and only way to drive traffic on the web. Other SEOs see the web in a larger sense and, instead, treat Google as one piece of the puzzle (albeit an important piece). The good SEOs recognize that while most searches may originate at Google, there are a lot of potential website visitors and customers coming from other engines that deserve some attention too. Fortunately, many of the search engines determine the importance of a site using similar criteria, so optimizing for one engine should give you a boost in all the others as well. But if your SEO is giving you ranking reports that only say Google, it may be time to start asking where you rank in the other engines. After all, no webmaster is prepared to say that a customer coming from a website other than Google is a customer they don’t want!

List Yourself in Web Directories

Your website traffic and customers can come from all over, so you want to make sure that wherever customers looking, they’ll find you. There are a lot of different web directories on the Internet. Some catalogue all sorts of sites, while others focus on a particular niche market. By taking just a little bit of time you can launch a web directory campaign that gets you listed in all the directories your potential visitors may use. Best of all, many web directories will let you submit your site for free, so this is a cost-effective way to generate targeted traffic. The best directories are those that offer a direct link back to your site. This way, your directory campaign also becomes a link-building campaign, and you boost your ranking on most search engines, including Google. (Two birds with one stone, not too shabby!)

Find Those Niche Sites

The web was built based on links. It’s how web surfers move from one site to another, following an endless flow of information. You need to take advantage of this by making sure that your site is linked to along this path. If you are selling t-shirts, try to find a site that is dedicated to the topic of t-shirts (or fashion, in this instance). In this day and age, you are almost guaranteed to find a site with t-shirt resources. Look for ways you can generate a link to your site from theirs. If you have some marketing dollars to spend, you may be able to buy text or banner advertising, which will also provide a link back to your site. You can send a quick, polite email to the webmaster requesting to trade links (after all, that sites wants links too!), or maybe you can contribute content somehow and include a link to your site in your author bio. There are a lot of different approaches you can take, and as long as you end up getting a link to your site, you’ll increase the likelihood of attracting visitors who are following that information path.

The world wide web is a big place and it’s only getting bigger. You should devote a good amount of resources to the more important traffic drivers, like Google, but you should not fall into a trap where that’s the only thing you can rely on. By diversifying your incoming traffic resources and listing yourself in web directories, you will be better prepared for what the future may bring.

About the Author:
Robert Burko is president and founder of Eliteweb.cc, an Internet portal featuring a best-of-the-web search engine and a comprehensive search-engine-friendly web directory
Article Source: http://www.articles411.com

The Basics of SEO - Some FAQs

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a foreign field to a lot of people. Rarely does a day go by when I don't get asked a few questions on the subject. So I've decided to post this FAQ article in the hopes that it will help people understand the basics, and make them a little more comfortable with the whole domain.

Q: Why are search engines important to me?

A: 85% of all website traffic is driven by search engines. The only online activity more popular than search is email. 79.2% of US users don't go to page 2 of search results. 42% of users click on the no.1 result. For the under-40 age-group, the Internet will become the most used media in the next 2-3 years.

Q: How do search engines decide on their rankings?

A: IMPORTANT: You cannot pay a search engine in return for a high ranking in the natural results. You can only get a high ranking if your content is seen as relevant by the search engines.
Search engines identify relevant content for their search results by sending out “spiders” or “robots” which “crawl” (analyze) your site and “index” (record) its details. Complex algorithms are then employed to determine whether your site is useful and should be included in the search engine’s search results.

Q: Can't I just pay for a high ranking?

A: No. The biggest concern for search engine companies like Google and Yahoo is finding content that will bring them more traffic (and thus more advertising revenue). In other words, their results must be relevant. Relevant results makes for a good search engine; irrelevant results makes for a short-lived search engine.

Most search engines these days return two types of results whenever you click Search:

„X Natural/Organic ¡V The “real” search results. The results that most users are looking for and which take up most of the window. For most searches, the search engine displays a long list of links to sites with content which is related to the word you searched for. These results are ranked according to how relevant and important they are.
„X Paid ¡V Pure advertising. This is how the search engines make their money. Advertisers pay the search engines to display their ad whenever someone searches for a word which is related to their product or service. These ads look similar to the natural search results, but are normally labeled “Sponsored Links”, and normally take up a smaller portion of the window.

Q: How do I get a high ranking?

A: There are four main steps:
Step 1 - Use the right words on your website
Step 2 - Get lots of relevant sites to link to yours
Step 3 - Use the right words in those links
Step 4 - Have lots of content on your site & add more regularly

Q: What is search engine optimization (SEO)?

A: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the art of creating a website which is search engine-friendly. This means:
„X using the right words in your copy
„X using the right words in your HTML code
„X structuring your site properly
„X designing your site properly

For more information on these 4 elements, download our free 'SEO Secrets' eBook from divinewrite.com/seosecrets.htm.

Many people use SEO to also describe the other ingredient in a high ranking, 'Link Popularity'.

Q: What is link popularity?

A: Think of the search engines as a big election. All the websites in the world are candidates. The links to your website are votes. The more votes (links) a candidate (website) has, the more important it is, and the higher it’s ranking. Link popularity is all about how many links you have, and how you can get more.
Links to your site tell the search engines how important your site is. They assume that if it’s important enough for a lot of other sites to link to, it’s important enough for them to display at the top of the rankings. Links are the single most important factor in ranking. Generally speaking, the more links you have to your site from other sites, the better your ranking.

Q: Are some links better than others?

A: Yes! The ideal kind of links are those that:
„X come from relevant sites (sites which use the same keywords);
„X come from important sites (have a high ranking);
„X include your keyword as part of the visible link text;
„X include varying link text (not the same link text each time); and
„X come from a page that links to few other sites.

When a search engine sees a link which satisfies most or all of these conditions, it says, “Hey, this site must be credible and important, because others in the same industry are pointing to it.”

Q: How do I get lots of links back to my site?

A: There are many possible ways to generate links. Some are dubious (like auto-generation software, and sites set up by webmasters simply to host links to their other sites) and I won’t be discussing them here. Others, like those discussed below, are legitimate.
„X Add your site to DMOZ & Yahoo Directories (and other free directories)
„X Check where your competitors¡¦ links are coming from
„X Article PR - Write and submit articles for Internet publication
„X Swap links
„X Partner websites
„X Pay for links

For more information on these methods, download our free 'SEO Secrets' eBook from divinewrite.com/seosecrets.htm.

Q: What do you think is the best way to get lots of links?

A: Article PR. Write helpful articles and let other webmasters publish them for free in exchange for a link in the byline. With article PR, you don't have to pay for the link, you determine the content of the page containing the link, you determine the link text, and the link is more or less permanent. A single article can be reprinted hundreds of times, and each time is another link back to your site!
For more information, read divinewrite.com/seoarticles.htm or visit ArticlePR.com.

Q: How do I write a good article PR piece?

A: See divinewrite.com/seoarticles.htm.

Q: How do I get a high ranking using free reprint content?

A: See divinewrite.com/Top_Ranking_Free.htm.

Q: How long does it take to get a high search engine ranking?

A: A long time! It’s impossible to say how much time you’ll need to spend generating links, but you can be sure it’ll be a while no matter which method of link generation you use. You just have to keep at it until you have achieved a high ranking. Even then, you’ll still need to dedicate some ongoing time to the task, otherwise your ranking will drop.

Q: What is the Google Sandbox, and is it real?

A: The Google Sandbox theory suggest that whenever Google detects a new website, it withholds its rightful ranking for a period while it determines whether your site is a genuine, credible, long term site. It does this to discourage the creation of SPAM websites (sites which serve no useful purpose other than to boost the ranking of some other site).

There is a lot of anecdotal evidence supporting the theory, but there is also a lot discounting it. No one has categorically proven its existence.

Q: What is the Google Dampening Link Filter, and is it real?

A: The Google Dampening Link Filter theory suggests that if Google detects a sudden increase (i.e. many hundreds or thousands) in the number of links back to your site, it may sandbox them for a period (or in fact penalize you by lowering your ranking or blacklisting your site altogether).

There is a lot of anecdotal evidence supporting the theory, but there is also a lot discounting it. No one has categorically proven its existence.

Q: What SEO companies should I be wary of?

A: Be wary of SEO companies that promise or guarantee results in a given timeframe, especially if they won't expand on their methods for generating links back to your site.

Q: What tools can you recommend?

A: There are many very useful tools to help with your SEO. The following are just selection. All tools are free unless otherwise indicated.
„X Backlink checker - http://www.webuildpages.com/neat-o/
„X Backlinks by IP address - http://www.webuildpages.com/cclass/index.php
„X Link Popularity Tool - http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/
„X Number of links required to rank - http://www.iblcheck.com/
„X Google Alert - http://www.google.com/alerts?hl=en
„X Google Sitemaps - http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps
„X Google Sitemap Generator - http://johannesmueller.com/gs/
„X Google Toolbar - http://toolbar.google.com/
„X Indexed Pages - http://www.webuildpages.com/cache/cachetoolpublic.pl
„X Keyword Analysis (Nichebot) - http://www.nichebot.com/
„X Keyword Analysis (Overture) - http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
„X Keyword Analysis (WordTracker - Paid) - http://www.wordtracker.com/
„X Keyword Difficulty - http://www.seomoz.org/tools/keyword-difficulty-tool.php
„X Keyword Identifier - http://www.googlerankings.com/ultimate_seo_tool.php
„X Keyword Density Measurement (Simple) - http://www.live-keyword-analysis.com/
„X Keyword Density Measurement (Complex) - http://www.gorank.com/analyze.php
„X Plagiarized Copy Search - http://www.copyscape.com/
„X Traffic Rank - http://www.alexa.com/
„X Search Engine Rank - http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/
„X SEO Report - http://www.urltrends.com/
„X Top 10 sites for a keyword by no of backlinks and age - http://www.webuildpages.com/seo-tools/whoischeck-bykeys.pl
„X Top 10 sites for a keyword - http://www.webuildpages.com/cool-seo-tool/
„X Spider Simulator - http://tools.summitmedia.co.uk/spider/

Q: I'm confused about all the terms used in SEO, can you help?

A: See divinewrite.com/seo_glossary.htm.

Q: What is keyword analysis?

A: The first thing you need to do when you begin chasing a good search engine ranking is decide which words you want to rank well for. This is called performing a keyword analysis. Keyword analysis involves a bit of research and a good knowledge of your business and the benefits you offer your customers.
For more information, download our free 'SEO Secrets' eBook from divinewrite.com/seosecrets.htm.

Q: Do I need to submit my site to the search engines?

A: Theoretically, no. But I wouldn't risk not doing it - especially as it's free. As soon as you register your domain name, submit it to Google! Even if you haven’t built your site, or thought about your content, submit your domain name to Google. In fact, even if you haven’t fully articulated your business plan and marketing plan, submit your domain name to Google.

For more information, download our free 'SEO Secrets' eBook from divinewrite.com/seosecrets.htm.

Q: Should I submit my site to the search engines more than once?

A: No need. Although some of the search engines allow you to do this, there's really no need.

Q: What are directories and should I submit my site to them?

A: Directories are websites (or web pages) which simply list lots of website and give a quick description of the website. Some are free and some require you to pay for a listing. Free directories are useful because you get a free link. However, the links aren't worth that much. Paid directories can be good if they're relevant, but they can cost a lot in the long term, so choose wisely.

One essential directories for any website is the DMOZ Open Directory Project.

About the author:
* Glenn Murray is a website copywriter, SEO copywriter, and article submission and article PR specialist. He owns article submission service Article PR and 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, more FREE articles, or to download his FREE SEO e-book.
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Leprechaun Repellent and Guaranteed SEO Companies - The Disturbing Link

When researching SEO companies, it is tempting to choose any company willing to offer guaranteed SEO services. It is human nature – people love a guarantee. This holds especially true for purchases where the buyer is purchasing something outside of his or her area of comfort. When companies first consider pursuing search engine optimization (SEO) as a potential marketing channel, particularly when there is an ongoing cost involved, they get a sense of comfort from purchasing "guaranteed SEO." Unfortunately, with many SEO companies, this confidence in the guarantee is ill-placed.

A lot of questionable SEO companies offer what I like to refer to as a "leprechaun repellent" guarantee. In other words, it's a guarantee that is easily attainable – if you purchase such services and are not subsequently harassed by a pesky leprechaun, the guarantee has been met. How can you complain?

The truth is that SEO companies do not control the major search engines, and any firm that claims to have a "special relationship" that gives it sway over the natural search engine results is simply counting on your ignorance. Fortunately, this does not mean that guaranteed SEO is impossible, especially when the guarantee has to do with aggregate results and the methods used to achieve them.

What follows is a partial list of some of the more popular types of guaranteed SEO out there – some of them roughly as useful as leprechaun repellent, and some of them actually meaningful.

Questionable Guarantees

The "Leprechaun Repellent" Keyphrases Guarantee

Many SEO companies boast that they will achieve a certain number of top rankings in the organic results of major search engines. This type of guaranteed SEO can be tempting, especially to those who are investigating SEO companies for the first time. After all, high rankings are what it's all about, right? Isn't that the goal?

The answer is an emphatic "No." Quality SEO companies will point out that the real goal is to bring high quality traffic to your site. It's quite simple to guarantee top positions if you choose non-competitive or obscure phrases – for example, "leprechaun repellent." Want proof? Enter "leprechaun repellent into your favorite search engine. You will almost certainly find this article dominating the results (caveat – if you are reading this article immediately after its release, the search engines may not have indexed it yet. Wait a week and try again.).

It is extremely easy for SEO companies to achieve high search engine positions for phrases that nobody uses. Such rankings might impress your friends and neighbors, but they won't send you quality traffic. They likely won’t send you any traffic at all. It's important to note that the phrase "leprechaun repellent" is used only for demonstrative purposes. Many unpopular phrases may not sound absurd. There are surely countless phrases out there that sound extremely relevant to your business that are never typed into search engines. Good SEO companies will avoid such phrases. "Leprechaun repellent" practitioners will embrace them – it allows them to attain their worthless guarantees.

There is also another aspect of this type of guaranteed SEO in which SEO companies will guarantee you first place positions on unspecified search engines for more competitive phrases. Unfortunately, this type of guaranteed SEO often involves obscure engines that have very little market share and are not sophisticated enough to quickly eliminate web pages that use spam tactics. In a few documented cases, the guarantees involved search engines that the SEO companies actually owned and operated!

There are really only three major search engines at present – Google, Yahoo, and MSN. There are a handful of minor engines that are also worth mentioning, including Ask Jeeves and AOL Search. Any guaranteed SEO should involve prominent engines, not obscure ones.

The "Company Name" Guarantee

There is also a common guarantee that shady SEO companies will use that guarantees that a company will show up for a search on its company name. This, much like the "leprechaun repellent" flavor of guaranteed SEO, offers no real value. Sure, if your company name is "Acme," it may actually be competitive – but chances are that if your website does not already show up near the top of the search engine results for a search on your company name, there is an easily fixed technical glitch that will resolve the issue. Quality SEO companies will address this area immediately. Moreover, ranking highly for your company name, while obviously desirable, provides only a tiny fraction of the potential value of search engine marketing. The real benefit for most companies is that search engine marketing attracts potential buyers who are not already familiar with the company name. Unless your company is a household name, it is unlikely that having your company name figure prominently in the results is going to have a huge impact on your business.

The Pay-Per-Click Guarantee

Some SEO companies will offer guaranteed SEO services that promise top positions for certain keyphrases on popular engines, but they are counting on dealing with prospects who do not understand the difference between natural search engine results and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. With PPC, it is very easy to guarantee a number one result, but this result will appear in the "paid" or "sponsored" results of the engine. Say, for example, that your company installs custom swimming pools. While a competitive phrase like "custom pools" might be difficult to achieve in organic results, the SEO company is not concerned with organic results. All it has to do is outbid the current highest bidder (using your money, of course), and your site will show up as number one in the "sponsored" results. Studies have indicated that sponsored results are held in a lower regard than natural results by savvy web searchers who recognize them as advertising. Also, as soon as you stop paying, your ranking disappears.

The "Submit Your Site to 50,000 Search Engines" Guarantee

There are many variations on this offer, primarily involving the number of engines promised. Regardless of the number, this is probably the most pervasive and persistent type of "guaranteed SEO," and it is basically a scam that preys on ignorance.

Companies that believe that they have high quality websites are predisposed to believe that the only thing holding them back from search engine success is that the search engines do not yet know that their sites exist. However, search engines measure quality in a much different way than a website owner does. A properly optimized site does not need to be submitted to search engines at all (I refer to actual "spider-based" search engines such as Yahoo, Google, and MSN, not human-edited directories such as Business.com, the Yahoo Directory, and the Open Directory Project). Engines prefer to find sites on their own.

This "solution" offers no real value, except of course to the SEO companies offering the service. Also, as previously mentioned, there are not 50,000 search engines – or at least 50,000 search engines worth worrying about. Do SEO companies that offer this service meet this guarantee? Certainly – they use automated programs to do the submissions. Is this type of guaranteed SEO worthwhile? Not for search engine positions, but it may keep leprechauns at bay.

Meaningful Guarantees

Given the preponderance of "guaranteed SEO" that is meaningless, the seemingly Wild West nature of the industry, and the reality that SEO companies do not control the results of any major engine, it may seem that guaranteed SEO can never be a worthwhile endeavor. However, this is not the case. If you note the examples above, they are primarily involved in specifics – top positions, a certain number of submissions, a certain number of engines. However, good SEO companies, understanding that they have no control over individual results, should be confident enough in the results of their work in aggregate and in the safety of the methodologies that they use to offer guaranteed SEO that lives up to its promise.

The Custom Guarantee

In very rare cases, certain skilled, experienced SEO companies will be able to develop for you a custom guarantee derived from the analysis of your current traffic data, the competitiveness of your industry, and the status of your site. You will ideally be offered this type of specialized guarantee from the beginning of your dealings with an SEO firm because it ensures that you will be achieving targeted, meaningful results based on your specific situation, rather than on generalities that could apply to any business in any industry. Some SEO companies may tell you that a custom guarantee is not possible because they have no direct control over search engine results. However, SEO companies who have been in business for a while know how to weather the algorithm shifts and understand that there is more than one popular search engine. Such a firm will be confident enough to create and back a custom guarantee for you.

The Targeted Traffic Guarantee

SEO companies dedicated to showing value to their clients will take a baseline reading of current search engine traffic at the outset of a campaign. While, as previously mentioned, SEO companies do not hold sway over search engine results, they should at least be confident enough in their overall skills to promise that their clients will see an increase in targeted search engine traffic based on popular phrases relevant to the business. If the firm offering this type of guaranteed SEO charges on a monthly basis, any month of the engagement where traffic for targeted phrases does not, at a minimum, exceed the baseline should not be charged. After all, you are paying on a monthly basis to protect and improve your positions. While major algorithm shifts that make results on individual results unstable can and do happen, they rarely happen on all engines at once. You should feel confident that the firm you are paying has a very vested interest in making sure it adapts to the changing nature of search engine algorithms, and few things inspire such confidence as knowing that it will not get paid otherwise. If your prospective firm is unwilling to at least guarantee that it will send increased traffic to your website from targeted phrases, every month, it may be time to look elsewhere.

The "White Hat" Guarantee

SEO companies are commonly broken up into two camps – "white hats" (practitioners who remain solidly within the search engine's stated terms of service) and "black hats" (practitioners who work to unravel the latest search engine algorithms and base their optimization techniques largely on technology, regardless of the engine’s terms of service). Both approaches are legitimate – after all, there is nothing illegal about exploiting a technical loophole for results. However, black hat SEO companies put their clients at risk of penalization or even outright banishment from the major engines. Getting back in can be a long process, and sometimes it is not possible at all. If you are concerned about potential penalization, get a guarantee from your firm that they adhere to the stated terms of service of all major search engines. If you can (and this is rare), get a guarantee that your site will not be penalized through any action of the SEO firm. This is harder for a company to offer, since the major engines frequently update their terms of service, and techniques that are acceptable today can be deemed unacceptable tomorrow. However, a confident firm that always errs on the side of caution when optimizing client websites will offer this type of guaranteed SEO services, since it will not use techniques that have a potential for penalization in the future.

Abusing the Metaphor (Beating a Dead Leprechaun)

Guarantees have been around for at least as long as leprechauns have been hoarding breakfast cereal and starring in bad horror films. So have guarantees that are essentially meaningless but sound respectable. A good guarantee should not only appeal to the base emotion of a potential purchaser, but it should also afford some real protection that the purchase he or she is making will provide meaningful results. Many of the most popular types of guaranteed SEO do not, and that's a shame. The industry already has a questionable reputation due to "leprechaun repellent" practitioners – make sure you don't go chasing their rainbow. After all, it's your pot of gold they are after.

About the Author:
Scott Buresh is the CEO of Medium Blue, a search engine optimization company. Scott has contributed content to many publications including Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004), MarketingProfs, ZDNet, WebProNews, Lockergnome, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. Medium Blue, which was recently named the number one search engine optimization company in the world by PromotionWorld, serves local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, Cirronet, and DS Waters. Visit MediumBlue.com to request a custom SEO guarantee based on your goals and your data.
Article Submitted On: October 27, 2006
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/

Getting Indexed By Google – It Needn’t Be Hell With A Good Ibl

One of the first steps to a good SEO campaign is ensuring that your website has been indexed by all the major search engines. Google, in particular, is of main concern to the majority of webmasters and SEOs purely because it is the most popular and widely used search engine. While some webmasters still insist on submitting their site to various other search engines, directories, and via the Google submit a site page.

While none of these methods will do you any harm and may generate traffic that is completely independent of your listing in Google, the quickest and potentially easiest way is using the method that Google prefer – an inbound link from a Google indexed page.

For years, webmasters busies themselves submitting to DMOZ (also called the open directory project) as well as to major search engines like Yahoo. While these methods will eventually see your site listed with Google there is no guarantee exactly how long it will take. Both have potential problems.

Yahoo can take as long as eight weeks to review and list your site, and DMOZ could potentially take as long as three months. Even once you are listed with either of these you are looking at a wait of four to eight weeks before you appear in the Google index. All in all you could be waiting four months to see your site indexed.

Google also have a submit your site form but this suffers a similar problem. The lead-time between submitting a site for approval and actually being indexed can be months. This, of course, is presuming that Google even agree to index your site. So that really only leaves us with one option to try and prevent a wait lasting several weeks to several months.

Inbound links (IBLs) are deemed to be a vote of popularity for a website. Google loves to crawl through the internet following only links from one page to another and from one site to another. This is the preferred method of travel in the Google index and offers by far the quickest way to get your site indexed and listed within the search engine results. Of course, you have a long way to go before you start to reach the top billing, or the headliner spot, but it is the beginning.

Perhaps the most important factor when attempting to gain your first IBL is how quickly the page it comes from gets indexed. The principle is that as soon as your link is found on the page of another site by the Google spider, it will work through your page and index that too. This means that if you can get your link on a site that is being indexed every few days by the Google bots then you might only have to wait a week before your SEO results are showing in earnest.

It doesn’t necessarily have to be a trial to get your first IBL either. Most article directories are regularly indexed, in many cases every single day. If you don’t want to submit to tens or hundreds of article directories then find the most popular and submit to that one. Popularity, in this case, is determined by the number of articles a directory has within its pages. The more articles a site has the more often they are likely to post them. Google indexing works in such a way that the more often a site adds new content, the more often the spiders will crawl on by to look for new content to index.

As soon as Google sees that you have a link they will crawl to your site and index it. It really is as simple as that. The only difficulty that remains is writing the article, and including a good link with relevant anchor text but we’ll save that for another article.

About the Author:
Matt Jackson
You can view this www.webwisewords.com/default2.asp?active_page_id=320” >Search Engine Optimization (SEO) article at WebWiseWords where there is also a growing directory of Internet Marketing articles for visitors to work through. WebWiseWords is a freelance copywriter. As well as providing the full service of an www.webwisewords.com/default2.asp?active_page_id=288” >SEO copywriter, they can also provide website content, press releases, articles, and more.
Article Source: NewFREEArticles.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

4 Sure-fire (And Free) Inbound Linking Strategies

Getting other websites to link to yours is one of the most time-consuming and essential tasks that any Internet marketer must face. Linking campaigns can be boring, repetitive, and, if done correctly, incredibly successful!

Within the Internet marketing world we call these links to our websites "Inbound Links", and they are important to your website for two reasons:

1. Inbound links bring traffic – whenever a website has a link to yours, a certain percentage of their traffic will visit your website. The amount of traffic each link generates is usually quite small, but as you build more and more links, the number of visitors can become significant.

2. Inbound links increase search engine awareness – the more links the big 3 search engines (Google, Yahoo, and MSN) see pointing to your site on the Internet, the more important they assume your website is. A website that has 10,000 inbound links will typically be ranked higher for it’s keywords than a site with only 20 inbound links.

There are many ways to get inbound links. Some cost money, and some are more effective than others. Following are 4 sure-fire methods of getting zero-cost inbound links. Implementing these will certainly help to improve traffic to your website.

Submit to Website Directories

Whenever I launch a new website, the first thing I do is register it on the web directories. Now, there are thousands of directories on the Internet, but only about 250 actually get traffic and count from a search engine optimization standpoint. Compiling the list was a painstaking process, but now that we have it, we’re able to really boost a new website into Google’s index pretty quickly.

You can submit your website to the free web directories, or you can have a service do it for you for. I will tell you that it is a boring and repetitive process to do yourself, and can take several days to a week to do 250 submissions.

Some web directories will offer enhanced listings for a small fee (usually under $20). These enhancements can be worth the money if you feel pretty sure your website will get valuable exposure or additional ad space included in the deal.

A few good website directories are: http://www.profitchoice.com/webdir (ours), http://www.dmoz.org (open directory project), and http://www.buzzle.com.

Submit Content to Article Directories

If you produce an online newsletter, then a really great way to get more exposure for your website is to submit your articles to online article directories. This process can be monotonous, but well worth the effort. Over time, I have compiled a list of about 100 article directories that do a good job of providing SEO-friendly links and decent turn-around time on their review cycles.

When you write an article for the article directories, you want to make sure that it is informative and newsworthy. Sales pitches are usually discarded before they are published, so make sure your content is valuable to a website publisher before you take the time to submit it. A couple good article directories are http://www.ezinearticles.com and http://www.goarticles.com.

RSS Feeds and Blogs

In addition to submitting your articles to article directories, why not create an RSS feed out of it as well? In addition to article syndication, Blogs are another form of content syndication that uses essentially the same format for distributing your content on other websites.

Once your feed is listed on the distribution sites, they will rescan your feed every few days and update the information in their databases. The beauty of RSS is that you don’t have to resubmit every time you add a new article.

A great piece of software that I use is called Feedforall (http://www.feedforall.com/). It helps you to create your RSS feed. All you have to do is paste your article information into the system, and it generates the XML for you. Last I checked, they have a free trial and the software costs about $40 to buy.

Your RSS feed can be distributed through a number of distribution sites. A few to get you started are: http://www.feedburner.com, http://www.syndic8.com, http://www.completerss.com.

Press Releases

One of my favorite methods of generating traffic to a website is through the use of press releases. Press releases can be free to create and distribute, and if a major media outlet picks them up, you can get a ton of traffic pushed into your site very quickly.

It is not unusual at all for a typical well-written press release to be picked up by hundreds or even thousands of other websites. The trick is to put out press releases regularly and make sure each one is newsworthy.

A great place to start is PRWeb’s website (http://www.prweb.com). They offer a free distribution service, or you can pay extra for their enhanced service that gets you better exposure to the search engines.

Getting Inbound Links Is Easy

In short, getting good quality inbound links to your site is pretty easy to do if you focus your efforts on activities that are most likely to succeed. Submitting your website and article content to directories and syndication services is an easy way to get links placed on thousands of websites very quickly.

To get more in-depth information on these and other Internet marketing techniques, visit http://www.profitchoice.com/7days and download our free online course, "7 Days to Website Success". The course provides detailed instructions and lists of websites you can use to dramatically improve your online results in just seven days.

About the Author:
Matthew Coers is an Internet marketing expert. His website, ProfitChoice.com contains FREE video tutorials and online courses designed to help entrepreneurs build a website and make money online.
Article Source: http://www.articles411.com

Solutions for 50 Backlinks with PageRank greater than 2

Today, no one can deny the importance of backlinks in Search Engine Optimization, especially in Google Optimization. In this article, you can find some solutions for the goal of 50 backlinks with PageRank greater than 2 for new websites. When this goal is archived, I'm totally sure that the pagerank of your website will be boosted to at least 3 in the next update of Google.

There are two main solutions for this goal:

- Finding links on our own, not spending money.

- Buying text links (backlinks).

1. Finding links on our own, not spending money

*Methods in this solution include:

- Find relevant, quality websites and request for link exchanges.

- Submit to quality directories.

- Submit testimonials on websites where you have purchased any services or products.

- Write articles or posts to submit to other websites, blogs, press and forums.

*Pros in this solution:

- No money.

- Robust, stationary links.

- Accepted by search engines.

*Cons in this solution:

- More time and efforts.

- Two-way links (reciprocal links).

- Difficult to determine the time to achieve goal.

*References for this solution:

- Link Exchange programs: linkalizer.com, linkmarket.net, freelinkcentral.com

- Automatic link exchange programs: belinked.info, onewaytextlinks.com, build-reciprocal-links.com, linkdash.com

- Quality Directories: businesspages.org, a2z-free.com, alphabiz.org

- Article Directories: goarticles.com, articlealley.com, article99.com, ezinearticles.com

*Tips:

- You can find more sites for link exchange from studying your competitors' link popularity. Use search engines to perform this check, the keyword in many cases is: link:your_competitor_url.

- When visiting some directories, pay attention to Directory category. You may find the others directories there. For example, in Directory category of businesspages.org, you can find some other good Australian directories.

*Estimated time: 2 months

2. Buying text links

*Methods in this solution include:

- Buy text links (backlinks) directly from sites (in case they don't accept link exchanges)

- Buy text links from text link brokers.

- Buy text links from link auction sites.

- Pay fee to be included in big, quality directories (Yahoo, Overture, LookSmart...)

*Pros in this solution:

- Less time and efforts to get links.

- One-way links (better than reciprocal links)

*Cons in this solution

- Money. We must pay fee every month (or year) for some links.

- Buying text links (many in the same time) from text link brokers isn't encouraged by search engines. They can penalize us.

- Some links are volatile (not permanent).

*References for this solution:

- Advertising on sites: iwebtool.com/pagerank_checker (PR5 - $10.00 per month)

- Text link brokers: textlinkbrokers.com (5 Permanent Links PR0 – PR4: $175 /month), textlinkpopularity.com (10 Links from PR 3 Pages: $150 - Pay only once for permanent links - no recurring charges)

- Link auction sites: linkadage.com

- Big, quality directories: Yahoo! Directory (1 link - $299/year - your site will be reviewed first)

*Tips:

- When buying links from brokers, be sure that you can preview the pages in which your link will be included. Besides the PageRank, there are other factors to take into consideration such as: relevant links in this page, how many links in that page, whether your link is static, ...

*Estimated time: 1 week (some directories need more time to review our request)

3. Conclusion:

It seems that the goal of 50 backlinks with PageRank greater than 2 for new websites is not an easy one. Improving link popularity is a long, patient but obligatory process. It's up to you to decide which solution is better or the combination of these two ones.

About the Author:
Article by Mike Pham of www.TopTrafficWholesaler.com . We offer free search engine submission and effective Internet advertising services.
Article Source: http://www.articles2k.com

SEO - General Guidelines

SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimizing and refers to a set of good practices that teach you how to improve your website so that it would be easily tracked, indexed and ranked by search engines. Getting your site indexed by Google and other major search engines will help you attract visitors and increase traffic.

SEO is an exciting and ongoing process that involves not only an initial optimized website, but also permanent maintenance and evaluating search results on a regular basis. With the ever-changing Internet technology, SEO experts sometimes have contrasting opinions on what makes a good website. However, there are some general guidelines most of them agree on.

Design & Content

• You should build your web pages for human beings and not for search engines. A clean design and a strong content will ultimately drive search engine spiders to your site.
• Make a clear hierarchy and provide text links to each page.
• Don't put to many links on a single page (maximum 100).
• You should include a site map to help users navigate easily through your website.
• Make sure you have clear TITLE tags, no HTML errors and all the links work.
• You should use text instead of images to display important elements, as search engine crawlers may not recognize a text inside an image.
• While keeping your content useful and clear, do use keywords that you know users would type to get to your page.

Technical Issues
• Most search engine crawlers see your website similar to the way a text browser sees it. Consequently, you should use a text browser, such as Lynx, to check your website. If you can't see the whole page because of JavaScript, session IDs, DHTML or Flash features, search engine spiders will probably have trouble with crawling your website.
• Check with your web host to see if the server supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header. This header tells Google whether the website content has changed since its last visit.
• While it is advised session IDs to track visitors' path through the website, you shouldn't do this for search bots.
• The robots.txt file on your web server tells spiders which directories can be crawled and which cannot. Make sure it's updated and it doesn't somehow block search engine crawlers.

Website Promotion

• After you've built your website and put it online, try to get high PageRank sites link to it.
• Submit your website to major search engines (Google, Yahoo/Altavista, MSN) to get it indexed, along with a site map that will tell them the site structure.
• Submit your website to relevant directories, such as Yahoo and Open Directory Project.
• Get involved in community based websites, blogs and forums and build a strong reputation.

Whether you choose to implement these techniques yourself or go to a SEO expert, no one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google and other search engines. Search engines change their crawling algorithms often and competitor websites appear all the time. However, following these basic SEO guidelines will improve your chances of increasing your website traffic and is a better practice than looking for a way to cheat on search engines in order to get your pages indexed.

Copyright © 2006 Andreas Obermueller

About the Author:
Andreas Obermueller is webmaster of Hit4Biz.com - Marketing Related Information and recommends Marble Host as reliable Web Host
Article Source: http://www.articles411.com

Seo India: Tips & Techniques By Ravz

SEO is all about "Individualism"

According to me SEO is not only getting rank for keywords (Of course that is the primary objective) but apart from ranking your objective should be "Conversion" getting "Sales" (No matter if its personal site or clients site)

SEO Steps:

1. Understanding Business.
# What is your business all about
# How is it going to Operate.
# Target audience (Global/Local)
# Opportunity
# Competitor study operating in same business.
# "Core competence"

2. Target Keywords.
# Getting a good list of keywords. (More keywords maximum number of ppl can be targeted)
# This is something that will directly reflect your efforts (targeting wrong keyword will get all your efforts in vain)

3. WEB Designing.
# Navigation
# Page size
# looks n feel
# inter linking
# HTML Code validation*

4. Meta tags & Content
# Title
# Description
# Keywords
# Content

*This is something all seo do in their style, some do not emphasis more on 1st point (according to me which is very important) & shoot up with 3rd step then 2nd & 4th.

5. Directories
# They are the boss (More the submission to directories more the chance to rank top for targeted keyword)

6. Link Building
# I am very bad at this (This is something which can do wonders for you)

I am still in process to transferring my skills & knowledge to a Brand "SEO Expert" or "SEO Specialist"

Ravz..!

About the Author:
Ravz D. is into research & analysis of online marketing. SEO India site http://expertseo.rediffblogs.com which offers Search Engine Optimization at affordable prices.
Article Source: www.iSnare.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

Factors That Decide Directory As a Quality Directory.

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

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

[1] Age of directory/Domain:-

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

[2] Page Rank and incoming links:-

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

[3] Cost:-

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

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

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

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

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

[6] Traffic:-

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

[7] Type of links:-

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

[8] Category of directory:-

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

[9] Time for review:-

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

[10]Other factors:-

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

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

Google SEO Tips -- Content, Content, Content

Introduction

Of the most important on-page SEO factors, the content of each page is obviously important. However, the inclusion of a large number of pages also gives your site a lot of credence in the eyes of Google. This is because Google loves content, and the more of it you have the more weight you will receive. Obviously the quality, relevance, and optimization is important but generally speaking the more content you can provide the better. This content can come in various forms and by optimizing every page you can also target a much greater number of keywords with more effect.

Why Google Loves Content Rich Websites

Google, like all search engines, use complex algorithms to determine exactly where your pages and website will show up in the result pages. While the exact details of Google’s algorithms are not known, several factors have been calculated as being among the more important. One of these is the amount of information a site presents to visitors. The theory is that the more pages of content your site has the more value it provides to your visitors. Interlinking between pages within the content of each page is also believed to have a positive effect.

Methods To Include Increased Content

It’s all well and good knowing that your site needs more content. It’s equally useful to know that your visitors will be just as appreciative of this fact as Google will be. The question is, how can it be done?

Using The Proper Page And Sub Page Hierarchy

The most important consideration is how easily accessible and easy to navigate your site is. Simply including tens or hundreds of top level pages is not likely to give the clean navigation system that your user’s require even though it will help provide the level of content you should be looking for. One solution is to use a proper hierarchy of internal pages. Under each of the major pages of your site include several sub pages, concentrating on different or more specific keywords and topics. This allows you to target a huge number of your most relevant keywords without creating a site that is difficult to get to grips with.

Site Specific Article Directories

Site-specific article directories are becoming increasingly popular. Including an article directory that is packed full of useful and informative articles gives your visitors real value and, again, allows you to target more keywords and attract more customers. This is actually very similar to the use of pages and sub pages except that you can always ask your visitors, or rely on e-zine article sites, for the majority of the content you require.

Blogs And News Headlines

Blogs and latest news sections are also very popular and beneficial. A lot of sites now include blogs. These can give relevant news stories, talk about specific topics, or just about anything you want. Search engines, including Google, have a certain affinity to the blog because they instinctively recognize that most contain lots of information rich pages. News headlines can concentrate specifically on your website, or company, or they can be more generally based on the industry in which you operate. Many sites use a blog to highlight the news stories because of the ease and affordability.

Further Benefits Of Content Driven Sites

We’ve intimated that your visitors will be equally appreciative of an informative, content-based site. The more information you can provide to visitors, the longer they will remain on your site and the more trust you will have gained. Site visitors that leave with nothing have no reason to use your site and no reason to purchase for you. If you can enrich their visit with hard facts, or useful or entertaining content, then you are greatly increasing the chance that they will purchase your product or click your links.

Important Precautions Before You Begin

There are very few precautions you need to take beside site accessibility and navigation factors. Ensuring that your visitors and the search engines have easy access to all of the pages of your site is essential; otherwise you will gain little or no benefit from your efforts. Larger sites with a complex hierarchical structure should consider the use of a sitemap to ensure that search engines do not get lost in the pages of your site. This way you should be able to virtually guarantee that every page gets indexed, ranked, and hopefully visited.

Content Quality Is As Important As Content Quantity

Another precaution you should take concerns the quality of the content itself. Not only should you completely avoid using the same content on more than once occasion but also you should ensure that every page offers some value. The problem is that in a bid to create numerous pages on various topics, sometimes the quality can suffer in place of quantity. Remember that Google spiders aren’t your only concern and your human visitors will want to read invaluable and informative content.

Conclusion

Google, as the largest and most populous of search engines, is considered the most important. Getting a top ranking in the Google search engine result pages is, therefore, the Holy Grail of SEO efforts. By reaching this coveted top position it is feasible that your website could see hundreds or even thousands of new visitors every single day. Google loves nothing more than content rich and content packed websites and by including a page hierarchy, an article directory, or a blog it is possible to take advantage of the Google spiders as they pass through your site.

About The Author:
Matt Jackson
About WebWiseWords
If you’re looking for a top quality website content writer then look no further than the WebWiseWords copywriting service. WebWiseWords is able to create compelling, keyword driven SEO website content that not only helps to promote websites within search engine result pages but also compels human visitors to take the desired action.
Article Submitted On: October 19, 2006
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/

The Role Of Web Directories In Seo

SEO or search engine optimization is a big word these days. Everyone who owns a web site is desperate to make sure that they are getting the top positions in the web searches of the surfers around the world. This is why so many large companies have sprung up offering to properly optimize a web site to give the owner the top engine rankings that they love so much. Of course there is a lot that goes into such things and SEO is best left for someone who has the time and energy to make it happen. There are many parts to SEO and a webmaster must stay on top of everything in this ever changing world. One thing to remember is that the search engines on the net are constantly changing the criteria for their searches. So one must take this into consideration and understand that SEO is never complete on any web page that is currently in operation.

Web directories play a highly important role in search engine optimization. Web directories are nothing more than large storage houses for web sites and their links. These storage houses hold the links in place until they are needed. However, these directories are used by search engines in a big way which is something that a lot of people fail to understand. Marketing this usage is not something that is high on the list of priorities for most search engines. Their policies and strategies regarding the optimization are often times kept secret until some insider accidentally on purpose leaks the information to the masses.

Each link that is stored in a web directory is followed by a description. This description is the source file that the search engine spiders will use to properly catalog the site into their own directory to be used later on for pulling under search engine criteria. So in essence they are using the information from the web directories to create their own directory and having a good time doing it. They do not have to suffer through the mess of having all of these sites submitted to them in one lump and have a great place for them to be stored until they are called for. This is the reason why so many SEO experts say that the submitting a web site to the web directories is the first and most important step in making sure that they are search engine optimized.

About the Author:
Wisam Abdulaziz
My Directory Free listing web directory
Submitted: 2006-10-26
Article Source: GoArticles

Link Building And Its Use In SEO

Link building has long been heralded as one of the most important aspects of any effective SEO campaign, and with good reason. The major search engines certainly give some weight to the number and quality of inbound links that a website receives. It’s also true that with good links from high traffic websites you can generate a very good amount of direct traffic from your links. However, the evolution of SEO and search engine algorithms means that gaining links from your site has become a different challenge when compared to link building of old.

Reciprocal Link Campaigns – Dead?

Originally, the most commonly used and potentially advantageous method of building links was using a reciprocal link program. The concept is a simple one. By including a link to another website on your resource or links page, they would reciprocate with a link to your own site. However, numerous algorithm changes have made this a less attractive way of gaining links. Too many links on your resource page and you will be flagged as a lank farm or spam site and search engines now tend to give a reciprocal link much less weight than a one way inbound link.

Buying Text Links – Ineffective?

Buying text links from websites also became a popular method to build a strong base of links. Again, though, this is now frowned upon by many of the search engines. They want to see links that have been gained because your site, or you personally, create and publish high quality information and content and provide a top quality service. In an ideal world these links would be gained organically. Webmasters would visit your site through the search engine listings or any other marketing methods and see top quality content, subsequently posting a link to one or more pages on your site. In reality, though, there are several problems with this.

Organic Links – Unobtainable?

Organic links are well and good but you have to have a popular site before you can begin to expect this kind of accolade. If you have no visitors then how can you hope to attract Webmsaters to post links to your site on the pages of their own site? The answer is, you have to drive customers to your site. Another problem is that even the best content in the world will struggle to gain organic links because Webmasters won’t offer something for nothing. You need to be able to provide some benefit, apart from quality information, to persuade Webmasters of popular sites to link to you.

Article Directories – Effective?

This is where article directories come in. Article directories are large directories filled with articles written by people looking to promote products, gain links for their site, and generally promote themselves and their services. Every article is allowed an About The Author section at the foot of the article (just like this article has) that can contain one or two links to a website. Some directories allow the use of HTML hyperlinks and in terms of SEO it is vital that you choose these sites to assist with linking. Don’t forget that you need to be able to add keywords to your anchor text in order to help promote your site with search engines.

The Importance Of Link Anchor Text And Some Common Mistakes

A common mistake in linking is the poor use of anchor text. Many people mask their URL behind text like “Click Here” or even their domain name. While the latter provides a little more value it is still unlikely to really help with any link-building program. When a search engine sees a valid link that they follow they use the anchor text to determine the subject of that page. They will then include this page in results for searches that are based on or very close to those keywords. Therefore, using anchor text of “Click Here” means you will be increasing your search engine visibility for anyone searching for the term “Click Here”. On Google the term “Click Here” currently 391 million results. Even if you genuinely wanted to compete in this area you would have no chance.

Using your domain name as anchor text poses similar problems. It is helpful with brand recognition and also ensures that should a surfer explicitly search for the name of your service they will be shown your site first. But how many people do you think find your site by searching for your domain name? The answer, unfortunately, is very few indeed. Always use keywords as your anchor text and make sure that this keyword is included on the page of your site that the link points to.

Using an irrelevant but popular keyword may seem like a good idea but it is a very dangerous game. Adult and online business keywords are among the most popular but when conducting any link building you MUST use keywords in anchor text that directly relate to that page of your site. I might notice that the term “blue widget” (a surprisingly popular choice of keyword for these purposes) receives a lot of searches and use that as the anchor text to point to this article. If I hadn’t included the search term above then Google and other engines would give the link no weight at best. At worst, and if I were to do this regularly, they would flag me, my page, my site, and my IP address as spam. A much better choice of keyword, and therefore anchor text for this article would be “link building”.

Ideal Article Length For Submitting To Directories

Articles submitted to directories can range in length from blog post sized 200 word articles to much more substantial articles of 1,000 to 2,000 words. Anything larger is unlikely to attract any substantial attention but these longer articles less than 2000 words in length are good ammunition for e-zines and electronic newsletters. Even these can gain good links if each issue is archived. They will also usually gain a very good amount of direct traffic.

Choosing Beneficial Article Directories For Your Article Submission

So, the article directories you choose should allow the use of anchor text. They should also offer either a high PageRank or a lot of traffic. PageRank can be viewed using the Google toolbar and anything below PageRank 3 is virtually useless unless the site receives a lot of traffic or is brand new and looks set to become popular in the near future. Alexa is a very good site to help determine the amount of incoming traffic that a site receives. Use as many directories as you can possibly find and submit your article to each one. Try to alter the About The Author section for each directory that you submit to.

Why You Should Consider Altering The Text Around Your Link

Google quickly recognizes that a lot of your links are from identical pages. You will still receive the benefit of your link building and you don’t get penalized for this but you won’t receive as much weight as you can. When you use the Google search engine you will usually notice that when you come to the end of the list you receive notification that a certain amount of results that are very similar to those you have already seen have been excluded from the results. Google does something very similar when compiling the list of inbound links to your site. By changing the text that is found around your link when you submit to each directory you will increase your link popularity.

Conclusion, Summary, And General Notes

There are hundreds of article directories and while you should post to all the ones that offer anchor text and have either a high PageRank or a lot of traffic you shouldn’t bog yourself down too much. Certainly include niche sites because these give you a targeted section of readers. There are also some major general directories that cater to all tastes and are certainly worth adding to your article directory database.

Links are said to be the currency of the Internet and are certainly worth investing some time and/or money into. They will help to boost your search engine rankings and will usually drive direct traffic to your site. By building a database of directories you can ensure that your articles and therefore your sites receive the kind of exposure they rightly deserve.

About The Author:
Matt Jackson
WebWiseWords offers unique link building packages that include article writing and submission. Packages range from basic one off submission to the pro+ package that includes four submissions per month to over 70 directories. Because WebWiseWords is a Platinum or Expert copywriter with many of these directories your article receives even more exposure.
Article Submitted On: October 28, 2006
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/