For you to become a successful Amazon Affiliate Marketer, like other Internet Millionaires, you must have a website or blog like mine. After you’ve done that the next step is to go to Amazon Website Site www.amazon.com then click on “Join Associates on the left hand side of the official home page.
Fill out their application to become one of their Affiliate and give genuine information after that provide them with your website details i.e. web address, web description or purpose of the site because that is what will determine the ad being displayed in your website
After that review your information and submit the application and Amazon will reply within 24 to 48 hours if they will accept or decline your request as per joining their associates.
If you are then approved, Amazon will give you the necessary links usually some pieces of html and javascript code to place on your site so that your site visitors can order directly from your site.
Decide from Amazon catalog the type of produce you would like to offer your customers and submit this information to Amazon, place the Amazon piece of code on your website and you are ready to earn from affiliate booty.
Amazon will send your daily report of activities from your website or blog. Keep these emails to track your affiliate earnings.
Enjoying!!!!!!!!!!!
If you have problem with inserting the codes to your website or blog don’t hesitate to inform me.
Note:
You will not receive a referral fee for any product your customers purchase from Amazon its only the product you recommended for example if you recommend a book title and your customer buys that book you will be given the referral fee.
Get the in-depth information / strategies you can apply to be professional blogger, Google Adsense guru, affiliate marketing professional and search engine optimizer (seo) expert.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Monday, November 23, 2009
ILLEGAL SEO TECHNIQUES
DANGEROUS, UNETHICAL TACTIC THAT WILL GET YOUR SITE BLACKLISTED BY SEARCH ENGINES
LINK FARMS
Also known as Spamexing or Spamdexing.
A link farm is a series of websites created solely for housing gratuitous links that point to a collection of websites. It can also be a network of websites interlinking with each other.
Such websites are considered illegal in the eyes of Google and major search engines because they aim to achieve high rankings for websites that haven’t earned those rankings through good content and overall quality.
As a strategy, utilizing link farms, or spamdexing a search engine, is highly dangerous.
Even if your website has great content, if you or your SEO consultant use this technique, your website will still get penalized or banned because the engines figure that if you did have good content you wouldn’t resort to such sneaky tactics designed to trick them.
HOW TO GUARD AGAINST IT When an SEO professional tells you that he or she will secure incoming links for you, ask them to tell you specifically how they will do so. The correct answer is that they will target specific, pre-existing and established websites to gain an incoming link from them to you (in most cases without having to link back to them).
If a professional tells you that they will build you hundreds or thousands of pages across different domains that will link to your website, do NOT work with them as this will severely cripple your website.
Also periodically search your domain name in the major search engines to see which sites are pointing to you. If you see anything out of the ordinary, such as websites whose domains are extremely long or gibberish (lots of numbers and random or inappropriate words) or pages that are simply long lists of links, approach your SEO professional about getting your site removed from these pages and find out how they appeared there in the first place.
DOORWAY PAGES
Also known as Advertising Pages, Jump Pages, Gateway Pages, etc.
Doorway Pages are a form of landing page that is designed solely for the search engine and oftentimes isn’t even viewable to the human visitor. These pages often use a redirect script that automatically points the visitor to another page on the website without the human visitor ever seeing the doorway page. This is also known as cloaking and is clearly defined as an illegal practice by Google and other search engines.
The only time a landing page is acceptable by search engines is if it is in the form of an informative, well written article that human visitors read and enjoy, where they are not tricked into clicking or being redirected to the website’s main pages.
HOW TO GUARD AGAINST IT Make sure you understand exactly what kind of pages are being added to your website and be sure to look at most of them.
Ask your SEO professional point-blank whether any of these pages will automatically redirect to your website’s main page. If they say yes, then they are breaking the rules and are well aware of it, and we recommend you do NOT work with such an individual or company.
It doesn’t matter if they say they use a special javascript or other redirect that is “legal” or acceptable to Google. This is never the case and though Google may not know about that particular trick yet, it will find out fast enough and your site will get penalized as a result.
KEYWORD STUFFING
One of the original illegal SEO techniques, keyword stuffing occurs when you load a webpage full of particular keywords, either in the meta tags, other script tags, or in the content itself.
This is different from optimizing the page for particular keywords because the same words are being repeated dozens or hundreds of times in no credible or informative way.
Keywords are hidden several ways, for instance some people will make the text the same color as the background so search engines see it, but no human visitors can. Others will hide keywords in script tags. Still others yet will use CSS to position keywords outside of your visible screen area, again so that no human visitors can see it - but search engines can.
Though on the surface, using such techniques might sound like an attractive idea. However, search engines can detect whether a keyword is being used properly and will penalize or ban your site for using any of the above techniques to stuff keywords into your site.
HOW TO GUARD AGAINST IT Often times, the only way you can know if your site has been stuffed with keywords is to view the source code of your website (visit your site in your favorite browser, click “View” and then “Source Code.” A page of HTML will display.
If you see the same keywords repeated hundreds of times anywhere, then your page has been stuffed and will be considered in violation of every search engine’s rules.
SCRAPER PAGES
Also known as Auto Generated Pages.
Scraper pages are those comprised of search results or content automatically pulled from dozens or hundreds of websites or search engine results. This is a form of plagiarism as no part of the scraper page is original content.
Most often, such sites are used to display Google Adsense Ads or other ads that pay the site owner every time a visitor clicks on it. However search engines have gotten very good at banning such sites from their results and human visitors can detect them easily as well.
Scraper sites are easy to spot as they are largely illogical. They are snippets of other webpage content, or search results, and therefore have no sensible point and do not make sense when read.
HOW TO GUARD AGAINST IT As with other illegal techniques, it’s important to first ask your SEO professional directly whether they will employ such unethical techniques. Then you must monitor their work. Make sure you have access to your website’s hosting service so that you can view all pages that are hosted on your site’s domain.
Periodically view pages at random to be sure they do not contain this or other illegal content. Also get reports of your site’s rankings and search the keywords you rank for. Click through from the search results and check the landing page’s source code and content for anything fishy or inappropriate.
LINK FARMS
Also known as Spamexing or Spamdexing.
A link farm is a series of websites created solely for housing gratuitous links that point to a collection of websites. It can also be a network of websites interlinking with each other.
Such websites are considered illegal in the eyes of Google and major search engines because they aim to achieve high rankings for websites that haven’t earned those rankings through good content and overall quality.
As a strategy, utilizing link farms, or spamdexing a search engine, is highly dangerous.
Even if your website has great content, if you or your SEO consultant use this technique, your website will still get penalized or banned because the engines figure that if you did have good content you wouldn’t resort to such sneaky tactics designed to trick them.
HOW TO GUARD AGAINST IT When an SEO professional tells you that he or she will secure incoming links for you, ask them to tell you specifically how they will do so. The correct answer is that they will target specific, pre-existing and established websites to gain an incoming link from them to you (in most cases without having to link back to them).
If a professional tells you that they will build you hundreds or thousands of pages across different domains that will link to your website, do NOT work with them as this will severely cripple your website.
Also periodically search your domain name in the major search engines to see which sites are pointing to you. If you see anything out of the ordinary, such as websites whose domains are extremely long or gibberish (lots of numbers and random or inappropriate words) or pages that are simply long lists of links, approach your SEO professional about getting your site removed from these pages and find out how they appeared there in the first place.
DOORWAY PAGES
Also known as Advertising Pages, Jump Pages, Gateway Pages, etc.
Doorway Pages are a form of landing page that is designed solely for the search engine and oftentimes isn’t even viewable to the human visitor. These pages often use a redirect script that automatically points the visitor to another page on the website without the human visitor ever seeing the doorway page. This is also known as cloaking and is clearly defined as an illegal practice by Google and other search engines.
The only time a landing page is acceptable by search engines is if it is in the form of an informative, well written article that human visitors read and enjoy, where they are not tricked into clicking or being redirected to the website’s main pages.
HOW TO GUARD AGAINST IT Make sure you understand exactly what kind of pages are being added to your website and be sure to look at most of them.
Ask your SEO professional point-blank whether any of these pages will automatically redirect to your website’s main page. If they say yes, then they are breaking the rules and are well aware of it, and we recommend you do NOT work with such an individual or company.
It doesn’t matter if they say they use a special javascript or other redirect that is “legal” or acceptable to Google. This is never the case and though Google may not know about that particular trick yet, it will find out fast enough and your site will get penalized as a result.
KEYWORD STUFFING
One of the original illegal SEO techniques, keyword stuffing occurs when you load a webpage full of particular keywords, either in the meta tags, other script tags, or in the content itself.
This is different from optimizing the page for particular keywords because the same words are being repeated dozens or hundreds of times in no credible or informative way.
Keywords are hidden several ways, for instance some people will make the text the same color as the background so search engines see it, but no human visitors can. Others will hide keywords in script tags. Still others yet will use CSS to position keywords outside of your visible screen area, again so that no human visitors can see it - but search engines can.
Though on the surface, using such techniques might sound like an attractive idea. However, search engines can detect whether a keyword is being used properly and will penalize or ban your site for using any of the above techniques to stuff keywords into your site.
HOW TO GUARD AGAINST IT Often times, the only way you can know if your site has been stuffed with keywords is to view the source code of your website (visit your site in your favorite browser, click “View” and then “Source Code.” A page of HTML will display.
If you see the same keywords repeated hundreds of times anywhere, then your page has been stuffed and will be considered in violation of every search engine’s rules.
SCRAPER PAGES
Also known as Auto Generated Pages.
Scraper pages are those comprised of search results or content automatically pulled from dozens or hundreds of websites or search engine results. This is a form of plagiarism as no part of the scraper page is original content.
Most often, such sites are used to display Google Adsense Ads or other ads that pay the site owner every time a visitor clicks on it. However search engines have gotten very good at banning such sites from their results and human visitors can detect them easily as well.
Scraper sites are easy to spot as they are largely illogical. They are snippets of other webpage content, or search results, and therefore have no sensible point and do not make sense when read.
HOW TO GUARD AGAINST IT As with other illegal techniques, it’s important to first ask your SEO professional directly whether they will employ such unethical techniques. Then you must monitor their work. Make sure you have access to your website’s hosting service so that you can view all pages that are hosted on your site’s domain.
Periodically view pages at random to be sure they do not contain this or other illegal content. Also get reports of your site’s rankings and search the keywords you rank for. Click through from the search results and check the landing page’s source code and content for anything fishy or inappropriate.
ADVANCED SEO TECHNIQUES PART 3 | CONCLUSION
Conclusion
If you’re looking for some simple things that you can do to increase the position of your sites rank in the search engines or directories, this section will give you some hard hitting and simple tips that you can put into action right away.
· What Should You Do Now?
It is worth cataloging the basic principles to be enforced to increase website traffic and search engine rankings.
· Create a site with valuable content, products or services.
· Place primary and secondary keywords within the first 25 words in your page content and spread them evenly throughout the document.
· Research and use the right keywords/phrases to attract your target customers.
· Use your keywords in the right fields and references within your web page. Like Title, META tags, Headers, etc.
· Keep your site design simple so that your customers can navigate easily between web pages, find what they want and buy products and services.
· Submit your web pages i.e. every web page and not just the home page, to the most popular search engines and directory services. Hire someone to do so, if required. Be sure this is a manual submission. Do not engage an automated submission service.
· Keep track of changes in search engine algorithms and processes and accordingly modify your web pages so your search engine ranking remains high. Use online tools and utilities to keep track of how your website is doing.
· Monitor your competitors and the top ranked websites to see what they are doing right in the way of design, navigation, content, keywords, etc.
· Use reports and logs from your web hosting company to see where your traffic is coming from. Analyze your visitor location and their incoming sources whether search engines or links from other sites and the keywords they used to find you.
· Make your customer visit easy and give them plenty of ways to remember you in the form of newsletters, free reports, reduction coupons etc.
· Demonstrate your industry and product or service expertise by writing and submitting articles for your website or for article banks so you are perceived as an expert in your field.
· When selling products online, use simple payment and shipment methods to make your customer’s experience fast and easy.
· When not sure, hire professionals. Though it may seem costly, but it is a lot less expensive than spending your money on a website which no one visits.
· Don’t look at your website as a static brochure. Treat it as a dynamic, ever-changing sales tool and location, just like your real store to which your customers with the same seriousness.
If you’re looking for some simple things that you can do to increase the position of your sites rank in the search engines or directories, this section will give you some hard hitting and simple tips that you can put into action right away.
· What Should You Do Now?
It is worth cataloging the basic principles to be enforced to increase website traffic and search engine rankings.
· Create a site with valuable content, products or services.
· Place primary and secondary keywords within the first 25 words in your page content and spread them evenly throughout the document.
· Research and use the right keywords/phrases to attract your target customers.
· Use your keywords in the right fields and references within your web page. Like Title, META tags, Headers, etc.
· Keep your site design simple so that your customers can navigate easily between web pages, find what they want and buy products and services.
· Submit your web pages i.e. every web page and not just the home page, to the most popular search engines and directory services. Hire someone to do so, if required. Be sure this is a manual submission. Do not engage an automated submission service.
· Keep track of changes in search engine algorithms and processes and accordingly modify your web pages so your search engine ranking remains high. Use online tools and utilities to keep track of how your website is doing.
· Monitor your competitors and the top ranked websites to see what they are doing right in the way of design, navigation, content, keywords, etc.
· Use reports and logs from your web hosting company to see where your traffic is coming from. Analyze your visitor location and their incoming sources whether search engines or links from other sites and the keywords they used to find you.
· Make your customer visit easy and give them plenty of ways to remember you in the form of newsletters, free reports, reduction coupons etc.
· Demonstrate your industry and product or service expertise by writing and submitting articles for your website or for article banks so you are perceived as an expert in your field.
· When selling products online, use simple payment and shipment methods to make your customer’s experience fast and easy.
· When not sure, hire professionals. Though it may seem costly, but it is a lot less expensive than spending your money on a website which no one visits.
· Don’t look at your website as a static brochure. Treat it as a dynamic, ever-changing sales tool and location, just like your real store to which your customers with the same seriousness.
ADVANCED SEO TECHNIQUES PART 2
What Your Website Absolutely Needs
This section will go over some of the most important elements that a page that hopes to get high research engine rankings needs. Make sure that you go through this while section very carefully as each of these can have a dramatic impact on the rankings that your website will ultimately achieve. Don’t focus solely on the home page, keywords and titles.
The first step to sales when customers visit your site to see the products they were looking for. Of course, search engine optimization and better rankings can’t keep your customer on your site or make them buy. The customer having visited your site, now ensure that he gets interested in your products or services and stays around. Motivate him to buy the product by providing clear and unambiguous information. Thus if you happen to sell more than one product or service, provide all necessary information about this, may be by keeping the information at a different page. By providing suitable and easily visible links, the customer can navigate to these pages and get the details.
· Understanding Your Target Customer
If you design a website you think will attract clients, but you don’t really know who your customers are and what they want to buy, it is unlikely you make much money. Website business is an extension or replacement for a standard storefront. You can send email to your existing clients and ask them to complete a survey or even while they are browsing on your website. Ask them about their choices. Why do they like your products? Do you discount prices or offer coupons? Are your prices consistently lower
than others? Is your shipping price cheaper? Do you respond faster to client questions? Are your product descriptions better? Your return policies and guarantees better than your competitor’s? To know your customer you can check credit card records or ask your customer to complete a simple contact form with name, address, age, gender, etc. when they purchase a product.
· Does Your Website Give Enough Contact Information?
When you sell from a website, your customer can buy your products 24 hrs a day and also your customers may be from other states that are thousands of miles away. Always provide contact information, preferably on every page of your website, complete with mailing address, telephone number and an email address that reaches you. People may need to contact you about sales, general information or technical problems on your site. Also have your email forwarded to another email address if you do not check your website mailbox often. When customer wants to buy online provide enough options like credit card, PayPal or other online payment service.
In the field of search engine optimization (SEO), writing a strong homepage that will rank high in the engines and will read well with your site visitors can sometimes present a challenge, even to some seasoned SEO professionals. Once you have clearly identified your exact keywords and key phrases, the exact location on your homepage where you will place those carefully researched keywords will have a drastic impact in the end results of your homepage optimization.
One thing we keep most people say is that they don’t want to change the looks or more especially the wording on their homepage. Understandably, some of them went to great lengths and invested either a lot of time and/or money to make it the best it can be. Being the best it can be for your site visitors is one thing. But is it the best it can be for the search engines, in terms of how your site will rank?
If you need powerful rankings in the major search engines and at the same time you want to successfully convert your visitors and prospects into real buyers, it's important to effectively write your homepage the proper way the first time! You should always remember that a powerfully optimized homepage pleases both the search engines and your prospects.
In randomly inserting keywords and key phrases into your old homepage, you might run the risk of getting good rankings, but at the same time it might jeopardize your marketing flow. That is a mistake nobody would ever want to do with their homepage.
Even today, there are still some people that will say you can edit your homepage for key phrases, without re-writing the whole page. There are important reasons why that strategy might not work.
· The Home Page
Your homepage is the most important page on your web site. If you concentrate your most important keywords and key phrases in your homepage many times, the search engines will surely notice and index it accordingly. But will it still read easily and will the
sentences flow freely to your real human visitors? There are some good chances that it might not. As a primer, having just 40 or 50 words on your homepage will not deliver the message effectively. To be powerful and effective, a homepage needs at least 300 to 400 words for maximum search engine throughput and effectiveness.
One way to do that is to increase your word count with more value-added content. This often means rewriting your whole homepage all over again. The main reason to this is you will probably never have enough room to skillfully work your important keywords and key phrases into the body text of your homepage. This may not please your boss or marketing department, but a full re-write is often necessary and highly advisable to achieve high rankings in the engines, while at the same time having a homepage that will please your site visitors and convert a good proportion of them into real buyers.
· The Acid Test
Here is the acid test that will prove what we just said is right: Carefully examine the body text of your existing homepage. Then, attempt to insert three to five different keywords and key phrases three to four times each, somewhere within the actual body of your existing page. In doing that, chances are you will end up with a homepage that is next to impossible to understand and read.
One mistake some people do is to force their prospects to wade through endless key phrase lists or paragraphs, in an attempt to describe their features and benefits. The other reason they do that is in trying to please the search engines at the same time. Writing a powerful and effective homepage around carefully defined keywords and key phrases is a sure way you can drive targeted traffic to your web site and keep them there once you do.
If some people still say re-writing a homepage takes too much time and costs too much money, think of the cost of losing prospective clients and the real cost of lost sales and lost opportunities. In the end, writing a strong homepage that will achieve all your desired goals will largely justify your time invested and the efforts you will have placed in the re-writing of your homepage.
This section presents a recommended layout for your homepage in order to make it as search engine friendly as possible. This is where you set the theme of your site. Let's suppose the primary focus of your site is about online education. You also have secondary content that is there as alternative content for those not interested online education. There is also other content that you would like to share with your visitors. For example, this might include book reviews, humor, and links.
The top of your homepage, as discussed earlier is the most important. This is where you set the keywords and theme for the most important part of your site, the thing you really want to be found for.
· Step By Step Page Optimization
Starting at the top of your index/home page something like this:
(After your logo or header graphic)
1.
A heading tag that includes a keyword(s) or keyword phrases. A heading tag is bigger and bolder text than normal body text, so a search engine places more importance on it because you emphasize it.
2.
Heading sizes range from h1 - h6 with h1 being the largest text. If you learn to use just a little Cascading Style Sheet code you can control the size of your headings. You could set an h1 sized heading to be only slightly larger than your normal text if you choose, and the search engine will still see it as an important heading.
3. Next would be an introduction that describes your main theme. This would include several of your top keywords and keyword phrases. Repeat your top 1 or 2 keywords several times, include other keyword search terms too, but make it read in sentences that makes sense to your visitors.
4.
A second paragraph could be added that got more specific using other words related to online education.
5. Next you could put smaller heading.
6.
Then you'd list the links to your pages, and ideally have a brief decision of each link using keywords and keyword phrases in the text. You also want to have several pages of quality content to link to. Repeat that procedure for all your links that relate to your theme.
7. Next you might include a closing, keyword laden paragraph. More is not necessarily better when it comes to keywords, at least after a certain point. Writing "online education" fifty times across your page would probably result in you being caught for trying to cheat. Ideally, somewhere from 3% - 20% of your page text would be keywords. The percentage changes often and is different at each search engine. The 3-20 rule is a general guideline, and you can go higher if it makes sense and isn't redundant.
8. Finally, you can list your secondary content of book reviews, humor, and links. Skip the descriptions if they aren't necessary, or they may water down your theme too much. If you must include descriptions for these non-theme related links, keep them short and sweet. You also might include all the other site sections as simply a link to another index that lists them all. You could call it Entertainment, Miscellaneous, or whatever. These can be sub-indexes that can be optimized toward their own theme, which is the ideal way to go.
Now you've set the all important top of your page up with a strong theme. So far so good, but this isn't the only way you can create a strong theme so don't be compelled into following this exact formula. This was just an example to show you one way to set up a strong site theme. Use your imagination, you many come up with an even better way.
· One Site – One Theme
It's important to note that you shouldn't try to optimize your home page for more than one theme. They just end up weakening each other's strength when you do that. By using simple links to your alternative content, a link to your humor page can get folks where they want to go, and then you can write your humor page as a secondary index optimized toward a humor theme. In the end, each page should be optimized for search engines for the main topic of that page or site section.
Search engine optimization is made up of many simple techniques that work together to create a comprehensive overall strategy. This combination of techniques is greater as a whole than the sum of the parts. While you can skip any small technique that is a part of the overall strategy, it will subtract from the edge you'd gain by employing all the tactics.
· Affiliate Sites & Dynamic URLs
In affiliate programs, sites that send you traffic and visitors, have to be paid on the basis of per click or other parameters (such as number of pages visited on your site, duration spent, transactions etc). Most common contractual understanding revolves around payment per click or click throughs. Affiliates use tracking software that monitors such clicks using a redirection measurement system. The validity of affiliate programs in boosting your link analysis is doubtful. Nevertheless, it is felt that it does not actually do any harm. It does provide you visitors, and that is important. In the case of some search engines re-directs may even count in favor of your link analysis. Use affiliate programs, but this is not a major strategy for optimization.
Several pages in e-commerce and other functional sites are generated dynamically and have “?” or “&” sign in their dynamic URLs. These signs separate the CGI variables. While Google will crawl these pages, many other engines will not. One inconvenient solution is to develop static equivalent of the dynamic pages and have them on your site.
Another way to avoid such dynamic URLs is to rewrite these URLs using a syntax that is accepted by the crawler and also understood as equivalent to the dynamic URL by the application server. The Amazon site shows dynamic URLs in such syntax. If you are using Apache web server, you can use Apache rewrite rules to enable this conversion.
One good tip is that you should prepare a crawler page (or pages) and submit this to the search engines. This page should have no text or content except for links to all the important pages that you wished to be crawled. When the spider reaches this page it would crawl to all the links and would suck all the desired pages into its index. You can also break up the main crawler page into several smaller pages if the size becomes too large. The crawler shall not reject smaller pages, whereas larger pages may get bypassed if the crawler finds them too slow to be spidered.
You do not have to be concerned that the result may throw up this “site-map” page and would disappoint the visitor. This will not happen, as the “site-map” has no searchable content and will not get included in the results, rather all other pages would. We found the site wired.com had published hierarchical sets of crawler pages. The first crawler page lists all the category headlines, these links lead to a set of links with all story headlines, which in turn lead to the news stories.
· Page Size Can Be A Factor
We have written above that the spiders may bypass long and “difficult” pages. They would have their own time-out characteristics or other controls that help them come unstuck from such pages. So you do not want to have such a page become your “gateway” page. One tip is to keep the page size below 100 kb.
· How many Pages To Submit?
You do not have to submit all the pages of your site. As stated earlier, many sites have restrictions on the number of pages you submit. A key page or a page that has links to many inner pages is ideal, but you must submit some inner pages. This insures that even if the first page is missed, the crawler does get to access other pages and all the important pages through them. Submit your key 3 to 4 pages at least. Choose the ones that have the most relevant content and keywords to suit your target search string and verify that they link to other pages properly.
· Should You Use Frames?
Many websites make use of frames on their web pages. In some cases, more than two frames would be used on a single web page. The reason why most websites use frames is because each frame’s content has a different source. A master page known as a “frameset” controls the process of clubbing content from different sources into a single web page. Such frames make it easier for webmasters to club multiple sources into a single web page. This, however, has a huge disadvantage when it comes to Search Engines.
Some of the older Search Engines do not have the capability to read content from frames. These only crawl through the frameset instead of all the web pages. Consequently web pages with multiple frames are ignored by the spider. There are certain tags known as “NOFRAMES” (Information ignored by frames capable browser) that can be inserted in the HTML of these web pages. Spiders are able to read information within the NOFRAMES tags. Thus, Search Engines only see the Frameset. Moreover, there cannot be any links to other web pages in the NOFRAMES blocks. That means the search engines won't crawl past the frameset, thus ignoring all the content rich web pages that are controlled by the frameset.
Hence, it is always advisable to have web pages without frames as these could easily make your website invisible to Search Engines.
· Making Frames Visible To Search Engines
We discussed earlier the prominence of frames based websites. Many amateur web designers do not understand the drastic effects frames can have on search engine visibility. Such ignorance is augmented by the fact that some Search Engines such as Google and Ask.com are actually frames capable. Ask.com spiders can crawl through frames and index all web pages of a website. However, this is only true for a few Search Engines.
The best solution as stated above is to avoid frames all together. If you still decide to use frames another remedy to this problem is using Javascript. Javascript can be added anywhere and is visible to Search Engines. These would enable spiders to crawl to other web pages, even if they do not recognize frames.
With a little trial and error, you can make your frame sites accessible to both types of search engines.
· STOP Words
Stop words are common words that are ignored by search engines at the time of searching a key phrase. This is done in order to save space on their server, and also to accelerate the search process.
When a search is conducted in a search engine, it will exclude the stop words from the search query, and will use the query by replacing all the stop words with a marker. A marker is a symbol that is substituted with the stop words. The intention is to save space. This way, the search engines are able to save more web pages in that extra space, as well as retain the relevancy of the search query.
Besides, omitting a few words also speeds up the search process. For instance, if a query consists of three words, the Search Engine would
generally make three runs for each of the words and display the listings. However, if one of the words is such that omitting it does not make a difference to search results, it can be excluded from the query and consequently the search process becomes faster. Some commonly excluded "stop words" are:
after, also, an, and, as, at, be, because, before, between, but, before, for, however, from, if, in, into, of, or, other, out, since, such, than, that, the, these, there, this, those, to, under, upon, when, where, whether, which, with, within, without
· Image Alt Tag Descriptions
Search engines are unable to view graphics or distinguish text that might be contained within them. For this reason, most engines will read the content of the image ALT tags to determine the purpose of a graphic. By taking the time to craft relevant, yet keyword rich ALT tags for the images on your web site, you increase the keyword density of your site.
Although many search engines read and index the text contained within ALT tags, it's important NOT to go overboard in using these tags as part of your SEO campaign. Most engines will not give this text any more weight than the text within the body of your site.
· Invisible & Tiny Text
Invisible text is content on a web site that is coded in a manner that makes it invisible to human visitors, but readable by search engine spiders. This is done in order to artificially inflate the keyword density of a web site without affecting the visual appearance of it. Hidden text is a recognized spam tactic and nearly all of the major search engines recognize and penalize sites that use this tactic.
· This is the technique of placing text on a page in a small font size. Pages that are predominantly heavy in tiny text may be dismissed as spam. Or, the tiny text may not be indexed. As a general guideline, try to avoid pages where the font size is predominantly smaller than normal. Make sure that you're not spamming the engine by using keyword after keyword in a very small font size. Your tiny text may be a copyright notice at the very bottom of the page, or even your contact information. If so, that's fine.
· Keyword Stuffing & Spamming
Important keywords and descriptions should be used in your content in visible Meta tags and you should choose the words carefully and position them near the top and have proper frequency for such words. However it is very important to adopt moderation in this. Keyword stuffing or spamming is a No-No today. Most search engine algorithms can spot this, bypass the spam and some may even penalize it.
· Dynamic URLs
Several pages in e-commerce and other functional sites are generated dynamically and have? or & sign in their dynamic URLs. These signs separate the CGI variables. While Google will crawl these pages, many other engines will not. One inconvenient solution is to develop static equivalent of the dynamic pages and have them on your site. Another way to avoid such dynamic URLs is to rewrite these URLs using a syntax that is accepted by the crawler and also understood as equivalent to the dynamic URL by the application server. The Amazon site shows dynamic URLs in such syntax. If you are using Apache web server, you can use Apache rewrite rules to enable this conversion.
· Re-Direct Pages
Sometimes pages have a Meta refresh tag that redirects any visitor automatically to another page. Some search engines refuse to index a page that has a high refresh rate. The meta refresh tag however does not affect Google.
· Image Maps Without ALT Text
Avoid image maps without text or with links. Image maps should have alt text (as also required under the American Disabilities Act, for public websites) and the home page should not have images as links. Instead HTML links should be used. This is because search engines would not read image links and the linked pages may not get crawled.
· Frames
There are some engines whose spiders won’t work with frames on your site. A web page that is built using frames is actually a combination of content from separate “pages” that have been blended into a single page through a ‘frameset’ instruction page. The frameset page does not have any content or links that would have promoted spidering. The frameset page could block the spider’s movement. The workaround is by placing a summary of the page content and relevant description in the frameset page and also by placing a link to the home page on it.
· Tables
When you use tables on the key pages and if some columns have descriptions while others have numbers, it is possible that this may push your keywords down the page. Search engines break up the table and read them for the content the columns have. The first column is read first, then the next and so on. Thus if the first column had numbers, and the next one had useful descriptions, the positioning of these descriptions will suffer. The strategy is to avoid using such tables near the top of the key pages. Large sections of Java scripts also will have the same effect on the search engines. The HTML part will be pushed down. Thus again, place your long Javascripts lower down on key pages.
· Link Spamming
Realizing the importance of links and link analysis in search engine results, several link farms and Free for All sites have appeared that offer to provide links to your site. This is also referred to as link spamming. Most search engines are smarter to this obvious tactic and know how to spot this. Such FFA sites, as they are known, do not provide link quality or link context, two factors that are important in link analysis. Thus the correct strategy is to avoid link spamming and not get carried away by what seems to be too simple a solution.
This section will go over some of the most important elements that a page that hopes to get high research engine rankings needs. Make sure that you go through this while section very carefully as each of these can have a dramatic impact on the rankings that your website will ultimately achieve. Don’t focus solely on the home page, keywords and titles.
The first step to sales when customers visit your site to see the products they were looking for. Of course, search engine optimization and better rankings can’t keep your customer on your site or make them buy. The customer having visited your site, now ensure that he gets interested in your products or services and stays around. Motivate him to buy the product by providing clear and unambiguous information. Thus if you happen to sell more than one product or service, provide all necessary information about this, may be by keeping the information at a different page. By providing suitable and easily visible links, the customer can navigate to these pages and get the details.
· Understanding Your Target Customer
If you design a website you think will attract clients, but you don’t really know who your customers are and what they want to buy, it is unlikely you make much money. Website business is an extension or replacement for a standard storefront. You can send email to your existing clients and ask them to complete a survey or even while they are browsing on your website. Ask them about their choices. Why do they like your products? Do you discount prices or offer coupons? Are your prices consistently lower
than others? Is your shipping price cheaper? Do you respond faster to client questions? Are your product descriptions better? Your return policies and guarantees better than your competitor’s? To know your customer you can check credit card records or ask your customer to complete a simple contact form with name, address, age, gender, etc. when they purchase a product.
· Does Your Website Give Enough Contact Information?
When you sell from a website, your customer can buy your products 24 hrs a day and also your customers may be from other states that are thousands of miles away. Always provide contact information, preferably on every page of your website, complete with mailing address, telephone number and an email address that reaches you. People may need to contact you about sales, general information or technical problems on your site. Also have your email forwarded to another email address if you do not check your website mailbox often. When customer wants to buy online provide enough options like credit card, PayPal or other online payment service.
In the field of search engine optimization (SEO), writing a strong homepage that will rank high in the engines and will read well with your site visitors can sometimes present a challenge, even to some seasoned SEO professionals. Once you have clearly identified your exact keywords and key phrases, the exact location on your homepage where you will place those carefully researched keywords will have a drastic impact in the end results of your homepage optimization.
One thing we keep most people say is that they don’t want to change the looks or more especially the wording on their homepage. Understandably, some of them went to great lengths and invested either a lot of time and/or money to make it the best it can be. Being the best it can be for your site visitors is one thing. But is it the best it can be for the search engines, in terms of how your site will rank?
If you need powerful rankings in the major search engines and at the same time you want to successfully convert your visitors and prospects into real buyers, it's important to effectively write your homepage the proper way the first time! You should always remember that a powerfully optimized homepage pleases both the search engines and your prospects.
In randomly inserting keywords and key phrases into your old homepage, you might run the risk of getting good rankings, but at the same time it might jeopardize your marketing flow. That is a mistake nobody would ever want to do with their homepage.
Even today, there are still some people that will say you can edit your homepage for key phrases, without re-writing the whole page. There are important reasons why that strategy might not work.
· The Home Page
Your homepage is the most important page on your web site. If you concentrate your most important keywords and key phrases in your homepage many times, the search engines will surely notice and index it accordingly. But will it still read easily and will the
sentences flow freely to your real human visitors? There are some good chances that it might not. As a primer, having just 40 or 50 words on your homepage will not deliver the message effectively. To be powerful and effective, a homepage needs at least 300 to 400 words for maximum search engine throughput and effectiveness.
One way to do that is to increase your word count with more value-added content. This often means rewriting your whole homepage all over again. The main reason to this is you will probably never have enough room to skillfully work your important keywords and key phrases into the body text of your homepage. This may not please your boss or marketing department, but a full re-write is often necessary and highly advisable to achieve high rankings in the engines, while at the same time having a homepage that will please your site visitors and convert a good proportion of them into real buyers.
· The Acid Test
Here is the acid test that will prove what we just said is right: Carefully examine the body text of your existing homepage. Then, attempt to insert three to five different keywords and key phrases three to four times each, somewhere within the actual body of your existing page. In doing that, chances are you will end up with a homepage that is next to impossible to understand and read.
One mistake some people do is to force their prospects to wade through endless key phrase lists or paragraphs, in an attempt to describe their features and benefits. The other reason they do that is in trying to please the search engines at the same time. Writing a powerful and effective homepage around carefully defined keywords and key phrases is a sure way you can drive targeted traffic to your web site and keep them there once you do.
If some people still say re-writing a homepage takes too much time and costs too much money, think of the cost of losing prospective clients and the real cost of lost sales and lost opportunities. In the end, writing a strong homepage that will achieve all your desired goals will largely justify your time invested and the efforts you will have placed in the re-writing of your homepage.
This section presents a recommended layout for your homepage in order to make it as search engine friendly as possible. This is where you set the theme of your site. Let's suppose the primary focus of your site is about online education. You also have secondary content that is there as alternative content for those not interested online education. There is also other content that you would like to share with your visitors. For example, this might include book reviews, humor, and links.
The top of your homepage, as discussed earlier is the most important. This is where you set the keywords and theme for the most important part of your site, the thing you really want to be found for.
· Step By Step Page Optimization
Starting at the top of your index/home page something like this:
(After your logo or header graphic)
1.
A heading tag that includes a keyword(s) or keyword phrases. A heading tag is bigger and bolder text than normal body text, so a search engine places more importance on it because you emphasize it.
2.
Heading sizes range from h1 - h6 with h1 being the largest text. If you learn to use just a little Cascading Style Sheet code you can control the size of your headings. You could set an h1 sized heading to be only slightly larger than your normal text if you choose, and the search engine will still see it as an important heading.
3. Next would be an introduction that describes your main theme. This would include several of your top keywords and keyword phrases. Repeat your top 1 or 2 keywords several times, include other keyword search terms too, but make it read in sentences that makes sense to your visitors.
4.
A second paragraph could be added that got more specific using other words related to online education.
5. Next you could put smaller heading.
6.
Then you'd list the links to your pages, and ideally have a brief decision of each link using keywords and keyword phrases in the text. You also want to have several pages of quality content to link to. Repeat that procedure for all your links that relate to your theme.
7. Next you might include a closing, keyword laden paragraph. More is not necessarily better when it comes to keywords, at least after a certain point. Writing "online education" fifty times across your page would probably result in you being caught for trying to cheat. Ideally, somewhere from 3% - 20% of your page text would be keywords. The percentage changes often and is different at each search engine. The 3-20 rule is a general guideline, and you can go higher if it makes sense and isn't redundant.
8. Finally, you can list your secondary content of book reviews, humor, and links. Skip the descriptions if they aren't necessary, or they may water down your theme too much. If you must include descriptions for these non-theme related links, keep them short and sweet. You also might include all the other site sections as simply a link to another index that lists them all. You could call it Entertainment, Miscellaneous, or whatever. These can be sub-indexes that can be optimized toward their own theme, which is the ideal way to go.
Now you've set the all important top of your page up with a strong theme. So far so good, but this isn't the only way you can create a strong theme so don't be compelled into following this exact formula. This was just an example to show you one way to set up a strong site theme. Use your imagination, you many come up with an even better way.
· One Site – One Theme
It's important to note that you shouldn't try to optimize your home page for more than one theme. They just end up weakening each other's strength when you do that. By using simple links to your alternative content, a link to your humor page can get folks where they want to go, and then you can write your humor page as a secondary index optimized toward a humor theme. In the end, each page should be optimized for search engines for the main topic of that page or site section.
Search engine optimization is made up of many simple techniques that work together to create a comprehensive overall strategy. This combination of techniques is greater as a whole than the sum of the parts. While you can skip any small technique that is a part of the overall strategy, it will subtract from the edge you'd gain by employing all the tactics.
· Affiliate Sites & Dynamic URLs
In affiliate programs, sites that send you traffic and visitors, have to be paid on the basis of per click or other parameters (such as number of pages visited on your site, duration spent, transactions etc). Most common contractual understanding revolves around payment per click or click throughs. Affiliates use tracking software that monitors such clicks using a redirection measurement system. The validity of affiliate programs in boosting your link analysis is doubtful. Nevertheless, it is felt that it does not actually do any harm. It does provide you visitors, and that is important. In the case of some search engines re-directs may even count in favor of your link analysis. Use affiliate programs, but this is not a major strategy for optimization.
Several pages in e-commerce and other functional sites are generated dynamically and have “?” or “&” sign in their dynamic URLs. These signs separate the CGI variables. While Google will crawl these pages, many other engines will not. One inconvenient solution is to develop static equivalent of the dynamic pages and have them on your site.
Another way to avoid such dynamic URLs is to rewrite these URLs using a syntax that is accepted by the crawler and also understood as equivalent to the dynamic URL by the application server. The Amazon site shows dynamic URLs in such syntax. If you are using Apache web server, you can use Apache rewrite rules to enable this conversion.
One good tip is that you should prepare a crawler page (or pages) and submit this to the search engines. This page should have no text or content except for links to all the important pages that you wished to be crawled. When the spider reaches this page it would crawl to all the links and would suck all the desired pages into its index. You can also break up the main crawler page into several smaller pages if the size becomes too large. The crawler shall not reject smaller pages, whereas larger pages may get bypassed if the crawler finds them too slow to be spidered.
You do not have to be concerned that the result may throw up this “site-map” page and would disappoint the visitor. This will not happen, as the “site-map” has no searchable content and will not get included in the results, rather all other pages would. We found the site wired.com had published hierarchical sets of crawler pages. The first crawler page lists all the category headlines, these links lead to a set of links with all story headlines, which in turn lead to the news stories.
· Page Size Can Be A Factor
We have written above that the spiders may bypass long and “difficult” pages. They would have their own time-out characteristics or other controls that help them come unstuck from such pages. So you do not want to have such a page become your “gateway” page. One tip is to keep the page size below 100 kb.
· How many Pages To Submit?
You do not have to submit all the pages of your site. As stated earlier, many sites have restrictions on the number of pages you submit. A key page or a page that has links to many inner pages is ideal, but you must submit some inner pages. This insures that even if the first page is missed, the crawler does get to access other pages and all the important pages through them. Submit your key 3 to 4 pages at least. Choose the ones that have the most relevant content and keywords to suit your target search string and verify that they link to other pages properly.
· Should You Use Frames?
Many websites make use of frames on their web pages. In some cases, more than two frames would be used on a single web page. The reason why most websites use frames is because each frame’s content has a different source. A master page known as a “frameset” controls the process of clubbing content from different sources into a single web page. Such frames make it easier for webmasters to club multiple sources into a single web page. This, however, has a huge disadvantage when it comes to Search Engines.
Some of the older Search Engines do not have the capability to read content from frames. These only crawl through the frameset instead of all the web pages. Consequently web pages with multiple frames are ignored by the spider. There are certain tags known as “NOFRAMES” (Information ignored by frames capable browser) that can be inserted in the HTML of these web pages. Spiders are able to read information within the NOFRAMES tags. Thus, Search Engines only see the Frameset. Moreover, there cannot be any links to other web pages in the NOFRAMES blocks. That means the search engines won't crawl past the frameset, thus ignoring all the content rich web pages that are controlled by the frameset.
Hence, it is always advisable to have web pages without frames as these could easily make your website invisible to Search Engines.
· Making Frames Visible To Search Engines
We discussed earlier the prominence of frames based websites. Many amateur web designers do not understand the drastic effects frames can have on search engine visibility. Such ignorance is augmented by the fact that some Search Engines such as Google and Ask.com are actually frames capable. Ask.com spiders can crawl through frames and index all web pages of a website. However, this is only true for a few Search Engines.
The best solution as stated above is to avoid frames all together. If you still decide to use frames another remedy to this problem is using Javascript. Javascript can be added anywhere and is visible to Search Engines. These would enable spiders to crawl to other web pages, even if they do not recognize frames.
With a little trial and error, you can make your frame sites accessible to both types of search engines.
· STOP Words
Stop words are common words that are ignored by search engines at the time of searching a key phrase. This is done in order to save space on their server, and also to accelerate the search process.
When a search is conducted in a search engine, it will exclude the stop words from the search query, and will use the query by replacing all the stop words with a marker. A marker is a symbol that is substituted with the stop words. The intention is to save space. This way, the search engines are able to save more web pages in that extra space, as well as retain the relevancy of the search query.
Besides, omitting a few words also speeds up the search process. For instance, if a query consists of three words, the Search Engine would
generally make three runs for each of the words and display the listings. However, if one of the words is such that omitting it does not make a difference to search results, it can be excluded from the query and consequently the search process becomes faster. Some commonly excluded "stop words" are:
after, also, an, and, as, at, be, because, before, between, but, before, for, however, from, if, in, into, of, or, other, out, since, such, than, that, the, these, there, this, those, to, under, upon, when, where, whether, which, with, within, without
· Image Alt Tag Descriptions
Search engines are unable to view graphics or distinguish text that might be contained within them. For this reason, most engines will read the content of the image ALT tags to determine the purpose of a graphic. By taking the time to craft relevant, yet keyword rich ALT tags for the images on your web site, you increase the keyword density of your site.
Although many search engines read and index the text contained within ALT tags, it's important NOT to go overboard in using these tags as part of your SEO campaign. Most engines will not give this text any more weight than the text within the body of your site.
· Invisible & Tiny Text
Invisible text is content on a web site that is coded in a manner that makes it invisible to human visitors, but readable by search engine spiders. This is done in order to artificially inflate the keyword density of a web site without affecting the visual appearance of it. Hidden text is a recognized spam tactic and nearly all of the major search engines recognize and penalize sites that use this tactic.
· This is the technique of placing text on a page in a small font size. Pages that are predominantly heavy in tiny text may be dismissed as spam. Or, the tiny text may not be indexed. As a general guideline, try to avoid pages where the font size is predominantly smaller than normal. Make sure that you're not spamming the engine by using keyword after keyword in a very small font size. Your tiny text may be a copyright notice at the very bottom of the page, or even your contact information. If so, that's fine.
· Keyword Stuffing & Spamming
Important keywords and descriptions should be used in your content in visible Meta tags and you should choose the words carefully and position them near the top and have proper frequency for such words. However it is very important to adopt moderation in this. Keyword stuffing or spamming is a No-No today. Most search engine algorithms can spot this, bypass the spam and some may even penalize it.
· Dynamic URLs
Several pages in e-commerce and other functional sites are generated dynamically and have? or & sign in their dynamic URLs. These signs separate the CGI variables. While Google will crawl these pages, many other engines will not. One inconvenient solution is to develop static equivalent of the dynamic pages and have them on your site. Another way to avoid such dynamic URLs is to rewrite these URLs using a syntax that is accepted by the crawler and also understood as equivalent to the dynamic URL by the application server. The Amazon site shows dynamic URLs in such syntax. If you are using Apache web server, you can use Apache rewrite rules to enable this conversion.
· Re-Direct Pages
Sometimes pages have a Meta refresh tag that redirects any visitor automatically to another page. Some search engines refuse to index a page that has a high refresh rate. The meta refresh tag however does not affect Google.
· Image Maps Without ALT Text
Avoid image maps without text or with links. Image maps should have alt text (as also required under the American Disabilities Act, for public websites) and the home page should not have images as links. Instead HTML links should be used. This is because search engines would not read image links and the linked pages may not get crawled.
· Frames
There are some engines whose spiders won’t work with frames on your site. A web page that is built using frames is actually a combination of content from separate “pages” that have been blended into a single page through a ‘frameset’ instruction page. The frameset page does not have any content or links that would have promoted spidering. The frameset page could block the spider’s movement. The workaround is by placing a summary of the page content and relevant description in the frameset page and also by placing a link to the home page on it.
· Tables
When you use tables on the key pages and if some columns have descriptions while others have numbers, it is possible that this may push your keywords down the page. Search engines break up the table and read them for the content the columns have. The first column is read first, then the next and so on. Thus if the first column had numbers, and the next one had useful descriptions, the positioning of these descriptions will suffer. The strategy is to avoid using such tables near the top of the key pages. Large sections of Java scripts also will have the same effect on the search engines. The HTML part will be pushed down. Thus again, place your long Javascripts lower down on key pages.
· Link Spamming
Realizing the importance of links and link analysis in search engine results, several link farms and Free for All sites have appeared that offer to provide links to your site. This is also referred to as link spamming. Most search engines are smarter to this obvious tactic and know how to spot this. Such FFA sites, as they are known, do not provide link quality or link context, two factors that are important in link analysis. Thus the correct strategy is to avoid link spamming and not get carried away by what seems to be too simple a solution.
Labels:
Advance SEO Techniques,
SEO,
SEO tips and Tricks
ADVANCED SEO TECHNIQUES PART 1
Note here this article is compiled by: Crazy Membership
Turbocharge Your Traffic & Profits on Autopilot
Introduction
This ebook is a hard-hitting guide that gives you the information you need to make the adjustments to your site right away to help improve your search rankings and benefit from the increase in organic search traffic. Search Engine Optimization or SEO is simply the act of manipulating the pages of your website to be easily accessible by search engine spiders so they can be easily spidered and indexed. A spider is a robot that search engines use to check millions of web pages very quickly and sort them by relevance. A page is indexed when it is spidered and deemed appropriate content to be placed in the search engines results for people to click on.
The art and science of understanding how search engines identify pages that are relevant to a query made by a visitor and designing marketing strategies based on this is called search engine optimization. Search engines offer the most cost effective mechanism to acquire “real” and “live” business leads. It is found that in most cases, search engine optimization delivers a better ROI than other forms such as online advertisements, e-mail marketing and newsletters, affiliate and pay per click advertising, and digital campaigns and promotions.
What On Earth Is An Algorithm?
Each search engine has something called an algorithm which is the formula that each search engine uses to evaluate web pages and determine their relevance and value when crawling them for possible inclusion in their search engine. A crawler is the robot that browses all of these pages for the search engine.
· GOOGLE Algorithm Is Key
Google has a comprehensive and highly developed technology, a straightforward interface and a wide-ranging array of search tools which enable the users to easily access a variety of information online.
Google users can browse the web and find information in various languages, retrieve maps, stock quotes and read news, search for a long lost friend using the phonebook listings available on Google for all of US cities and basically surf the 3 billion odd web pages on the internet!
Google boasts of having world’s largest archive of Usenet messages, dating all the way back to 1981. Google’s technology can be accessed from any conventional desktop PC as well as from various wireless platforms such as WAP and i-mode phones, handheld devices and other such Internet equipped gadgets.
· Page Rank Based On Popularity
The web search technology offered by Google is often the technology of choice of the world’s leading portals and websites. It has also benefited the advertisers with its unique advertising program that does not hamper the web surfing experience of its users but still brings revenues to the advertisers.
When you search for a particular keyword or a phrase, most of the search engines return a list of page in order of the number of times the keyword or phrase appears on the website. Google web search technology involves the use of its indigenously designed Page Rank Technology and hypertext-matching analysis which makes several instantaneous calculations undertaken without any human intervention. Google’s structural design also expands simultaneously as the internet expands.
Page Rank technology involves the use of an equation which comprises of millions of variables and terms and determines a factual measurement of the significance of web pages and is calculated by solving an equation of 500 million variables and more than 3 billion terms. Unlike some other search engines, Google does not calculate links, but utilizes the extensive link structure of the web as an organizational tool. When the link to a Page, let’s say Page B is clicked from a Page A, then that click is attributed as a vote towards Page B on behalf of Page A.
· Back Links Are Considered Popularity Votes
Quintessentially, Google calculates the importance of a page by the number of such ‘votes’ it receives. Not only that, Google also assesses the importance of the pages that are involved in the voting process. Consequently, pages that are themselves ahead in ranking and are important in that way also help to make other pages important. One thing to note here is that Google’s technology does not involve human intervention in anyway and uses the inherent intelligence of the internet and its resources to determine the ranking and importance of any page.
· Hypertext-Matching Analysis
Unlike its conventional counterparts, Google is a search engine which is hypertext-based. This means that it analyzes all the content on each web page and factors in fonts, subdivisions, and the exact positions of all terms on the page. Not only that, Google also evaluates the content of its nearest web pages. This policy of not disregarding any subject matter pays off in the end and enables Google to return results that are closest to user queries.
Google has a very simple 3-step procedure in handling a query submitted in its search box:
1. When the query is submitted and the enter key is pressed, the web server sends the query to the index servers. Index server is exactly what its name suggests. It consists of an index much like the index of a book which displays where is the particular page containing the queried term is located in the entire book.
2. After this, the query proceeds to the doc servers, and these servers actually retrieve the stored documents. Page descriptions or “snippets” are then generated to suitably describe each search result.
3.
These results are then returned to the user in less than a one second! (Normally.)
Approximately once a month, Google updates their index by recalculating the Page Ranks of each of the web pages that they have crawled. The period during the update is known as the Google dance.
· Do You Know The GOOGLE Dance?
· The Algorithm Shuffle
Because of the nature of Page Rank, the calculations need to be performed about 40 times and, because the index is so large, the calculations take several days to complete. During this period, the search results fluctuate; sometimes minute-by minute. It is because of these fluctuations that the term, Google Dance, was coined. The dance usually takes place sometime during the last third of each month.
Google has two other servers that can be used for searching. The search results on them also change during the monthly update and they are part of the Google dance.
For the rest of the month, fluctuations sometimes occur in the search results, but they should not be confused with the actual dance. They are due to Google's fresh crawl and to what is known "Everflux".
Google has two other searchable servers apart from www.google.com. They are www2.google.com and www3.google.com. Most of the time, the results on all 3 servers are the same, but during the dance, they are different.
For most of the dance, the rankings that can be seen on www2 and www3 are the new rankings that will transfer to www when the dance is over. Even though the calculations are done about 40 times, the final rankings can be seen from very early on. This is because, during the first few iterations, the calculated figures merge to being close to their final figures.
You can see this with the Page Rank Calculator by checking the Data box and performing some calculations. After the first few iterations, the search results on www2 and www3 may still change, but only slightly.
· During the dance, the results from www2 and www3 will sometimes show on the www server, but only briefly. Also, new results on www2 and www3 can disappear for short periods. At the end of the dance, the results on www will match those on www2 and www3.
GOOGLE Dance Tool
This Google Dance Tool allows you to check your rankings on all three tools www, www2 and www3 and on all 9 datacenters simultaneously.
The Google Web Directory works in combination of the Google Search Technology and the Netscape Open Directory Project which makes it possible to search the Internet organized by topic. Google displays the pages in order of the rank given to it using the Page Rank Technology. It not only searches the titles and descriptions of the websites, but searches the entire content of sites within a related category, which ultimately delivers a comprehensive search to the users. Google also has a fully functional web directory which categorizes all the searches in order.
· Submitting your URL to Google
· Google is primarily a fully-automatic search engine with no human-intervention involved in the search process. It utilizes robots known as ‘spiders’ to crawl the web on a regular basis for new updates and new websites to be included in the Google Index. This robot software follows hyperlinks from site to site. Google does not require that you should submit your URL to its database for inclusion in the index, as it is done anyway automatically by the ‘spiders’. However, manual submission of URL can be done by going to the Google website and clicking the related link. One important thing here is that Google does not accept payment of any sort for site submission or improving page rank of your website. Also, submitting your site through the Google website does not guarantee listing in the index.
Cloaking
Sometimes, a webmaster might program the server in such a way that it returns different content to Google than it returns to regular users, which is often done to misrepresent search engine rankings. This process is referred to as cloaking as it conceals the actual website and returns distorted web pages to search engines crawling the site. This can mislead users about what they'll find when they click on a search result. Google highly disapproves of any such practice and might place a ban on the website which is found guilty of cloaking.
· Google Guidelines
Here are some of the important tips and tricks that can be employed while dealing with Google.
· Do’s
·
A website should have crystal clear hierarchy and links and should preferably be easy to navigate.
· A site map is required to help the users go around your site and in case the site map has more than 100 links, then it is advisable to break it into several pages to avoid clutter.
· Come up with essential and precise keywords and make sure that your website features relevant and informative content.
· The Google crawler will not recognize text hidden in the images, so when describing important names, keywords or links; stick with plain text.
· The TITLE and ALT tags should be descriptive and accurate and the website should have no broken links or incorrect HTML.
· Dynamic pages (the URL consisting of a ‘?’ character) should be kept to a minimum as not every search engine spider is able to crawl them.
· The robots.txt file on your web server should be current and should not block the Googlebot crawler. This file tells crawlers which directories can or cannot be crawled.
· Don’ts
· When making a site, do not cheat your users, i.e. those people who will surf your website. Do not provide them with irrelevant content or present them with any fraudulent schemes.
· Avoid tricks or link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking.
·
Do not employ hidden texts or hidden links.
· Google frowns upon websites using cloaking technique. Hence, it is advisable to avoid that.
· Automated queries should not be sent to Google.
· Avoid stuffing pages with irrelevant words and content. Also don't create multiple pages, sub-domains, or domains with significantly duplicate content.
· Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with hardly any original content.
· Crawler/Spider Considerations
Also, consider technical factors. If a site has a slow connection, it might time-out for the crawler. Very complex pages, too, may time out before the crawler can harvest the text.
If you have a hierarchy of directories at your site, put the most important information high, not deep. Some search engines will presume that the higher you placed the information, the more important it is. And crawlers may not venture deeper than three or four or five directory levels.
Above all remember the obvious - full-text search engines such index text. You may well be tempted to use fancy and expensive design techniques that either block search engine crawlers or leave your pages with very little plain text that can be indexed. Don’t fall prey to that temptation.
· Ranking Rules Of Thumb
The simple rule of thumb is that content counts, and that content near the top of a page counts for more than content at the end. In particular, the HTML title and the first couple lines of text are the most important part of your pages. If the words and phrases that match a query happen to appear in the HTML title or first couple lines of text of one of your pages, chances are very good that that page will appear high in the list of search results.
A crawler/spider search engine can base its ranking on both static factors (a computation of the value of page independent of any particular query) and query-dependent factors.
· Values
· Long pages, which are rich in meaningful text (not randomly generated letters and words).
· Pages that serve as good hubs, with lots of links to pages that that have related content (topic similarity, rather than random meaningless links, such as those generated by link exchange programs or intended to generate a false impression of "popularity").
· The connectivity of pages, including not just how many links there are to a page but where the links come from: the number of distinct domains and the "quality" ranking of those particular sites. This is calculated for the site and also for individual pages. A site or a page is "good" if many pages at many different sites point to it, and especially if many "good" sites point to it.
·
The level of the directory in which the page is found. Higher is considered more important. If a page is buried too deep, the crawler simply won't go that far and will never find it.
These static factors are recomputed about once a week, and new good pages slowly percolate upward in the rankings. Note that there are advantages to having a simple address and sticking to it, so others can build links to it, and so you know that it's in the index
· Query-Dependent Factors
· The HTML title.
· The first lines of text.
· Query words and phrases appearing early in a page rather than late.
· Meta tags, which are treated as ordinary words in the text, but like words that appear early in the text (unless the meta tags are patently unrelated to the content on the page itself, in which case the page will be penalized)
· Words mentioned in the "anchor" text associated with hyperlinks to your pages. (E.g., if lots of good sites link to your site with anchor text "breast cancer" and the query is "breast cancer," chances are good that you will appear high in the list of matches.)
· Blanket Policy On Doorway Pages And Cloaking
Many search engines are opposed to doorway pages and cloaking. They consider doorway and cloaked pages to be spam and encourage people to use other avenues to increase the relevancy of their pages. We’ll talk about doorway pages and cloaking a bit later.
· Meta Tags (Ask.Com As An Example)
Though Meta tags are indexed and considered to be regular text, Ask.com claims it doesn't give them priority over HTML titles and other text. Though you should use meta tags in all your pages, some webmasters claim their doorway pages for Ask.com rank better when they don't use them. If you do use Meta tags, make your description tag no more than 150 characters and your keywords tag no more than 1,024 characters long.
· Keywords In The URL And File Names
It's generally believed that Ask.com gives some weight to keywords in filenames and URL names. If you're creating a file, try to name it with keywords.
· Keywords In The ALT Tags
Ask.com indexes ALT tags, so if you use images on your site, make sure to add them. ALT tags should contain more than the image's description. They should include keywords, especially if the image is at the top of the page. ALT tags are explained later.
· Page Length
There's been some debate about how long doorway pages for AltaVista should be. Some webmasters say short pages rank higher, while others argue that long pages are the way to go. According to AltaVista's help section, it prefers long and informative pages. We've found that pages with 600-900 words are most likely to rank well.
· Frame Support
AltaVista has the ability to index frames, but it sometimes indexes and links to pages intended only as navigation. To keep this from happening to you, submit a frame-free site map containing the pages that you want indexed. You may also want to include a "robots.txt" file to prohibit AltaVista from indexing certain pages.
Turbocharge Your Traffic & Profits on Autopilot
Introduction
This ebook is a hard-hitting guide that gives you the information you need to make the adjustments to your site right away to help improve your search rankings and benefit from the increase in organic search traffic. Search Engine Optimization or SEO is simply the act of manipulating the pages of your website to be easily accessible by search engine spiders so they can be easily spidered and indexed. A spider is a robot that search engines use to check millions of web pages very quickly and sort them by relevance. A page is indexed when it is spidered and deemed appropriate content to be placed in the search engines results for people to click on.
The art and science of understanding how search engines identify pages that are relevant to a query made by a visitor and designing marketing strategies based on this is called search engine optimization. Search engines offer the most cost effective mechanism to acquire “real” and “live” business leads. It is found that in most cases, search engine optimization delivers a better ROI than other forms such as online advertisements, e-mail marketing and newsletters, affiliate and pay per click advertising, and digital campaigns and promotions.
What On Earth Is An Algorithm?
Each search engine has something called an algorithm which is the formula that each search engine uses to evaluate web pages and determine their relevance and value when crawling them for possible inclusion in their search engine. A crawler is the robot that browses all of these pages for the search engine.
· GOOGLE Algorithm Is Key
Google has a comprehensive and highly developed technology, a straightforward interface and a wide-ranging array of search tools which enable the users to easily access a variety of information online.
Google users can browse the web and find information in various languages, retrieve maps, stock quotes and read news, search for a long lost friend using the phonebook listings available on Google for all of US cities and basically surf the 3 billion odd web pages on the internet!
Google boasts of having world’s largest archive of Usenet messages, dating all the way back to 1981. Google’s technology can be accessed from any conventional desktop PC as well as from various wireless platforms such as WAP and i-mode phones, handheld devices and other such Internet equipped gadgets.
· Page Rank Based On Popularity
The web search technology offered by Google is often the technology of choice of the world’s leading portals and websites. It has also benefited the advertisers with its unique advertising program that does not hamper the web surfing experience of its users but still brings revenues to the advertisers.
When you search for a particular keyword or a phrase, most of the search engines return a list of page in order of the number of times the keyword or phrase appears on the website. Google web search technology involves the use of its indigenously designed Page Rank Technology and hypertext-matching analysis which makes several instantaneous calculations undertaken without any human intervention. Google’s structural design also expands simultaneously as the internet expands.
Page Rank technology involves the use of an equation which comprises of millions of variables and terms and determines a factual measurement of the significance of web pages and is calculated by solving an equation of 500 million variables and more than 3 billion terms. Unlike some other search engines, Google does not calculate links, but utilizes the extensive link structure of the web as an organizational tool. When the link to a Page, let’s say Page B is clicked from a Page A, then that click is attributed as a vote towards Page B on behalf of Page A.
· Back Links Are Considered Popularity Votes
Quintessentially, Google calculates the importance of a page by the number of such ‘votes’ it receives. Not only that, Google also assesses the importance of the pages that are involved in the voting process. Consequently, pages that are themselves ahead in ranking and are important in that way also help to make other pages important. One thing to note here is that Google’s technology does not involve human intervention in anyway and uses the inherent intelligence of the internet and its resources to determine the ranking and importance of any page.
· Hypertext-Matching Analysis
Unlike its conventional counterparts, Google is a search engine which is hypertext-based. This means that it analyzes all the content on each web page and factors in fonts, subdivisions, and the exact positions of all terms on the page. Not only that, Google also evaluates the content of its nearest web pages. This policy of not disregarding any subject matter pays off in the end and enables Google to return results that are closest to user queries.
Google has a very simple 3-step procedure in handling a query submitted in its search box:
1. When the query is submitted and the enter key is pressed, the web server sends the query to the index servers. Index server is exactly what its name suggests. It consists of an index much like the index of a book which displays where is the particular page containing the queried term is located in the entire book.
2. After this, the query proceeds to the doc servers, and these servers actually retrieve the stored documents. Page descriptions or “snippets” are then generated to suitably describe each search result.
3.
These results are then returned to the user in less than a one second! (Normally.)
Approximately once a month, Google updates their index by recalculating the Page Ranks of each of the web pages that they have crawled. The period during the update is known as the Google dance.
· Do You Know The GOOGLE Dance?
· The Algorithm Shuffle
Because of the nature of Page Rank, the calculations need to be performed about 40 times and, because the index is so large, the calculations take several days to complete. During this period, the search results fluctuate; sometimes minute-by minute. It is because of these fluctuations that the term, Google Dance, was coined. The dance usually takes place sometime during the last third of each month.
Google has two other servers that can be used for searching. The search results on them also change during the monthly update and they are part of the Google dance.
For the rest of the month, fluctuations sometimes occur in the search results, but they should not be confused with the actual dance. They are due to Google's fresh crawl and to what is known "Everflux".
Google has two other searchable servers apart from www.google.com. They are www2.google.com and www3.google.com. Most of the time, the results on all 3 servers are the same, but during the dance, they are different.
For most of the dance, the rankings that can be seen on www2 and www3 are the new rankings that will transfer to www when the dance is over. Even though the calculations are done about 40 times, the final rankings can be seen from very early on. This is because, during the first few iterations, the calculated figures merge to being close to their final figures.
You can see this with the Page Rank Calculator by checking the Data box and performing some calculations. After the first few iterations, the search results on www2 and www3 may still change, but only slightly.
· During the dance, the results from www2 and www3 will sometimes show on the www server, but only briefly. Also, new results on www2 and www3 can disappear for short periods. At the end of the dance, the results on www will match those on www2 and www3.
GOOGLE Dance Tool
This Google Dance Tool allows you to check your rankings on all three tools www, www2 and www3 and on all 9 datacenters simultaneously.
The Google Web Directory works in combination of the Google Search Technology and the Netscape Open Directory Project which makes it possible to search the Internet organized by topic. Google displays the pages in order of the rank given to it using the Page Rank Technology. It not only searches the titles and descriptions of the websites, but searches the entire content of sites within a related category, which ultimately delivers a comprehensive search to the users. Google also has a fully functional web directory which categorizes all the searches in order.
· Submitting your URL to Google
· Google is primarily a fully-automatic search engine with no human-intervention involved in the search process. It utilizes robots known as ‘spiders’ to crawl the web on a regular basis for new updates and new websites to be included in the Google Index. This robot software follows hyperlinks from site to site. Google does not require that you should submit your URL to its database for inclusion in the index, as it is done anyway automatically by the ‘spiders’. However, manual submission of URL can be done by going to the Google website and clicking the related link. One important thing here is that Google does not accept payment of any sort for site submission or improving page rank of your website. Also, submitting your site through the Google website does not guarantee listing in the index.
Cloaking
Sometimes, a webmaster might program the server in such a way that it returns different content to Google than it returns to regular users, which is often done to misrepresent search engine rankings. This process is referred to as cloaking as it conceals the actual website and returns distorted web pages to search engines crawling the site. This can mislead users about what they'll find when they click on a search result. Google highly disapproves of any such practice and might place a ban on the website which is found guilty of cloaking.
· Google Guidelines
Here are some of the important tips and tricks that can be employed while dealing with Google.
· Do’s
·
A website should have crystal clear hierarchy and links and should preferably be easy to navigate.
· A site map is required to help the users go around your site and in case the site map has more than 100 links, then it is advisable to break it into several pages to avoid clutter.
· Come up with essential and precise keywords and make sure that your website features relevant and informative content.
· The Google crawler will not recognize text hidden in the images, so when describing important names, keywords or links; stick with plain text.
· The TITLE and ALT tags should be descriptive and accurate and the website should have no broken links or incorrect HTML.
· Dynamic pages (the URL consisting of a ‘?’ character) should be kept to a minimum as not every search engine spider is able to crawl them.
· The robots.txt file on your web server should be current and should not block the Googlebot crawler. This file tells crawlers which directories can or cannot be crawled.
· Don’ts
· When making a site, do not cheat your users, i.e. those people who will surf your website. Do not provide them with irrelevant content or present them with any fraudulent schemes.
· Avoid tricks or link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking.
·
Do not employ hidden texts or hidden links.
· Google frowns upon websites using cloaking technique. Hence, it is advisable to avoid that.
· Automated queries should not be sent to Google.
· Avoid stuffing pages with irrelevant words and content. Also don't create multiple pages, sub-domains, or domains with significantly duplicate content.
· Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with hardly any original content.
· Crawler/Spider Considerations
Also, consider technical factors. If a site has a slow connection, it might time-out for the crawler. Very complex pages, too, may time out before the crawler can harvest the text.
If you have a hierarchy of directories at your site, put the most important information high, not deep. Some search engines will presume that the higher you placed the information, the more important it is. And crawlers may not venture deeper than three or four or five directory levels.
Above all remember the obvious - full-text search engines such index text. You may well be tempted to use fancy and expensive design techniques that either block search engine crawlers or leave your pages with very little plain text that can be indexed. Don’t fall prey to that temptation.
· Ranking Rules Of Thumb
The simple rule of thumb is that content counts, and that content near the top of a page counts for more than content at the end. In particular, the HTML title and the first couple lines of text are the most important part of your pages. If the words and phrases that match a query happen to appear in the HTML title or first couple lines of text of one of your pages, chances are very good that that page will appear high in the list of search results.
A crawler/spider search engine can base its ranking on both static factors (a computation of the value of page independent of any particular query) and query-dependent factors.
· Values
· Long pages, which are rich in meaningful text (not randomly generated letters and words).
· Pages that serve as good hubs, with lots of links to pages that that have related content (topic similarity, rather than random meaningless links, such as those generated by link exchange programs or intended to generate a false impression of "popularity").
· The connectivity of pages, including not just how many links there are to a page but where the links come from: the number of distinct domains and the "quality" ranking of those particular sites. This is calculated for the site and also for individual pages. A site or a page is "good" if many pages at many different sites point to it, and especially if many "good" sites point to it.
·
The level of the directory in which the page is found. Higher is considered more important. If a page is buried too deep, the crawler simply won't go that far and will never find it.
These static factors are recomputed about once a week, and new good pages slowly percolate upward in the rankings. Note that there are advantages to having a simple address and sticking to it, so others can build links to it, and so you know that it's in the index
· Query-Dependent Factors
· The HTML title.
· The first lines of text.
· Query words and phrases appearing early in a page rather than late.
· Meta tags, which are treated as ordinary words in the text, but like words that appear early in the text (unless the meta tags are patently unrelated to the content on the page itself, in which case the page will be penalized)
· Words mentioned in the "anchor" text associated with hyperlinks to your pages. (E.g., if lots of good sites link to your site with anchor text "breast cancer" and the query is "breast cancer," chances are good that you will appear high in the list of matches.)
· Blanket Policy On Doorway Pages And Cloaking
Many search engines are opposed to doorway pages and cloaking. They consider doorway and cloaked pages to be spam and encourage people to use other avenues to increase the relevancy of their pages. We’ll talk about doorway pages and cloaking a bit later.
· Meta Tags (Ask.Com As An Example)
Though Meta tags are indexed and considered to be regular text, Ask.com claims it doesn't give them priority over HTML titles and other text. Though you should use meta tags in all your pages, some webmasters claim their doorway pages for Ask.com rank better when they don't use them. If you do use Meta tags, make your description tag no more than 150 characters and your keywords tag no more than 1,024 characters long.
· Keywords In The URL And File Names
It's generally believed that Ask.com gives some weight to keywords in filenames and URL names. If you're creating a file, try to name it with keywords.
· Keywords In The ALT Tags
Ask.com indexes ALT tags, so if you use images on your site, make sure to add them. ALT tags should contain more than the image's description. They should include keywords, especially if the image is at the top of the page. ALT tags are explained later.
· Page Length
There's been some debate about how long doorway pages for AltaVista should be. Some webmasters say short pages rank higher, while others argue that long pages are the way to go. According to AltaVista's help section, it prefers long and informative pages. We've found that pages with 600-900 words are most likely to rank well.
· Frame Support
AltaVista has the ability to index frames, but it sometimes indexes and links to pages intended only as navigation. To keep this from happening to you, submit a frame-free site map containing the pages that you want indexed. You may also want to include a "robots.txt" file to prohibit AltaVista from indexing certain pages.
Monday, September 28, 2009
SEO - SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
SEO is one important tool that every Internet Marketer never toils with. Coz to a Marketer “ the higher the page rank = the higher the traffic -equivalent- {sales}
Search engine optimization (SEO) is one way to make your web site reachable to potential customers also improving the quality of traffic to your website from search engines. Typically, the higher the website appears in the search result, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. There are so many SEO tools available on the internet now… but I have written a list of some I used and some recommended by some of my Internet marketing friends. But I strongly advice that you have comprehensive / formal training on any SEO tools you are using. SEO is an inexpensive way to get substantial amount of traffic to your Web site. SEO aims different kinds of search, including local search, image search and industry-specific vertical search engines. This provides a website web presence.
SEO Fundamentals
While there is no big deal in writing a Web page that will rank highly in search engines, there are a few things you can do to help your pages do better:
1. Write strong content.
If you focus on nothing else, you should focus on the content of your Web pages. Search engines want to provide links to relevant pages, and so they are constantly tuning their programs to read and review the content of Web pages to make sure that it really is about what you say it's about. Content is king on a Web page both for your readers and for search engines.
2. Write valid HTML.
Ironically, this is often one step in SEO that many Web developers forget - they focus so much on other aspects of SEO that they forget that simple things like valid HTML can help your pages get spidered much more than meta keywords and meta descriptions.
3. Find good keyword phrases.
What makes up a good keyword phrase can be tricky, but that is what you should be optimizing your page for. Don't try to come up with every keyword phrase possible. Instead, focus on one phrase that really captures what your page is about, and make sure that that phrase is repeated in the content, the headlines, and links within the page.
4. Don't optimize your entire site.
This may seem confusing, but many Web developers want to come up with one keyword phrase and optimize every page on the Web site for that phrase. While that makes your life a lot easier, it won't get any of the pages the exposure that you would otherwise want. Instead, focus on optimizing one page at a time - find the keyword phrase that works for that page, and optimize it. Then move on to the next page in your site. If you treat every page as a possible entry page on your Web site, your readers will have more ways to find the site.
Don't Give Up on SEO
It takes a long time to see results with Search Engine Optimization. So it takes hard work and persistence. Learn from mistakes you make. Don’t get discouraged by your ranking. Remember that unless you’ve chosen a very unpopular search term, it can be very hard to get 10 (first page) ranking in most search engines. Just keep trying – the results are worth the effort
Search engine optimization (SEO) is one way to make your web site reachable to potential customers also improving the quality of traffic to your website from search engines. Typically, the higher the website appears in the search result, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. There are so many SEO tools available on the internet now… but I have written a list of some I used and some recommended by some of my Internet marketing friends. But I strongly advice that you have comprehensive / formal training on any SEO tools you are using. SEO is an inexpensive way to get substantial amount of traffic to your Web site. SEO aims different kinds of search, including local search, image search and industry-specific vertical search engines. This provides a website web presence.
SEO Fundamentals
While there is no big deal in writing a Web page that will rank highly in search engines, there are a few things you can do to help your pages do better:
1. Write strong content.
If you focus on nothing else, you should focus on the content of your Web pages. Search engines want to provide links to relevant pages, and so they are constantly tuning their programs to read and review the content of Web pages to make sure that it really is about what you say it's about. Content is king on a Web page both for your readers and for search engines.
2. Write valid HTML.
Ironically, this is often one step in SEO that many Web developers forget - they focus so much on other aspects of SEO that they forget that simple things like valid HTML can help your pages get spidered much more than meta keywords and meta descriptions.
3. Find good keyword phrases.
What makes up a good keyword phrase can be tricky, but that is what you should be optimizing your page for. Don't try to come up with every keyword phrase possible. Instead, focus on one phrase that really captures what your page is about, and make sure that that phrase is repeated in the content, the headlines, and links within the page.
4. Don't optimize your entire site.
This may seem confusing, but many Web developers want to come up with one keyword phrase and optimize every page on the Web site for that phrase. While that makes your life a lot easier, it won't get any of the pages the exposure that you would otherwise want. Instead, focus on optimizing one page at a time - find the keyword phrase that works for that page, and optimize it. Then move on to the next page in your site. If you treat every page as a possible entry page on your Web site, your readers will have more ways to find the site.
Don't Give Up on SEO
It takes a long time to see results with Search Engine Optimization. So it takes hard work and persistence. Learn from mistakes you make. Don’t get discouraged by your ranking. Remember that unless you’ve chosen a very unpopular search term, it can be very hard to get 10 (first page) ranking in most search engines. Just keep trying – the results are worth the effort
Using Good Keywords | How to DiscoverThem / Benefits
It now easy for anybody to create a website. You don’t need to be a programmer, web designer or graphics designer. With numerous tools online now for website designing you can easily setup a website in less than 5 minutes.
But getting visitors to the website is the problem, coz even if you have add nice contents to your website and you are not getting visitors to read it then its as good as nothing. So to have your site found by people who are looking for the information, you will need to ensure that the search engine, which index your site are getting the right information to index on. I also recommend you read more on my previous article on Search Engine Optimization.
So for the search engines to get the right message, they rely on what keyword they find in:
* The title of your website (within the title tag).
* The words or phrases in your site's URL.
* The content of your site.
Well-written "natural" content is the best way to include keywords in your content, and those other places mentioned, but just what keywords should you use to include there?
Fortunately, most of the tools that can give a good guide to what keywords will be most effective, in terms of both searches per month and the number of results returned, are freely available.
Google Trends: Show the trends in searches over time. This will let you know if the keyword is maintaining popularity.
Google Suggest: this is the small window, which drops down in the search bar when you type in a search. Start with the phrase you really want, then look down as you type to see other suggestions, and the amount of results returned. Basically these results are your competition .
Google AdWords Tool. Handy to show searches for many related keywords.
Your own Brain!..yes selecting keywords has a certain amount of skill associated with it, but the most important thing to do is put yourself in the shoes of someone who might be searching for your formation, and imagine what they would search for.
One more thing ... The fewer competitors you have on your keyword the higher the page rank for your website.
But getting visitors to the website is the problem, coz even if you have add nice contents to your website and you are not getting visitors to read it then its as good as nothing. So to have your site found by people who are looking for the information, you will need to ensure that the search engine, which index your site are getting the right information to index on. I also recommend you read more on my previous article on Search Engine Optimization.
So for the search engines to get the right message, they rely on what keyword they find in:
* The title of your website (within the title tag).
* The words or phrases in your site's URL.
* The content of your site.
Well-written "natural" content is the best way to include keywords in your content, and those other places mentioned, but just what keywords should you use to include there?
Fortunately, most of the tools that can give a good guide to what keywords will be most effective, in terms of both searches per month and the number of results returned, are freely available.
Google Trends: Show the trends in searches over time. This will let you know if the keyword is maintaining popularity.
Google Suggest: this is the small window, which drops down in the search bar when you type in a search. Start with the phrase you really want, then look down as you type to see other suggestions, and the amount of results returned. Basically these results are your competition .
Google AdWords Tool. Handy to show searches for many related keywords.
Your own Brain!..yes selecting keywords has a certain amount of skill associated with it, but the most important thing to do is put yourself in the shoes of someone who might be searching for your formation, and imagine what they would search for.
One more thing ... The fewer competitors you have on your keyword the higher the page rank for your website.
Using Good Keywords | How to DiscoverThem / Benefits
I was surfing the internet some weeks back and i came across some tools i found on the internet that could a complete website in less than 5 min and i was like whaoo not like days back where you type in codes manually. It now easy for anybody to create a website. You don’t need to be a programmer, web designer or graphics designer. With numerous tools online now for website designing you can easily setup a website in less than 5 minutes.
But getting visitors to the website is the problem, coz even if you have add nice contents to your website and you are not getting visitors to read it then its as good as nothing. So to have your site found by people who are looking for the information, you will need to ensure that the search engine, which index your site are getting the right information to index on. I also recommend you read more on SEO analyzed.
So for the search engines to get the right message, they rely on what keyword they find in:
* The title of your website (within the title tag).
* The words or phrases in your site's URL.
* The content of your site.
Well-written "natural" content is the best way to include keywords in your content, and those other places mentioned, but just what keywords should you use to include there?
Fortunately, most of the tools that can give a good guide to what keywords will be most effective, in terms of both searches per month and the number of results returned, are freely available.
Google Trends: Show the trends in searches over time. This will let you know if the keyword is maintaining popularity.
Google Suggest: this is the small window, which drops down in the search bar when you type in a search. Start with the phrase you really want, then look down as you type to see other suggestions, and the amount of results returned. Basically these results are your competition .
Google AdWords Tool. Handy to show searches for many related keywords.
Your own Brain!..yes selecting keywords has a certain amount of skill associated with it, but the most important thing to do is put yourself in the shoes of someone who might be searching for your formation, and imagine what they would search for.
One more thing ... The fewer competitors you have on your keyword the higher the page rank for your website.
But getting visitors to the website is the problem, coz even if you have add nice contents to your website and you are not getting visitors to read it then its as good as nothing. So to have your site found by people who are looking for the information, you will need to ensure that the search engine, which index your site are getting the right information to index on. I also recommend you read more on SEO analyzed.
So for the search engines to get the right message, they rely on what keyword they find in:
* The title of your website (within the title tag).
* The words or phrases in your site's URL.
* The content of your site.
Well-written "natural" content is the best way to include keywords in your content, and those other places mentioned, but just what keywords should you use to include there?
Fortunately, most of the tools that can give a good guide to what keywords will be most effective, in terms of both searches per month and the number of results returned, are freely available.
Google Trends: Show the trends in searches over time. This will let you know if the keyword is maintaining popularity.
Google Suggest: this is the small window, which drops down in the search bar when you type in a search. Start with the phrase you really want, then look down as you type to see other suggestions, and the amount of results returned. Basically these results are your competition .
Google AdWords Tool. Handy to show searches for many related keywords.
Your own Brain!..yes selecting keywords has a certain amount of skill associated with it, but the most important thing to do is put yourself in the shoes of someone who might be searching for your formation, and imagine what they would search for.
One more thing ... The fewer competitors you have on your keyword the higher the page rank for your website.
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Affiliate Commission Pay Per Click
I want to thank you all that have been following my blog all this while. I want to explain some info on affiliates marketing i think an amateur marketer beginner would benefit from. When it comes to money, people all over the country are trying to find ways of earning extra cash to fund the rising prices of fuel and everyday living costs, this is because of the recession which is affecting people all over the world. People are losing their businesses, homes and more. But one good way to earn extra money is through affiliate programmes. If you don't already know what an affiliate program or marketing is, then here is a quick rundown for you. Basically, the easiest way of explaining what affiliate marketing is, is to use Amazon.com as an example. When you click onto any website such as Amazon, as well as advertising their own products, you might also notice that they also have links and banners to other businesses or merchants. These links can be clicked on by potential customers so that they are able to check out what is being advertised. As an affiliate, you will be advertising somebody else's business or products through your website, email address or search engine. You will then be paid commission for advertising these services on your site.
There are several ways that you can earn affiliate commission through advertising and one of the easiest and quickest ways to make some extra cash is through pay per click. This is just one of the ways that as an affiliate you can make money through advertising somebody else's business and it works simply by each time a potential customer clicks on a link advertised on your website, you will receive affiliate commission as a result of your direct advertising. This is a really simple way to make money, especially if you already have your own website and want to earn money with it; all you have to do is pick the right kind of advertising. In order to make sure that you can earn a substantial amount of affiliate commission then you need to pick your niche very carefully. This is because one of the downsides to affiliate marketing is if you don't pick carefully then you might end up getting very few hits or none at all! Always do some research before you pick the type of advertising that you want on your website.
But how do you get involved in affiliate marketing so that you can earn affiliate commission via pay per click? Well, the best way to do it is to join an advertising website. This is a type of websites where merchant's advertised their businesses and the type of things which they wish to have advertised on other sites. As a member, you can then pick the merchants that you wish to do business with and then you can begin making money almost straight away. When choosing the merchants always make sure that you pick the right ones; this doesn't necessarily mean that they are the highest paying advertisers, although this does help!
There are several ways that you can earn affiliate commission through advertising and one of the easiest and quickest ways to make some extra cash is through pay per click. This is just one of the ways that as an affiliate you can make money through advertising somebody else's business and it works simply by each time a potential customer clicks on a link advertised on your website, you will receive affiliate commission as a result of your direct advertising. This is a really simple way to make money, especially if you already have your own website and want to earn money with it; all you have to do is pick the right kind of advertising. In order to make sure that you can earn a substantial amount of affiliate commission then you need to pick your niche very carefully. This is because one of the downsides to affiliate marketing is if you don't pick carefully then you might end up getting very few hits or none at all! Always do some research before you pick the type of advertising that you want on your website.
But how do you get involved in affiliate marketing so that you can earn affiliate commission via pay per click? Well, the best way to do it is to join an advertising website. This is a type of websites where merchant's advertised their businesses and the type of things which they wish to have advertised on other sites. As a member, you can then pick the merchants that you wish to do business with and then you can begin making money almost straight away. When choosing the merchants always make sure that you pick the right ones; this doesn't necessarily mean that they are the highest paying advertisers, although this does help!
Thursday, August 6, 2009
The Pillar of Any Internet Business!
When I first come online, I had the chance to work with a mentor. Do you want to know one of the very first lessons he taught me?
Internet Marketing Lesson #1: Your Autoresponder Is The First Commandment of Online Business
I was lucky enough to understand that real money should be made in the backend and not in the front end. This is the reason why so many want to start their own online business and end up making no money.
Please bare with me while I explain how autoresponder works and how you need to follow up with your prospects for maximum sales and profits.
1. How autoresponder works
I will give you a quick overview of the whole process. The first thing you need to do is to create a squeeze page and add your optin form. This will allow you to build a list and send them your educational and promotional messages to build trust and make sales.
Please pay attention to what I just said above. Note that trust comes before sales. Don't try to do it the other way, because although you will still be able to make some sales, this will be short lived.
2. How often you you email your subscribers?
Setting up your autoresponder software to send your newsletter once a week is a good rule of thumbs because you don't want your subscribers to forget you or forget the reason why they subscribed to your list.
Don't forget that money is in the backend and that the very first thing you want to do whenever you start a new project is building your list.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
THE BEST FREE SEO TOOLS
Best Free SEO Tools
1. Ranking Checker by SEOmoz.com
This nice SEO tool allows you to check your rankings for up to 5 keywords per day for FREE and it keeps an archive for you. All you need is to sign up for a free SEOmoz account. The coolest part is that you are able to download your archived rankings as CSV. When you install the "browser button" it automatically copies the URL of the page that you are visiting into the tool for a fast ranking check. Since this free tool can handle up to 5 keywords daily, you'll be able to check approximately 150 keywords monthly.
2. MultiRank Checker by iWebtool.com
Let's say that you are interested in checking the Google Page Rank and the Alexa Ranking for one of your clients and also to do the same for 9 of their competitors. You have two options: 1) Go it the manual way and gather the information one by one or 2) just dump the 10 domain names into the MultiRank Checker and copy/paste the results table. I personally like this tool because it checks in bulk and saves a bit of time.
3. Fiddler Web Debugging Tool by Fiddlertool.com
Let's say that you don't like the Charles debugging tool because you have to pay a whole $50 for it. Don't panic, Fiddler does basically the same and yes, it is for free. Currently it's available only for Windows and it needs the .NET framework that you can download from their web site as well. The main benefits of this tool is the capacity to analyze all the background communication that goes on between the browser and the servers. I know what you are thinking about: Why not just use firefox and install Tamper Data? Well yes, that is a possibility. But if you are looking for a tool that won't freeze your browser (seems to be a common occurence with Tamper Data) then Fiddler can become handy. Professional SEOs absolutely need a web debugging tool like this in their toolbox.
4. SEO Analyzer by Sitening.com
The SEO Analyzer is a great tool to start off optimization efforts. It is a report that gives a detailed list of SEO components that might require a closer assessment with a web site. The coolest part is that this tool keeps a copy of your previous reports and you can download them as PDF with a click of a button. This tool is definitely not intended to substitute a complete SEO site analysis though. The interface is very user friendly and it also gives you a score that you can use to quickly assess how much work a site might need.
5. Strongest Subpages Tool by WeBuildPages.com
This tool gives you an organized list of the strongest pages on any web site. This is important because by looking at the results you can easily determine what pages are carrying the most amount of inbound links. This tool is especially useful for webmasters looking at competitor's strongest pages and, at least for us, running this tool on a competitor always spawns some creative ideas for building link campaigns via content additions.
6. Backlink Checker by WeBuildPages.com
Every SEO needs a backlink checker tool. This free tool is an excellent free backlink checking tool. It'll come in useful if you need a place to start with your linking campaigns. You can also analyze competitor backlinks as well as your own using the Neat-O tool.
7. Firefox with the Web Developer Extension by Chris Pederick
Firefox in itself is the most flexible browser out there. But when you pair it with the Web Developer extension Firefox becomes a useful SEO tool. With it you can easily remove the cascading styles (inline, external or both), you can take a fast glance at all the external links in a page, or you can remove all the javascript components at once just to name a few of its features. The nicest part of the extension is that you can add your own SEO tools to the menu (online or desktop).
8. SEO for Firefox by SEOBook.com
There is no other tool out there that could give you the amount of information that this tool does right from either the visited page or the search engine. Perfect for a quicky competitive overview. This tool will give you PageRank, cache date, domain age, backlinks in Yahoo, number of .edu links, the number of cached pages, and many other stats for any given page with a simple right click. The most amazing feature is that you can export your information directly from the SERPs to CSV.
9. Google Analytics / Google Webmaster Console by Google.com
Based on Urchin, Google Analytics is a top analytics tool made available to everybody for free by Google. This analytics tool can give you detailed reports about traffic behavior, content visitation, funnel information and much, much more. On the other hand, the Webmaster Console tool now gives you a good view of what Google "sees" for your site including: crawling rate, crawling speed, backlinks, highest PageRank of your site and more.
This two tools together constitute the fundaments of free search engine marketing but beware because by using either ou are giving Google access to all of your site data.
10. Keyword Selector Tool by Overture.com
This tool is one of the first keyword tools that was available to webmasters. It's still very useful and is still free. Lots of newer keyword tools build over the last few years are based on the Keyword Selector tool. If you use it in conjunction with Google's keyword tool then you could get really crazy. ;-)
11. XENU's Link Sleuth by Tilman Hausherr
XENU is one of those tools that you download for free and keep a copy just in case the owner decides to start charging for it. This tool is basically a spider. And the benefits of having a spider in your SEO toolbox is priceless. Using this tool you can determine if a site has endless loops, broken links, redirect detections and much more. As its name indicates, Xenu is like having a detective look at your site - a free detective that is.
12. Xinu BETA by Miguel Camps Orteza
Yeah the name is similar to XENU but these are two totally different tools. This excellent SEO tool will give you detailed stats about any site including rankings, syndication, social bookmarkings, validation, indexation and backlinks from several major search engines: ALL IN ONE PAGE! Also the best part is that it is open source, so not only you can use the tool, you can download it an install it in your own server.
13. Keyword Density & Prominence Tool by Ranks.nl
This tool allows you to crawl a particular page and analyze the density of keywords not only in the content of the page but also in the tags.
14. Visual PageRank by iWebTool.com
If you are a graphic person, then checking page rank in your site is probably as boring as watcing Home Shopping Network on a saturday night. Well now you can check your page rank visually with sweet tool. This tool gives let's you see your web page and overlays that page rank for each one of your links.
15. GeoTargeting Detection Tool by SEOmoz.com
This tool helps you determine if you have optimized a site for country-specific search engines. SEO can be valuable for many industries if applying local or geographic optimization. Nice tool!
Did I leave any other free SEO tools out of the list? Please feel free to share it here. Thks.
1. Ranking Checker by SEOmoz.com
This nice SEO tool allows you to check your rankings for up to 5 keywords per day for FREE and it keeps an archive for you. All you need is to sign up for a free SEOmoz account. The coolest part is that you are able to download your archived rankings as CSV. When you install the "browser button" it automatically copies the URL of the page that you are visiting into the tool for a fast ranking check. Since this free tool can handle up to 5 keywords daily, you'll be able to check approximately 150 keywords monthly.
2. MultiRank Checker by iWebtool.com
Let's say that you are interested in checking the Google Page Rank and the Alexa Ranking for one of your clients and also to do the same for 9 of their competitors. You have two options: 1) Go it the manual way and gather the information one by one or 2) just dump the 10 domain names into the MultiRank Checker and copy/paste the results table. I personally like this tool because it checks in bulk and saves a bit of time.
3. Fiddler Web Debugging Tool by Fiddlertool.com
Let's say that you don't like the Charles debugging tool because you have to pay a whole $50 for it. Don't panic, Fiddler does basically the same and yes, it is for free. Currently it's available only for Windows and it needs the .NET framework that you can download from their web site as well. The main benefits of this tool is the capacity to analyze all the background communication that goes on between the browser and the servers. I know what you are thinking about: Why not just use firefox and install Tamper Data? Well yes, that is a possibility. But if you are looking for a tool that won't freeze your browser (seems to be a common occurence with Tamper Data) then Fiddler can become handy. Professional SEOs absolutely need a web debugging tool like this in their toolbox.
4. SEO Analyzer by Sitening.com
The SEO Analyzer is a great tool to start off optimization efforts. It is a report that gives a detailed list of SEO components that might require a closer assessment with a web site. The coolest part is that this tool keeps a copy of your previous reports and you can download them as PDF with a click of a button. This tool is definitely not intended to substitute a complete SEO site analysis though. The interface is very user friendly and it also gives you a score that you can use to quickly assess how much work a site might need.
5. Strongest Subpages Tool by WeBuildPages.com
This tool gives you an organized list of the strongest pages on any web site. This is important because by looking at the results you can easily determine what pages are carrying the most amount of inbound links. This tool is especially useful for webmasters looking at competitor's strongest pages and, at least for us, running this tool on a competitor always spawns some creative ideas for building link campaigns via content additions.
6. Backlink Checker by WeBuildPages.com
Every SEO needs a backlink checker tool. This free tool is an excellent free backlink checking tool. It'll come in useful if you need a place to start with your linking campaigns. You can also analyze competitor backlinks as well as your own using the Neat-O tool.
7. Firefox with the Web Developer Extension by Chris Pederick
Firefox in itself is the most flexible browser out there. But when you pair it with the Web Developer extension Firefox becomes a useful SEO tool. With it you can easily remove the cascading styles (inline, external or both), you can take a fast glance at all the external links in a page, or you can remove all the javascript components at once just to name a few of its features. The nicest part of the extension is that you can add your own SEO tools to the menu (online or desktop).
8. SEO for Firefox by SEOBook.com
There is no other tool out there that could give you the amount of information that this tool does right from either the visited page or the search engine. Perfect for a quicky competitive overview. This tool will give you PageRank, cache date, domain age, backlinks in Yahoo, number of .edu links, the number of cached pages, and many other stats for any given page with a simple right click. The most amazing feature is that you can export your information directly from the SERPs to CSV.
9. Google Analytics / Google Webmaster Console by Google.com
Based on Urchin, Google Analytics is a top analytics tool made available to everybody for free by Google. This analytics tool can give you detailed reports about traffic behavior, content visitation, funnel information and much, much more. On the other hand, the Webmaster Console tool now gives you a good view of what Google "sees" for your site including: crawling rate, crawling speed, backlinks, highest PageRank of your site and more.
This two tools together constitute the fundaments of free search engine marketing but beware because by using either ou are giving Google access to all of your site data.
10. Keyword Selector Tool by Overture.com
This tool is one of the first keyword tools that was available to webmasters. It's still very useful and is still free. Lots of newer keyword tools build over the last few years are based on the Keyword Selector tool. If you use it in conjunction with Google's keyword tool then you could get really crazy. ;-)
11. XENU's Link Sleuth by Tilman Hausherr
XENU is one of those tools that you download for free and keep a copy just in case the owner decides to start charging for it. This tool is basically a spider. And the benefits of having a spider in your SEO toolbox is priceless. Using this tool you can determine if a site has endless loops, broken links, redirect detections and much more. As its name indicates, Xenu is like having a detective look at your site - a free detective that is.
12. Xinu BETA by Miguel Camps Orteza
Yeah the name is similar to XENU but these are two totally different tools. This excellent SEO tool will give you detailed stats about any site including rankings, syndication, social bookmarkings, validation, indexation and backlinks from several major search engines: ALL IN ONE PAGE! Also the best part is that it is open source, so not only you can use the tool, you can download it an install it in your own server.
13. Keyword Density & Prominence Tool by Ranks.nl
This tool allows you to crawl a particular page and analyze the density of keywords not only in the content of the page but also in the tags.
14. Visual PageRank by iWebTool.com
If you are a graphic person, then checking page rank in your site is probably as boring as watcing Home Shopping Network on a saturday night. Well now you can check your page rank visually with sweet tool. This tool gives let's you see your web page and overlays that page rank for each one of your links.
15. GeoTargeting Detection Tool by SEOmoz.com
This tool helps you determine if you have optimized a site for country-specific search engines. SEO can be valuable for many industries if applying local or geographic optimization. Nice tool!
Did I leave any other free SEO tools out of the list? Please feel free to share it here. Thks.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
The Secret of Marketing in a Recession
Though it seems to make sense to cut expenditures in lean economic times, 80 years of data proves that cutting marketing to save money is a losing proposition.
Way back in 1927, the Harvard Business Review published a report tracking 200 companies from the 1923 recession on. The results were clear. The companies that didn't cut back on marketing - those that advertised the most during that period - enjoyed the biggest sales increases.
Another later study measuring the effects of business-to-business advertising looked closely at the recessions of 1949, 1954, 1958 and 1961. In these tough times, sales and profits dropped for companies that reduced their advertising. In addition, when the recovery came about (as it always will) those same companies lagged behind those that did NOT cut back.
That was proven again by McGraw-Hill Research when examining the financial performance of 600 companies in 16 industries during the recession of 1981-1982. The report, published in Laboratory of Advertising Report 5262, showed that sales for companies which aggressively marketed during the recession rose 256% over those that cut back - and stayed growing for up to three years AFTER the economic downturn.
A Cahners Publishing Company study in 1980 and a Center for Research and Development study in 1990 both concluded that those companies which maintain or increase their advertising during recessionary times stand to gain the most market share during that period (an average of 1.5 points.)
Coopers & Lybrand and Business Science International put it this way in their joint report published by Penton Media in 1993: "Businesses that maintain aggressive marketing programs during a recession, outperform companies that rely more on cost cutting measures. A strong marketing program enables a firm to solidify its customer base, take business away from less aggressive competitors, and position itself for future growth during the recovery."
There is a book of such research findings entitled Advertising in a Recession by Bernard Ryan, Jr., published in 1999. But these examples will probably suffice to tell the story.
The word "recession" has its origins in the Latin for "move backward." In an economic recession, when those around them "move backward," smart marketers do just the opposite. They STEP FORWARD.
I brought this article from one of my mentor's teaching (BBlackwood - Longtime creative director and marketer). He send it to my box... So i think it might be helpful for we online and offline marketers.
Ifeanyi....
Way back in 1927, the Harvard Business Review published a report tracking 200 companies from the 1923 recession on. The results were clear. The companies that didn't cut back on marketing - those that advertised the most during that period - enjoyed the biggest sales increases.
Another later study measuring the effects of business-to-business advertising looked closely at the recessions of 1949, 1954, 1958 and 1961. In these tough times, sales and profits dropped for companies that reduced their advertising. In addition, when the recovery came about (as it always will) those same companies lagged behind those that did NOT cut back.
That was proven again by McGraw-Hill Research when examining the financial performance of 600 companies in 16 industries during the recession of 1981-1982. The report, published in Laboratory of Advertising Report 5262, showed that sales for companies which aggressively marketed during the recession rose 256% over those that cut back - and stayed growing for up to three years AFTER the economic downturn.
A Cahners Publishing Company study in 1980 and a Center for Research and Development study in 1990 both concluded that those companies which maintain or increase their advertising during recessionary times stand to gain the most market share during that period (an average of 1.5 points.)
Coopers & Lybrand and Business Science International put it this way in their joint report published by Penton Media in 1993: "Businesses that maintain aggressive marketing programs during a recession, outperform companies that rely more on cost cutting measures. A strong marketing program enables a firm to solidify its customer base, take business away from less aggressive competitors, and position itself for future growth during the recovery."
There is a book of such research findings entitled Advertising in a Recession by Bernard Ryan, Jr., published in 1999. But these examples will probably suffice to tell the story.
The word "recession" has its origins in the Latin for "move backward." In an economic recession, when those around them "move backward," smart marketers do just the opposite. They STEP FORWARD.
I brought this article from one of my mentor's teaching (BBlackwood - Longtime creative director and marketer). He send it to my box... So i think it might be helpful for we online and offline marketers.
Ifeanyi....
10 Tips On How To Sell Your Product
It’s not just about the product you know.
I realised maybe there was going to be a problem with my ability to run a decent business when I found that I was buying more products than I was selling! So I vowed to not buy the next product that I saw advertised, and stop to analyse why I wanted to buy it instead.
I used to think a good product sells itself. Well, it doesn’t. Others have sold the same products I tried selling with far greater success.
Here’s what I’ve learnt.
1. It’s all about marketing. Would you buy glue that doesn’t stick very well? What if you put the same product on the back of little pieces of paper and call them post-its? What about an anti-bacterial solution that isn’t strong enough to kill germs on furniture surfaces? No? What if the seller changed it to an antiseptic mouthwash that cures bad breath and called it Listerine?
2. Target your audience! You may win some new converts by trying to get as many people to see your products as possible. But if you have a limited budget, it helps to try to market to those who are already looking for your kind of product. Notice most ads have very positive, hyped up words that target hopes, dreams, greed etc? You are selling a want, not a need. You have to turn the want into a need.
3. Give a call to action. Do not let them just read the advertisement and move on.
4. Give a free gift, or bonus.
5. Notice most ads have very positive, hyped up words that target hopes, dreams, greed etc? You are selling a want, not a need. You have to turn the want into a need. Can’t expect to sell millions of products by saying please buy, you don’t really need it but have pity on me, I have 12 kids to feed. Please, please please. Help me.
6. Learn to face rejection. I hate this part. I’d really rather not even try. But then, I’d have failed before I’ve even started. Oh, and learn why you got the rejection and how you can change that into a yes, rather than blame the grumpy lady who told you off.
7. Articles are to entertain first, not to provide information. You have to write what the customers want to read, not what you want to write. They can find information very easily these days.
8. Sell yourself. It’s all about you. The seller. You make the product look good and convince people why they need it too. Your reputation is at stake as well. I always thought a model’s job was to look good. It isn’t. I learnt it from America’s Top Model. The model’s job is to make the product look good.
9. It’s all about building up a relationship. Robert Kiyosaki uses himself to teach his lessons and sell his products. People buy Rich Dad Poor Dad because of him. He always said he was a best-selling author. Not a best-writing author!
10. Keep bugging them. Get an email contact or something. Send regular updates. Eventually they will buy something. Don’t spam though. Turns people off. And if emails keep bouncing, it may be an abandoned account. Don’t waste your time.
Ifeanyi believes we all have it in us to be rich - ridiculously rich. We just need to learn to unleash the potential.
I realised maybe there was going to be a problem with my ability to run a decent business when I found that I was buying more products than I was selling! So I vowed to not buy the next product that I saw advertised, and stop to analyse why I wanted to buy it instead.
I used to think a good product sells itself. Well, it doesn’t. Others have sold the same products I tried selling with far greater success.
Here’s what I’ve learnt.
1. It’s all about marketing. Would you buy glue that doesn’t stick very well? What if you put the same product on the back of little pieces of paper and call them post-its? What about an anti-bacterial solution that isn’t strong enough to kill germs on furniture surfaces? No? What if the seller changed it to an antiseptic mouthwash that cures bad breath and called it Listerine?
2. Target your audience! You may win some new converts by trying to get as many people to see your products as possible. But if you have a limited budget, it helps to try to market to those who are already looking for your kind of product. Notice most ads have very positive, hyped up words that target hopes, dreams, greed etc? You are selling a want, not a need. You have to turn the want into a need.
3. Give a call to action. Do not let them just read the advertisement and move on.
4. Give a free gift, or bonus.
5. Notice most ads have very positive, hyped up words that target hopes, dreams, greed etc? You are selling a want, not a need. You have to turn the want into a need. Can’t expect to sell millions of products by saying please buy, you don’t really need it but have pity on me, I have 12 kids to feed. Please, please please. Help me.
6. Learn to face rejection. I hate this part. I’d really rather not even try. But then, I’d have failed before I’ve even started. Oh, and learn why you got the rejection and how you can change that into a yes, rather than blame the grumpy lady who told you off.
7. Articles are to entertain first, not to provide information. You have to write what the customers want to read, not what you want to write. They can find information very easily these days.
8. Sell yourself. It’s all about you. The seller. You make the product look good and convince people why they need it too. Your reputation is at stake as well. I always thought a model’s job was to look good. It isn’t. I learnt it from America’s Top Model. The model’s job is to make the product look good.
9. It’s all about building up a relationship. Robert Kiyosaki uses himself to teach his lessons and sell his products. People buy Rich Dad Poor Dad because of him. He always said he was a best-selling author. Not a best-writing author!
10. Keep bugging them. Get an email contact or something. Send regular updates. Eventually they will buy something. Don’t spam though. Turns people off. And if emails keep bouncing, it may be an abandoned account. Don’t waste your time.
Ifeanyi believes we all have it in us to be rich - ridiculously rich. We just need to learn to unleash the potential.
Driving Traffic to your Site
You have probably seen all of the articles and ebooks on line that you can purchase to show you how to make money on the internet from your home. Well it is true you can make some money on line with your web site but you first need traffic. It doesn't matter how great of a web designer you are, if you don't know how to draw traffic to your web site no one will see it. Traffic is the key to making money on line, whether you use that traffic to sell something, get people to click on your AdSense links, or just to get their name and email address so you can do email marketing. You need to drive traffic to your web site and there are a few different ways to do it. There are paid ways of driving traffic to your web site and there are free ways to drive traffic.
Paid ways of driving traffic are quick and you see results right away but the once you stop paying the traffic stops as well. Where free traffic will take a little longer for you to generate the traffic but it is traffic you will continue to get 3 months from now. We will talk about different ways to generate traffic for free in this article.
Google web master tools is a great set of tools to see how your website ranks with Google in terms of search results, errors in your code, and other things you can do to improve your listing. I suggest signing up for free Google web master tools and creating a sitemap for your web site that google can look at. This will help google to index your site properly especially if you use database driven web sites. It will take a little while for all of the information to populate in the different areas but once your information starts to populate it will become very helpful information for you to use.
Article writing is by far my favorite way to draw traffic to my web site because it allows me to do something I love and helps me to draw traffic. I simply write articles about what I know and what is related to my web site. Then I post those articles on the hundreds for free article sites on the internet which gives me free link backs to my site. Then if people like my articles they can take them from the article site and use them on their own site again adding to my link backs. I have found this to be the most effective form driving traffic to your web site because it put free information out there and creates links to your site that will remain there for months. But there is one thing about article marketing, you may right an article that generates traffic for a few months but that article will eventually stop generating as much traffic as it did before. So you need to continue to write new articles about new topics to keep everything fresh.
Blogging is another great way to generate traffic to your site and create back links. Check out blogs that are relevant to your web site and comment on different posts where you can add important information. When you post on a blog you will put in your name, email address, web site, and your comment. The blog will usually use your name as who posted the blog and make your name a link to your web site which again helps create unique back links to your web site that other search engines will pick up on and rank your site higher. A lot of blogs entries are being checked by the administrator to filter out spam and any one using vulgar language but most are not doing that and are posting entires immediately. So with that being said we want to keep blogging a great traffic generating tool so spamming is something we don't ever want to do. This will actually cause you to be banned from a lot of blogs and will also cause your website to lose credibility.
Paid ways of driving traffic are quick and you see results right away but the once you stop paying the traffic stops as well. Where free traffic will take a little longer for you to generate the traffic but it is traffic you will continue to get 3 months from now. We will talk about different ways to generate traffic for free in this article.
Google web master tools is a great set of tools to see how your website ranks with Google in terms of search results, errors in your code, and other things you can do to improve your listing. I suggest signing up for free Google web master tools and creating a sitemap for your web site that google can look at. This will help google to index your site properly especially if you use database driven web sites. It will take a little while for all of the information to populate in the different areas but once your information starts to populate it will become very helpful information for you to use.
Article writing is by far my favorite way to draw traffic to my web site because it allows me to do something I love and helps me to draw traffic. I simply write articles about what I know and what is related to my web site. Then I post those articles on the hundreds for free article sites on the internet which gives me free link backs to my site. Then if people like my articles they can take them from the article site and use them on their own site again adding to my link backs. I have found this to be the most effective form driving traffic to your web site because it put free information out there and creates links to your site that will remain there for months. But there is one thing about article marketing, you may right an article that generates traffic for a few months but that article will eventually stop generating as much traffic as it did before. So you need to continue to write new articles about new topics to keep everything fresh.
Blogging is another great way to generate traffic to your site and create back links. Check out blogs that are relevant to your web site and comment on different posts where you can add important information. When you post on a blog you will put in your name, email address, web site, and your comment. The blog will usually use your name as who posted the blog and make your name a link to your web site which again helps create unique back links to your web site that other search engines will pick up on and rank your site higher. A lot of blogs entries are being checked by the administrator to filter out spam and any one using vulgar language but most are not doing that and are posting entires immediately. So with that being said we want to keep blogging a great traffic generating tool so spamming is something we don't ever want to do. This will actually cause you to be banned from a lot of blogs and will also cause your website to lose credibility.
Top 7 Reasons Why Your Small Business Should Use Twitter
If you run a small business and aren't using Twitter, I have to ask, why not? It seems that just about everyone else on the planet with access to the web or a cell phone is.
Twitter seems to be following the same pattern that blogs did. First a few, and just for personal use – (please!) Then a lot more and an expansion of uses. And then a belated awakening by businesses that something is happening over there and it might be worth getting in on it.
Remember Letterman's reverse lists? Well this is one of those, listing the reasons you'll want to get twittering from least to most important. Something is happening over there at Twitter and it's well worth getting in on.
Your small business should be using Twitter because:
7) Everyone else is doing it.
The guy who runs the convenience store down the street. The landscape architect. The shoe store owner. And lots of big companies, such as Dell, HP, AT&T and Microsoft. Having your business on Twitter is hot.
6) Twitter is good optics.
Using Twitter is evidence that your small business is participating in this whole social media thing and obviously a "with-it" kind of outfit that people might be interested in doing business with. It's just not enough to have a website anymore.
5) Twitter is a fast way to get the message out.
Assuming your potential and existing customers are on Twitter, you can instantly let them know your news, whether it's an announcement or a new product, a special deal, or an upcoming event they may be interested in.
4) Twitter will help you stay on top of your industry and/or market segment.
Twitter lets you hear what other people are saying. Using http://searchtwitter.com Twitter Search you can find out what people are saying about a particular topic, enabling you to keep your ear to the ground about your company and the competition.
3) Twitter will help you refine your brand.
By participating in Twitter (that is, using it to communicate with others, rather than just spamming product announcements) you can present and develop the kind of image that attracts your potential customers, and refine your brand. (Remember; communication is a two-way thing.)
2) Twitter is a great networking tool.
Being on Twitter will give you opportunities to meet and talk to oodles of people, some of whom you would never get the chance to talk to otherwise. And some of those people might be the very business contacts you've been seeking, people you want to start projects with, source product from or even hire.
1) And the most important reason your small business should use Twitter – because Twitter lets you engage your customers.
Posting information about your products and/or services is the obvious use. But Twitter also gives you another channel for listening to and finding out about your customers – what they like or dislike about your company, how they feel about your brand, what suggestions they have for improvement, what their favourite products are and why... all kinds of nuggets that you can use to make your business more successful.
So there you have it. In a nutshell, Twitter can provide your small business with another channel to inform and engage your current and potential customers – and every opportunity to do that is worth exploring.
You will want to make sure, though, that you're following the Twitter promotion rules for small businesses. If you don't use Twitter properly, you can end up being seen as a spammer and damaging your small business' reputation.
Twitter seems to be following the same pattern that blogs did. First a few, and just for personal use – (please!) Then a lot more and an expansion of uses. And then a belated awakening by businesses that something is happening over there and it might be worth getting in on it.
Remember Letterman's reverse lists? Well this is one of those, listing the reasons you'll want to get twittering from least to most important. Something is happening over there at Twitter and it's well worth getting in on.
Your small business should be using Twitter because:
7) Everyone else is doing it.
The guy who runs the convenience store down the street. The landscape architect. The shoe store owner. And lots of big companies, such as Dell, HP, AT&T and Microsoft. Having your business on Twitter is hot.
6) Twitter is good optics.
Using Twitter is evidence that your small business is participating in this whole social media thing and obviously a "with-it" kind of outfit that people might be interested in doing business with. It's just not enough to have a website anymore.
5) Twitter is a fast way to get the message out.
Assuming your potential and existing customers are on Twitter, you can instantly let them know your news, whether it's an announcement or a new product, a special deal, or an upcoming event they may be interested in.
4) Twitter will help you stay on top of your industry and/or market segment.
Twitter lets you hear what other people are saying. Using http://searchtwitter.com Twitter Search you can find out what people are saying about a particular topic, enabling you to keep your ear to the ground about your company and the competition.
3) Twitter will help you refine your brand.
By participating in Twitter (that is, using it to communicate with others, rather than just spamming product announcements) you can present and develop the kind of image that attracts your potential customers, and refine your brand. (Remember; communication is a two-way thing.)
2) Twitter is a great networking tool.
Being on Twitter will give you opportunities to meet and talk to oodles of people, some of whom you would never get the chance to talk to otherwise. And some of those people might be the very business contacts you've been seeking, people you want to start projects with, source product from or even hire.
1) And the most important reason your small business should use Twitter – because Twitter lets you engage your customers.
Posting information about your products and/or services is the obvious use. But Twitter also gives you another channel for listening to and finding out about your customers – what they like or dislike about your company, how they feel about your brand, what suggestions they have for improvement, what their favourite products are and why... all kinds of nuggets that you can use to make your business more successful.
So there you have it. In a nutshell, Twitter can provide your small business with another channel to inform and engage your current and potential customers – and every opportunity to do that is worth exploring.
You will want to make sure, though, that you're following the Twitter promotion rules for small businesses. If you don't use Twitter properly, you can end up being seen as a spammer and damaging your small business' reputation.
Ways To Drive Traffic To Your Business Web Site (PART 2)
11. Provide a subscription box, to your e-zine or business announcement list, on your most viewed business web site pages.
12. On large business web sites, create a "What's New Page" or even better, ask your web designer to design a "Site Map" for your visitors. Much of your business web site traffic will come from search engines. Here are some search engine submission tips to keep in mind.
13. Search engines look for certain things - titles, headings, meta tags - so it is crucial to make sure your site is "search engine friendly". Visit the Search Engine Optimization and Submission page on this site for additional resources on search engines and search engine submission tips.
a. TITLE tags: Title tags should be 60 or so characters and include some keywords.
b. Header tags are numbered from 1 to 7: some search engines recognize Header tags. So make sure you use these tags for each of the titles on your page.
c. Keyword Meta tags: Add no more than 15 to 20 keywords to keep the search engines from flagging your site for keyword spamming. Prioritize your words. The best way to submit to search engines is to submit to each search engine individually.
d. Use keywords in the text area of each page. They are especially important at the beginning of sentences and higher up on the page.
e. To learn more about meta tags and choosing keywords, read "Effective Search Engine Optimization" (from About Small Business: Canada).
14. Search engines do not find your site unless you submit your site's information to them. Below are four ways to submit your Web site to search engines:
a. It is recommended that you submit to search engines individually (this is also the way I do it and it works great, but is time consuming)!
b. Since some people prefer to use a free service to submit their sites to search engines, I recommend that they open a free e-mail address to use when you do "anything" for free on the World Wide Web. Two good search engine submission services are Submit It!, and Scrub The Web. You can pay for a program that will assist you to submit and critique your site such as WebPosition Gold.
c. Hire a Search Engine Optimization Expert to handle your search engine submissions.
15. Visit these search engine information sites: Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Guide.
But search engine submission is only one way to drive traffic to your business web site. Continue on to the next page to read other tips for web site promotion.
Making sure your business web site is search engine friendly is only one aspect of Web site promotion. Here are some other web site promotion tips:
16. Find easy and secure ways for your clients to pay you. A shopping cart and a secure way to accept checks and/or credit cards work very well.
17. Check your business web site's links regularly to make sure they all work. Use a free link checker such as Xenu's Link Sleuth.
18. Provide monthly chats or bulletin boards (forums) to build relationships and community.
19. Conduct periodic contests and announce the winners on your site.
20. Offer a free e-book or e-report on your site. Its size doesn’t matter if you’re providing it for free and it’s specifically for your ideal client. Provide permission for the e-book to be forwarded to others for their personal use.
21. Write articles, post them to your business Web site, and submit them to article banks.
22. Design some quizzes or surveys. Statistics show that visitors love quizzes and assessment tools.
23. Participate in online forums as an expert. You get to "quietly" promote your business in your three or four line signature.
24. Place your business web site address on all your printed literature -- business cards, brochures, newsletters, letterhead, e-mail signature, ads - everything!!
25. Promote your web address in your signature for e-mails (change it regularly to highlight something new you're promoting).
26. Teach classes or speak to groups about subjects relating to your products.
27. Network locally to bring people to your site.
28. “Permission Market” by gathering, in writing, the e-mail addresses of students, or an audience as part of your evaluation forms. Create index cards so that you can invite your friends, networking partners or associates to join your list. Keep any papers involved in this process for at least a year or two.
29. When your business web site is launched, updated, or you write a free e-book, send a Press Release to the media, your clients, and friends and associates, too.
30. Want to know more about Internet Marketing? Click on post on the right hand side to get more hints.
12. On large business web sites, create a "What's New Page" or even better, ask your web designer to design a "Site Map" for your visitors. Much of your business web site traffic will come from search engines. Here are some search engine submission tips to keep in mind.
13. Search engines look for certain things - titles, headings, meta tags - so it is crucial to make sure your site is "search engine friendly". Visit the Search Engine Optimization and Submission page on this site for additional resources on search engines and search engine submission tips.
a. TITLE tags: Title tags should be 60 or so characters and include some keywords.
b. Header tags are numbered from 1 to 7: some search engines recognize Header tags. So make sure you use these tags for each of the titles on your page.
c. Keyword Meta tags: Add no more than 15 to 20 keywords to keep the search engines from flagging your site for keyword spamming. Prioritize your words. The best way to submit to search engines is to submit to each search engine individually.
d. Use keywords in the text area of each page. They are especially important at the beginning of sentences and higher up on the page.
e. To learn more about meta tags and choosing keywords, read "Effective Search Engine Optimization" (from About Small Business: Canada).
14. Search engines do not find your site unless you submit your site's information to them. Below are four ways to submit your Web site to search engines:
a. It is recommended that you submit to search engines individually (this is also the way I do it and it works great, but is time consuming)!
b. Since some people prefer to use a free service to submit their sites to search engines, I recommend that they open a free e-mail address to use when you do "anything" for free on the World Wide Web. Two good search engine submission services are Submit It!, and Scrub The Web. You can pay for a program that will assist you to submit and critique your site such as WebPosition Gold.
c. Hire a Search Engine Optimization Expert to handle your search engine submissions.
15. Visit these search engine information sites: Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Guide.
But search engine submission is only one way to drive traffic to your business web site. Continue on to the next page to read other tips for web site promotion.
Making sure your business web site is search engine friendly is only one aspect of Web site promotion. Here are some other web site promotion tips:
16. Find easy and secure ways for your clients to pay you. A shopping cart and a secure way to accept checks and/or credit cards work very well.
17. Check your business web site's links regularly to make sure they all work. Use a free link checker such as Xenu's Link Sleuth.
18. Provide monthly chats or bulletin boards (forums) to build relationships and community.
19. Conduct periodic contests and announce the winners on your site.
20. Offer a free e-book or e-report on your site. Its size doesn’t matter if you’re providing it for free and it’s specifically for your ideal client. Provide permission for the e-book to be forwarded to others for their personal use.
21. Write articles, post them to your business Web site, and submit them to article banks.
22. Design some quizzes or surveys. Statistics show that visitors love quizzes and assessment tools.
23. Participate in online forums as an expert. You get to "quietly" promote your business in your three or four line signature.
24. Place your business web site address on all your printed literature -- business cards, brochures, newsletters, letterhead, e-mail signature, ads - everything!!
25. Promote your web address in your signature for e-mails (change it regularly to highlight something new you're promoting).
26. Teach classes or speak to groups about subjects relating to your products.
27. Network locally to bring people to your site.
28. “Permission Market” by gathering, in writing, the e-mail addresses of students, or an audience as part of your evaluation forms. Create index cards so that you can invite your friends, networking partners or associates to join your list. Keep any papers involved in this process for at least a year or two.
29. When your business web site is launched, updated, or you write a free e-book, send a Press Release to the media, your clients, and friends and associates, too.
30. Want to know more about Internet Marketing? Click on post on the right hand side to get more hints.
Ways To Drive Traffic To Your Business Web Site (PART 1)
In 1998, promoting your business web site was a very easy process. You placed 3 lines of code called "meta tags" on the top of your home page and submitted the page to free search engines or directories. Fast forward to the present.
Web site promotion has become a time consuming project and a new position in the web design industry, Search Engine Consultants, has been created. Use the list below to find ways that your business web site will be found by your ideal client, is user friendly and is visited often.
1. Build a strong, solid business foundation. Design a business plan, marketing plan, ideal client profile and 30-second elevator speech.
2. Be consistent and “brand” your company. Use the same colors, logo, motto, etc. everywhere on your business web site!
3. Make your business web site trustable.
4. Create policies that build trust: customer service, code of ethics and newsletter privacy policy.
5. Ask your web master to name each of your pages using a keyword you have supplied them with.
6. Offer added values on your business web site that make sense to your business and ideal client. This can include affiliate programs, books, and recommended links to web sites.
7. Add a “favorites or bookmark this site” script to some of your business web site pages.
8. Add a "Recommend This Site" on your site. If someone visits your business Web site and knows someone else who may appreciate it, this feature will e-mail the page's link to a recipient.
9. If you have pages on your business web site that you update monthly (like an articles page or recommended links page) say so on the page.
10. Join a few Web rings. For additional information, visit WebRing and Bravenet.
11. Provide a subscription box, to your e-zine or business announcement list, on your most viewed business web site pages.
12. On large business web sites, create a "What's New Page" or even better, ask your web designer to design a "Site Map" for your visitors.
Web site promotion has become a time consuming project and a new position in the web design industry, Search Engine Consultants, has been created. Use the list below to find ways that your business web site will be found by your ideal client, is user friendly and is visited often.
1. Build a strong, solid business foundation. Design a business plan, marketing plan, ideal client profile and 30-second elevator speech.
2. Be consistent and “brand” your company. Use the same colors, logo, motto, etc. everywhere on your business web site!
3. Make your business web site trustable.
4. Create policies that build trust: customer service, code of ethics and newsletter privacy policy.
5. Ask your web master to name each of your pages using a keyword you have supplied them with.
6. Offer added values on your business web site that make sense to your business and ideal client. This can include affiliate programs, books, and recommended links to web sites.
7. Add a “favorites or bookmark this site” script to some of your business web site pages.
8. Add a "Recommend This Site" on your site. If someone visits your business Web site and knows someone else who may appreciate it, this feature will e-mail the page's link to a recipient.
9. If you have pages on your business web site that you update monthly (like an articles page or recommended links page) say so on the page.
10. Join a few Web rings. For additional information, visit WebRing and Bravenet.
11. Provide a subscription box, to your e-zine or business announcement list, on your most viewed business web site pages.
12. On large business web sites, create a "What's New Page" or even better, ask your web designer to design a "Site Map" for your visitors.
Top Secrets For Driving Traffic Directly to Your Blog
When you are have created your website you probably feel as proud as a new parent. After all you have just watched the birth of your own idea and now it's time for the first few toddling steps. Driving the traffic to your blog is next on the agenda and this is a crucial step to ensuring the success of your site. You have to hook the public with your content and ideas. You may have decided on a self-hosted site, or perhaps you opted to use WordPress or Blogger. The platform you choose really won't matter that much, as far as generating traffic goes, because there are some specific guidelines that are always going to be used to bring the traffic to your blogging doorstep.
The majority of bloggers will know that SEO is critical when it comes to getting the exposure and online visibility that is necessary to succeed. After all the basic reason a blog exists is to attract readers and generate customers. Search engine optimization can not be ignored and there are some great resources for you to use to help you get your online blog off to a blazing hot start.
When you are first getting interest generated about a blog you can count on Squidoo and Hubpages to give you a hand. This gives you a place to create your own lenses and hubs that deal with your particular blog niche. Once you have taken this step it is easy to create the links to your blog site with either the direct link connections or by using the RSS feed. These link modules are available on both Squidoo and Hubpages.
Do not overlook the help that other blogs can give you. If you leave some comments on a number of closely related blog sites it can mean a big boost to your own traffic. Make your comments informative, even if they are not very lengthy. A one or two word comment will not catch the eye of anyone, but a more relevant remark can provoke interest from a number of readers. Avoid using those overworked, repetitive comments that pop up so frequently because they are not being read by anyone. In other words, be at least a little creative in your posting.
For successful traffic you need to take advantage of the benefits that you can gain when you use social bookmarking. It will probably work to your advantage to be a little choosy and begin by bookmarking a limited number of these sites with your posts. If you cast your net too wide it will come across as SPAM, which is a definite no-no. Reddit and Stumble Upon are a couple of prime places to begin your bookmarking tactics. In addition to the limited posts, make sure that you bookmark for others because this will make it seem that you are really part of the social network and not circling the community like a shark in the ocean.
You can also reap some rewards for your blogging efforts by connecting with the social networking sites that are currently in high demand. Facebook and Twitter are two good choices to focus your efforts on. Remember that you need to keep your niche in the forefront of your mind as you build a profile and start creating your own interconnected community. Once more you need to keep communication as important as your task of creating links to your own site and products.
Forums with related ideas and information can help you gain exposure and create a familiarity with the public. The more familiar your name and site becomes the more likely people will want to do business with you. To get your name moved to the top of the list in your niche markets try searching Google by typing in "the name of your niche + forum". This should provide you with the target listings that you will need to begin this plan of attack.
What you want to do is to use these methods to build trust and familiarity with a large network of people on the Internet. This will help you create friendships and generate some much needed exposure online. As people begin to feel comfortable with your name and site, it will make them more inclined to purchase products from you, which is good for your online business.
The majority of bloggers will know that SEO is critical when it comes to getting the exposure and online visibility that is necessary to succeed. After all the basic reason a blog exists is to attract readers and generate customers. Search engine optimization can not be ignored and there are some great resources for you to use to help you get your online blog off to a blazing hot start.
When you are first getting interest generated about a blog you can count on Squidoo and Hubpages to give you a hand. This gives you a place to create your own lenses and hubs that deal with your particular blog niche. Once you have taken this step it is easy to create the links to your blog site with either the direct link connections or by using the RSS feed. These link modules are available on both Squidoo and Hubpages.
Do not overlook the help that other blogs can give you. If you leave some comments on a number of closely related blog sites it can mean a big boost to your own traffic. Make your comments informative, even if they are not very lengthy. A one or two word comment will not catch the eye of anyone, but a more relevant remark can provoke interest from a number of readers. Avoid using those overworked, repetitive comments that pop up so frequently because they are not being read by anyone. In other words, be at least a little creative in your posting.
For successful traffic you need to take advantage of the benefits that you can gain when you use social bookmarking. It will probably work to your advantage to be a little choosy and begin by bookmarking a limited number of these sites with your posts. If you cast your net too wide it will come across as SPAM, which is a definite no-no. Reddit and Stumble Upon are a couple of prime places to begin your bookmarking tactics. In addition to the limited posts, make sure that you bookmark for others because this will make it seem that you are really part of the social network and not circling the community like a shark in the ocean.
You can also reap some rewards for your blogging efforts by connecting with the social networking sites that are currently in high demand. Facebook and Twitter are two good choices to focus your efforts on. Remember that you need to keep your niche in the forefront of your mind as you build a profile and start creating your own interconnected community. Once more you need to keep communication as important as your task of creating links to your own site and products.
Forums with related ideas and information can help you gain exposure and create a familiarity with the public. The more familiar your name and site becomes the more likely people will want to do business with you. To get your name moved to the top of the list in your niche markets try searching Google by typing in "the name of your niche + forum". This should provide you with the target listings that you will need to begin this plan of attack.
What you want to do is to use these methods to build trust and familiarity with a large network of people on the Internet. This will help you create friendships and generate some much needed exposure online. As people begin to feel comfortable with your name and site, it will make them more inclined to purchase products from you, which is good for your online business.
HOW TO PING YOUR WEBSITE TO GET MORE TRAFFIC
I was shocked to see how much traffic my blog generated when I did my first ping. It's almost like my site was blasted on the radio a couple of times. If you are not pinging you should definitely start.
So what is pinging? Pinging is an Internet program used to test a connection by sending a ICMP or an Internet control message protocol. Basically it lets the engine robots know that you have updated the content on your site. The best part about pining is that if done right you will see almost an immediate growth sprout in your traffic. If you want a service that will do the pinging for you, you can pay and they will automatically update for you.
If you choose to go the free route. Checkout Pingoat.com they will do this for no charge. You can't ping back to back but they give you a reasonable amount of time to be able to start pinging again.
Pingomatic is another one of my favorites. They actually sell the service but they let you ping for free. I think the service is like $17.00 or something low like that. It's definitely worth it.
You can also ping yahoos servers. You can do this by doing a copy and paste in your browser. Use this address:
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping?u=(http://youraddresshere.com)
Put your address in the "your address here section" and then press enter. This will automatically tell yahoos robots that your site has been updated.
So what is pinging? Pinging is an Internet program used to test a connection by sending a ICMP or an Internet control message protocol. Basically it lets the engine robots know that you have updated the content on your site. The best part about pining is that if done right you will see almost an immediate growth sprout in your traffic. If you want a service that will do the pinging for you, you can pay and they will automatically update for you.
If you choose to go the free route. Checkout Pingoat.com they will do this for no charge. You can't ping back to back but they give you a reasonable amount of time to be able to start pinging again.
Pingomatic is another one of my favorites. They actually sell the service but they let you ping for free. I think the service is like $17.00 or something low like that. It's definitely worth it.
You can also ping yahoos servers. You can do this by doing a copy and paste in your browser. Use this address:
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping?u=(http://youraddresshere.com)
Put your address in the "your address here section" and then press enter. This will automatically tell yahoos robots that your site has been updated.
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