Looking Beyond Google: Meta-Search Engines Can Help Online Marketers

Read this interesting article on looking beyond Google, Meta-Search Engines Can Help Online Marketers By Bill Platt
For businesses that market wholly or partially online, it may seem that three words are the only way to get more customers: Search engine optimization (SEO). Typically, the search engines being referred to are: Google, Yahoo, and MSN. These three engines have almost become interchangeable with the phrase “do a search”, so much so that the word “Google” has entered the English lexicon as “find information”. There are actually hundreds of search engines, not just the Big Three (Google, Yahoo, and MSN) that many Internet users think of. By focusing only on the most well known search engines for your online marketing strategy, you may be missing out on as much as 30% of the billions of searches being done online every single day. While not the oldest search engine on the internet, Google does have the reputation of being the granddaddy. However, it is worth investigating alternative search engines – niche engines, meta-search engines, and human-powered engines. Niche search engines focus their searches on a particular subject matter, such as blogs (http://www.blog-search.com) or articles (http://www.goarticles.com).
Meta-search engines compile results from multiple search engines (http://www.dogpile.com,http://www.widow.com). Finally, human-powered search engines are composed of directory pages with link and general information,put together by humans who search for the most relevant content (http://www.mahalo.com, http://www.dmoz.org). These alternative search engines tend to have pretty high page ranks, which give more credence to the fact that online marketers shouldn’t overlook them. There is also the fact that some Internet searchers do not want to use Google because of personal or political views. Because of Google’s popularity, it can (incorrectly) be perceived as having a monopoly on the search engine market. That perception, combined with opposition to a seemingly growing “corporate world”, turns off some potential customers and eliminates your potential to reach them, if you focus only on Google or other big search engines. As part of SEO, using keywords to bring in consumers is all the rage. Businesses spend a great deal of time and money researching keywords, keyword density, and effects on page rankings in results lists. Guess what? It’s not only a pain for the businesses to constantly be looking for which words may get them more hits and higher rankings; it’s quickly becoming over done.
Continue to read more here >> SEO: Look Beyond Google: Meta-Search Engines Can Help Online Marketer

Free Web Traffic with Link Bait – Put Your Link Building on Steroids

Here's how you can generate

Free Web Traffic

Link Bait – Put Your Link Building on Steroids

The most significant and perhaps the hardest part of website optimization is link building. Website promoters beat the bushes trying to discover the blooming valleys of premium quality links to pick up some juicy links there. However, it isn’t that easy and quite often all efforts may be in vain.

But as the saying has it: “If the mountain will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet must go to the mountain!” If you can’t get links from well-established websites you can encourage them to link to you themselves! One of the ways you can build up tons of links is by producing premium quality content that may potentially go viral. This SEO technique is generally referred to as link baiting. Generally it’s about enticing website visitors to promote your site via links from their own sites.

Here are the high spots of the link baiting techniques that may encourage anyone (be it a well-known blogger or the Average Joe) to link to your website:

Write About the Industry’s ‘Big Guys’

You can get yourself a huge piece of link pie if you write about the authorities in your given market niche. If you tell a story about the leaders who have impacted your niche or post an interview with them you are sure to build a good reputation and attract more visitors. But you must make sure that the story or the interview you post is really noteworthy and useful to readers.

Review Popular Products or Services

The online market is full of similar offers so folks often get confused when making their choice. That’s why before making their final decision they search the web for reviews to compare products or services. So if you manage to write a detailed, informative and authoritative review, it is likely to go viral and to be reposted with the reference to the primary source (your website or blog). Besides this can not only get you good quality links, but also win some bonuses from the companies whose products and services you reviewed (like for instance a free version of their products) .

Give Out Some Freebies

Just confess how many times you entered the word “free” in Google when searching for something. People are easily drawn by free offers, so if on your website you give out some quality products or services that can significantly boost the flow of website traffic. You can provide some free software, free video or music downloads, e-books or tutorials, etc. Providing such free services as web hosting, free search tools etc. can also attract traffic to your website and help you get more backlinks. Moreover, you’ll also be able to promote your products and services over time.

Continue to read more >>

Link Bait – Put Your Link Building on Steroids

Generate Free Web Traffic by understanding Web Advertising

More money is wasted on advertising than any other business function. That is not to say businesses shouldn’t advertise but rather people should understand how advertising works. There are many ways to characterize ads, but for our purposes let’s make it simple and separate advertising into two distinct approaches: saturation and emotional.

One of the things I’ve learned over a long career is that business folk invariably take their lead from the wrong sources. Small and medium size businesses look to the mega corporations to learn their tricks and adopt their attitudes when they have little in common – advertising being no exception. Since our clients are mostly medium or small size companies we try to help put some of these issues into perspective.

If you’re big enough and have the money available, there are all kinds of marketing initiatives you can invest in, but if you have a limited marketing budget you need to be smart about how and on what you spend your advertising dollars. And the most effective and cost efficient place to spend those dollars is on your website. Yes you need to attract people to your site, but if once they arrive they find it lacks intriguing, engaging content, then you’ve wasted your money. So what tactical approach should you take to deliver your marketing message?

Saturation Advertising

The first approach is saturation advertising like you see on television. Anyone who has spent an evening sitting in front of the TV set is familiar with what I am talking about: the constant repetition of the same commercials over and over until the ads become an unwelcome irritation. The fact is no matter what you do to avoid commercials they eventually seep into your head. Even fast forwarding through commercials on a recorded program has an effect. Saturation advertising depends on repetition not quality, which is why some of the worst and/or stupidest commercials can still be effective.

There are some great commercials on television that do engage the audience with an entertaining, memorable, marketing message that enhances the brand and generates leads, but when push comes to shove, television advertising is all about repetition not quality.

Does Saturation Advertising Work?

Does saturation advertising work? The short answer is yes it does, at least for a television audience it does. Most people believe that it works on others but not on them, a phenomenon, psychologists call the Third Party Effect. The fact is, repeating something automatically makes it appear more believable.

The majority of people will respond that they don’t pay attention to commercials, but inattention does not protect you from the influence of repeated messaging. In fact bad commercials work better if the audience isn’t really paying attention, and fail when the audience is actually listening carefully. Careful attention brings to light all a message’s conceptual, technical and performance issues.

Continue to read >>

Internet Marketing:Understanding Web Advertising

6 Easy Tips to Improved Facebook Marketing

Here's 6 Easy Tips to Improved Facebook Marketing you can learn and practice to get massive web traffic.

When it comes to social networking there’s little doubt that Facebook is the largest and most influential of the social networks online. It has more than 500 million registered user and, at the time of writing this, the average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events. For businesses this means that a Facebook page or other piece of Facebook real estate is a serious way to generate social and viral traffic, but only if it is done well.

There are 900 million objects that people interact with which means, first and foremost, yours needs to stand out. It either needs to provide something that others don’t (unlikely given the amount of competition) or it needs to do what it does better than the competition. One of the most common mistakes by small businesses is believing that Facebook traffic is a quick hit; it can take months to build up a decent sized list of fans that avidly read your content, but there are some steps you can take to help attract greater numbers.

The Facebook Platform

Fortunately, there is an extensive platform on which you can build unique Facebook pages and interact with existing and potential readers and your business needs to make the most of these in order to generate the best possible results.

1. Be Unique Not Generic – There is a lot of competition on Facebook, regardless of the type and topic of content that you’re providing. Ensure your Facebook page really stands out by creating a unique design. You don’t have to have the standard Facebook page design and you can implement all sorts of features that help your visitors recognize you as a leader in your field.

You can also serve different landing pages to different visitors. For example, fans and first time visitors to your page do not need to see the same thing and Facebook offers the functionality to change these settings. Show a page that encourages non-followers to fan your page, and show the main content to those that have already done so. Provide incentives such as coupons for your products or services, or free resources like Ebooks and other giveaways, to members that have not yet clicked to follow your page.

Continue to read more >>

Internet Marketing: 6 Tips to Improved Facebook Marketing

Five Crucial Components of Web Design

Professional website developers know the importance of web design and the role it plays in making a website successful.

Designing a successful website is no easy task, especially for someone who is new to the world of web development. With the help of web development applications many people can and do create decent websites. But decent in most cases is not good enough to make a site successful from a traffic or financial standpoint.

There are five crucial components of web design that you must focus on in order to make a site valuable to its visitors and successful for you.

- SEO -
Getting free traffic to your site.

- Usability -
Ease of navigating around the site and finding desired information quickly.

- Aesthetics -
Visual appeal.

- Content -
Valid, up to date, relevant information.

- Graphics -
Eye candy that relays relevant visual information to the visitor.

SEO

Before you ever lay down a byte of HTML code for a site you have to know and understand at least the basics of SEO and how it fits into the design. SEO is the art of designing a site in a fashion that gives the site an advantage for obtaining free and abundant traffic.

The number one aspect of SEO is selecting keywords relevant to your site. The keywords you select should be based on high usage, low competition and relevancy to your topic. Once you select keywords you can then begin the development of your site. Keep in mind keywords are a critical aspect of the design. The keywords you choose will be applied within the design in strategic fashion to benefit the flow of traffic to your site. To understand more on how to implement SEO you should read and learn more about this important subject. If you don't, your website success will be difficult to achieve.

Usability

Your website must be easy to navigate and designed in a way that makes it easy to find information. Visitors will not stay long if it takes more than one or two clicks to get the information they want or if it takes brain power to figure out how to get the information they want. One of the goals of your site design is to keep usability easy, and simple. To do this, apply the following three fundamentals of usability.

* Provide a site search tool.

A visitor in a hurry can quickly find the info they desire then move on to the action they desire.

* Provide simple, intuitive and consistent site navigation.

This provides visitors the tool they need to leisurely explore their way through your site.

* Provide logical and simple to follow content.

The message of a site should start off in a simple and basic fashion with well defined links pointing the way to more detailed information or explanation as needed.

In the cases above the goal is to make it easy for your visitor to find the information they want without frustration or difficulty. Doing this well will have a positive effect on increasing the return of your visitors.

Aesthetics

A website has to look clean, uncomplicated and strike a balance in layout that is pleasant to the visitor. Pleasing aesthetics come about when the colors of a site complement each other, the graphics blend and lend continuation of the theme and the layout brings unity and openness to the page.

Often overlooked by novice designers is the color palette of the site. While you can select color in a willy-nilly fashion and still provide a visually appealing site, a better idea for color selection should be based on an understanding of the color wheel and proven color strategies.

Many web designers often view a web page as an opportunity to blast a visitor with lots of information in hopes this will convince the visitor to take action. Usually this results in a quick exit due to the overwhelming visual effect and complicated look. A better approach is to provide less content and open space (referred to as white space) to allow visitors eyes to scan and explore with ease.

Content

An important feature of any website is the quality of the text content. Visitors come to a site expecting to find answers to their questions, solutions to their problems or for entertainment value. The content offered at your site must be well-written, without grammatical or spelling errors. It also has to be relevant to the theme of your site, with valid, up to date information for your visitors. Content is King!

Graphics

You can have a functional and usable website without graphic elements. However, if there are similar sites to yours that employ graphics, guess which site will get the most traffic. The necessary companions to any well-designed site are the images and illustrations that grace its pages. The images can't be any willy-nilly graphic that you might think is cool. Graphic imagery has to support your branding, and communicate the message you are trying to convey. Before you incorporate graphic elements into your site, take some time to look around the web. Notice what looks good and how elements are laid out. These same layouts techniques can be used as models for your site.

The Internet is a highly competitive business arena. To be successful with a commercial website, you have to keep these five crucial web design elements in mind. Contrary to what many will tell you, it is rarely possible to have commercial success without the benefit of a professional website. This is not to say that you must hire a professional, however you must implement professional design elements to improve your chances for success.

About the Author: Woody Longacre, Internet Web Design. We invite you to visit the Web Hosting Goods Store for Web Design Services, Web Hosting, and Domain Registration.

What is Internet Marketing all about?

Want to know What is Internet Marketing all about?

Internet marketing is still a complete mystery to a large majority of Internet users. For many users, internet marketing is seen as some foreign area of the web, populated with silly get-rich-quick schemes and unsavory characters ready to rip off the innocent and uninformed consumer at the click of a mouse. Continue to read more.. SEO: 5 Most Popular Forms of Internet Marketing

Website Redesign eBook & Webinar

Website Redesign eBook & Webinar

Thinking about a website redesign? Did you know that a website redesign can actually lower your traffic and reduce your lead flow? Don't take another step without learning about the pitfalls and best practices around redesigning your website. Download our Free Website Redesign Kit and learn everything you need to know for a successful website redesign.

Inbound Internet Marketing System

HubSpot is an inbound marketing system to help your small or medium sized business to get found on the Internet by the right prospects and convert more of them into leads and customers. HubSpot inbound marketing helps your company get found by the qualified prospects that are looking for the products or services that you sell in search engines, blogs and the blogosphere, and social media. Once these qualified visitors are on your website, HubSpot helps you convert more of them into leads and paying customers through landing pages, lead intelligence and marketing analytics.

HubSpot is web-based, does not require any IT staff, and is designed to be used by a marketing person, not a techie. Our company, our blog and our products have been featured in the Wall Street Journal Online, MarketingSherpa, PC Magazine, AdAge, and MarketingProfs.

Source: http://www.hubspot.com/

SEO: How to Cheat Google AdSense??

This is an interesting article by by Fernando Hal, read more about How you can cheat Google Adsense (and get your AdSense account disabled).

Face it. You come to this article probably thinking to find some ways to cheat Google, or to confirm whether some method you have on mind will work. Well, if you want to know how to cheat AdSense, here are the ways, focusing on the AdSense click-frauds. These covers from basic AdSense cheating techniques to the advanced class.

Continue to read more ..

How to Cheat Google AdSense??

How to Optimize for Google: Part 1 of 3 By Scott Van Achte

How to Optimize for Google: Part 1 of 3 By Scott Van Achte, Senior SEO, StepForth (c) 2008

In today's online world search engine rankings can make your business succeed, and while rankings in Yahoo and MSN are very valuable, their combined market value is still less than that of Google. This makes achieving top rankings in Google that much more important.

In this three-part series on How to Optimize for Google we will touch on a number of important aspects for top Google rankings including website optimization, links, Google Webmaster tools, and a number of other considerations.

The focus of Part 1 will be with on page website optimization.
Website Monitoring Service!

THE RIGHT KEYWORDS
This article is not about keyword research so I will not spend too much time on this topic, however, I felt it was important to at least brush on this slightly. If you are interested in reading more, please see Keyword Research for Organic SEO.

Make sure that your targets are achievable. If you select the wrong keywords, it can make your entire optimization experience essentially a waste. Choose keywords that are attainable but yet still provide a reasonable search frequency for your industry. Your phrase selection should also be targeted to bring qualified traffic to your site.

Using the hotel industry as an example, targeting the word "hotel" would make very little sense but by narrowing it down to "Victoria BC hotel" you now have less competition, and a more qualified audience. Keep your targets in perspective and go after the obtainable rankings.

WEBSITE OPTIMIZATION
There are many on-site factors that play a role in your search engine rankings. Here are a number of those factors and what you can do to increase your chances of success.

Title Tag
The title tag plays one of the most important roles in search results at Google, and is almost always the heading Google chooses for each of its listings. Placement of your target phrase is best used near the start of the tag and repeated again in the middle or near the end. Three uses of your target phrase may be helpful in some instances, as long as it is not too overwhelming. For best results each page on your site should have a totally unique title tag.

It is also important to remember that because Google will use this title as the main heading for your listing, you will want to keep it attractive to potential searchers. Try to also add a call to action, or other wording to help make your listing appear attractive to searchers.
Strengthen Your Positions in Google!

To help illustrate the fact Google takes this tag into consideration, simply do a search for your target phrase and take a look at the titles of the top 10. I tried a search for a rather broad term "hotel" and saw that all 10/10 listings had it in the title tag, and 6/10 had it as the very first word. A quick scan showed that the entire top 30 either had the word hotel, or hotels in their title tags.

If you do only one thing to your website, make sure that all your title tags are relevant, unique, and contain your target phrase for each page.

Meta Description Tag
The Meta Description tag is still occasionally used by Google as the description which appears in the search results themselves. While this used to be a more common practice Google tends to use it most often on sites with very limited content, or those which are flash based. I have seen it still used for content rich sites, however this is less common.

The Meta Description tag still has an impact on search rankings. Your best bet when using this tag is to keep it short and sweet with your target phrase close to the start and not repeated more than 3 times. Like the title tag, each page on your site should have its own unique description tag.

Meta Keyword Tag
When it comes to Google this tag is useless, and won't influence your rankings. There is some speculation as to whether a spammy keyword tag can however, have a negative effect on Google rankings. As a result, if you do utilize a keyword Meta tag for the smaller engines, it is best to keep it clean and play it safe.

Density
Keyword density plays a role in overall rankings; however, it is not as cut and dry as it once was. Once upon a time there was a magic number that when used could almost guarantee top rankings.

This is no longer the case. Today the ideal density varies from industry to industry, phrase to phrase. To find out what density you should aim for, take the top 10 or 20 search results and see what percentage those sites are using. In most cases you will find that the majority of these sites have a very similar density to one another, and this average density is a good estimation of what you should aim for.
Forget Expensive PPC Advertising - There is an Alternative!

Body Text and Keyword Placement
The location of relevant text on your site will help establish the overall importance of your target phrase. While you do not want to overwhelm the engines and site visitors with a bombardment of target phrases at the top of the page, try to sprinkle in some instances as close to the top of the page as possible.

Synonyms
Be sure to include various synonyms for your target phrases within your body text on your site. Google will use these synonyms to tie in the overall relevance of the page for your main target phrases, which in turn can improve your odds.

To find possible synonyms you can use a thesaurus, but the best way is to search Google itself and see exactly what they consider to be similar. Simply search in Google for your target phrase preceded with a tilde, such as "~hotels". Next scan through the search results for any text Google has bolded. These are all words that Google considers to be related. Using the "~hotels" example Google brings up phrases such as 'travel', 'tourism', 'accommodation', as well as various hotel chain names such as 'Hilton Hotels'.

Keywords in Domain
There is still some speculation if having a target phrase as part of your top level domain (TLD) is of use to search rankings. From my experience, yes, there is value here, although, nothing like it was several years ago.

If you are starting off in the online world and are contemplating which domain to go for, consider one that uses your target phrase, assuming that it is both relevant to your business name, and uses no more than a single hyphen. While multiple hyphens in a domain can be successful, they are very common with highly spammy websites, so it is best to not take that route if possible.

While having a keyword located within your domain can provide some ranking juice, I would not suggest heading out and doing a domain swap. In most cases you would be better off working on your existing site than starting from scratch with a new domain.

Keywords in page specific URL
Using keywords for specific page URL's can also help add a little bit of value to your site, providing you use them responsibly. Consider using a keyword as a directory name and as part of a file name where it naturally makes sense to do so. If you have a website that focuses on tourism and includes local hotel listings, you may want to consider the following structure for your page on the Hilton:

MyTourismSite.com/Victoria/Accommodations/Hotels/Hilton.html

Heading Tags
Placement of target phrases within heading tags helps to establish the importance of those given phrases. That said do not over do it, or abuse it. Only place target phrases within a heading tag if it makes sense to do so, and don't flood a page with numerous tags. Heading tags are not as critical as they once were, but still a good contribution to a well optimized page.

Link Anchor text
This is the actual text you clíck on as part of a link. When full or partial target phrases are used within your text links they help pass on some value to the linked page for those phrases. This is also true when considering surrounding text. When the content around the link is also relevant, the link holds slightly more value.

While a link that simply states "clíck here" or "www.domainname.com" does have its place, they provide considerably less value than a link that would use "discount hotels" as its anchor.

Image Alt Text
While image alt text still plays a minor role, its biggest part is within the use of image based navigation. If you have an image linked to another page, the alt text will be attributed much the same way as standard link anchor text is.

Image Alt text should always be short and to the point and should accurately describe either the image itself, or the page the image is linking to. Do not use alt tags as a place to stuff keywords.

Inline Links
These are links that are found mid sentence or mid paragraph as opposed to a simple listing of links as found in a menu or possibly on a sitemap. Links found mid paragraph tend to pass on a little more value from the surrounding text and can provide more relevance to the linked page.

Site Navigation
It is absolutely imperative that your website be fully spiderable by the search engines. This may seem obvious, but often webmasters overlook Google's ability to crawl a website. Google has become very advanced in what links it can follow and how it can spider a website, but there are still some things that can cause significant roadblocks.

- Flash: One of the most commonly made mistakes is the use of flash. If flash is used as a sole means of site navigation then you can count on Google not viewing your internal pages, and having a significant disadvantage in terms of site rankings.

- Java Script / DHTML: These days most Java Script and even DHTML menus can be spidered by Google, however, this is not always the case. If your site utilizes any kind of fancy navigation and you are wondering why Google has not indexed your internal pages, check out Google's Cached Text version of your page. If you do not see any text links, then your navigation may be invisible to Google.

- Images: Image based navigation has been safe for many years now, but if your site uses this form of navigation it is essential to have brief, relevant alt text on all your buttons. This alt text will act much like standard anchor text for text based links. This is not only for the purpose of search ranking value, but take a look at Google's cached text version of your page. If you have image based links that do not have alt text, those links do not appear. This doesn't mean Google won't follow them, but for anyone viewing your site on a text based browser, your links will be invisible to them.

URL Structure
Avoid long elaborate URL's with extraneous characters. While Google has reached a point where they can index massive URL strings, it is best to avoid them if at all possible. For dynamic sites consider utilizing mod rewrites to significantly clean up the URL to not only make it more search engine friendly, but more user friendly as well.

MyTourismSite.com/?locid="victoria"&catid="accommodations"&type="hotel"&comp="hilton"

stands a better chance if cleaned up to read:

MyTourismSite.com/victoria/accommodations/hotels/hilton.htm

SUMMARY
Basic website optimization is a critical component for successful placement in Google but is only part of the overall picture. Stay tuned for "How to Optimize for Google - Part 2 of 3" where we will discuss Links and Google Webmaster Tools.

About The Author
Scott Van Achte is the Senior SEO at StepForth Web Marketing Inc., based in Victoria, BC, Canada and founded in 1997. You can read more of Scott's articles and those of the StepForth team at news.stepforth.com or contact us at StepForth.com, Tel - 250-385-1190, TollFree - 877-385-5526, Fax - 250-385-1198

Some useful SEO Strategies For Search Engine Optimization

A web site does not stop with ownership. Work has to be done such as getting it optimized for search engines. Your web site has to be made search engine friendly, that is to say, it must meet certain expectations of the “crawlers” or “spiders” of search engines. The index that these crawlers have created will be used in ascertaining the status of your web site in terms of relevancy to the requests of users.Good strategies for search engine optimization that should be fully implemented include the following.. Read more ..

SEO: Strategies For Search Engine Optimization

SEO: Keyword Research and Analysis - The Art of Internet Marketing

Do you know what your target audience wants and how they are looking online? As an Internet Marketing Consultant I am often surprised that many website owners don’t know who their market is, and how to target them with web copy and SEO.

Keywords are the words that web surfers enter in search engines to find websites about their search terms. If you want to get in front of your potential audience, it’s important your website has good search engine rankings for your keywords that are related to the theme of your website.

Knowing what your target audience wants and how they are looking online is crucial to your online success. Optimizing your web pages for keywords that nobody uses in the search engines is useless. In addition, in order to get targeted visitors, the keywords must not be too broad or too general. Your copy and metatags should also support the keyword phrases your market uses and entice them with copy that meets their needs and compels them to action.

The First Step to Internet Marketing - The Right Keywords for Your Website

The first step in successful SEO copywriting is choosing the right keywords to make them very specific to your market. You can survey your target market for their keyword usage or use more thorough keyword research tools. When conducting the keyword research and analysis:

1) use keyword phrases containing two to four words
2) be specific - geographically, topically, or by product
3) only use the keywords that are important to your web business
4) avoid very competitive keywords or general keyword phrases

Use focused and targeted keyword phrases that are common enough so the web searcher will use them, but selective enough that they don’t return millions of matches. Most web surfers use a two to four word phrase when they search online, so phrasing is very important. For example, if you are offering a service like dog training or Internet Marketing, you wouldn’t target the key phrase “dog training” or “SEO”, but something more specific like “Chicago dog trainer” or “Vancouver Search Engine Optimization”. Very specific keywords generate highly qualified, targeted traffic that increases your sales opportunities.

The Wrong Keywords for Your Website

Single words cannot promote ranking or sell effectively, for example you wouldn’t want to target “dog” as a dog trainer in Chicago. Avoid the most popular keyword phrases or general keyword phrases because you’ll be competing with millions of other web pages for a search engine ranking.

It’s unrealistic to think that a new web site could rank number one on a popular phrase like “Marketing”. You are better to target “Internet marketing strategies” or even better, “Internet Marketing Strategies Vancouver”. More established companies who have been on the Internet for several years will have the advantage of link popularity and a high Pagerank and therefore better rankings in the search results for these broader or general keyword phrases.

Continue to read more..

SEO: Keyword Research and Analysis - The Art of Internet Marketing

Using Offline Advertising in Internet Marketing

Knowing how to use offline advertising in internet marketing can give you a significant advantage over your competitors, since many do not use offline methods to advertise their products. Offline advertising is particularly relevant if you are selling a product, or offering a service, that attract customers locally. For example, you could offer a fitness aid at your local leisure center. Many leisure or fitness centers will allow you to put a free poster offering your product, but even if they charge you for it the price is usually small. Perhaps you have a golf training aid that you can advertise at your local golf club.

Local classified ads are also a good means of getting your product some local publicity. The classified ads pages or even adverts placed on selected pages of your local press, frequently provide you with local orders. The beauty of these is that they are very easy to follow up, either with back-end products or new ones. You need not even restrict yourself to the local press. How often have you seen an internet marketing advert on the national press? They are not uncommon, and although expensive, they must produce a good return.

If you have a niche website, it could be worth your while browsing round your local newsagent and checking out the magazines on display. You know the kind - all these racks upon racks of magazines on every topic you can think of. Have a word with the newsvendor and find out some of the more popular magazines that cover your niche. These could be good publications for placing your adverts, especially if they are not too expensive and they have a good circulation.

Poster campaigns can also work well. You can advertise with posters in many shopping malls, and some stores also offer you the opportunity place an A5 poster for only pennies a week. Have your own business cards printed with your internet business contact details, such as website address and email address in addition to your phone number. Put your website address on everything, and have a signature that use on all correspondence. Not just emails and forum postings, but also offline correspondence such as letters, invoices, receipts and anything else you send to other people.

Another form of offline marketing that most people have never heard of, let alone use, is buzz advertising. This type of advertising has been growing in popularity recently, especially by offline businesses. It is used extensively by some auto companies and by cosmetics companies. Buzz advertising involves getting a verbal buzz going about your website or product. Some companies pay people specifically to verbally promote their products by approaching strangers, striking up conversations and bringing up the product in the conversation.

“Say, have you heard about the latest perfume from —-!” While not yet common it is getting more popular. Of course, the buzz need not be started off by someone you have employed to do it, but you can do it yourself. You can get your family and relatives involved as well. Before you know it, everybody might be talking about your product or your great new website. That’s how YouTube and MySpace got so popular.

If you have a van or pick-up get your business name and website address painted on the site. It’s easier to get a buzz going if people see your website in their face all the time, on vehicles, on posters, in newspapers and magazines, and even chalked on walls! Well, perhaps not the last one, but that would sure get people noticing your website! Do you get the idea? Get your website name known in every way that you can.

How about a local radio slot, with you explaining the virtues and benefits of your product, service or website? Stress the benefits, and you need not restrict it to local radio. Try for a national radio slot or even TV if your business is sizeable enough. There are no restrictions to the advertising methods you can use. Hire a loudspeaker and shout it from the rooftops!

Online advertising methods are very effective in internet marketing, since they can be visible to people all round the world, but if you know how to use offline advertising it can also work very nicely for you, and bring you a lot of business you would not otherwise have.

About the Author: Andre Sanchez - How to Use Offline Advertising in Internet Marketing was originally published at http://www.affiliatemarketinglife.com.

Tags: Internet Marketing, Web Traffic, Earn Money Online, Adsense, Adwords, Money, Offline Advertising, How To, Andre Sanhez

How To Get Improved Search Engine Rank Using Squidoo and SEO

If you know how to use Squidoo to achieve improved search engine rank of your web pages, then you have a tool at your disposal that can be just as powerful as using traditional search engine optimization, if not more so.

One important facet of your Squidoo lens is that it could be listed on Google, or any of the other search engines, for your major keywords, and you should not lose sight of any promotional techniques that provide you with free exposure on search engines. If you Blink your Squidoo lens, you can win every way. Not just with Blinklist, but you can have it listed on just about every social networking site you can think of, Technorati and Deli.cio.us included. Also Furl, Craigslist, Stumbleupon and any of the many others out there.

For those not totally aware of what Squidoo is, I don’t intend to go into the ethos of the site right here, other than to state that it can be used as a promotional tool as well as a being a virtual website. Your lens can also be given a Google PageRank. You can use your Squidoo lens in place of a minisite in order to promote yourself and your product, and improve your search engine listing. You can use it as a showcase for your products, your blogs or even your websites, and draw traffic to it and hence to those other online ventures you are involved in.
In order to use Squidoo as a promotional tool for your main website you have to know a lot about the topic of your site. It is not a tool to use to sell an affiliate product, for example, unless you are an authority on that product. However, if you have written a book on a certain aspect of SEO, and want to advertise it, then Squidoo is ideal for that. The reason is that you can give in order to earn. Hence, Squidoo is great for me, because I can provide visitors to my lens with useful information on SEO, while at the same time advertising my SEO site that offers my product. I then get visitors and a link from Squidoo, both of which are great for my search engine rank, and also listing position.

It might be possible just to advertise the product directly, but I prefer to provide information. That allows your visitors to become confident that know what you are talking about, and are not just a ‘fly by night’ that is trying to sell a product that you know nothing about. The objective of Squidoo is to provide useful information on topics to others interested in that topic. If they go to Squidoo and click on a category, they should be able to find all the info they are looking for.

They don’t want outright adverts, but if they find that you are providing good information, then they might want to visit your website. You give them the link to do so, and then they get more information. Part of that might be the offer to purchase your product that will possibly solve their problem. However, neither you nor they know that it will, so you provide them with a guarantee that if it doesn’t work for them, they get their money back. You have used Squidoo to persuade them that you know what you are talking about, that led them to your site and more information, and then to your product. They buy it, try it, and if it works fine. If not, they get refunded. In my book that is the proper way to conduct business, and you can use Squidoo to help you with that.
You can also optimize your lens for maximum search engine listing position, since your Squidoo lens should be based upon a single keyword or keyphrase to enable you to get a good listing. You can SEO a lens just as you can do a web page, and with the same effect. Free organic traffic from your listing position.
To achieve all that, sign up for Squidoo, follow their instructions and get your first lens up and running, and then use it to promote your regular website and improve its ranking. You must also make sure that your customers have an out if it doesn’t work for them. Squidoo provide lots of help in designing your first lens, but if you already have website then you should find it easy. Optimize your lens for the search engines and you are all set.
By combining your web page, lens and blog optimization, and cross-promoting each in an intelligent way, it is difficult to see how you could fail to get high search engine listings and improved search engine rank using Squidoo and SEO.

About The Author
If you need more information on how to use Squidoo for improved search engine rank, here is a lens that does what I am suggesting you do. Check it out, and then sign up for Squidoo yourself from the same page. Copy what I do and you can hardly fail. The free info on the page is important, especially Improved Search Engine Rank dot com and might be all that you are looking for.

Technorati Tags: SEO, Squidoo, Internet Marketing, Web Traffic, Search Engine Rank, Improved Search Engine Rank, Search Engine Optimization, Tips

A Beginner’s Guide to Pay Per Click Marketing By Kalena Jordan

Pay Per Click (PPC) search engine marketing refers to a specific type of advertising where you pay a search engine every time a potential customer clicks on your ad. These ads appear on search engine results pages and sometimes on sites within a search engine’s network of associates.

How do Pay Per Click Ads Work?

If you look at a search engine results page (SERP) carefully, you can generally distinguish between search results that are regular algorithmic or “organic” search listings and PPC search results which are actually paid advertisements. The latter are generally listed under the headings “sponsored results” or “featured listings” and consist of specially designed text, image or video ads that are triggered to display when your target keywords are used in a search query. The PPC ads generally appear on the right hand side and/or at the top of the search results pages.
To appear in the PPC results, advertisers sign up for the PPC program of their choice and create short text ads, image ads or videos describing the product or service available on their site in a way that will best entice searchers to visit it. During the program setup, an advertiser will decide which trigger keywords/phrases they wish to bid on and how much they are willing to pay when a visitor clicks on their ad. Generally, the higher the bid, the more likely their ad will show above their competitor’s.

The Origins of Pay Per Click Marketing

The PPC industry was pioneered by GoTo.com (later re-branded as Overture before it was purchased by Yahoo! in July 2003). Despite their enormous success, GoTo’s PPC model was met with a lot of skepticism in the industry following their IPO in 1999. Their eventual purchase by Yahoo put to rest any doubts that pay per click advertising was here to stay.

In October 2000, Google which was eventually to become the world’s most popular search engine, launched their own keywords advertising model (Google AdWords), blending algorithmic search results with pay per impression ads.

In 2002, in an attempt to compete more successfully with Overture, Google expanded AdWords to include the pay per click pricing model we are familiar with today. This model proved both more popular and more successful and eventually replaced the pay-per-impression model as the default system.

By 2002, GoTo (by then rebranded as Overture), had distribution deals with an impressive range of search engines including Yahoo!, MSN, AltaVista, InfoSpace and a number of meta search engines including MetaCrawler and Ixquick. Overture’s powerful distribution network guaranteed advertisers placement of their ads in front of a LOT of eyeballs and it became clear that many were willing to pay big bucks for the privilege. Other major search engines also formed successful distribution partnerships with PPC providers during this time, noticeably AOL, AskJeeves and MSN with Google AdWords. The pay per click industry had officially arrived.

Scores of PPC search engines began to spring up following Overture’s lead, however the PPC industry continued to be dominated by the two big PPC players, Overture and Google AdWords, while Yahoo!, MSN, AOL and Google fought it out for dominance in the general search market.

In July 2003, in a move that shocked the industry, Yahoo! purchased Overture to enable them to better compete with market leader Google. In April 2005 they rebranded the PPC engine as Yahoo! Search Marketing and in 2006 they launched a revamped version of the service, code-named Panama.

Meanwhile, in October 2005, Microsoft quietly launched their own PPC service called MSN adCenter. An official launch in the US, together with a name change to Microsoft AdCenter occurred in May 2006. In May 2007, Microsoft revamped AdCenter with new features and rolled it out to advertisers worldwide.

Currently, Yahoo and Google continue to dominate the PPC landscape, although Microsoft AdCenter is beginning to make an impact. Second tier PPC engines such as MIVA (formerly Espotting and FindWhat) and Kanoodle are fast catching up to the majors.

There are now hundreds of PPC search engines worldwide, servicing global, regional and niche markets, but only a few that have achieved a significant market share of advertising revenue. A summary of the majors are listed below.

Yahoo! Sponsored Search

Yahoo! Sponsored Search is the current name for what was originally called Overture Precision Match. Yahoo! Sponsored Search prominently displays your site in search results on some of the top U.S. search properties that Yahoo! collaborates with. With Sponsored Search, you set the price you’re willing to pay for each customer who clicks on your listing.

Your ads appear at the top, bottom or right hand side of Yahoo search results pages under the heading “Sponsor Results”. Your ads are triggered on search result pages when searchers enter the keyword combinations that you’ve bid on. Your ads can be targeted by language and country.

If you create a keyword campaign and you use the ContentMatch option, your bid also buys you top listings on Yahoo’s allied sites AltaVista, InfoSpace, eBay, CitySearch, AllTheWeb and a range of news and content portals, such as USAToday, National Geographic, iVillage and NBC.

Google AdWords

Google AdWords gives web site owners the ability to promote their site when particular keyword or phrase searches are conducted at Google and associate sites. Your ads appear at the top or on the right side of search results pages in a “call out” box under the heading “Sponsored Links”. Your AdWords text, image or video ads appear on search result pages for the keywords you buy, and can be targeted by language and country.

With Google AdWords cost-per-click (CPC) pricing, you pay only when a customer clicks on your ad, regardless of how many times it’s shown. Google adjusts your bids automatically to keep you ahead of your competition at the lowest possible price. Google AdWords results appear on Google search results pages, Google’s distribution sites, Google Gmail, and numerous content sites which are syndicated through the Google AdSense program.

Microsoft AdCenter

Microsoft adCenter is the newest kid on the Pay Per Click block. It includes the ability to target your ads to MSN Live Search users who match your target regional and demographic criteria.

Microsoft adCenter allows you to submit base bids for keywords or phrases you associate with your ads. This base bid is the maximum amount you are willing to pay if any Live Search user searches for one of your keywords and clicks your ad. You can also increase your bid in order to reach specific audience targets, which help increase the chance your ad will appear for a user who fits your buyer profile.

Targeted bidding in the Campaigns tab allows you to add amounts to your base bid to increase the possibility that your ad will show to searchers who fit your optimum buyer profile. You can use your bid amounts to influence your ad’s position in the Live Search results. In general, the more you bid, the higher the position your ad will have.

You can use Microsoft’s Intelligent Targeting feature to adjust your ads to match these variables:

* Geographical location
* Age and gender
* Day of the week
* Time of day (morning, afternoon, or night)

Interestingly, Microsoft pitches the ability to “build brand awareness” with their PPC program, due to the continued exposure of your ad and brand to a large market, regardless of whether that ad attracts clicks. This is an important feature of all major PPC programs but one that is rarely promoted by Google or Yahoo!

Perhaps brand-building is adCenter’s Unique Selling Proposition (USP) because Microsoft claim to reach more potential eyeballs than their competitors: over 99 million people per month have access to their Live Search tool across MSN and Windows Live.

The Advantages of Pay Per Click Advertising

The growth of the search industry worldwide has created a huge market for paid search advertising and most search engines and directories now have some type of Pay For Performance or Pay Per Click (PPC) element to them.

Pay Per Click advertising:

* Enables webmasters to target geographical and niche markets more precisely via specific search queries.
* Enables webmasters to have their page URL displayed at the top of the search engine results pages without having to figure out complex search engine algorithms or pay an SEO expert to tweak their site for higher rankings.
* Enables webmasters to receive new traffic instantly.
* Enables a website or offline store to be found by search engine users even if no site exists or the site is not search engine compatible.
* Enables small businesses to operate globally and compete on an equal footing with much larger competitors.
* Enables instant sales and more measurable ROI via conversion tracking.
* Enables more precise visitor pathways to be plotted (e.g. by leading visitors to specific landing pages).
* Enables campaigns to be switched on and off on-demand to meet specific needs, search trends or specific events (e.g. Christmas sale)

About The Author
Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

Technorati Tags: SEO, PPC, Pay Per Click Marketing, Internet Marketing, Web Traffic, Google, Yahoo, MSN, Adwords, Adsense, Overture, Goto.com, search engine results page, SERP

Web Traffic : 20 Simple Ways To Get Massive Traffic To Your Web Site

Starting on an Internet Marketing campaign doesn’t have to be hard, tricky, or complicated. Learn these few simple ways how you can easily implement to get tons of traffic to your site right now!

1) Write articles: believe it or not this is an incredible tool for driving traffic. Well-written, relevant articles can net quite a bit of activity to your web site. Don’t forget to add your URL in your byline. Articles should be 500 to 2,000 words in length. You can send articles to sites like: Article City, GoArticles, Submit Your Articles and Ezine Articles.

2) Social bookmark *everything* - and I do mean everything - you can bookmark each page of your site and each blog entry you post. While this might seem tedious, it’s worth it. You’ll see a strong increase in traffic if you social bookmark each page on your site and each of your blog entries.

3) List yourself in the best directories – you’ll have to pay for this but since most people don’t do this (since everyone’s looking for a freebie) you could really enhance your traffic by getting a listing: dir dot yahoo dot com, business dot org, botw dot org.

4) Get yourself listed at: DMOZ dot org – it’s not easy to get listed there, but worth the effort.

5) Review: if you can review hot new products or books within your market, head on over to Amazon and start positioning yourself as an expert. In order to do this effectively you’ll want to create an Amazon profile and make sure and sign each review with a reference to your URL (your web site). You can also go to Epinions and Revoo to review products as well.

6) Offer a freebie on Craig’s List: you’ll be amazed at how much traffic you get from a single Craig’s List ad. The key here is to send people to a page on your site and make sure they have to sign up for something (like your email newsletter) before they can grab their freebie. That way you’re not just getting traffic, you’re also building your list.

7) Create a “recommended by” list on your Delicious page – you can do this by logging on and creating an account and there and then tagging articles, blogs and other content you think is important to your readership. Then offer this page as a resource site. You can add a link to this page in your email signature line or on your web site.

Continue to read more..

20 Simple Ways To Get Massive Traffic To Your Web Site

Tags: SEO, Massive Traffic, Internet Marketing, Web Traffic, Web Site, Adsense, Adwords, Google, Marketing, Ezine, Article

Top 10 Search Engine Optimization Strategies For Your Website!

Although the concept of search engine optimization can be somewhat complex, there are a number of basic search engine optimization techniques you can use to improve your organic search results. Keep the following in mind when trying to achieve top rankings for your website.

1. Meta Tags.

Meta tags are simple lines of code at the top of your web page programming that tell search engines about your page. Include the title tag, keyword stag, description tag, and robots tag on each page.

2. Create and update your sitemap.

Developing a site map is a simple way of giving search engines the information they need to crawl your entire website. There are plenty of free software packages on the web that can help you generate a sitemap. Once you create a sitemap, submit it to Google and Yahoo.

3. Ensure that all navigation is in HTML.

All too often, navigational items are in the form of java script. Even though navigation technically still works in this format, it’s not optimized. Create your navigation in HTML to enhance internal links throughout your website.

4. Check that all images include ALT text.

Your image’s alt text is spidered by search engines. If you’re not including your keywords in alt text, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity for improved search engine result placements. Label all of your images properly.

5. Use Flash content sparingly.

Content generated through java script or flash is a big no-no. Some webmasters like to use flash because of the presentation. If you must, use it sparingly, but only after your site has been properly optimized with basic search engine optimization in mind.

6. Make sure that your website code is clean.

Keep in mind when optimizing a web page crawlers are basically only looking at your source code. When programming your web pages, having W3C compliant code can make all the difference. Run your code through a W3C validator before promoting.

7. Place keywords in your page content.

Search engines scan your website and web pages for keywords. Shoot for a keyword density of between two and eight percent. Google likes your page to be at the lower end of this scale and Yahoo at the upper end.

8. Submit your website to search engine directories.

It’s always a good idea to let large search engine directories know that you’re out there. Submit your website URL to directories like Google, Yahoo, and DMOZ.

9. Build links to your website.

Consider building a link exchange program or create one-way links to your site using articles or forum posts. All major search engines value the importance of your website based on how many others websites are linking to it.

10. Learn the basics.

Learning to optimize your website for search engines takes time and patience. Start by applying basic search engine optimization principles. If you’re new to website optimization, or even a well seasoned veteran, begin by prioritizing which pages are most important to you and go from there. Soon you’ll find yourself moving up the rankings.

About the Author: Michael Fleischner is a Marketing Expert and Search Engine Optimization Specialist. He has more than 12 years of marketing experience and had appeared on The TODAY Show, Bloomberg Radio, and other major media. Visit MarketingScoop.com for further details and more marketing articles.

Technorati Tags: SEO, Meta Tags, HTML, Keywords, Top 10, Search Engine Optimization, Strategies, Website, Web Traffic, Internet Marketing, Link, Google, Adsense, Adwords, Website Optimization, Search engine results, PageRank, organic search

SEO: 20 Things You Need to Know Before Optimizing a Web Site

One of the most important aspects of a search engine optimization project is also one of the most overlooked – preparation! There are some important steps to take in advance of optimizing your site that will make sure your SEO is successful.

Before You Start

Before you start any search engine optimization campaign, whether it’s for your own site or that belonging to a client, you need to answer the following questions: 1) What is the overall motivation for optimizing this site? What do I/they hope to achieve? e.g. more sales, more subscribers, more traffic, more publicity etc.

2) What is the time-frame for this project?

3) What is the budget for this project?

4) Who will be responsible for this project? Will it be a joint or solo effort? Will it be run entirely in-house or outsourced?

Answering these questions will help you to build a framework for your SEO project and establish limitations for the size and scope of the campaign.

Ready: How Search Engine-Compatible is the Site Currently?

Something I find very useful before quoting on any SEO project is to produce what I call a Search Engine Compatibility Review. This is where I carry out a detailed overview and analysis of a site’s search engine compatibility in terms of HTML design, page extensions, link popularity, title and META tags, body text, target keywords, ALT IMG tags, page load time and other design elements that can impact search engine indexing.

I then provide a detailed report to potential clients with recommendations based on my findings. It just helps sort out in my mind what design elements need tweaking to make the site as search engine-friendly as possible. It also helps marketing staff prove to an often stubborn programming department (or vice versa!) that SEO is necessary. You might consider preparing something similar for your own site or clients.

Steady: Requirements Gathering

Next, you need to establish the project requirements, so you can tailor the SEO campaign to you or your client’s exact needs. For those of you servicing clients, this information is often required before you are able to quote accurately.

To determine your project requirements, you need to have the following questions answered:

1) What technology was used to build the site? (i.e. Flash, PHP, frames, Cold Fusion, JavaScript, Flat HTML etc)

2) What are the file extensions of the pages? (i.e. .htm, .php, .cfm etc)

3) Does the site contain database driven content? If so, will the URLs contain query strings? e.g.
www.site.com/longpagename?source=123444fgge3212, (containing “?” symbols), or does the site use parameter
workarounds to remove the query strings? (the latter is more search engine friendly).

4) Are there at least 250 words of text on the home page and other pages to be optimized?

5) How does the navigation work? Does it use text links or graphical links or JavaScript drop-down menus?

6) Approximately how many pages does the site contain? How many of these will be optimized?

7) Does the site have a site map or will it require one? Does the site have an XML sitemap submitted to Google Sitemaps
(https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login)?

8) What is the current link popularity of the site?

9) What is the approximate Google PageRank of the site? Would it benefit from link building?

10) Do I have the ability to edit the source code directly? Or will I need to hand-over the optimized code to programmers
for integration?

11) Do I have permission to alter the visible content of the site?

12) What are the products/services that the site promotes?(e.g. widgets, mobile phones, hire cars etc.)

13) What are the site’s geographical target markets? Are they global? Country specific? State specific? Town specific?

14) What are the site’s demographic target markets? (e.g. young urban females, working mothers, single parents etc.)

15) What are 20 search keywords or phrases that I think my/my client’s target markets will use to find the site in the
search engines?

16) Who are my/my client’s major competitors online? What are their URLs? What keywords are they targeting?

17) Who are the stake-holders of this site? How will I report to them?

18) Do I have access to site traffic logs or statistics to enable me to track visitor activity during the campaign?
Specifically, what visitor activity will I be tracking?

19) How do I plan on tracking my or my client’s conversion trends and increased rankings in the search engines?

20) What are my/my client’s expectations for the optimization project? Are they realistic?

Answers to the first 10 questions above will determine the complexity of optimization required. For example, if the site pages currently have little text on them, you know you’ll need to integrate more text to make the site compatible with search engines and include adequate target keywords. If the site currently uses frames, you will need to rebuild the pages
without frames or create special No-Frames tags to make sure the site can be indexed, and so on.

This initial analysis will help you to scope the time and costs involved in advance. For those of you optimizing client sites, obtaining accurate answers to these questions BEFORE quoting is absolutely crucial. Otherwise you can find yourself in the
middle of a project that you have severely under-quoted for.

The remainder of questions are to establish in advance the who,what, where, when, why and how of the optimization project. This will help you determine the most logical keywords and phrases to target, as well as which search engines to submit the site to.

For those of you optimizing web sites for a living, you might consider developing a questionnaire that you can give clients to complete to ensure you tailor the web site optimization to their exact needs.

Go!

So now you are clear about your motivations for optimizing the site, you know more about the target markets, you know how compatible the existing site is with search engines and how much work is involved in the search engine optimization process. You’re ready to tackle the job.

Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column , Kalena manages Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

Technorati Tags: SEO, Optimizing Web Site, Web Traffic, Google, Internet Marketing, Ready Set Go, Tips, Technique, Make Money Online, Strategy, Online Marketing, Web Search , Website

Achieving Organic Search Engine Ranking - Link Building

By now, we all know there’s a lot that goes into achieving high organic search engine rankings. In case you’re unfamiliar with the concept of “SEO,” it refers to the art of modifying a web site’s properties in order for that site to appear in the top search engine results on Google, Yahoo, Ask and MSN, for example.Think of the search engine optimization (SEO) process as a puzzle made up of three distinct types of pieces: code, content, and last but definitely not least, incoming links. You need to put all the pieces together to see results; if you focus too much on one single aspect of SEO, you’ll have a third of the visibility and you’ll still be missing the rest of the pieces.

In this article, I’m going to talk specifically about link building, and how this tactic is a critical component to successful search engine optimization. For those unfamiliar with this tactic, link building is the process by which you get incoming links to a website. Link Building is initiated to get incoming links to a website from other websites. The whole purpose behind link building is to improve the link popularity of a website, or to improve the number of incoming links to a website.

The reason link building is so important to high organic positioning is that all the major search engines use link related variables in their ranking algorithms, the complex equations that evaluate a site on a myriad of factors and then use this data to determine which sites appear where on the results pages.

So what incoming link related variables do the search engine algorithms consider?

- Number of Links- Quality/Origin of Links

- Relevance of Links

- Anchor Text Within Links

- Links Must Present Value to Users

Confused? Let me explain. Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask all consider the number, quality, and relevance of incoming links to your site when determining its rank (Incoming links are those links that point to your web site). Google has a system called PageRank, and the other engines operate within similar frameworks. Google has stated, “PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value.” In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves ‘important’ weigh more heavily and help to make other pages ‘important.’”

Thus, the sites with the most links, or votes, must naturally be the best pages for the information being searched for. Think of it as a digital form of never-ending natural selection; the sites with the best content are linked to more often, boosting their search engine positioning, which in turn, makes them more visible to searchers who will continue linking to them more often.

So, two sites that are both about web design are differentiated by the number of incoming links they’ve obtained. If site A has 135 incoming links, and site B only has three, site A will dominate site B in the search engine results. Yet not every link helps. Go here to read about link building strategies to avoid.

As you’ve read, links are an important aspect of SEO. But not just any links. In fact, the wrong links can hurt you, badly. At this point, I’ll now turn my attention to the quality and relevance of these links, in the process explaining why not every link is a good one, and how some can do far more harm than good.

As mentioned earlier, your links need to be from quality sites that share some degree of relevancy with yours. The major engines are all conscious of the origin of these links, and lately, they’ve been known to penalize sites that build massive networks of irrelevant links. This penalization stems from something known as link farms, which were created in the late 1990s for SEO purposes. Link farms would sell links to sites, but none of these links presented any real value to users. Now the major engines evaluate a site not only on the number of links, but the quality, relevance and origin of these links. For example, a site supporting content about garages would be a great linking opportuníty for a auto parts site, while a cat food site would most likely incur a penalty.

Lastly, the anchor text of your incoming links needs to be optimized in order for the search engines to know what kind of site this link directs a user to. Anchor text is the colored or underlined text that indicates the existence of a link.

For example, if you own a Japanese sushi restaurant in Denver, you don’t want links that point to your site to say something vague like “Denver restaurant.” While this is true, it won’t help you get ranked for the keyphrase you want to be ranked for.

Instead, have your links’ anchor text say “Japanese Cuisine and Sushi Restaurant in Denver.” Not only is this more specific and better for users, it allows the search engines to better determine the relationship between the content of your site and the links that point to it. After all, the strength of this relationship is surely one of the most important factors in achieving high organic positioning. For a more detailed explanation of link building and anchor text within links, clíck here.

So now that you know what kind of links you need to acquire to achieve high organic search positioning, where do you start? Unfortunately, that’s a topic for another blog, but if you go here you can see how to acquire the links that will make a difference.

On a final note, remember to follow the philosophy of utility when conducting any link building campaign: Present users with links that connect them to useful, relevant information, and the search engines will reward you with high organic rankings.

About The Author
Nick Yorchak is an SEO expert at Fusionbox, a full-service Denver Internet marketing company. He can be reached at 303.952.7490. Click here to visit his expert SEO blog.

Tags: SEO, Achieving, Organic Search Engine, Ranking, Link Building, Internet Marketing, Web Traffic, Adsense, Adwords, Google, MSN, Yahoo, Ask

How Glossaries and FAQs Can Improve Search Engine Rankings

A large part of my time at StepForth as a search engine optimization consultant is spent conducting competitor research on behalf of our clientele. This service is focused on deconstructing the marketing campaigns of each competitor while identifying the tactics that appear to have fundamentally contributed to their search engine success. As you might imagine I come across many intriguing techniques that work and many that don't. In this article I will account for a couple of techniques that appear to be overlooked by many but have proven time and time again to work; the creation of an on-site glossary and
frequently asked questions (FAQ) section.

Create a Glossary

I imagine we have both shared one frustration with the Internet at one time or another and that is jargon... and too much of it. Acronyms, and bafflegab seem to be unintentionally utilized on websites all over the web (I am guilty too, I admit it) and I often wish there was a simple way to find a definition within a website rather than visiting an online dictionary. In some cases
I find a website where the owners have smartly linked a potentially confusing term to an off-site definition which is kind to the user but a waste of a great optimization opportunity. Whenever an occasion arises where a link to a definition would be worthwhile it makes far more sense to link to that content within your own website so that you can gain credibility in the eyes of a major search engine like Google.

You see, Google's algorithm is essentially a credibility calculator; it considers a whole host of elements on your website and pointing to your website to determine where it should be ranked. The algorithm considers countless elements including the uniqueness and relevance of each page's content to the number of links pointing to your site from other credible and relevant websites. In this case, a small boost in credibility can be gained by first having the added relevant content inherent to a glossary and second by linking a word/phrase from a page to its definition within your glossary.

For example, if your website (i.e. www.xyzname.com) sold a wide variety of wood working tools and furniture building plans online it would be to your benefit to provide a fairly comprehensive glossary of woodworking terms on your website. Once the glossary is complete you can then occasionally link to the associated terms from within the written content on your
website.

Okay, I see that the content within a glossary is relevant but I am not clear on why these links help?

A search engine algorithm tries to ascertain credibility in much the same manner humans do; we just take our innate calculations for granted. So consider how you would feel if you were on the woodworking site reading a tutorial on building a rocking chair and whenever a confusing term appeared you were provided with a link to a glossary on the site kindly defining the term. This
small convenience would probably inflate your opinion of the usefulness of the website and in-turn the credibility of the website would be less in doubt. Search engine algorithms assimilate these helpful links in much the same manner so by helping your visitors you are also helping your website.

Wait! There is another bonus to having a glossary:

As an added benefit glossary pages also have a great chance at obtaining rankings for their associated definitions precisely because they have links from relevant text pointing to them. As a result, a woodworking glossary might become an entry page for curious surfers or even a page where other woodworking sites link to for a definition.

In short, glossaries are simply a win-win tactic for nearly any website. In fact, as I write this I can't think of a single website that would not benefit from a glossary.

Create a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Page

Now that you have read why an on-site glossary is important perhaps the concept of adding a Frequently Asked Questions section to your website is a no-brainer or perhaps not. Either way if you don't have a FAQ page then get your hide in gear and create one ASAP.

Like a glossary a Frequently Asked Questions page is a perfect place to build the credibility of your website and put to rest the fearful/concerning questions that often arise in relation to your products/services. If you need some ideas of what questions a prospective customer might ask, try calling a few clients and ask them what they looked for before ultimately choosing your
company. In addition, try placing a submission form on your contact page where prospects can ask you a question directly – just be sure to respond with haste. Then place the question and your response on the appropriate FAQ page.

Yet another bonus from having an FAQ

It is very common for the average surfer to search the web using questions. If your FAQ uses the wording that you think your prospects will use when searching, you will have a good chance at acquiring some extra high quality traffic. Do some research using a keyword analysis tool and try to find the best wording for each FAQ.

Tips for Building an Optimized Glossary or FAQ

Now I imagine that every expert in the SEO field has a different preference for designing the 'ultimate' glossary or FAQ but there are definitely some important tips to keep in mind for both:

1. Keep the pages relatively short. For example, I do not recommend having the entire glossary or FAQ on a single page unless they are relatively small. Ideally I would limit the number of questions or definitions to 10 or 15 on each page.

2. When building a FAQ try to devote each FAQ page to a singular topic. For example, on a woodworking site the FAQ for one page might be on the installation of a wood floor and another page would be devoted to questions on laminate floor installation.

3. When formatting the content for both the glossary and the FAQ try to link to related content within your website. This way if any visitors or search engines enter the site via one of these pages they can find great related reading material in a single click.

4. Make sure that a "back" button or a button that takes the user to the glossary or FAQ main navigation is available after each definition/answer. This will make it easier for visitors to navigate each resource or find their way back to their original reading material.

5. Add content to both resources whenever possible. It is often very simple to add a new definition or question and over time each resource will become more and more valuable to
your users and ultimately contribute more to your website's success.

6. Ensure that the FAQ and Glossary pages are included in your XML sitemap so that search engines can regularly index them for fresh content [see Google XML Sitemaps – The Basics
(http://news.stepforth.com/2006-news/Google-XML-Sitemaps.shtml)]. That said, I advise setting the suggested re-index rate monthly unless the resources will be updated more often than that. After all, these pages are supposed to help but not take away from the core content of your website.

Your Competitors Are Doing It or They Will

If your website lacks a glossary or a FAQ I can only hope that this article convinced you to make it a priority. These tools are noted as contributing factors to the success of competitors throughout many of my analysis contracts and simply put they are too simple to add for anyone to be without them. Even if you have to hire your search engine friendly (http://news.stepforth.com/blog/2006/08/is-your-website-search-engine-friendly.php) web designer to add these resources the ends will justify the means.

About the Author
Ross Dunn is the founder and CEO of StepForth Web Marketing Inc. (http://www.stepforth.com/). Based in Victoria, BC, Canada, StepForth has provided professional search engine placement and management services since 1997. Ross is a search engine optimization and placement expert with over 9 years of marketing experience and is a Certified Internet Marketing and Business Strategist (CIMBS). Blending his experience in the art of web design and search engine optimization, Ross offers a unique and informed perspective on obtaining top search engine placements. Ross can be reached at ross@stepforth.com