Search Marketing Must Look To Training To Help Develop New Talent And Fill Skills Gap

Writen by Damon Lightley

At present there’s a real preference within the search engine marketing (SEM) industry to recruit team members with at least 2 years experience. However, this is proving difficult as the growth in search marketing activity is overtaking the growth of professional search marketers. So what can be done about the skills shortage?

Companies have two possible options. 1) employ the services of a specialist search engine marketing agency to develop and implement their search strategy, or 2) recruit talent with potential and train them up in the different disciplines of search marketing.

Search is in demand!

With more and more businesses placing search high up on their marketing agendas it would make sense for them to do both. Companies will always benefit from having the strategic support of specialist agency to help them get to grips with the latest developments in search and to help them integrate search into their marketing mix. However, many of the day to day tasks associated with both pay per click (PPC) and search engine optimisation (SEO) can be effectively managed internally, providing that person has the right levels of knowledge to do so.

In the current climate most organisations would probably be better off sticking with their agency but at the same time they should be thinking of developing a long-term training strategy to build up internal search marketing knowledge and skills.

Building internal knowledge takes time

Building a team with solid SEO and PPC skills isn’t going to happen overnight and it does come with its risks. In a market that is short on supply of individuals with proven SEM skill sets, companies also face the prospect of a ‘brain drain’. There is the possible risk of recruits that have been trained up with these skills are then lured away by bigger players who are able to pay higher salaries.

However, what is inevitable is that if the current trend continues and search marketers become few and far between then there will be a greater demand for agency support, and with demand outstripping supply, we could see companies paying a premium for search marketing agency services.

Investing in search engine marketing training must not be viewed as a costly outlay but rather an investment. Companies that seize the opportunity to develop internal knowledge now, could benefit in the medium to long term by gaining a competitive advantage that is hard to replicate in the short-term.

Damon Lightley is a director at SiteVisibility. SiteVisibility offers search engine marketing training which includes PPC training and SEO training, helping companies by training their staff in the discipline of search marketing.

For more information on search engine marketing training courses please visit Site Visibility.

Searching the Web: A How-to on Effective Web Searching

Writen by Joe DeClara

The internet is a massive database storing information of all sorts, answers to almost any question. From looking up bus schedules to searching for the meaning of life, the answers are there, or at least someone’s answer is there. If you’re asking a question that has a factual answer, you should be able to find the correct answer easily enough; you may have to finagle your search queries a little though. If you’re asking a subjective question you’ll get just as many answers, they’ll just all be different, although each one will claim to be the true answer. Some personal evaluation is always required.
There are many search engines out there, and more are added each day. The first question you’ll face is which one to use. Each has a benefit, each has deficiencies. You will quickly find out which ones you like the best after searching through endless search results. Google.com for example is a great general search engine, it will find most concepts and pages that explain what you need to know, you may find some guys page in Amsterdam that briefly comments on your topic as well but the top ten results are usually pretty accurate. I’ll get to how to use Google.com and other pages more efficiently later in this article. Wikipedia.org is another great website for looking up factual data only. If you have a question about the Russian revolution, or what bacteria are, here’s where you’ll find your answer. Which site you end up using consistently is up to you, next I’ll tell you which sites not to use.

We all know that the internet is filled with both useful data and useless data, most of us know it is also full of harmful data. Many websites will place trojans, worms, and viruses on your computer if you let them. Stay away from illegal downloads, porn and extreme violence and you should be safe, but there are some of these concerns with search engines as well. Some things to avoid:

If you get more than the occasional popup, dump that site. One popup every other visit or so is probably just a way for the site creator to make some cash, no harm in that. Some sites however flood your screen with multiple popups, or one every time you click anything. These sites may be flooding you in hopes of you accidentally clicking the wrong thing at the wrong time and downloading something nasty. You may not even know it’s there, but they do and whatever they’re doing it can’t be good for you.

If the results come back as porn, no matter what you search for, you don’t want that, well maybe you do.

The last type of site I suggest you avoid are sites such as askjeeves.com, these sites are quality sites in that they don’t have malicious intents. If you use the tips I’ll show you next, you just won’t have a use for sites like askjeeves.com. AskJeeves.com uses other search engines and finds results for you. A great idea for those who are inadequate at searching for themselves, and there is no shame in that, most people are like that. You will no longer need this feature as you will be an expert searcher in a couple more paragraphs.

There are a number of techniques that I use quite successfully to find information, and none of them include breaking thumbs or knees.

The first is put your search in quotes (or search for the exact phrase). You may not get any hits at all, but if you get some they should pretty much be exactly what you’re looking for. Of course this tip won’t always be useful, especially if you’re searching for a single word. If I’m searching for something specific, like “my hard drive is making noise”, I always search for the phrase I want in quotes first. If that doesn’t work I either remove the quotes, or shorten the phrase. Results typically include message boards when you search with quotes, but they are a great source of information, links and all!

Message boards are fantastic, you’ll often be able to find someone who had the same problem, or wanted the same information as you, but he posted a question three months ago and now there are ten answers. You get the same information as him, but now, not in three months. Often message boards will have links to sites that answer your question as well, that way you don’t have to rely on trusting some guy on the internet, like me.

Think outside the box when entering your search terms. Try the obvious first, but if you find yourself stumped, expand your search to include things that are related to what you want to know. For example if you’re interested in knowing more about General Lee, but all you can find when you search for it is the Dukes of Hazard, try searching for the Civil War, or army generals. This is the single most important skill to have when searching for obscure information.

The easiest way to search for something is to let someone else search for it. There are sites such as askipedia.com that will do this for free. It won’t be as quick as doing it yourself, they have a 24 hour guarantee, but it will be much easier. You won’t have to do much work at all, and they may come up with better results anyway.

Practice makes perfect so get out there and experiment. Search of a specific topic and see how many different searches will return the same results, you’ll be surprised.

Joe DeClara, is a researcher/writer for Askipedia.com. A question isn't just something that you have answered, it's a chance to learn something new, and what is more important than expanding our area of knowledge. Come learn with us, all you need is a question.

http://www.askipedia.com

Searching The Internet Without Search Engines

Writen by Thad Collins

The World Wide Web contains more than ten million websites with thousands more being added daily from all over the world, and search engines are tasked with presenting the most relevant pages based on the search criteria entered. Finding a large and popular site like www.irs.gov is easy because it is related to a large agency, but a small site like mine www.consumermortgagereduction.com would be impossible without the use of search engines. The task of finding a website that relates to a specific subject would be almost without the use of the search engine, yet they perform this task with relative ease using tools that may be unknown to most users of search engines.

The first of these tools utilize by search engines are web-crawlers; they search sites based on meta-tags, or the hidden descriptions of the site encoded in the head of the web page. By using web-crawlers to spider websites, the search engine does not have to search the entire webpage to return results, just the first few lines of code. The majority of the code web-crawlers spider is contained in the head section or top of the web page, and search engines use this information to list relevant search terms results.

Meta-bots and Google-bots are used by search engines in the same way that web-crawlers are deployed, and the only difference is that bots read the first lines of text that is visible on the browser of the user. Meta-bots and Google-bots are useful in providing content oriented sites with a quick description of the site, and is use to match the relative words in a search engine query.

The indexer is not a search engine par say, for example the largest indexer is Yahoo, which is not a search engine like Google that is a true search engine. A true search engine uses keyword searches to find website, whereas an indexer stores a link to sites based on categories. To submit a website for inclusion into an indexer the submitter has to find a relevant category that matches their website, but to submit to a search engine they only have to submit the site Universal Resource Listing or URL and the search engine deploys its web-crawler or bots to index the site.

The search engine has become an intricate part of life, especially in the lives of students that utilize the web for research. Without the search engine the search for sites that contain the terms being searched for would almost be impossible to locate in a world of millions of websites.

About The Author

Thad Collins is the owner of Consumer Mortgage Reduction Service a company that specializes in providing business programs to entrepreneurs that want to start a Biweekly Equity Acceleration and Auditing business. For more information visit: http://www.consumermortgagereduction.com

Searching The Internet For Information The Google Way

Writen by Sandra Stammberger

The Internet today is an ever growing database of knowledge. But as with almost anything in life there are some negative things attached to this aspect of Internet.

First, the Internet is not an ordinary encyclopedia, i.e., an organized knowledge database. The Internet is more like a disorganized database to which everyone can contribute. Because of the diverse and widespread information input and the requirement to find specific information when one needs it, there is a need to bring some sort of organization to the Internet community. Today there are web directories and search engines as two of the most useful mechanisms responsible for bringing order to the Internet.

Web directories organize links to many places on the Internet where information about a specific topic can be found. Web directories can have a general or topic specific focus and are usually organized into several categories based on the topic. Web directories are good sources of information if they are well-maintained with regular updates. They are usually maintained better by human actions than by automated software. Computers still cannot determine the relevancy of certain text as effectively as humans. A good example of a human edited directory is dmoz - Open Directory Project, (http://www.dmoz.org). It is the largest and most comprehensive human-edited directory on the Internet, maintained by thousands of volunteer editors.

Search engines are yet another tool that helps you find information on the Internet. There are many search engines on the Internet but the biggest and the most popular are Google, AOL/Netscape, Lycos and MSN. Some of them also have their own web directories, which are often comprised of dmoz data combined with their own data.

Search engines, however, are different from web directories. They do not categorize links to web places like web directories do but they allow users to "search the internet" using specific search terms. However, it should be noted that what is really being searched at the moment you submit your inquiry (in the form of a search term) is, in fact, a database. These databases are constantly updated and upgraded with so called 'search engine spiders' which search the Internet all the time looking for new and recently updated websites.

So what search engines can help you do is to find which pages contain, and are the most relevant to, the search term you have used. For determining the relevancy of a page to the search term, they use complex algorithms which are not completely revealed to the public. The reason for this is that these algorithms, once known to public, could then be used to adjust a site's ranking, ignoring the fact that the content of the website must be relevant to what people are searching for. Search engines want visitors to return to their websites and thus need to provide quality. This quality is relevant results for a visitor's search inquiry.

With the basic operation of web directories and search engines now explained, what are effective ways to use them to obtain relevant information?

Here are a few simple tricks that many people do not know when searching the Internet for information using various search engines. Let us look at Google, since at the moment Google (http://www.google.com) is the most popular, and thought by many the most comprehensive, search engine.

When you search for something on Google you may get a variety of results, some more and some less relevant to the original search inquiry. For example, you may end with results from various newspaper articles that merely mention the search term, but the content may be totally unrelated to the search inquiry. A good technique to minimize those unrelated results are to place "intitle:" or "allintitle:" before your search terms.

The "intitle:" option is used when you search for a single word search term and anything you write after that word will not be affected by the intitle option. So if you want a phrase to be affected by the intitle option you will use "allintitle:" instead. E.g. "intitle:cars" but "allintitle:used cars" (without the quotation marks). Note that there should be no space between the colon and your search term.

A similar effect can be accomplished with the options "inurl:" and "allinurl:" but here Google will restrict the results to show only those results where the URLs contain the word or phrase you have searched for.

If you are searching for a definition of a term, Google offers help here too. You have to type "define:" (without the quotation marks) followed by the word or words you want defined. If Google has come up with that definition on the Internet it will be displayed for you at the top of the search results. Please note that if you enter more words after "define:" Google will see those words as a phrase.

When you have a URL of a website that interests you (e.g. www.example-url.com) you can find all the websites that link to that site, all the websites related (similar) to that site and check what info Google has on that particular site.

You will use "link:" followed by the URL of your choice (e.g. "link:www.example-url.com" - without the quotation marks) when you want to find all websites that link to that site. The prefixes "related:" and "info:" are used in the same way.

Should you wish to search only a certain website, not the whole Internet, you can use "site:" following with the URL of the website you wish to search. But note that the search term here comes BEFORE the "site:" which is followed by the URL of the website. E.g., "download linux site:www.linux.org".

The only time the quotation marks are used in searching is when you are searching for a phrase and not combined with any of the above mentioned prefixes. For example, "searching the internet" with quotation marks will search for the exact phrase and "searching the internet" without quotation marks will search for the places where the words "searching", "the" and "internet" appear not strictly in that order. Logically by using quotation marks when searching you will get fewer results but more relevant ones while without the use of the quotation marks you will get more but usually less relevant results.

This explanation and these little tricks should help you use the Internet more efficiently in the search for information and should improve the quality and relevance of your search results.

About The Author

Sandra Stammberger is the owner of Insider Scripts. At Insider Script’s programmers are working around the clock to develop affordable, powerful money making scripts that will help you drive traffic to your business. http://www.insider-scripts.com.

Search Engine Wars - Quality Searches Vs Quantity!

Writen by Martin Lemieux

It is no secret that Google and Yahoo are on a continuous battle to win our hearts and get everyone to convert, but is converting someone really a matter of the quantity or the quality?

Let's take a look at some top key searches and compare them with some search engines online. I will outline a few things for each search result:

1) Search Engine

2) Number of results found

3) Quality & content of the top 10 sites

4) What you find going beyond the first 10 pages

Each section will get ranked out of 10 points for quality (information taken on August 26,2005).

Starting with my all-time favorite search term: "INTERNET MARKETING"

Google.com

- 99,000,000 results

- 10/10 on quality

- 10/10 Past 10 pages still delivers top quality results

Yahoo.com

- 281,000,000 results

- 7/10 on quality. There's no reason to list a "Hotel Marketing Firm" & "Building websites". The #1 spot was reserved for Yahoo marketing.

- 9/10 Past 10 pages, it is very generic for business, not specific.

MSN.com

- 93,661,176 results

- 10/10 on quality

- 10/10 Past 10 pages still delivers high quality results. I am surprised and give MSN two thumbs up for their attention to detail.

Moving onto the search term for "BUSINESS NEWS"

Google.com

- 627,000,000 results

- 10/10 on quality

- 10/10 Beyond 10 pages delivers high quality & local news centers.

Yahoo.com

- 1,260,000,000 results (wow)

- 10/10 on quality

- 9/10 Beyond 10 pages. There are still some sites that should never be there.

MSN.com

- 381,631,054 results

- 8/10 on quality - Some aren't related at all and brand new sites as well.

- 10/10 beyond 10 pages. Their results seem to tighten up and get better.

Let's now take some more "local" search results to see deeper and more targeted results...

Moving on to the search term for "WASHINGTON UNIVERSITIES".

I hope to find the "University of Washington" come up #1 or thereabouts.

Google.com

- 22,700,000

- 10/10 on quality (www.washington.edu is #1)

- 10/10 beyond 10 pages. The results still deliver "university" topics.

Yahoo.com

- 143,000,000 results

- 9/10 on quality - The top spot is reserved for Yahoo on Washington University in St. Louis. There seems to be a strong battle going on here on which university to list.

- 10/10 beyond 10 pages. Content is specific and relevant.

MSN.com

- 34,442,536 results

- 9/10 on quality - Again another battle going on and washington.edu is #10 tilting on the verge of page 2.

- 10/10 beyond 10 pages. All related to Washington & University living

Let's now get even more specific than that... For this search term I will be using something very local that I can relate to and give a better analysis.

Moving on to the search term for "HAMILTON ONTARIO CANADA".

Google.com

- 3,700,000 results

- 10/10 on quality - Great job

- 10/10 beyond 10 pages - Anything goes but is directly related to Hamilton.

Yahoo.com

- 14,900,000 results

- 10/10 on quality - Almost the same as Google but a couple of different choices.

- 9/10 on quality - Some results are found by keyword stuffing their pages.

MSN Local *New (http://search.msn.com/local/)

- 1,280,405 results

- 9/10 on quality - Getting some random placements & keyword stuffing

- 10/10+ beyond 10 pages - Many local companies well listed in the results.

Let's now take a look at these results as a total. Out of a possible score of 80 points, here are the total scores for each:

Google - 80 points

MSN - 76 points

Yahoo - 73 points

Total search results delivered:

Google - 752,400,000

Yahoo - 1,698,900,000

MSN - 511,015,171

And people wonder why Google is the king of searching?! But wait, without even noticing the results, as I totaled the final point standings, MSN came up in second place! In my study, I tried to be as neutral as possible.

How is it that Msn & Google have 50% the amount of results shown in Yahoo, but outrank Yahoo in quality?

In conclusion:

Even though Yahoo delivered a report stating that it has over 19 billion search items, what does it matter when you're still trying to figure out how to deliver all that content? MSN & Google seem to know exactly what to do with their results. They don't seem "off the wall" at all. If Yahoo is to step up and be crowned the search king, I really think that they need to refine the amount of search terms they have, to match the quality of search results as well.

Yahoo has major potential to outreach Google but they still have a lot of work ahead of them and by the time they figure things out, Google may even step up their game even further and wow us all on some other search plateau.

About The Author:

Martin Lemieux is the president of the Smartads Advertising Network. Smartads is dedicated to helping you expose your business online and offline.

International: http://www.smartads.info

Article Submission Website (Beta): http://www.article99.com

Copyright ฉ 2005 Smartads Advertising Network - Reprints Accepted - One link must be active in the bio.

Search Engine Visibility - The Mantra of Corporate Profitability

Writen by Arun Tibrewal

The corporate fundamentals are par excellence! The product is unsurpassable and the website is a web designer’s dream in creativity and design – but there is a vacuum – of potential online customers! – The website lacks the basic ingredient of success – Search Engine Visibility! – which is what search engine optimization is all about.

Increasing the search engine visibility is vital to any online business. To illustrate Google alone gets as many as 250 million searches a day – visualize the magnitude of the potential market out there if one were to get the all important visibility factor right!

Search engine visibility is not merely about obtaining top positions in search results – rather it is about designing, writing, conceptualizing and creating a website. This is done exclusively for the site visitors and helping them find what they are searching for using the modality of search engines – the basic navigation tool over the internet.

The concept of building the site first and focusing on the visibility factor later is like building the car first and worrying about the quality index later! This fallacy can translate into a financial loss to the Corporate amounting to thousands of dollars.

Web designing should be executed with in - built user and search engine friendly parameters.

The reason to exist for any business enterprise is profitability both financial and social. The cornerstone of financial profitability is predictably maximizing profits, which is governed by an array of management and marketing tools.

The exponential growth of the web into an ocean of information has ushered in the era of the potential online customer turning to exploring the websites.

The corporate of today then is anonymous without a corporate website. The website provides an insight to the corporate profile, information and services. A strong website without search engine visibility is an untapped potential, which can only hurt the corporate bottom line and the stakeholders. Consequently, a strong website coupled with high search engine visibility is a near invisible weapon in the hands of a dynamic corporate.

The search engines are the basic navigation aids for the potential online customer and are entrusted with the daunting task of selecting from millions of web sites and pages when responding to online queries. The search engines undoubtedly favor “search friendly” sites and this is where search engine visibility comes into play.

Search engine optimization and increasing the visibility is then the order of the day if the corporate visibility is to sustain and co – exist.

The search engine centric approach cannot be utilized in isolation. It should ideally strike a delicate balance between being a search engine friendly and a user-friendly website.

Increase that Search engine visibility and watch the queries pour in, then work on the conversion index for without the potential customer queries there will be no conversion Index!

Arun Tibrewal is an online marketing promotions specialist since 1998 and owner of I-wayhost - Web Hosting and its network sites. I-wayhost is dedicated to provide top class hosting services with there straight forward plans. Permission is granted to reprint this article as long as the resource box should keep intact with the following links.

(Customized billing solutions)

(Online Marketing Blog)

Search Engine Visibility

Writen by Michael Davison

No longer is Internet Marketing just for the gurus, the big players and advertisers, the web has grown into a lot of SME businesses ''SME small to medium enterprises'' that can now afford the technology to design/develop Websites, host and sell products online within the e-commerce business arena. Internet marketing online for the smaller business can be a costly state of affairs! We all know the areas: PPC Pay Per Click, search engine submission, SEO Search Engine Optimisation etc, can be a dark jungle of pitfalls or should I say money loss $$$$

There are some very simple techniques that a lot of Internet marketing companies would rather keep secret and make you pay for through expensive consultancy services, I do know the struggle some of the smaller online business owners have with Internet Marketing.

A lot is made of PPC Pay Per Click, it really is a solution for short-term campaigns, or a new product or promotion you instantly want your prospects to see, Google Adwords and Yahoo’s Overture can be costly! There are ways to get a natural search listing through organic SEO Search Engine Optimisation.

I would like you to go through the check list below and answer some honest questions about your website, the following steps are all organic SEO techniques.

Search Engine Visibility Check List

1.Are you creating web pages with content your target audience is genuinely interested in reading?

2.Does your content contain highly focused keyword phrases?

3.Are you optimising your web pages for at least three to five keywords at a time?

4.Does each optimised page contain a unique title?

5.Are you using keywords in your title tags?

6.Are your most important keywords above the fold (the top of your web page) and throughout each optimised page?

7.Are you using keywords within hypertext links?

8.Does each optimised page contain a unique meta tag description?

9.Does each optimised page contain a unique meta tag keyword list?

10.Do your graphic images contain descriptive keywords within the alt text?

11.Does your website have a sitemap to assist visitor navigation?

12.Do you have a secondary XML sitemap designed for search engines (see XML sitemap generator http://www.seo4internet.com/seotools.htm)

13.Are your optimised pages placed within the root directory of your website?

14.Do you have a dedicated reciprocal link page set-up? I cant stress enough about a well managed reciprocal link program, back links connecting to your website are key to your websites Internet exposure.

15.If you are an e-commerce retailer are you using “Froogle”, the Google free UK price comparison service, with searches by keyword, which can then be broken down by category and ordered by price?

16.Does your domain name contain keywords? (Domain highlighting) For any future domains you may purchase make sure the URL has the relevant keyword/keywords in relation to what your business is about!

My name is Michael Glyn Davison I have over 10yrs background experience within the fields of Internet Business Development, Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation and ICT Project Management. Focused on Internet business strategies to take business forward and gain a more competive commercial edge, enhanced Internet visibility, stronger search engine presence, higher revenues and deeper market penetration.

Visit my website at http://www.seo4internet.com

Search Engine Updates vs. SEO

Writen by Bruce Zhang

Webmasters always anxiously wait for a search engine update. Those who rank well want to see their sites
get even better. Those who didn't do well expect a major boost. Those whose sites get de-indexed anticipate
a major comeback. Those who just started new sites bet on their sites will make into the first page of
search engine result pages (SERPs) for their targeting keywords. Of course, not everyone will be happy about
the results of search engine updates. After all, search engine traffic is a zero-sum game - someone loses
and someone gains. Then, the webmasters start preparing for next update.

The Business Reasons Behind The Major Updates

All major search engines claim that they strive to present search results to users with the highest quality. But
the business of search engine is business. What they won't tell us is that there're many business reasons for
every major search engine updates. Search engine traffic is hot commodity - it's free and has higher conversion rate
since the searchers are very close to make their buying decisions. The downside of the search traffic for webmasters
is that they don't have control at all. Your sites may be ranked #1 today, but nowhere next day.

Search engine companies will, no doubt, use the search engine traffic to maximize the values for their stakeholders. Google's Feb. 2 update
(allegra update or Superbowl update) once again shocked the webmaster community like last Florida update. The noticeable change
in Superbowl update is that well-established sites rank well even for specific keywords that aren't even highly
relevant to their pages. You may think the move is to fight spams and improve the quality of SERPs. That's only part of the
story. The results of the update is that the websites of well-established corporations (with never ending press releases)
will get a major traffic boost from Google. Google does this by algorithm changes, not manual manipulations.

If we think search engine traffic from Google is really an incentive to try it free before you buy. This time, Google decides to
lure the major corporations to test the benefits of search traffic. Major corporations will likely increase their spending
in online advertising and those news agencies may even drop their law sues against Google if they see the traffic from Google
justifies that their sites benefit from including in Google index database.

Is this the real driving force behind last update? Only Google knows. If you own Google, however, you will do the exactly the same.

Will this negatively impact the user experience? - maybe and maybe not. What is the real difference between the #1 spot
and the site that ranks #100? - the backlinks. Backlinks don't alter the quality of a page at all.

When they say technology, they mean business. Major technology changes are always driven by business needs. It has nothing to
do with "good" or "bad".

Strategies to Cope with search Engine Updates

The Internet and the Web was once hailed as the new medium and the new opportunity for small business and site owners.
They will be disappointed as big three peek into fortune 500 companies's deep packets. There're strategies they can use to
cope with the search engine updates, however.

1. Create a portfolio of website using different SEO techniques. If some of your sites get hammered in a update the rest may benefit
from the update.

2. Generate traffic from all major search engines.

3. Use the search traffic to build loyal user bases.

4. Build sites similar to the sites of well-established companies. The tags, on-page, off page optimization
techniques will become less and less important as major corporations aren't interested in those types of things that geek webmasters
are interested.

Speculation on Coming Updates

The next Google update is around the corner. I won't expect any noticeable change. If Google decides to let big apples try
search traffic free. They will need a couple of months to realize the values of the search traffic.

There will be major re-distribution of search traffic in 3 or 6 months. If the same group of major corporations always get huge
amount of free traffic from Google. They won't bother to open their wallets. The major traffic distribution may be from one group of major
corporations to another. The search traffic will unlikely sift back to small sites.

Copyright Bruce Zhang 2005

Bruce Zhang operates a website http://www.4th-media.com that automatically aggregates and categorizes
SEO news, new articles, and forum threads from over 50 sources daily ( http://www.4th-media.com/newsbot/ ) to help webmasters and SEO professionals to keep up with the latest development in search engine marketing. The website also offers original thoughts on SEO.

Search Engine Traffic: Winning With Content

Writen by Usiere Uko

Targeted traffic is the lifeblood of any online business. The best source of free-targeted traffic to your site is the search engines. To be visible at the search engines, you have to appear in the first three or so pages of the search engine result pages (SERPS). The quest for attaining high rankings at the search engines has spawned a whole industry, the search engine optimization (SEO) world.

The long-term strategy to succeed at the search engines is to focus on adding unique content to your site, consistently. Visitors to search engines are looking for content, and if you provide it, you drive considerable traffic to your site.

There are a lot of factors that come into play in attaining high rankings at the search engines. Your domain name, title, meta and alt tags play a role as well as incoming links etc. The weight of Page Rank (PR) in Google algorithms has been a matter of ongoing debate and speculation in the SEO world. Studies have reported low PR sites getting high rankings in SERPS while high PR sites pant at the bottom.

While the weight of other factors in overall site rankings are debatable, there is no controversy as to the role of content. It wins the marathon. Google rode to the top on the wings of content, serving relevant content to searchers. To remain at the top, Google is constantly tweaking its ultra secret algorithms that ensure that relevant content sites rank high in its SERPS.

Some webmasters fall into the trap of focusing on a few major keywords, and going to war with them, instead of diversifying their keyword base by constantly adding new unique content. As thousand of sites go up everyday around the world, it becomes increasingly difficult to win the search engine war for your favorite but highly competitive keywords. Instead of dissipating energy over winning in highly competitive keywords, as you add more content, your keyword base increases and you begin to show up tops for non-competitive keywords.

As you continue to add more content, the trickle of visitors becomes a flood and before you know it, your inner pages begin to draw in considerable traffic. Instead of becoming fixated by the front door (home page), you begin to get hundreds and eventually thousands of visitors that land at your site through your content pages, and eventually get to visit your home page. If you look at your content pages a fish net, the more unique content you add, the more you spread the net, and the more fish you catch.

Developing excellent content for your site does not only bring in visitors, but webmasters too, looking for valuable content to complement their site themes. Quite a number of them will link to you without asking for a link back. This boosts your link popularity and PR, for what it is worth, and enhances your search engine rankings.

By creating an excellent content site, you are creating a valuable resource for surfers and search engines, and they will reward you appropriately. Surfers will reward you by delivering your most wanted response (MWR), be it to place an order, click through to your affiliate merchant sites etc. Search engines reward you with high rankings, which mean more traffic. On the whole, you end up building an online brand and become recognized as an expert in your field. This opens other doors: speaking engagements, partnerships, adverts and endless possibilities.

It all started with focusing on your visitors, and consistently adding valuable content until your site becomes a one-stop resource center for your area of interest.

To win with content, you have to be very patient. It does not happen overnight. Low content well-optimized sites will initially overtake you. It may take anything from three months to one year or more, before you begin to see results, especially if you factor in Google’s sandbox effect. If you keep at it and never give up or lose focus, you will begin to see visitors from search engines begin to show up in your traffic logs. It starts as a trickle and builds up gradually. If you check out the search engine for your rankings for that keyword, you will be pleasantly surprised to see that you begin to show up in the SERPS, maybe attain page one.

Your days of obscurity are over. This is not the time to go to sleep. Keep doing justice to your subject matter. Continue adding unique valuable content. Become the preferred destination for surfers looking for content on that subject matter. The world will make a beaten path to your door.

Stay focused.

Usiere Uko is the webmaster of the Financial Freedom Inspiration website and editor of the monthly Financial Freedom Inspiration Newsletter, a free ezine to inspire you to exit the rat race and fulfill your God given dreams. To subscribe or visit the site, please visit http://www.financial-freedom-inspiration.com. He is also webmaster of http://www.newdawninspiration.com

Search Engine Traffic Myths, Time Wasters, and Pitfalls

Writen by Michael Turner

Everyone wants to increase their rankings with the search engines and because of this there is a ton of information available on how to go about it. Unfortunately, while some of this information is real, there is just as much or more information that is outdated, wrong, and a complete waste of time, money and energy on your part. So, you can read the following and learn about a few of the myths and pitfalls people believe about search engines and in the future you can continue to educate yourself from reputable sites that provide accurate and truthful information.

Myth #1 - Permanent Position

It takes a lot of effort to get a top ranking with the big search engines, but for some reason people believe once they reach this level of success it is permanent, almost like a prize they have earned. However, if you want to keep your prize, or top search placement, you will have no time to celebrate because your site can be bumped from the top list in minutes, hours, or it could be days or weeks. If you do not maintain your website and work on optimizing it every day and making it better, you will be eventually knocked off the list.

Myth #2 - All Search Engines

Another funny myth and pitfall many newcomers to the web fall into is that you must get your website submitted to all of the existing search engines in order to optimize your traffic and get more sales. However, the amount of time and effort you would need to put into this will more than likely outweigh its benefits. You want to make sure your page is indexed in Google, Yahoo, MSN, and other similar large and popular search engines. This is where most of your traffic will come from and where you want to be.

Myth #3 - High Rankings are Easy

Getting a high ranking is not easy, it is actually very hard. People want you to think it is easy to get a top ranking, but in actuality it requires a lot of effort, time, money, and dedication to get a top search engine ranking and maintain it. This is because all of the search engines are looking for something different, websites are changing on a daily basis with new sites, new information, and the like. SO, as you can see, all this change makes it difficult and unpredictable to get a high ranking and maintain it without a lot of concerted effort.

There are many pitfalls and myths that are associated with search engines and increasing your traffic. What you need to keep in mind is nothing is automatic or easy. This is a business and it will require you to put forth the effort and time your website needs if you want to be number one or at least among the best.

Michael Turner reveals his foolproof way to increase website traffic in his free 7 part mini-series. Grab it free right now at http://www.powertraffictactics.com/

Search Engine Traffic Domination - How to Turn the Search Engines into Your 24/7 Salesmen

Writen by Michael Turner

Getting your website returned by the search engines as a high result is a significant goal by most webmasters because higher search results means higher traffic and revenues. However, there are some tips you can utilize to help your website gain better rankings by the search engines and ways to turn the search engines into your 24/7 salesmen. The following suggestions, if followed, will help you get better rankings by the search engines and more traffic to your website.

Suggestion #1 - Keywords

Using keywords on your website is vital to your search engine rankings, it is as simple as that. The reason for this is people search the search engines for keywords looking for specific information. If those keywords are present in your Meta tags, titles, and beginnings of paragraphs, then you will have a higher ranking by the search engines than if not. However, you should definitely make sure that you know what keywords are best for your market and your web page because misuse can cause you problems.

Suggestion #2 - Links

The amount of links on the Internet that pointing to your site will greatly enhance the ranking your website receives by the search engines. The reason for this is that search engines search for particular keywords and then the sites with links. The sites with the appropriate keywords and the most links get the best rankings. Because of this you need to be concerned about having links all over the net to improve your rankings, and let the search engines drive traffic to your site for free.

Suggestion #3 - No Frames

Do not use frames on your website if you want the search engine to promote your site. The reason for this is that most search engines do not support frames and even if the first page of your site gets indexed, the others probably won’t. Without all of your web pages indexed the search engines won't be able to appropriately promote your site.

Suggestion #4 - No Spamming

At all costs do not spam, not in any way, shape, or form. All search engines look down upon spamming and do not index spammers. Even worse, search engines ban them or blacklist them for life. You obviously do not want to get your site blacklisted for life because that will ruin a major method for driving traffic to your site. So, simply avoid spamming in any context of the word.

When you follow these basic principles you will allow the search engines to do most of your work for you. When you give the search engines exactly what they want, they will return your site as a high return and you will get more traffic as a result.

Michael Turner shows you exactly how to increase web site traffic in his free 7 part mini-series. Grab it today at http://www.powertraffictactics.com/

Search Engine Tips & Tricks: Create a Robots Text File for Your Web Site

Writen by Sandra Waggett

Search engines index millions of web sites to generate the search results they return for key words. They do this using “spiders”.

Most search engines have their own spider that crawls around the web looking for web pages. Spiders are also known as “robots” because they are simply tiny little programs that run automatically, looking for web pages and recursively traveling through the embedded text links to index them.
Most robots look for a robots.txt file in the top-level directory of your web site, also known as the “root” where your home page is located on the web server.

The robots.txt file is a simple text file created in a basic text editor, like Notepad. It allows you to control what the spider is allowed to access and what it is not allowed to access or index.

The format of the basic robots.txt file is pretty simple:

User-Agent: [Spider Name]

Disallow: [File Name]

For example, to allow ALL robots complete access to your web site, your robots.txt file will look like this:

User-agent: *

Disallow:

The asterisk is a “wild card” character that represents ALL robots. Leaving the Disallow line blank indicates to the robots, that nothing on the site is disallowed.

The next example bars all robots from the cgi-bin (where your scripts are typically located), images directories, and the portfolio directories:

User-agent: *

Disallow: /cgi-bin/

Disallow: /images/

Disallow: /portfolio/

Note: You should use a separate Disallow line for each directory or individual file.

In this example, you may wonder why you would want to disallow a robot from indexing your portfolio directory.

If you are a photographer and you have thumbnail images on a portfolio page that link to enlargement pages launched in a pop-up window, you may not want those pop-up pages indexed. These are called “dead-end” or “orphaned” pages because only the enlarged image appears on the page with no contact info or menu links back to the main site. If the visitor entered your site on one of these pages, they would have nowhere to go and no way to contact you.

For a live example, check out www.AnJPhotography.com and look at her wedding portfolio. When you click on an image, it opens in a new window. The page in the new window is a “dead-end” page. A robots.txt file can keep search engines from indexing these “dead” pages so you don’t leave site visitors stranded.

This example keeps googlebot (the Google spider) from getting at the
private.htm file:

User-agent: googlebot

Disallow: private.htm

When you create your robots.txt file it is extremely important that you use a basic text editor (like Notepad) and NOT a word processing application like Microsoft Word. Applications like Microsoft Word can insert hidden characters that may make your robots.txt file unreadable. After you post your robots.txt file to the web server, you can validate it to make sure it is properly formatted. There are several free validators on the web. Here is one:
http://www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/robotcheck.cgi

There are several advantages and some disadvantages of having the robots.txt file in your root directory. Protocol requires that all search engine robots start indexing your web site with the robots.txt file. This is the default entry point for robots if the file is present. Major search engines will never violate the Standard for Robots Exclusion. This is the primary reason it should be there. Beyond that, it can help with your search engine rankings when used correctly, and it can keep dead pages on your web site from being indexed. The primary disadvantage is that the robots.txt file may be viewed by nefarious individuals on the web, so you never want to use the robots.txt file to try to hide sensitive pages or directories on your web site (like passwords or private information).
For more information about the robots.txt file and complete list of robots, visit the following web site: http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/robots.html

Sandra Waggett is the founder and principal designer of MSW Interactive Designs LLC (MSW-ID) major products and websites. MSW-ID provides custom website design, hosting, ecommerce and online marketing solutions to nearly 400 small business clients nationwide. MSW-ID helps small business professionals achieve an effective Internet presence.

Prior to founding MSW Interactive Designs LLC, she spent nearly 5 years working as a Senior Engineer for BAE Systems on the Lockheed Martin Mission Systems Team in Colorado Springs, CO.

While with BAE, she was the training lead for the proposal phase of the Integrated Space Command and Control (ISC2) program. In this role, she authored the 10 year training plan for the proposal and developed web-based training prototypes for presentation to to the Government decision makers.
Sandy earned her Master of Arts of degree from the University of CO, Colorado Springs, in Curriculum and Instruction, Corporate Track. Her specialties include web design, interface design, instructional design, and computer-based training development.

Search Engine Tips & Techniques

Writen by Terri Seymour

As you are building your site or getting your site built, you need to do as much as you can to ensure higher rankings in the search engines. There are a variety of little tips and techniques you can use to do this.

Meta tags & keywords - Meta tags are included in the
section of your site and are read by the search
engines. The two most important kind are "description"
and "keywords" Description is a description of the
content of your site and keywords is a list of keywords
relevant to the page.

Research what people are searching for and use those
searches (relevant to your site) in your meta tags.
A great little keyword search tool is available here:
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

Find more great info on meta tags here:
http://www.metamend.com/search-engines-meta-tags.html

Site content- Make sure you match your site content with
your meta tags. Also, keep updating your site content.
Search engines love new content. Try adding articles to
your site or doing a blog. Do NOT let your site get old
and stale!

Blogging - A blog is basically a journal that is posted
on a web site. A person who blogs is a blogger. Blogs
are usually updated daily or every other day. Blogs
can be used on personal or business websites. Blogs
can draw a lot of targeted traffic to your site. You
can create your own blog here:
http://www.blogger.com/start

Site map - A site map is simply a page that lists all
the links on your site. This makes it easy for the
search engines to spider your site. A site map page is
a good navigational tool for your visitors as well.
It contains links to all important pages of your web
site and it gives your visitors an overview of your
web site structure all in one page. Take a look at
these well designed site maps:

http://www.ireland.com/about/map/

http://www.google.com/sitemap.html

Links page - Having a quality reciprocal links page
can benefit your site in several ways. First of all,
it gets your site listed in more places on the net
which can bring you more traffic. More and more major
search engines will rank your pages higher when there
are more links to your site. Also, quality links can
help the spiders find you more easily each week,
therefore keeping you indexed longer and dropped less
frequently. Take a look here for an example of a link
exchange page:

http://www.seymourproducts.com/exchange/index.shtml

Articles - Not only do you want to post relevant articles
on your site, but writing and submitting them to other
sites will help you as well. Posting new articles on
your site will keep your content fresh and new so the
spiders like your site. It will also keep your visitors
coming back for more.

Writing and submitting articles can increase your link
popularity and bring you more traffic as well as helping
your search engine ranking. A few places to submit
your articles is listed below:

http://webmarketingspecialists.com/articlesubmit.html

http://wahmteam.com/submissionform.shtml

http://www.home-business-tips-newsletter.com/articles/submit.html

http://www.webpronews.com/submit.html

http://www.creativehomemaking.com/submit_article.shtml

Using these techniques and others will greatly improve
your rankings in the search engines and bring you more
targeted traffic which in turn can increase your sales
substantially! For more info on search engine tactics,
visit http://www.searchengines.com/

Find tons more tips, information and articles at
http://www.SeymourProducts.com.

Terri Seymour and
her husband Terry also offer a no-cost, non-MLM home
business opportunity. They strive to help you build a
successful home business. Take advantage of the tips,
support, resources, and more for your home & business.

Search Engines... What They LOVE and HOW-TO Get Them To Come CRAWL Your Website

Writen by Cory Threlfall

Search Engines... one of the MOST tricky marketing tactics of them all online simply because the SE's are forever changing the rules of Website Optimization.

Meaning... what used to work "Yesterday" might not work "Today".

Now, with that said, for the remainder of this article I want to let you in on what SE's 'LOVE' and will thank you for everytime you hand them over some.

It's really not much of a mystery to those of you who have been marketing online for some time But for those of you who haven't this is something you should seriously consider getting into for more reasons than ONE.

OKAY. Enough of the small talk. I'm going to dive straight in and get to the point Right Now on what SE's 'LOVE' and it's simply...

... CONTENT!

That's right, "Content" is what SE's 'LOVE' and are continually crawling the Internet for Day and Night 24/7/365 and will gladly pay your website a visit if you supply it on a Daily, Weekly or Monthly basis.

The more often you supply "Content" and post it on your website the more often SE spiders will come CRAWL and "index" your website pages.

The question is... "do you write Articles?"

If you don't, maybe you might want to consider it.

Now that you know what SE's 'LOVE', your probably wondering what the BEST way is to get the SE spiders attention to get them to come on over and CRAWL your website.

Well, first off I would recommend you submitting your Articles(whether you have some already or plan on starting) to 'Article Directories' simply because SE spiders are constantly CRAWLING these websites since they are SO full of content and are updated usually on a daily basis.

You can find them by simply typing in "article directories" into your favorite search engine's search field.

The other great thing about 'Article Directories' is they usually have HIGH 'PR'(Popularity Ranking) which is another KEY thing SE's take into consideration which means once you've posted your articles on that directory or directories, the spiders will eventually 'Find' your article, crawl that page within that Article Directory and follow the corresponding links within your "Resource Box" back to your website.

The more article directories you post to, the more chances you'll have at getting some SE spider activity on your website, crawling and indexing your webpages.

This is just ONE of the ways to get SE spiders to come visit your website and only ONE reason WHY you should submit your Articles to 'Article Directories' but that's another article within itself.

For the remainder of this article I'm going to share with you a way to get SE spiders to come visit your website within the next 24 to 48 hours to have a look around.

Are you ready?

BLOGS!

Blogs are simply the Fastest WAY to get the SE spiders attention to come and take a look simply because Blogs contain "Content" in the form of "Articles" and/or "Reviews or just general feedback from your readership.

The more often you post to your Blog the more often SE spiders will come visit.

The reason IS... everytime you post to your Blog it'll PING(Ping is simply a signal being sent out telling the SE that there's NEW content to come and index at your Blog) ...the SE's(Not all of them) ...to come take a look.

When they come visit, they'll spider your Blog and will follow all corresponding links within.

Remember the "Resource Box" located at the end of a article(you can use mine as an example) with all the authors website information and URL. This will come in handy so make sure You carefully think about what you put their with your articles.

Now, with that said, I wrote an earlier article explaining how to set-up a Blog to get Yahoo! and MSN to come visit. It's really quite simple, so don't worry yourself to much about it being difficult.

All you need to really focus on is supplying the "Content".

Here's the link if you wish to read the article:
http://www.internetwondersezine.com/article_13.html

I also wrote another article explaining what Blogs are for those of you who aren't very familiar with them yet.

Here's the link if you wish to read the article:
http://www.internetwondersezine.com/article_12.html

Now, there are many other ways to get SE spiders to come visit your website but these two methods I mentioned above are in my mind the quickest.

So, there you have it, "Search Engines... What They LOVE and HOW-TO Get Them To Come CRAWL Your Website", so go NOW and give it a try.

Looking for MORE Information or Webmaster Resources on How-To create Articles? Look NO Further! Go shop Cory Threlfall's TOP Rated CBmall that carries over 10,000 of the Internets BEST 'Information Products' available Online. webmaster resource site

Search Engines – What are They Really?

Writen by Karl Glantschnig

Search engines have the main purpose to index thousands of millions of web pages. Once you look for a word or a phrase, the search engine scans automatically the entire database where it has the stored pages indexed and it returns to you as a result a list containing the most relevant results for that search.

The only criteria the number of pages found and their relevance depend on are the capabilities of the used search engine.

Search engines appeared somewhere in the early 90’s when Alan Emtage, a student at the McGill University in Montreal created the first search engine like too. It was called Archie. Its purpose was to search through the information available on the FTP servers. The files on these servers were available for anyone, but one couldn’t use them unless knowing the exact address of the server and of the file. Archie looked through this database and gathered lists of files for each server. It was used by people to match phrases and characters in order to take them to the server address the file they were looking for was on.

Archie is now an old method, but its creation was the first step in the search engine rally that is going on now. As the public grew more and more aware of the existence of the internet, the need for a search tool became visible.

So, first there were some software robots, using the concept of spidering to index the web, following links from one site to the other and saving the text from all visited websites in a database.

Between 1994 and 1995 three important search engines appeared: Lycos, WebCrawler and AltaVista. At about the same time Yahoo! appeared but Yahoo! is not a search engine. Yes, it has a search engine function, but yahoo is firstly a director or data and articles, providing different services as email and hosting. Recently yahoo has signed contracts with other search engines as Google for both of them to provide more search results.

Today search engines are in a continuous competition. There are thousands of search engines, but just a few big ones. This small group of top search engines is responsible for more than 90% of online searches.

But the question arises: if search engines are free and they cam be used by everyone what keeps them financially alive? The answer to the question is very simple: advertising and traffic. The more visits they have, the bigger the traffic then the more money they can make providing promotion space.

Search engines are competing to develop the best formulas and algorithms to evaluate the web pages accordingly to the keywords provided.
If someone is looking for a top position in search engines, then he has to be sure that his site is projected in such a way that search engines would find it easily, being relevant for the keywords and phrases the owner wants it to be found by.

Discover How To Gain Instant Access Right Now Today To: unlimited Private Label Right Articles and Products (Software & e-books)- You Can Sell Starting Today - Don't Leave Money On The Table! Make More Money From The Same Number Of Visitors By Offering Unique New Product Each Month! http://www.webcontentclub.com

Copyright 2006 – Karl Glantschnig. Editor PMCezine... You are free to reproduce this article as long as no changes are made, the author's name is retained and the link to our site URL remains active.

Search Engines vs. Comparison Websites in the Hotel Industry

Writen by Liam Lyon

Search engines such as Google are failing on 2 fronts:

1. They are failing users because they struggle to deliver high quality search results for people looking to purchase goods and services.

2. They are failing businesses because the pay-per-click advertising model is outdated; as a consequence a large part of a company's advertising budget is wasted.

A new generation of comparison websites are emerging that give users a level of sophistication to searches for goods and services. They also use the pay-per-sale advertising model which improves efficiency for businesses.

I will use the hotel industry to demonstrate these claims.

BUSINESS-RELATED AND INFORMATION SEARCHES

Google searches can be categorised into two types; information searches and business-related searches.

Information searches

Information searches don’t normally end in a sale. They will have very few or no sponsored links in the search results. The results obtained are of a good quality and the user will usually find what they want within the first few sites viewed. This aspect of Google will not change. Google will always be excellent for information searches.

Business-related searches

Business-related searches are ones that usually end with a sale. They will have a large number of sponsored links in the results. The user can be overwhelmed by the number of relevant sites returned and spend a long time viewing each site to see which one has the cheapest prices. The results may be distorted by unscrupulous webmasters who have used underhand tricks to manipulate their site to the top of the list.

ADWORDS AND SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION (SEO)

There are 2 ways in which a commercial website owner can get their web pages into the Google search results. The first is by bidding for “search keywords” in Google Adwords and appearing as a “sponsored link”. The second is by performing search engine optimisation (SEO) on the website and hope that this will improve your position in the general search results.

Adwords

Adwords use the pay-per-click advertising model. Adwords can be an expensive way to market a website. Many companies will bid on the same “search keywords” pushing up the price. The company that bids the highest price will appear as the top sponsored link. The next highest bidder will appear as the second sponsored link, and so on.

The pay-per-click model is far from perfect. There is “click fraud” where automated website software generate bogus clicks to run up large advertising bills. Just because a user clicks through it doesn’t mean that they make a purchase. Quite often the click to sale ratio can be as low as 2-5%.

SEO

SEO can also be expensive. It takes time and requires specialised knowledge that does not come cheap when contracted in. SEO, when performed to the maximum requires that every word and every link on a page be analysed and positioned correctly. A large part of SEO is also in the effort in acquiring inbound links; links from other sites to your own. To obtain high quality links from high quality sites takes a huge amount of time if done properly.

EXAMPLE: HOTEL INDUSTRY

Taking the hotel booking industry as an example we can show the ineffectiveness of Google. If you are looking to book a hotel in Paris then you may type “Paris Hotels” into Google to see what websites are available. Users now know that they have a wide choice of sites when booking hotels and the rates can vary enormously between the hotel booking companies.

The sponsored links returned with this search seem to offer the user a good choice of reputable hotel booking companies. What the user probably doesn’t know or care is that the cost to the booking company from just clicking on one of these sponsored links is as much as ฃ3.00 per click. Bearing in mind that a company may have between 20-50 clicks to get a single sale, this is a significant cost to the company. This cost has to be recouped by charging a significantly higher price. By booking a hotel through a sponsored link the user will be paying more for the hotel room than is necessary.

The normal search results will probably contain at least 1000 sites that will allow online booking of hotels in Paris. All these sites will be attempting to reach the no. 1 position. Many of the sites in the top 10 of the results would have spent considerable time, effort, and money on SEO. This cost also has to be recovered by charging a higher price. For a user to get a room at a competitive rate they will have to check dozens of separate websites.

THE FAILINGS OF GOOGLE

In summary, both the sponsored links and normal search results are unsatisfactory to the user when performing business-related searches.

The fundamental problem of Google is that it uses a single search box (containing multiple keywords) to perform its searches. There is no context, meaning or structure with these search keywords when searching the millions of websites. Google’s search algorithm works fine when processing information searches but fails on the more complex nature of business-related searches.

The websites that will eventually replace Google will have sophisticated search input pages. They will have many dropdown and text input search boxes that will be specific to the industry the user is searching in. These sophisticated search input pages will return better quality search results to the user.

Google will not be replaced by a few sites but thousands of different sites all providing specific business-related search information for specific business needs. Comparison sites will play a major part.

COMPARISON WEBSITES

Comparison websites offer an alternative to Google where the industry is very competitive and there are a large amount of homogeneous products. Comparison websites allow users to compare prices from many different companies without having to “trawl” through each site individually. They work like a specialised search engine; you enter your search input parameters, perform the search, and then click through to the website that gives you best price.

It seems that there will not just be a few comparison sites dominating the market. The trend is to make a comparison site very specific to an industry so that it can deliver better quality information to the user.

An example of such a specialised site would be a hotels comparison website that compares hotel rates from many different booking companies. The search input page would allow the user to enter a destination, arrival date, duration, room type, and even a hotel name (if the user has a specific hotel in mind). The hotel search results would show live rates that would be aggregated on hotel name so the user could see the “spread” of prices for each hotel.

A common myth about comparison websites is that they must be more expensive than going directly to the company. This is not true. The prices displayed are the same as if you had gone directly to the websites and searched them manually yourself. They deliver information on what the user wants with no bias and at no extra cost. The end result of comparison websites is that competition is increased and prices are driven down.

THE WAY FORWARD

It seems that the traditional search engine has its days numbered for business searches; especially for homogeneous products. The new generation of comparison sites are not only better for the customer in obtaining information but because they are pay-for-sale they work much better for the businesses too.

Liam Lyon runs the site
http://www.hotelScomparison.com

Save time and money on your next hotel booking.

Search Engine Success & The Google-Vision Secret

Writen by Linda Caroll

Want to know the secret to great search engine listings?
Ignore Google.

No, I'm not crazy.

Have you ever seen a horse plodding down the road wearing blinders? A lot of people see the road to good search engine listings the same way. With blinders on. They can't see anything but Google. Google is number one. They obsess on Google. They desperately want to get a good listing in Google.

That is crazy. True Google-Vision requires removing the blinders.

If you do a Google search for "Google Marketshare" you'll find some interesting numbers.

• comScore Networks says Google has 36.9% of the search market.

• eMedia says 45.85%.

• Search View agrees with eMedia.

Do you know what that means? It means that if you're obsessed with Google, you're not seeing over half the searchers on the Internet. That's pretty crazy, too.

The top four search engines are Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL.
Ignore Google. Ignore Yahoo, too. Trust me on this.

MSN loves content and they prefer a relatively flat hierarchy to your site.
For example;

BAD:

www.your-domain.com/folder/folder/folder/folder/page.html

GOOD:

www.your-domain.com/folder/page.html

www.your-domain.com/page.html

Each slash (/) represents another level in your file hierarchy. Less is more.

Make sure you have great content on your site. Submit to MSN. Then submit to AllTheWeb.com. Once you've done those two, submit some articles to article directories. Yes, just like this one.

When you've done all the above, submit just your main page to dMoz.org. Read their policies very, very carefully first. You do not want to make the submission wrong and get rejected. dMoz feeds AOL search, and you know how many members AOL has... They're like the McDonalds of ISPs.

Then, keep an eye on your website stats program. Odds are, one day you'll log in and see a little visitor named Googlebot. It works almost every time.

See, Google doesn't like websites that exaggerate their importance, stuff pages with keywords or cheat their algorithm to attempt to get to the top. Even on their website, they state that they examine the entire web when calculating results.

Looking at the web as a whole, instead of focusing on Google is true Google-Vision. It's how Google looks at the web, and it's how you need to look at the web, too.

When you stop obsessing on Google, and start working on providing good content to the rest of the Internet, Google will find you. In my experience, Yahoo won't be too far behind.

LindaCaroll.com clients have been featured in Forbes, The New York Times, People Magazine & more. You can get great
results, too. Start with the free email course, at Google-This.com
or enjoy the discounts for Ezine Article readers

This article may be reprinted in full as long as you include a live credit link to LindaCaroll.com or Google-This.com.

Search Engine Submission - What to Look for when Selecting an Australian SEO Company

Writen by Steve Szasz

Every business owner I've met has been encouraged at some point to invest in a website; often convinced with hype that if their business didn’t have a website then they might as well pack their bags and retire to the social security queue.

Hype aside, this statement is basically true. Certainly, any business deemed suitable for online marketing will miss out on a flood of new business without the incorporation of a thorough online marketing strategy.

In accepting this, you may choose to have a new website developed with all the bangs and whistles. But beware; unless your site can be found amongst the millions of web pages now shown on the Internet, your time and resources have been wasted.

That's why a Search Engine Optimiser is essential in maximising your chances of online success. Search Engine Optimisation in it's simplest form is the practice of fine tuning your website to achieve the highest possible position in the search results when a person searches for information using a search engine.

In this article I will highlight the does and don'ts of selecting a credible and effective SEO company. There are a number of points to be considered when making this decision.

Including:

Q. How can I judge if the SEO Company will produce what they say?

A. In answering this question, be aware of the following when either talking to them or reading their sales pitches.

1. No reputable SEO company will submit your website to more than 30 odd major search engines and indexes. These major search engines and directories feed their search results to the million or so other so called “search engines”. Submissions to a greater number is quite unnecessary and a certain indicator of a lack of professionalism.

2. Be wary of any claim that your site will be submitted to thousands of search engines. It is more than likely that these submissions will be made to what we call FFA websites. These are not search engines at all, but rather a kind of link exchange website. As a result, your email server may be flooded by huge amounts of unwanted email. In short, stay well away from any SEO making such claims.

3. Ask any prospective SEO to detail the successes they have had with their previous clients submissions. In being aware of these successes, your confidence in the ability of the SEO to maximise your website effectiveness will increase.

Q. How can I know if these website submissions are genuinely being done?

A. Unfortunately, in reality, you can’t. Be certain to ask for a list of search engines and directories where submissions will or have been made. Any reputable SEO company will supply you with a written monthly report highlighting the search engines to which your site has been submitted, the submission dates and progress of your website rankings. If, after 3 months, your website ranking hasn’t improved then it is more than likely that optimisation isn’t occurring and even doubtful whether the promised website submissions have even been made.

Q. How long before I can reasonably expect my search engine ranking to improve?

A. Usually, as a rule of thumb most of the major search engines will take up to 3 - 4 months before they will index your website. This is not always the case. Recently, I submitted my website to the Google Directory and indexation occurred the same day. The waiting time for indexation is unpredictable, but be prepared to allow 3-4 months.

Q. Will my SEO Company notify me when a search engine has added me to their index?

A. Yes. You should be notified within days of your website being indexed and at the very least at the end of each month.

Q. How will my SEO company optimise my website for submission to the search engines and Directories?

A. Basically, a good SEO will make your website as search engine friendly as possible. This will involve changing the text and html code behind your website. Simply, when the search engine robot enters your website it finds it very easy to determine what your website is about. The correct keywords and meta tags will have been placed within your site, to ensure that the robot is able to collect and pass off information with speed and accuracy. This results in a much improved rank for your site; higher than would ever have been achieved without optimisation.

Your SEO will also optimise each page differently so that the robot will include more than one page in the search engine. For example, if the robot comes to your homepage and it has been optimised and your primary message and keywords on that page were for new tyres then you would hope that when someone uses a keyword search for “new tyres”, your website would be within the first 30 results. But on the other hand, another page of your website may be about wheel alignments. You would certainly hope that another searcher using a search phrase "wheel aligners" would get results pointing to that relevant wheel alignment page.

Your website success is completely determined by effective search engine optimisation . It is pointless investing time and resources developing a website without consideration to how your prospective clients will find you. It is no different to burning $50 notes.

I hope you have found this short article useful and that I have helped you decide on a great SEO company. Of course, there are many more things to watch out for; but you are now aware of the main ones. Keep them in mind and you will get the results you are after.

Steve Szasz is an Australian renowned SEO and expert in the field of Website marketing in Australia. Visit Steves' website at http://www.webseo.com.au for tips and resources to successfully market your website in Australia

Search Engine Submission Software

Writen by Keith Mallinson

We all know that in order to get customers to your site, you need to market it. You need to get the word out that your site is there and it's got the products or information for your customers. Here I am, come and get me! But, how to do this is the question. One of the most effective ways is to use a search engine as a tool. More and more search engines are the ways people find websites that they visit. Once they are there, your products or information will sell itself!

Search engine submission software can help you do this. By submitting your site to search engines, you will be there when someone does a search using the keywords you set up for that website or webpage. Again, the goal is to get the customer to the site. Some of these software programs can help while others may prove to be useless. Here's a reason why. When you, yourself want to search for something on the net, where do you go? Do you use Google? Yahoo? More than likely you do. The question is, does the software you plan to spend your hard earned money on include these popular search engines?

The website software submission software claims to submit your site to many different sites. Often some of these are free for all sites or sites that generally generate no traffic besides submissions like these. So, what good does that do you? When you decide to purchase this type of software ensure that it will submit your site to useful search engines, ones that will be used and will generate traffic to your site.

By all means, having your website automatically submitted to hundreds of search engines is a great thing. But, make sure that where your site is going is actually something that will increase your hits. Do this by researching just where it is being submitted to.

Keith Mallinson is author of the article exchange newsletter, offering
subscribers up to date information on all aspects of article submissions and use
of free articles for search engine
optimization http://www.article-exchange.com

Search Engine Submission is Key to Growing Your Internet Business

Writen by Chris Robertson

One of the biggest mistakes that online Internet businesses make is that they overlook the importance of search engine rankings. Most online shoppers use search engines to find the products and services they're seeking, and a majority of people who make offline purchases first do research on the Internet. In today's era of Internet marketing, proper search engine submission may be the single most important element of a successful marketing campaign.



Without the right search engine registration strategies, your online Internet business won't draw the traffic you need or deserve. Yet, with the rapidly changing world of Internet marketing and advertising, it's virtually impossible for the average person to keep up with the industry's best practices for professional submissions. And the unfortunate reality is that the way your site is submitted to search engines will determine whether or not your website even gets included in their search databases.



This is one of those instances where the "do it yourself" approach can cost you hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of dollars in lost revenue. It's worth your investment to pay an expert Internet marketing and advertising service to perform professional search engine registration into the primary databases of the top and major high-traffic search engines and directories. The money you spend will be repaid many-fold through increased traffic to and sales in your online Internet business.



When making a decision about which company to use in order to get professional submissions to the major search engines, find one that has a professional linking service. Such an Internet marketing and advertising service will manually and professionally link your website into the primary databases of all of the major search engines and directories. They do this through submitting your website information and keywords to the best search engines. Since literally thousands of other search engines draw results from the top directories and search engines, your online Internet business will populate the results from all of these engines as well.



In order to achieve online success, professional submission and a professional linking service to search engines is a required marketing tool. When you utilize such a service, you will see not only increased traffic to your site, but also targeted traffic. This means that the quality of your traffic will increase, which will in turn lead to increased sales.



Once you no longer have to spend your time drumming up business for your website, you can spend more time performing other tasks to grow your business, like exceptional customer service, procurement of new products, and streamlining your business practices. By concentrating on those aspects of your business, and leaving search engine submission to the professionals, you'll be well on your way to realizing you business goals and objectives.

Chris Robertson is an author of Majon International, one of the worlds MOST popular internet marketing companies on the web.
Learn more about Search Engine Submission is Key or Majon's Professionals directory.

Search Engine Strategy Plan - SESP - Your Initial Plan Can Make or Break Your Future Rankings

Writen by Gavin Carlisle

What exactly is a SESP? It is something that we call the "Search
Engine Strategy Plan". In today's hectic world of the internet, with
billions of other websites and millions of competitors worldwide, to get noticed above the rest takes some serious planning. Without a strategy plan, you are just floundering wildly in the search engine seas, hoping that someone, somewhere might locate you. Search Engine Optimisation (or Search Engine Submission for that matter) is not rocket science. Nor should it take a phD or Degree in Computer Science. The simplicity of it all is hard work, research, setting goals and objectives and experimentation. As with anything, with the correct plan in place, you can achieve the results you require, and excel at that item.

Just like you would not launch a business without a business plan, nor build a
house without a blueprint, you should not plan a web marketing strategy without
first creating an SESP - (your Search Engine Strategy Plan). It is
surprisingly easy to work out a SESP. You need to first plan exactly what you
want to achieve with Search Engines. Is ranking for prime or common
keywords or keyword phrases that attracts a complete (and often unqualified)
audience, and getting complete blanket coverage important to your website, or
would you prefer to get higher ranking with alternative and defined
phrasing that attracts a more qualified customer that you know will be a quality
customer and will increase your actual conversion rates of the products or
services you are selling. What search engines are most important to your
website? What countries are you targeting? Are their specific industry
directories that would be important for your gain of qualified traffic and
leads? Plan it carefully. Plan it well. Do not rush into it. Plan before
executing! Let me say it again to make it hit home. Plan!

Once you have your SESP ready, then execute the Plan. Start your search
engine submissions, your directory submissions and work on your
linking strategies. Ensure that you follow up on the original execution and
ensure that everything is in place (much like auditing KPI's - Key Performance
Indicators - with a business plan), make adjustments where necessary and things
will start to happen. Your site will become indexed. If optimisation is
done correctly and you have a strong link strategy in place, visitors
will begin to find your website, whether via the search engines, or via the
links you have placed online with qualified linking partners. Qualified leads
and qualified customers will begin to hit your website. If your website looks
professional enough and your product is attractive enough to them, they will
turn from a lead into a customer and purchase from you. Results will happen!
Business will increase. Natural Ranking is where the REAL hidden business growth
comes from. Anyone can place a Paid Advertisement (PPC - Pay Per Click
campaign). PPC is simply finding appropriate keywords that your potential
customers would search for you with, visit Google or Yahoo, place the highest
bid on the keywords and your guaranteed exposure. But your also guaranteed a
huge click through bill! What happens if those click throughs don't actually
purchase from you? How do you pay for those PPC costs! You can answer that
question yourself.

Where talent in the SEO world really lives, is the ability to gain
natural rankings in the SERP's (Search Engine Ranking Position or Search Engine
Results Page). Answer one simple question and answer it truthfully. Are you
ready to learn and experiment? Yes that is correct! Experimentation is the core
of any SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) specialist. There are no instruction
booklets or official guides for Google or other search engines. Google's
algorithms are top secret (otherwise Google wouldn't have the stranglehold they
do!). Only select Google employees know what Google does and how it does it. The
rest of the world simply speculate, hypothesise or guestimate. Then you have the
SEO's in the industry that experiment. They theorise on current or future
changes, and have test sites that they experiment with, watching what changes
give what results. If the result is positive on their test sites, they apply
those same changes to their clients websites.

Experimentation! It is the key to
success with SEO! If you talk to an SEO and they say they
experiment, listen to them carefully and pay attention! You are onto a winner
with that SEO. The search engine game is fluid and ever changing. Your SEO must
be able to rapidly adapt to change. An SEO that is set in their ways is no more
than a person pretending to be an optimisation authority that has read a few
e-books and thinks that what they have read is the end all of SEO. If your SEO
experiments and publicly states so, then stick with them. If your SEO is set in
their ways and won't adapt, then run away. Run away fast! Find a real SEO!

Algorithms change often, and when they do, it has a fast and swift impact,
sending the SEO world into a complete uproar, often dramatically changing
rankings of websites, some dropping, some increasing. Throw the dice and watch
the result! But these changes are necessary. I hear you gasping with horror and
total disagreement. But picture this. If the changes did not happen, a few
detrimental things would take place and become embedded nightmares in our
everyday search travels. Firstly spammers would dominate. Imagine a world of
spammers completely dominating. You do a search for Zebra's in Africa or taxi
hire in London and up comes 40 top results for Viagra. But wait I searched for Zebras!

.... You understand and nod in agreement now don't you. Yes. Without change,
spammers would work out how to beat the engines and manipulate the rankings, and
natural search results would suffer and die, and you would treat your local
search engine like you do those nasty telemarketers who call you up at dinner
time wanting to sell you something you would never need. You wouldn't use them,
nor give them a second thought. Internet search and the wonderful world of
information that we now depend on daily would grind to a halt. Secondly, a
complete industry would collapse. The SEO industry. Why would you need to employ
an SEO consultant if you could simply read a manual and do it all yourself. Much
like we have gardeners, pool cleaners, office cleaners, web designers and so on,
who service our needs because we either don't have time to do the services
ourselves, we simply do not know how to do them or even because the benefits of
having these services provided to us outweighs the cost of the services, so we
have SEO consultants and a growing SEO industry.

Gavin Carlisle is a representative of SearchEngines.com.au Providing solid and free advice on the latest SEO trends and offering the use of many online Free SEO Tools to make SEO easier. Removing the myths and black hat from SEO.