Advertising Inserts

Writen by Lance Winslow

One of the best and easiest ways to advertise without having to worry about shelf life of those who would most likely use your services or buy the products from your small business is to use inserts in your local newspaper. A marketing piece might also be to insert our flyers in the daily newspaper. This usually ranges from $23.00-35.00 per thousand if we print the flyers and $25.00-50.00 per thousand if the newspaper prints them. The newspaper rarely prints flyers in house, although some do. They contract it out because their printing presses are all computerized and specialized for that industry only. Large newspapers such as The Los Angeles Times have really neat programs whereby they will mail a flyer to every residence, which doesn’t take the paper. Christmas time is a bad time to do inserts because it gets lost in all the shuffle of 20 other color catalogs of every retailer under the sun.

Under no circumstances should you do inserts on Thursdays or Sundays. On Thursdays grocery stores typically come out with their ads and on Sundays, which is usually a newspaper’s highest circulation day, all businesses try to get in. A good day is Monday, Tuesday or Saturday. Most people don’t read the paper on Fridays because it’s the weekend and they’ve got things to do. Also, you want the phone to ring on Mondays and Tuesdays since they are the slowest days for many small businesses.

Most people call on the first or second day after an ad. Over one-half call immediately and the other one-half call over the next three weeks. When the ads are designed properly, we get 0.5-4.5% market penetration (phone calls). This is three times as much as placing an ad in the newspaper. Ads in newspapers, much like the telephone book, don’t work for us very well at all. It’s a waste of money and you will be under whelmed by it’s dismal results. Weekly newspapers are good if you advertise in the service directory because the shelf life is longer. Inserts in weekly newspapers are awesome. They normally will fall into the same price range as daily newspapers. When placing an order for inserts be sure to ask which days have one to three inserts or no other inserts. This is your best choice for days and it will raise your inquires by 1-2%.

If your current newspaper advertising is not pulling for you the way you wish it were, try inserts next time. Think about it.

Lance Winslow

Advertising Has Never Been Cheaper

Writen by Vernon Stent

If you run a small business you have probably already found yourself having
to be multi-skilled in accountancy, law, interview techniques and a whole host
of other areas. If your small businesses doesn't have the resources to hire a
marketing firm, you will also need to be adept at getting your products or
services publicized.

Things are not as simple as they once were. There are so many media outlets
out there that even large marketing agencies are finding the array of
possibilities daunting. There has certainly been a shift towards digital
marketing, ranging from the now established web banner ads to RSS feeds, mobile
telephone messaging and pod casting, not to mention the use of blogs and viral
marketing. There has been a clamour to put out on line video messages as the
definition between television and internet has become increasingly blurred.

Let's be realistic. If your business cannot afford an agency, you are
unlikely to be at the cutting edge of these new technologies. Do not despair. If
you can't beat 'em then don't join 'em! As marketing spends have been stretched
more thinly across all the available media, this has left traditional outlets
struggling to win business. Print media has been hit particularly hard as have
tv and radio. This means that in these outlets it is a buyer's market with
plenty of bargains to be had.

Perhaps tv may still be out of your financial reach, but newspapers and
magazines will fall over themselves to offer one-off production facilities and
will advise on how best to get your message across. Radio is more user-friendly
as ever, offering low cost script-writing and production expertise. If you are
planning a marketing campaign on a modest budget, I would seriously consider
these options. If your company trades in a discreet locality then a joint local
radio and press campaign could be put together at little expense. You could even
put together a do-it-yourself national campaign using these traditional media.

There was a time when the use of traditional outlets may have proved
intimidating for a small business. Pick up the phone and call one of them. You
may be pleasantly surprised at the hand-holding they will offer you. Remember
that many agencies have negotiated rock-bottom prices with them and it is those
agencies that are calling the tune. Direct approaches from companies actually
offer a greater margin for print and broadcast media. Despite the fact that you
will be paying more for your column inches or broadcast minutes than an ad
agency, you will still get a bargain, especially now while these outlets are out
of fashion.

Things may not always be this way. Traditional media has seen a lot of
consolidation over recent years and this is set to continue. They are pooling
their ad-selling resources. Larger print titles are taking over smaller rivals.
Many of those remaining independent are sharing third-party agencies to sell
ads. There has also been an exaggerated swing towards new media and there is
bound to be a correction. The buyer's market will not be around for long. Like
all true markets, balance will be restored and the bargains will be harder to
find.

So, now is the time to act. Contact your local newspaper or your trade
magazine. Contact your local radio station. With their help, you can put
together your own professional campaign. While the big boys play with their new
digital ad toys, you can steel a march on your competitors using traditional
outlets. Do it now before it's too late!

Vernon Stent is marketing manager for various companies, including Arkay
Hygiene, selling Insectocutor Electric Fly
Killers. As an example listen to this radio
commercial, which was produced without the use of an ad agency.

Search Engine Optimization for Dummies

Writen by Daegan Smith

Lets face it. Search Engines rule the World Wide Web today. Anytime you want to look up some information or a product you want to buy, you put the relevant keyword in the search field of a major SE like Google. And Violแ! The efficient little engine throws up pages and pages of website URLs which carry your keyword.

SEO has become the most popular and the most effective strategy for increasing website traffic today. It gives you more exposure, pulls in more qualified visitors and helps you substantially increase your income. So, if you are a home based business owner with a serious web presence you would know the importance of attracting quality traffic to your website. Among all the strategies and tactics you can employ to attract focused web traffic to your site, optimising your website to get in top SE rankings is the most important. However to keep your rankings that way you have to be on top of what is happening in the SE industry. To understand how search engines work, spend some time at: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/0,4621,316408,00.html

Here are some great ways to optimize your site to get to the top of the SE rankings and stay that way:

1. Reciprocal links: Fish out relevant (but non-competing) websites that complement your services and products and ask them to link to your site. It’s a big hit with search engines to see a large number of sites linked to yours. However more important than quantity is the quality of the linked sites. Search engines look at how relevant the links are, that is, how much the content of the linking site has in common with the content on your site. The more relevant, the better. SE s also gauge the importance of these sites; their online presence and the number of hits they get. In a nutshell SE s believe that company matters!

2. Keyword is the king:however much the SE industry changes its rules, algorithms, indexing methods…. the right keyword is still the most important reason they will pick up your site to put on their top result pages. So keyword inclusion and placement is very important. The best places to place your chosen keywords are:
   • Domain name: Putting your keyword in your domain name is both most obvious and the most important. But take care to put it in the root of the URL, not in the stem…that could SE s angry and do you more harm than good.
     
   • Title tags: in the title tags of your source code
     
   • Meta description: In the Meta description of your site.
     
   • Meta keyword tags

3. CONTENT CONTENT CONTENT: Create content rich information pages to get traffic coming your way. A word of caution…unless these pages contain information of some value to the potential visitors SE s may not pick them up. Search engines hate "pointer pages" that have no content and exist only to add to the number of links pointing to a site.

4. Online Directories: Almost all major portals have industry specific directories. Submit your website’s URL to directories like Yahoo and About.com as well as smaller directories. This will increase your chances of getting a boost in your SE rankings.

5. Go Forth and Multiply: Create your own community of sites that point to each other. A good idea would be to have different sites if you sell different types of products and services. You can also concentrate on using specific keyword phrases on each site. The more content rich sites that point to your site the better. So that’s another great way to boost your search engine ranking.

Now lets look at some of the most common mistakes that can prove to be the undoing of your website.

- The number 1 mistake is not putting enough CONTENT. Your website must have keyword –rich content that adds value to the visitors’ info search. Without meaningful content your visitors can click out just as easily only to never come back again.

- Using frames is a technique that makes the Webmaster’s life easy but can easily prove to be a major put off for SE s. SE s may find it difficult to move around in frames and will fail to include all of the pages in their list. These missed out pages will never show up to the people who are looking for them and defeat the whole purpose of your exercise.

- Enclosing text in graphics is another technique used by web designers to give the website an even, uniform look for every visitor. Unfortunately, SE s cannot differentiate between a photo in a graphic and text in a graphic. Hence they will overlook it. There you go again! Beat this problem by putting the real information in plain text that search engines can recognize.

Being visible the Internet is the first step to being found on the Internet.

So take advantage of these proven success tips and avoid the traps that will make your rankings fall down in the SE abyss. What you’ll be left with is a great website ranking bringing in focused qualified visitors to help you boost your sales.

For more information check out these websites:

http://www.powerhomebiz.com/vol127/optimization.htm

http://www.dummies.com/WileyCDA/DummiesTitle/productCd-0764567586.html

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Search Engine Optimization for Affiliates

Writen by Karen Kari

Organic search engine optimization is a process that involves analysis of your website’s structure, code, content, links and tags. Based upon the current algorithms used by the major spider-based search engines, such as Google, changes and enhancements are made to your site in order to push your site up in the rankings and deliver it earlier in the search results delivered by the engine. For your site to rank in the first page or two of sites delivered in a search, it’s pretty much essential to use optimization software or a consulting service that keeps up-to-date on this fast changing industry.

So what will they do for you? Constantly monitor and adjust, things you don’t have time to do if you’re going to be marketing and advertising your site, adding content, blogging, creating partnerships and adding other merchants. By collecting site data and analyzing a huge number of sites, they identify patterns in the way pages are evaluated and achieve rankings. They understand the changes in the algorithms used by the major search engines. Your site and others receive continual reviews and updates, and changes in statistics are monitored.

These companies will identify the keywords that will bring buyers to your site. They will take care of submitting the pages of your site to the major search engines and online directories. They can also advise you and make changes to your linking, as links to other quality sites will help your ranking by the search engines. Because they see how so many sites rank, some can also help you in increasing the usability of your site and use and placement of ads, and merchant links. They may be able to advise you about reducing your drop-off rate (those who don’t buy) or conversion rate (those who click to a merchant and buy).

It’s an option worth real consideration you need to monetize your site to the best of your ability, and can’t do everything. There’s no sense in doing all the work related to maintaining a site and having nobody find you.

Karen Kari's articles and more information on the affiliate business can be found at:

http://www.affiliatebandit.com

http://www.advertisingcellar.com

http://www.billionfreeads.com

Search Engine Optimization Company

Writen by Rani Prabha

Search Engine Optimization is basically a research work to rank high in search engines. It is a research work because the ranking of a site keeps changing according to the various algorithms of various search engines. An optimizers needs to keep a constant eye on these algorithms, study them and optimize their sites accordingly. Thus a SEO has a lot to study as there are so much search engines with their own algorithms. The most popular of these search engines are Google, Yahoo, MSN, Alta-Vista, Lycos etc.

Search Engine Optimization Facts

Google Algorithms and Updates

Google is considered as king of Search Engines. It has most the most confidential and complex algorithm ever yet. Beyond, Search Engine Ranking Position [SERPs], it gives Page Rank to every site depending upon their back links. Still, it doesn't not allow you to increase your back links by any other means. Google updates their algorithms after sometimes and that algorithm update is considered very important among the optimizers. The recent algorithm update of Google ended up in December 2005 and was known as Jagger Update. It was the first update after Florida, which occur in November, 2003

Google Sandbox

Those sites, which uses unethical means to get good SERPs are banned or penalized by Google. One such penalty is Google sandbox. It is still not sure that whether Google Sandbox exits or it is just an assumption. Whatever it may be, this has been assumed that Google Sandbox is an algorithm which Google use to penalize any site. Once a site is in Sandbox, it can be suffer in various ways, like:

• The site is removed from Google SERPS, and Googlebot stops crawling or indexing it.
• The site gets crawled and but doesn't appear in the SERPs.
• The site can get sand-boxed on only one or few keywords, though the site gets regularly crawled and remain on SERPs for other keywords.
• Only few pages of the site can get sand-boxed while the other being treated normally by Google.

Rani Prabha writes about Search Engine Optimization Company in India.

Search Engine Optimization For Blogs

Writen by Priya Shah

Blogging software is really a simple Content Management System (CMS) that easily adds new pages and integrates them into your site's navigational structure and linkage.

Blogs and blog posts are naturally search engine friendly because they are text-rich, link-rich, frequently-updated webpages that use stylesheets or CSS, and have very little extraneous HTML.

Optimizing a blog is very similar to optimizing a website, and optimizing a blog post similar to optimizing a web page.

But depending on the blogging service or software you use, the results may look somewhat different.

If you follow some simple rules for search engine optimization, your blog can rank much higher than static website pages in the search engine results pages.

Here are the most important rules to follow to get your posts listed for keywords of your choice.

1. Use your primary keyword in your blog domain

Whether you purchase a separate domain (recommended) for your blog, or host it on a blogging service or a subdomain of your own site, try to ensure that your URL contains the primary keyword you want to optimize for.

For example, if you want your blog to get found for the keyword "rss" get a domain with the keyword "rss", or use the keyword in a subdomain as in

http://www.rssnewssite.com/blog/

Getting a domain name with your own name might make for good branding, especially if yours is a personal blog.

But if you're doing it for business and want the targeted traffic to flow your way, keywords in the domain or subdomain are a move in the right direction.

2. Use your primary key phrase in your blog header tags and the title of your posts

If your primary key phrase is "business blogging" make sure that the word business, or blogging, or both, appear in your blog headers (the H1 or H2 tags) as well as the title of each of your posts.

Most blogging software will take the keywords in your post title and put them into the file name of the permalink posts it creates.

For example, if you have a blog on Blogger and title your post "Search Engine Optimization For Blogs", Blogger will automatically create a page with your post and name the file "search-engine-optimization-for-blogs.html" or something similar.

With other server-side software like Wordpress and Movable Type, you may require the mod_rewrite command to save the title of your entries as a permalink.

3. Use your secondary keywords in the body of your post

If you want to get listed for secondary keywords use them infrequently in the body of your post and pepper your blog titles or links with them appropriately.

Don't overdo this or your posts will end up sounding unnatural and spammy to readers.

4. Use your keywords in the anchor text of links

Keyword in links have more importance than simple text.

Use your primary and secondary keywords in the anchor text of links when linking to other blog posts or to other pages on your main site.

Link keywords where they naturally appear in the body text, but again, don't overdo it, or you'll end up with spammy looking pages.

5. Make sure search engines can spider your blog easily

Set up your blog so that the side navigation bar is present on all pages.

Make sure your archives and previous posts are accessible from all pages of your blog so they get spidered easily.

6. Get backlinks from other blogs or websites

Links pointing to your blog or posts are essential to build pagerank and make your blog rank higher in the search engine listings.

I've seen many people recommend Blogrolling as one method of building links to your blog.

BlogRolling is a one-stop linklist manager for your blog or journal. http://www.blogrolling.com/

But all this service actually does is give you a bit of javascript code that "calls" the links.

As far as search engine rankings go, this method of linking is of little use, because spiders can't read external javascript code.

Instead I recommend that you focus your linking efforts on the methods here.

Submitting to Blog Search Engines and Directories:

Submitting your blog and RSS feed to blog search engines and directories is essential for getting high-quality links back to your blog.

Here is the best list I've found of places to submit your feed or blog.
http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/

Link Exchanges:

Many similarly-themed blogs are often willing to exchange links with other blogs and form richly interlinked networks or communities. Link exchanges with other blogs are easy to implement with most blogging software.

Trackbacks:

You can also get links back to your blog using trackbacks. One of the disadvantages of using Blogger is that it does not automatically create trackback urls that others can use to link back to your posts.

Haloscan is a free service that will automatically add comments and trackbacks to your Blogger blog.
http://www.haloscan.com

But if trackbacks are an important component of your linking strategy, I would advise using another software or system that adds this feature automatically.

Comments:

You can also get back links to your blog by posting legitimate comments in response to posts on other blogs.

7. Update frequently

There's no better food for search engine spiders than fresh content.

Post and update your blog frequently using all the rules outlined above and there's no reason why your blog will not get you top rankings in a short period of time.

8. Stay put

Once you create your blog, try to stick to the same domain and blog host or system for as long as you continue to publish.

You could end up losing a lot of your traffic, your readers and all your search engine listings if you decide to move.

For more ways of building traffic to your blog, read the article "How To Build Traffic To Your Blog"
http://www.blog-maniac.com/build-blog-traffic.htm

Priya Shah is a partner in the search engine marketing firm, SEO & More and writes an online marketing blog. Request the whitepaper Boost Your Search Engine Visibility With Blogs And RSS.

This article may be reprinted as long as the resource box is left intact and all links are hyperlinked.

Search Engine Optimization for Beginners

Writen by Jack Humphrey

If you are confused about terms like "search engine optimization" or having a "search engine friendly" site, then listen up! I am here to help.

Depending on how long you have had, or considered having, a website online, you have heard terms thrown around like the above or even worse, acronyms! SEO comes to mind.

Really there is not that much to fear even if you have no idea right now what is really meant by having a search engine friendly site.

Here is what search engines like to have in their results when people type in keywords:

1. A site with lots of content.

2. A site with UNIQUE content (Original - meaning you wrote it or you paid someone to write it for you.)

3. Sites that are well organized link-wise (meaning simple navigation from the main page of your site to every other page of your site.)

4. Sites that have links pointing to them from other popular, relevant sites. (sites that are similar in content to yours but that are not in direct competition with yours in content)

5. Sites that change regularly (not static but always growing with new content on a regular basis)

6. Sites they can read. (search engine robots cannot read javascript for instance and therefore you get no credit for whatever content is in that application on your site)

7. Tightly themed sites. It is easier for an engine to rank your site properly (where you want it to be) if you are not all over the map in content.

Exception: Portal sites or directories. But this is an item for another article all together

What About The Complicated Stuff?

There really isn't anything complicated about what the search engines want. But if you have stumbled into a search engine forum you were likely blown away with comments and tips that were completely over your head.

There is a difference between basic, standard optimization and the stuff they talk about in those forums. While visting SEO forums is good to keep up on new things as you go along, many people get confused and the forums are the breeding grounds for confusion when you are a beginner.

Try to learn advanced SEO from noted experts in the field rather than taking anything in chats or forums as gospel. A lot more people THINK they know what they are doing than actually do.

Remember that anything someone is willing to give away for free which, if it works, could be worth tens of thousands of dollars in high rankings resulting in high sales, is probably something that is old hat and not effective anymore.

But for now, you have a lot of work to do on the basics. The advanced stuff can come later. Relative to the advanced SEO, getting the basics right is the most powerful move you can make because you are going from zero to moving up in rankings by, many times, tens of thousands of spaces in a relatively short time.

Advanced SEO focuses on moving your site from high rankings slightly higher rankings.

Keywords

Your content is the most important thing about a website. It must be friendly to the search engines meaning no special java script or other stuff. Just good old fashioned HTML. You will do fine with PHP, SHTML, and other things, but for the purpose of this article, HTML is the way most people construct their sites.

You should use a good density of your main keyword phrase for each page of your site within the content. If you are going after a high ranking for the phrase "dog leashes" you need to have that phrase in the title of the page and throughout the content.

Programs that are great for analyzing your site and giving feedback on how to improve your rankings don't come any more highly recommended that Internet Business Promoter from Axandra.

More Info: http://www.Axandra.com/go.to/jdh358

Nice thing about the software above is that it teaches you search engine optimization while it works on your site. So having it is like having a course on optimization while your site is altered for the best placement in the search engines at the same time.

The main recommendation I have for people starting to deal with optimizing their sites for the engines is to take things one at a time and get the basics down before you start messing with advanced strategies.

And when you start down that road, information you pay for is usually more accurate and more valuable than hanging around in forums. High rankings are worth a LOT of money and people don't work hard to become experts just to give that information away.

Good luck and get to work!

Jack Humphrey is the CEO of http://WebFoxMedia.com, an online marketing consulting firm that focuses on publicity, traffic generation and website development for small to large companies.

Search Engine Optimization: Fact & Fiction

Writen by Adrian Mullan

Search engine optimization is one area of the Internet that has become clouded in a lot of hype, myths and rumors. While common sense comes in handy, we wanted to help clear up some of the confusion.

Here's a list of the most common search engine myths...

FICTION: Catering for search engines is a waste of time.

FACT: Research shows that 85-95% of users start at a search engine to find what they're looking for. As a website owner, it's worth spending a little time to understand how search engines work. While competition for top positions can be intense, a high ranking on a major search engine can drive substantial amounts of traffic to your site.

FICTION: Submitting your website to hundreds of search engines will bring you thousands of visitors.

FACT: While it sounds like a tempting offer, the reality is that these offers are bogus. What they are failing to mention is:

a) While there ARE hundreds of search engines - the Top 3 (Google, Yahoo! and MSN) account for almost 90% of all search traffic.

The rest of the search engines are so small that you've probably never heard of them. In other words, there's no point getting listed in a search engine that nobody uses - so concentrate on the big players.

b) You need to do more than just 'submit' your website

Submitting your website and getting a top ranking in a search engine are two very different things. Just because your site has been submitted doesn't mean you'll get any traffic.

Research shows that the majority of people who use search engines only look at the first two pages of results.

So while you may be 'listed' in a search engine, you'll get zero traffic if you're located on page 17 or 40 of the search results. Nobody ever gets that far down the list - you need to be on page one or two to get any real traffic to your site.

FICTION: If I submit my website today, I'll see instant results.

FACT: It takes time to get good rankings. Your site may appear in search engines within six to eight weeks, but it takes months of continuous work to achieve top rankings.

FICTION: 'Meta Tags' are the secret to getting top search engine rankings.

FACT: 'Meta Tags' are keywords that are hidden within the source code of web pages.

Meta Tags are virtually irrelevant in the ranking algorithms of the top engines today.

In the early days of the Internet, search engines paid close attention to the Meta Tags contained within a website - but those days are gone.

Once people worked out that Meta Tags were part of the search engine formula, they started abusing the system by placing irrelevant keywords in their Meta Tags.

As a result, search engines have become a lot smarter and many (including Google) pay very little attention to the Meta Tags included on your web pages.

However there are other areas that search engines pay close attention to, which are covered later in the course.

FICTION: I should cram as many keywords as possible into my site.

FACT: Although you do need keywords on your site, you only need keywords that are directly related to the theme of your site. Your keywords should be naturally incorporated within the content of your website. Simply repeating the same keyword over and over again will do nothing to improve your search engine rankings.

FICTION: Joining a link exchange or 'free-for-all' link program will boost your search engine rankings.

FACT: Free-for-all (FFA) linking schemes do not improve your search engine rankings. In many cases they will often do a site more harm than good.

While search engines do take into account the amount of incoming links to your website, quality is more important than quantity.

Where possible, you should aim to collect links from websites that are related to the theme of your website.

For example, if you run a roof repair business, getting hundreds of links from sites selling Viagra is not going to improve your search engine results.

On the other hand, links from builders, tradespeople and roof tile companies will help direct the right type of traffic to your site.

FICTION: To get good search engine rankings, I have to pay thousands of dollars to outside search engine consultants.

FACT: Reputable search engine consultants can be helpful in specific scenarios, but for the most part there's not much an outside consultant can do that you can't do yourself.

Getting good rankings is simply a case of old fashioned elbow grease. It's a three step formula:

1) You need to build a website that is search engine friendly.

2) Your website needs to have plenty of relevant content.

3) You need lots of incoming links from good quality websites.

Adrian Mullan is the author of 'The Internet Demystified' and founder of WebDummy.com, which is a popular search engine optimization resource for small business owners.

Search Engine Optimization Explained

Writen by Ted Prodromou

Search Engine Listing And Optimization

In the world of website marketing, search engines are an essential key to success. They are the most important way to bring traffic to your website. Understanding how search engines work and what they require is an important first step to harnessing their marketing power.

The two types of search engines can be characterized as active and passive. An active engine utilizes crawl technology that constantly searches out websites, adds them to its database and creates listings automatically with what it finds. Passive engines require registration of your website directly with them and rely on editors to add your site to their directory. As search engines have evolved, many have adopted a combination of passive and active strategies.

Search engine optimization is the utilization of techniques that will assure that search engines find and include your website in their databases. There are proven methods to search engine marketing involving website design and content adaptation, and keyword strategy. The primary goal of these methods is to bring traffic to your site. The secondary goal is for that traffic to be targeted to your product. In the internet marketing game, exposure is essential. But marketing efficiency requires effective exposure to the right prospects.

Customer Delivery By Search Engine

Valiss's knowledge of search engines and how to position your website for optimal exposure can help your website top its market. Search engine optimization must be a central part of your internet marketing plan. By refining your website, Valiss will enable search engines to deliver more of your prospective customers to your site.

Ted Prodromou spent over 25 years in the computer industry working for IBM, Digital, and Cellular one. Today he's the owner of Valiss IT, a consulting firm that provides small business coaching and marketing help. He’s also a certified personal and professional coach.

Ted has created and led many coaching workshops and today is helping small businesses automate their marketing with his latest coaching program, "Attract Clients While You Sleep". For more information visit http://www.valiss.com/specials.

If you would like to download his free report "How To Attract Clients While You Sleep" visit http://www.valiss.com/specials.

You are free to distribute this article, providing it remains unchanged and with the resource / bio box attached.

Search Engine Optimization – Back to Basics

Writen by Paul Callis

An organic search engine ranking is the more cost effective method. There is a lot of time and work that goes into making a website search engine friendly to get good rankings and even longer to build up good quality links.

The only downside to organic search engine placement is the time required to get your website to the top, but once it is, you will reap the long term benefits for ever. Do not expect search engine optimization to work miracles overnight, it takes time, hard work and a lot of patience. The average time for a new domain name to rank well on Google is around 6-8 months now a days, as a new site do not get placed well until they have been up and running several months, so that Google know the site is genuine.

Building Link Popularity is a very important aspect of any effective Search Engine Optimization campaign today. The off page factors such as link popularity, Page Rank and Anchor Text in incoming links play a major role in your site's ranking in the search engine results pages. More and more major search engines, including Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask Jeeves, AltaVista etc. rely on off page factors such as 'Link Popularity' to establish the importance of your site in order to give it a high ranking. Now website optimization is not enough to get you good search engine rankings. A large number of good incoming links help your website beat competition to rank high in Search Engines.

There are two types of links you can establish on the web. One way is to trade links with other website's, you give a link from your links Page on your site to the partner sites in return for their site linking to you. The second method is to establish one-way links, which are very hard to obtain and can be very costly. Both are extremely beneficial in gaining higher search engine rankings. Building Link Popularity is a very long and time consuming process, hence why many website owners employ the services of us to help them spend more time on other time consuming aspects of their business, such as running a shop etc.

More information on Search Engine Optimization can be found at the author’s website at http://www.seogeek.co.uk

Search Engine Optimization History

Writen by Christoph Puetz

Webmasters today spend quite some time optimizing their websites for search engines. Books have been written about search engine optimization and some sort of industry has developed to offer search engine optimization services to potential clients. But where did this all start? How did we end up with the SEO world we live in today (from a webmaster standpoint seen)?

A guy named Alan Emtage, a student at the University of McGill, developed the first search engine for the Internet in 1990. This search engine was called "Archie" and was designed to archive documents available on the Internet at that time. About a year later, Gopher, an alternative search engine to Archie, was developed at the University of Minnesota. These two kinda search engines triggered the birth of what we use as search engines today.

In 1993, Matthew Gray developed very first search engine robot - the World Wide Web Wanderer. However, it took until 1994 that search engines as we know them today were born. Lycos, Yahoo! And Galaxy were started and as you probably - two of those are still around today (2005).

In 1994 some companies started experimenting with the concept of search engine optimization. The emphasis was put solely on the submission process at that time. Within 12 months, the first automated submission software packages were released. Of course it did not take long until the concept of spamming search engines was 'invented'. Some webmasters quickly realized that they could swamp and manipulate search results pages by over-submission of their sites. However - the search engines soon fought back and changed things to prevent this from happen.

Soon, search engine optimizers and the search engines started playing some sort of a "cat and mouse" game. Once a way to manipulate a search engine was discovered by the SE-optimizers they took advantage of this. The search engines subsequently revised and enhanced their ranking algorithms to respond to these strategies. It was clear very soon that mainly a small group of webmasters was abusing the search engine algorithms to gain advantage over the competition. Black Hat search engine optimization was born. The unethical way of manipulating search engine resulted in faster responses from search engines. Search engines are trying to keep the search results clean of SPAM to provide the best service to customers.

The search engine industry quickly realized that SEO (Search Engine Optimization) as an industry would not go away, and in order to maintain useful indexes, they would need to at least accept the industry. Search engines now partially work with the SEO industry but are still very eager to sort out SPAMMERS that are trying to manipulate the results.

When Google.com started to be the search engine of choice for more than 50% of the Internet users it was highly visible to anyone in the industry that search engine spamming had reached a new dimension. Google.com was so much more important to the success of a website that many webmasters solely concentrated on optimizing their sites for Google only as the payoff was worth the efforts. Again - Black Hat SEO took place, pushing down the honest webmaster and their sites in search results delivered. Google started fighting back. Several major updates to Google's algorithms forced all webmaster to adapt to new strategies. Black Hat SE-optimizers but suddenly saw something different happening. Instead of just being pushed down in the search results their websites were suddenly completely removed from the search index.

And then there was something called the "Google Sandbox" to show up in discussions. Websites either disappeared into the sandbox or new websites never made it into the index and were considered in the Google Sandbox. The sandbox seemed to be the place where Google would 'park' websites either considered SPAMMY or not to be conform with Google's policies (duplicate websites under different domain names, etc.). The Google Sandbox so far has not been confirmed or denied by Google and many webmasters consider it to be myth.

In late 2004 Google announced to have 8 billion pages/sites in the search index. The gap between Google and the next two competitors (MSN and Yahoo!) seemed to grow. However - in 2005 MSN as well as Yahoo! Started fighting back putting life back into the search engine war. MSN and Yahoo seemed to gain ground in delivering better and cleaner results compared to Google. In July of 2005 Yahoo! Announced to have over 20 billion pages/sites in the search index - leaving Google far behind. No one search engine has won the war yet. The three major search engines however are eagerly fighting for market share and one mistake could change the fortune of a search engine. It will be a rocky ride - but worth watching from the sidelines.

About the Author

Christoph Puetz is a successful entrepreneur and international book author. Examples of his search engine optimization work can be found at Web Hosting Tutorials and at Highlands Ranch, Colorado.

The article can be published by anyone as long as the resource box (About the Author) is posted on the website including the links. These links must be clickable.

Search Engine Optimization Overview

Writen by C. Pabst

The importance of search engine optimization cannot be stressed enough. High rankings on search engines like Google, Yahoo, and the others ranks amongst your top priorities when putting yourself or your business online. Search Engine Optimization, or SEO for short, is exactly how you do this.

The first thing you need to know about search engine optimization is what search engines are exactly and how they work. Frankly, I have no idea. From what I've heard and from what I've observed, Google and its inner workings rank up there with the greatest inventions of all time. It might even possibly be a greater invention than the entire universe.

Kidding. Just seeing if you’re with me.

All we really need to know is that search engines have a little spider, or bot (short for robot) that goes out nightly or daily or whenever and scans sites on the internet. In the case of Google it’s "Googlebot," while Yahoo!’s robot is called "Slurp!" and MSN uses "MSNbot."

These little bots go to your site and “read it” in much the same way as a human does, left to right, top to bottom. What these robots find they bring back to the "mothership," the search engine database. If Googlebot finds your site about kittens, it will report the site, its location (URL), its contents, etc. to Google’s database where it is stored. When someone then does a search through Google for kittens, Google looks to its own database for search results. This is what makes search engines so fast. All the searches you do call upon data already in the search engine’s database, not from a brand new search of the entire internet.

There is something else to mention as well. Search engine bots will search your site whenever they darn well feel like it. You can go to Google and tell it to search your site by telling it manually that you exist, giving it your URL, etc. That doesn’t mean Google will go check it out right that instant or even that night. In fact, sometimes it takes weeks or months for Googlebot to actually go and sniff out your site. And when it does all it means is that you are now in Google’s database which is HUGE. You may not even show up in Google’s listings for a while.

That’s where Search Engine Optimization comes in. Search Engine Optimization has two purposes really.

To make the search engine bots happy by providing them relevant information,

To make the search engine bots happy enough to place you high up on search rankings.

See, Google and Yahoo! and all the search engines make money on relevant searches. If every time someone searches for kites Google comes up with a bunch of pages on iguanas, nobody is going to use Google anymore as the results just aren’t accurate. This explains a couple things: what the bots are looking for when they sniff your site (good and relevant content), and why search engines will penalize you, sometimes for life, if you try to fool them.

We’ll get to all this in the next few pages, but suffice it to say now that the bots are looking for tasty subject matter, good writing, relevant content, etc. If you want to know how to really make Googlebot happy, give it what you’d give any human visitor to your site. Think of Googlebot as your best friend and design with him in mind.

C. Pabst is an author, entrepreneur and the owner of Work From Home Business Source. He is also the creator of the revolutionary money-making system Internet Triple Header, based on simple, applicable and practical concepts, not positive thinking or luck.

Search Engine Optimization of Your Blog

Writen by Rakesh Kumar

Now-a-days installing blogging softwares are just few minutes of click and run jobs. In few minutes you can install a nice looking blog ready to be published. Until this stage, everything seems simple, but when it comes to promoting something as complex as blogging softwares or CMS (Content Management System) applications for that mater, on which blogging softwares are based, can be quite tricky and painful. It is as much painfully easy to install blog software, as it is painfully hard to promote it on search engines if you do not know the correct direction to make headway.

Even though Wordpress comes with features which will help you to make your blog search engine optimized, but these are too basic features to be relied on and you will still need to make changes yourself to better it.

Mata Tags

Meta tags which are important for search engine optimizing your blog, doesn’t come bundled with your Wordpress, when you install it. You will need to install a plugins to have your meta tags displayed on your blog head. Meta tags can be added in the header.php file of your blog. A list of popular Mata tags plugins can be found at http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins/Meta.

Permalink Tag

Every blog has a Permalink feature; it is the permanent link (URL) to a post or page on your blog. Having keyword rich URLs will surely help your blog being pulled for important keywords. You can customize your permalink structure to have more keywords instead of default /category/year/date/time/hour/minute/second/post_title as your post URL. For instance, you can remove %seconds%, %hour% or %post_id% in your parmalink tag. These are not necessary and having them as your URIs will only make it look longer. Also you can do away with %date% tag altogether to just have %category% in the URIs.

Category names

Be careful while making categories. You can always have the category names as keywords so that your final URIs will be full of keywords.

Tagging

You can have tags especially Technorati Tag plugin installed for your blog posts. Tags are basically names of categories or subjects. With tags in your post, you can categorize your posts based on these tags. While tagging will increases traffic to your blog, it will also make it search engine friendly.

Making above changes to your blog will definitely make it look more search engine optimized and will help you increase its online visibility in Search engine result pages (SERPs).

Happy SEO Blogging!!

Rakesh Ojha is a SEO specialist and Online Marketing Consultant with over 5 Years in SEM Industry. Contact him at rakesh@searchengineoptimization4u.com or visit his website at http://www.searchengineoptimization4u.com.

Read latest SEM and SEO articles on his blog at http://semblog.searchengineoptimization4u.com

Internet Marketing - The Two Faces of FREE

Writen by Paul White

'FREE' is the reason people are successful, and make a fortune marketing on the internet, yet 'FREE' is also the reason 90% of people fail miserably!

It is all to do with your approach to your business and your careful use of 'FREE' things.

You will never make any money placing your own ads on other people's FREE classified sites and/or FFA links, even if you have submission software.

And you will never make money with just a FREE self replicating website.

This is the point when most people give up. But you must realise that you will never become rich for FREE.

You must invest initially in a professionally designed webpage/site and place links to your programs. You will then be able to promote your own unique website, and people can click on your programs once they visit you, and see everything you are offering.

Mix up the programs you are promoting on your website. Some can be FREE, but others should have cost you something to start up. If you introduce a thousand people for example, and all of you just get a FREE self replicating website, then no one makes any money!

Once you have a good professional looking website set up, and you have a reasonable advertising budget to work with, which you know you can comfortably afford to spend each week, then you are ready to exploit the other side of FREE!

It is your customers, and potential customers, who need to be given FREE things.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that customers are sitting at their computer screens, with their mouse in one hand and their credit cards in the other, surfing the net to spend their hard earned cash on anything or everything they see.

You have to earn your customers respect to get money from them, and the best way to earn respect from a customer is to give them something for FREE.

To get them to sign up for your newsletter or ezine then offer them lots of FREEBIES.

There are now so many ezines around that they need to have a reason to subscribe to yours.

And keep them subscribing! I offer new daily FREE software and FREE E-books to all my own subscribers.

Even more important is to offer FREE things on your website to get your visitors there in the first place.

Placing an ad that reads 'Buy this amazing widget at my site...' will attract just a fraction of the visitors that an ad reading, 'View details of this amazing widget and get FREE entry into our $25,000 weekly drawing, FREE software, FREE ebooks and FREE grocery vouchers worth hundreds of dollars!....'

Yet all of these Freebies, and thousands more can be found quite easily by yourself by surfing all of the FREE sites, and collecting what you think will be suitable for your own visitors.(Just type in the word 'FREE' into any search engine for a huge list of sites.)

Also visit lotto and competition sites for suitable FREE games you can include on your site.

Also offer even more Freebies as an incentive for your customers to buy products from you. For example, 'Buy this widget from me by midnight tonight and I will also give you 10 FREE adverts in our ezine.'

And apart from giving away FREE ads in your ezine, also have a FREE classified ads section on your own website where people can place their ads. Again you will find them flocking to your site to do this.

So there you have the two faces of FREE, one is ugly and one is beautiful!

To ensure success just make sure that you know which face is which!

About The Author

Paul White is a 42 year old former teacher. He now helps people all around the world to become wealthy online. Whatever you are selling, visit the popular site: http://www.profitmountain.com and if you subscribe to Profit Mountain's FREE wealth building newsletter, you will also receive FREE advertising for the next 12 months! (Worth $200!) as well as loads of other things!

Internet Marketing - Surviving the First Year

Writen by Keith Thompson

So you've decided to take the leap into deep water and go
into business for yourself, specifically into Internet
Marketing. Congratulations! This was a smart decision, one
that will eventually reward you with all the dreams you can
dream. Your challenge now is to survive that 1st year.

Hopefully you're reading this early on in your endeavors,
and can make the adjustments necessary to keep your
enterprise afloat and your bank account buoyant. Here are
several things the "gurus" neglected to mention along the
way to building your own internet marketing empire!

1 - Who are you listening to? There are a lot of people
who've made a lot of money, and they're all too eager to
tell you about it, frequently in the form of their latest
product. It's very easy to find yourself tuning in too many
voices, instead of riding one horse till it either gets you
there or is spent. Find a niche that interests you, find
products that are either yours or through an affiliate
program, and focus entirely on your plan, not allowing
yourself to chase rabbits.

2 - What is certain! And that is that the real money to be
made in internet marketing is produced in the following
ways: owning your own site(s), your own products, your own
opt-in mailing list, and your own vision! Think about it!
Not one of the internet millionaires to whom we look to for
advice has lacked any of these for very long. You bought
their products off their sites, joined their mailing lists,
and to one degree or another shared their vision. If you
haven't already, begin immediately to build your own empire.
Build a site, start learning about traffic, linking, opt-in
lists and all the other essentials necessary for long-term
success. Affiliate marketing will only take you so far. In
fact, most of the top affiliates have several of their own
products!

3 - The learning curve. There is a certain amount of
information you simply have to either learn (or pay for).
Don't discount the fact that this will take a little time.
One doesn't discover how to build and market a fully-
optimized web site in a month. Or three! This is; and
because of the fluid nature of the web; always will be a
work-in-progress. Do what you can do every day and come back
tomorrow for more. Don't be discouraged when the money takes
a while to appear; if you do this right, when it does show
up it will be worth the wait!

4 - A support system. Get one. Don't plan on supporting
yourself from your business right away. It took the best at
the very least several months to start seeing any real
money. Don't despair if you turn out to be mortal, too. Give
yourself a chance at this; the rewards are simply too great.
I'll leave you with a quote that sustained me many a night:
"I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my
ship." - Louisa May Alcott

Keith Thompson is the webmaster of Internet Marketing
Here & Now where you can find lots of information on how
to learn internet marketing!

Search Engine Optimization Ethics

Writen by John Tourloukis

There are various techniques of Search Engine Optimization. Broadly, these are referred to as White Hat, Black Hat and Grey Hat.

According to various definitions available, ethical SEO would be:

• a technique that does more good than harm
• one that keeps in mind the dignity and rights of all involved
• one that treats all parties involved fairly
• looks out for the overall benefit of all concerned
• enhances the participant experience in all aspects

But why is this needed? Why should there be ethics defined for something like searching on the Internet? Given the fact that this is an ever-growing area of revenue and traffic generation, the interest in best practices is increasing. And just as well, the ethics that are being discussed and adopted widely are not restricted to the big corporate search engines. In fact, they apply more to those who are optimizing their pages so that they will show up on these engines’ results.

People using a search engine expect to find accurate results when they search. But usage of underhanded (Black hat or Grey hat) techniques, may return a page that does not have the relevant information. This counts as bad user experience and the search engine stands to lose out in its audience. Moreover, a web page that does have the information being searched by a user also loses out. Over a period of time, if there are too few people linking to a misrepresented link, its ranking will fall anyways, but not before it has done some damage to the user’s experience.

One of the most unethical practices is deception of a search engine. This can be achieved by keyword stuffing where only keywords relating to a particular topic are placed on an HTML page. By doing so, the search engine bots index and rank the page but when someone visits it, they find only a list of keywords or content that is not relevant to their search.

Another technique that is often implemented and has been universally termed as Black hat is the practice of hidden text. By putting keywords or text into a web page with the same color as that of the page background (e.g., white text on a white page), search bots will pick up the page as containing ‘x’ content. In reality, though, the content may be entirely different from what the keywords claim it to be.

Both examples have and continue to lead to the banning of companies and their pages on the search engine results pages. Almost all search engines have their techniques by which they identify pages which are fooling their bots. Once found, action is swift and often, severe.

Just to be clear, here is what is expected of the three main parties involved in searching on the Internet:

Search Engine:

• To return the most relevant resources based on the keywords entered by the user
• Index and maintain an index of web pages
• Be honest about links that are sponsored on its search results pages


Web page and site owners:

• Provide content that is relevant to the search made by a user
• Change the content or keywords but remain honest about it
• Adhere to the Terms and Conditions as laid out by various search engines

Users:

• Search only with those search engines that return relevant results and are clear about what they do on the results pages
• Be somewhat aware of what happens on the Internet
• Be fair in case of minor mismatches in search results unless they appear to be done with malicious intent

Yes, the above are ethics but as in the real world, black will continue to co-exist with white and in some cases, overlap to offer the gray areas!

John Tourloukis is the founder of Fast PC Networks an internet consulting and Ethical SEO company. I blog about SEO here

Search Engine Optimization Basics

Writen by Gerrick W

What is Search engine optimization or SEO? It is the science and art of getting your web pages rank high at the search engines. Some people think that SEO is so complex that they cannot possibly understand it. Still others think that to rank high at the search engine depends on a stroke of luck.

Well, these are all misconceptions. Ranking high at the search engines does not happen by chance. There are some basic things you must do to stand any chance of getting your web pages to perform well at the search engines.

On-page factors

1. Use text not graphics for your web design. Web pages that are loaded with graphics are not friendly to search engines' crawlers. Search engines classify and rank pages by text, not graphics.

2. Build your web page content around specific key phrases. Your web pages must have specific themes. It would be very difficult to rank high for generic terms. Carefully research and select 2 or 3 word phrases pertaining to your niche to optimize. Don't just optimize your home page. Work on your sub pages. You want as many pages as possible to be indexed and ranked well.

3. Organize your website internal links. You want all your web pages to be crawled and indexed by the search engines. You want to make it easy for crawlers to find your internal pages. It is best to include text links to these pages from your home page, and to cross-link all your web pages.

If your navigational system uses Java-script or images, then you have to add text links at the top or bottom of your web pages to make sure that the crawlers follow all the links. Double-check all your links to verify they are working.

4. Include your key phrases at the following places…

a. URL and file names. The URL and file names are important indicators to search engines. It is good SEO practice to put your key phrases either in your main domain name or in your file names.

b. Title and description tags. Your title text is displayed in the blue line at the top of your browser. It is located in the head section of the html document. Include your key phrase in your title tag.

Description tags are not visible to website visitors. Search engines often display them as text form to give searchers a cursory glance of your web pages is. Your description tags should be compelling to pull in visitors. It should contain your key phrase.

c. Headlines and subheadlines. Place your headlines at the top of your web pages page. Your headline and subheadline texts should be enclosed with special header tags such as h1, h2, h3.

d. Body Text of web page. Your key phrase should appear in the first paragraph, center and the last paragraph of your body text.

e. Anchor text. These are your navigational links, incoming and outgoing links of your web pages.

Important note: Don't use the same key phrase in your URL, filenames, title tags, description tags, headlines, body text and text links. Search engines may penalize you for keyword spamming. Use variations of your key phrase or terms related to it.

5. Add fresh content to your website regularly. Both search crawlers and your website visitors feed on content. Web pages with fresh informative content tends to be bookmarked. If you add fresh content regularly, other webmasters would naturally link to your web pages.

Off-page factor

Link Popularity is an important factor, used by almost all of major search engines to rank websites. Link popularity can be increased by link exchange or acquiring one-way incoming links.

Since link popularity is an important factor in determining search engine ranking, plan it carefully. Don't just exchange links indiscriminately, link to web pages that are similar to your niche. Also have your incoming text links centered on your key phrase.

It is not only the quantity of links that counts, but also the quality of the links. So, you will be better off with a few links from good quality web pages (those that ranked high by the search engines) than many links from low-ranked web pages.

How to acquire one-way incoming links? You could either purchase them or do it the organic way – write articles related to your niche and post them at article directories that command high web traffic.

Search engine rankings are extremely important for a successful Internet marketing campaign. Get your basic SEO right. Try the steps listed above. Good search engine ranking does not happen overnight. Be patient. Depending on the competitiveness of your key phrases it could anywhere between 3 to 6 months, in some cases a year, for your web pages to rank high at the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN.

SEO can be time consuming if done manually. The good news is there are softwares like Web Position Gold and Web CEO, just to name two, available to automate most of your SEO tasks. Or if you have a big marketing budget, you may want to hire an SEO company for your search marketing campaign.

Gerrick W

Information and Software Tools You Need
to Effectively Promote Your Online Business.
Visit: http://www.1stinternetmarketingsolution.com

Search Engine Optimization --- An Overview

Writen by Prabuddha S Raychaudhuri

Search engine optimization is one of most popular online marketing tool for any website. With most websites looking forward to increasing the online sales of their products/services, search engine optimization can be a very cost-effective tool to target and procure your customers online. In this paper, we will discuss about search engine optimization, its benefits and how you can optimize your website for top search engine rankings.

What is search engine optimization?

Search engine optimization (also known by various other names like search engine ranking, search engine promotion, website promotion, SEO etc.) is a method through which a website is given top rankings in various search engines. According to a recent industry study, 1 in every 20 people go to the second page of search results pages, but only 1 in every 100 people go beyond that. So, by top search engine rankings, we mean that your website should be within the first two pages of the search results, preferably in the first page (i.e. within top 10 rankings).

2. What are the prime benefits of search engine optimization?

ง Top search engine rankings result in more pre-qualified business leads coming to your website which in turn can convert to greater sales for your organization.

ง Search engine promotion is one of the cheapest methods of advertizing for your organization. Compared to advertizements in the newspapers/magazines or in the television, search engine promotion costs many times less and can bring more traffic to your websites, thereby providing greater ROI.

ง Search engine optimization enhances online brand identity of your organization.

3. What are the key factors for your website to have top search engine rankings?

Search engines change their algorithms frequently, thereby forcing the search engine optimization companies to re-strategize their search engine optimization techniques. However, the following attributes are basic and play a major role in procuring top search engine rankings.

a. Keyword Research – Keywords play the most vital role in your search engine optimization campaign. Keywords (can be 1, 2, 3 or more words) are the search terms which a surfer types in the search box of a search engine to reach your website. Let us consider that you are an “India-based Outsourcing consultant” interested in optimizing your website for top search engine rankings. The following are some of the keywords which surfers will type to reach your website -

Keywords

bpo

bpo india

bpo outsourcing services

business outsourcing services

business process outsourcing

offshore companies

offshore outsourcing

offshore outsourcing services

offshore services

outsource india

outsourcing companies

outsourcing consultants

outsourcing india

outsourcing services

outsourcing services company

Keyword research tips –

• Always target keywords that best describe your products/service.

• Try to find multiword potential keywords compared to single keywords.

• Try formulating keywords which give answers to as “why/how/what …….?”

• Utilize your server log files to know what your customers searched most while visiting your site.

• Use keyword generator softwares like Wordtracker (http://www.wordtracker.com) or Overture (http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/)

• Include popular common misspellings (e.g. viagra typed as viagara etc.) in your keyword list.

b. Title of the webpage - …… - Title has a deep impact on your website’s search engine rankings. Experience shows that most companies use the following as title of their index page which can prevent them from getting top search engine rankings.

Welcome to the website of XYZ.com

For example, let’s continue with the above example of “India-based Outsourcing consultant”.

An ideally optimized title should contain the top 3-5 keywords of your business, e.g. outsourcing consultants, outsourcing india, outsource india

Optimized Title - Outsourcing Consultants, Outsourcing India, Outsource India

c. Description Meta tag of the webpage – Description of a webpage also plays important role in getting top search engine rankings.

Optimized Description - Develop a suitable description based on your top 3 keywords

d. Keywords Meta Tag of the webpage - This meta tag was of great importance at one time. But rampant manipulations (i.e. multiple, often non-relevant keyword stuffing in the “keywords” tag), leading to abuse has resulted in search engines giving lesser importance to “keywords” tag while ranking sites. Nevertheless, you can always place top 3 – 5 keywords of your site in the “keywords” tag.

Optimized Keywords -

e. Importance of Content/Keyword-enriched optimized pages for top search engine rankings –

Well, if there is one aspect which holds supreme importance in search engine, specially in Google ranking, then it is this. Yes, content! The popular industry say – “Content is King” was perhaps devised by watching Google’s love for content. Develop content based on the top keywords related to your business. While developing content for your web pages, keep in mind the keyword density (KD).

Mathematically speaking, Keyword Density is the ratio of the total number of time a keyword is repeated divided by the total content words. Since KD is normally represented in percentage, the above figure is to be multiplied by 100

For example, if you have developed a web page of around 250 words on the keyword “search engine optimization”, and that particular keyword (search engine optimization) is repeated 10 times, then

Keyword Density (KD) = 10/250 * 100 = 4%

As a thumb rule, Keyword Density of an optimized page for top search engine rankings should vary between 2 – 7 % (this figure varies among different search engines)

4. Submission of Keyword-enriched optimized pages – After you have finished content development for the optimized pages based on the keywords targeted for top search engine rankings, submit those pages to various search engines.

1. Google - http://www.google.com/addurl.html

2. AlltheWeb - http://addurl.alltheweb.com/add_url

3. AltaVista - http://addurl.altavista.com/addurl/new

4. MSN - http://submitit.bcentral.com/msnsubmit.htm

5. Role of Link Popularity in top search engine rankings –

Link popularity has assumed tremendous importance for getting good ranks in Google now a days. In fact, what started as a friendly reciprocal link exchange program among various webmasters has now become a sub-industry within the SEO industry itself, with thousands of link farms popping up every day! Yes, if you are interested in getting top ranks in search engines, especially Google, then you must pay effort in building up links for your site.

Create a html page, preferably named as “Resources/Links/Partners” and place a link of this page from Index Page of your site. This page should never be more than 1 click away from the index page of your site, else webmasters won’t be interested in participating in the reciprocal link exchange program.

Target both “industry-related” and “non-industry-related” websites as your link exchange partners. For example, if you are providing outsourcing services, then try getting links from “industry-related websites (i.e. websites dealing with outsourcing services, maybe your business rivals!). This is important, because if 10 of your rival sites give links to your site, then Google will surely pay importance to your site, because getting links from rival companies are difficult. Your site MUST be of some high caliber, else the other 10 sites won’t have linked! Also, try procuring links from top ranked general informative websites as well.

Always exchange links with websites which have high Google PageRank (PR) of at least 4, the more the better! (both Index Page as well as Resources/Links Page of the Link Partner’s site should have PRs of >=4) [PageRank is a proprietary tool that Google uses to determine the importance of a page and varies in a scale of 0 (least important) to 10 (maximum importance)].

Have a link code ready for participating in link exchange program. Here is a sample link code for an India-based Outsourcing consultant.

- Indian outsourcing consultant providing guidance to companies willing to set up outsourcing centers in India.

Always prefer a text link (as given above) in comparison to a banner link, where your chance of Google and other search engine spiders finding the potential keywords is limited only to the “alt tag” of the banner. Also, Google pays importance to the text of the incoming link/anchor text (i.e. the incoming link text must contain high potential, relevant keywords), so develop a link text with title (”indian outsourcing consultant“) which will help you in Google Ranking.

Refrain from javascript link code because Google spider finds it difficult to index.

Key SEO Factors

• Targeting the right keywords for your website

• Title of your webpage

• Description Meta tag of your webpage

• Keywords Meta tag of your webpage

• Quality, Informative Content

• Link Popularity

Conclusion -

With Google’s numero uno position in the search engine market being threatened by arch-rivals Yahoo! [bought Overture, the largest PPC search engine recently, who in turn bought Altavista and Alltheweb] and Microsoft’s MSN [believed to be developing its own search engine], it is no doubt that the search engine industry is going to experience tremendous changes in the next few months. The recent Google “Florida” Update is just one of the many upheavals that we may be witnessing in an industry where the only constant factor is the “change”. However, the various techniques outlined in this paper are basic and are we believe that following them you will be able to achieve top 10 ranks in Google and other search engines.

About The Author

Prabuddha S Raychaudhuri is the Founder & CEO of Search Engine Optimization Guru Pvt. Ltd. (http://www.searchengine-optimization-guru.com), a premiere Search Engine Optimization and Marketing (SEO/SEM) consultancy firm, catering to clients which range from Fortune 500 to small home business start-ups. Our services include Top 10 Google and other search engines rankings, Pay Per Click (PPC) targeted traffic campaign, Paid Listing Management, Keyword Advertizing. Prabuddha holds a Bachelor Of Engineering (B.E.) in Construction Engineering and can be contacted at prabuddha@searchengine-optimization-guru.com.

prabuddha@searchengine-optimization-guru.com

Advertising Rules Proposed for Business Opportunities in the General Media

Writen by Lance Winslow

There are new rules being proposed for Business Opportunities (Biz Ops), which advertise in the General Media, such as Infomercials, Websites, Radio, Cable or Pod Caste. Have you ever heard some of the business opportunity advertisements out there? Make $10,000 per month stuffing envelopes part-time from your own home?

And you are thinking yah right? Sure I am going to make 10K monthly working a few hours a day in my under ware? Well The Federal Trade Commission agrees, so they have proposed a new set of rules to govern business opportunity advertising in the general media and here is their proposed rule.

Proposed section 437.4(b): General media claims

“Proposed section 437.4(b) would address the making of earnings claims in the general media.197 Specifically, a seller can make an earnings claim in the general media provided the seller:

(1) Has a reasonable basis for the claim at the time the claim is made;

(2) Has written material that substantiates the claim at the time the claim is made;

(3) States in immediate conjunction with the claim the beginning and ending date when the represented earnings were achieved and the number and percentage of those who have achieved the presented earnings in the given time period.

200 These requirements are necessary to prevent deceptive and misleading earnings representations in advertisements, as well as to enable a prospect to assess the typicality of any advertised earnings claim.”

If you are a seller or specialist in the Business Opportunity sector you may wish to comment on this proposed set of rules by the Federal Trade Commission. If you are in the advertising industry, heads up to you also, as you may wish to perhaps ask some questions when your hear outrageous claims from your clients. Consider all this in 2006.

Lance Winslow

Advertising Risk - Social Proof Overpowers Authority

Writen by Ron Strand

The other day I was out for a mountain bike ride in a nearby wilderness area. As I neared the woods, I noticed a police SUV stopped by two bikers. It looked like the police were talking to them about something, then the car took off down a trail in the direction of a dense part of the forest. When I reached the bikers that had been stopped by the police car, they flagged me down and told me that a bear had been spotted in the area. The police asked them advertise the presence of the bear to other bikers.

The couple seemed a bit excited. They explained that they were new to the area and asked if bear sightings were common. I told them that I had been riding in the area for fifteen years and had only seen bear twice. I thought this would reassure them that bear were rare. They took it as confirmation that a bear was a very real threat and took off in the opposite direction. I thought I would explore a bit more and went down the trail in the direction of the police and presumably the bear. I didn’t go very far, when I realized that there was no one else on what would normally be a busy trail on a nice Sunday afternoon. Obviously, all the bikers in the area had heeded the warning. So I decided not to press my luck either and left the area.

Heading in the other direction, I decided to follow a trail that runs along side a lake. But to my surprise, there was a big metal gate blocking the trail with a very official looking warning sign advertising that the park authority had closed the trail due to unsafe conditions. I stood there for a moment, and noticed that mountain bikers had been bypassing the gate and using the trail in spite of the warning. I waited a moment longer and could see people heading in both directions on the trail. So I ignored the sign and biked down the trail.

As I biked along the trail, I didn’t see anything that looked dangerous or would cause the trail to be closed. The only thing I could think of was a couple of spots where it looked like some mud had slid down a cliff during a heavy rain. This would have made the trail very slippery in those spots when it was wet. Probably someone had been riding there in the rain, slid and hurt themselves, and sued the park authority. But it had not rained in at least a week and the trail was safe. Leaving the gate up and declaring the trail closed accomplished nothing as people soon learned that there was nothing to fear.

As I continued my ride, I thought about what these two incidents taught me about advertising risk. Two powerful ways to motivate human behaviour are authority and social proof. When risk is communicated, an authority of some sort often delivers the message or is cited by whoever is delivering the message. This makes sense, especially because it is often the authorities and experts who identify the risk in the first place. But communicators need to remember that social proof, the phenomenon of looking to others to guide appropriate behaviour will override authority. Part of a risk communication strategy must anticipate how people are going to react and plan the resulting social proof as a part of the risk communication plan.

Ron Strand is a college instructor and consultant who writes on a variety of topics including golf and fundraising.

Advertising - R.I.P.

Writen by Scott G

A fateful day is coming when there will be no more advertising, marketing, or public relations. Why? Simple: we're killing our industry by being too successful at it.

The communications field keeps finding new ways to send sales messages to target audiences, and by utilizing these new methods to the maximum extent possible, we are strangling the effectiveness of all media. Quite frankly, marketing intrusiveness is out of control.

Ads Beyond Counting.

Some reports claim you'll view 10,000,000 ads in your lifetime, yet with new communication channels and new techniques of marketing, that number is probably under-estimated.

Sponsored data is built into your mail, e-mail, Web sites, video games, online games, magazines, newspapers, newsletters, and media broadcasts. Ads are delivered by TV, radio, phones, outdoor boards, private vehicles, and transit posters. Marketing messages are sprayed on walls, chalked on sidewalks, printed on condoms, acted out in the streets, waiting to ambush you in restrooms, and beamed at you from electronic displays of every shape, size, and description, including sound-emitting urinal cakes.

Viral creations contain ad messages. Word of mouth advertising (WOM) is expanding fast. Channel One delivers commercials to kids in schools.

In stores, RFID (radio frequency identification) chips track your purchases. Watch TV and your selections are tracked. Online, every click is monitored. That information is available for sale, so demographic and psychographic data can be accumulated and you, the targeted consumer, can be more accurately reached.

Sponsormania.

Phrases like this emerge from your radio and TV: "Welcome to the Nextel Halftime Report, brought to you by Toyota." They might reel off a whole string of sponsors for a ten-minute programming segment that features interviews with players and coaches wearing corporate logos while standing in front of electronically shimmering backgrounds displaying other corporate logos. The way we're going, we can soon expect to hear: "Welcome to C-SPAN's coverage of the Halliburton Congress, brought to you by Bechtel."

Ads by the Pound.

Grab the Sunday morning newspaper. Weight: 3.4 lbs. Remove the advertising booklets, inserts, leaflets, flyers, announcements, mini-magazines, and the classified section. Remaining weight of news sections: 1.2 lbs. But each of these sections also contains ads. And some entire sections could be viewed as ad-oriented, such as Entertainment, Style, Food, Real Estate and Automotive.

Most of us don't begrudge the puffery in the movie or TV sections, but we're blurring the line between information and marketing in all other areas of the paper.

In an "article" on a new car were the following phrases: "…unique charm… head-turning good looks along with outstanding usefulness... exceptional headroom… feeling of spaciousness… Definitely a good buy." Mileage was reported to be 22/city and 30/highway. Hardly impressive, yet the article concluded with "attractive gas mileage" as one of the vehicle's features.

I think money changed hands to get that favorable review. Or there was pressure on the writer to state everything in a positive manner so the auto maker as well as their dealers will take out more ads.

We've gotten used to these things in the auto, movie, TV, cooking, lifestyle and home sections. But now they're happening in every section. Indeed, they happen in every aspect of today's communications.

The Pay-To-Say Society.

In advertising, marketing, and public relations, editorial and news coverage are now available for a price. We are in the "pay-to-say" society.

Consider:

* Authors interviewed on TV: the time has been bought and paid for.

* That lighthearted TV show roundup of the best kitchen appliances: the products have been "placed" in the program (just as the clothing, cars, restaurants, cameras, TV sets, furniture, dishware and other products have been placed in movies and TV programming).

* That model/actress/hunk/entrepreneur on a magazine cover: the space has been sold according to a rate card, just like an ad.

* That "news report" on government support of education: the entire mock documentary was written, produced and distributed by the people who want to shape your opinion.

You may be reading this on a Web site that places ads all around the text and/or links to ads embedded in the editorial content, just awaiting your unsuspecting cursor to roll over them.

If you're reading this in a magazine, an RFID may be inside. (For that matter, there may be RFIDs in the lining of your jacket, in your shoes, in your jeans, or in that pack of gum in your pocket.)

The Truth: On Sale.

I once ghostwrote an article for a coalition of companies that made polystyrene products. Their industry was facing problems over the waste issue and they needed to have an upbeat but corporate magazine story about how dedicated they were to recycling. So I was paid three thousand dollars to state their case.

Since I was supplied with reams of input and interviews, the article was full of facts and figures about the miracles of their recycling process, the enticingly high percentage of re-used product that the industry could accommodate in its manufacturing processes, and on and on.

What wasn't in the article was one teeny tiny little fact: there was no means of collecting the used products in order for any of this recycling to take place. That minor detail negated the underlying point of the propaganda. Oops, I mean informative editorial piece.

With the improprieties of Jayson Blair and Judith Miller came doubts about the print media. These doubts grew after learning that a male prostitute was allowed to penetrate the White House press corps so he could lob softball questions to the president's Press Secretary.

The main problem with all of the "advertorial" placements, made-up stories, and outright lying is obvious. What is left for anyone to believe? With everything becoming an ad, people will start to turn away from ad messages in greater numbers.

The NASCARizing of Everything.

We've all seen and made fun of the maze of logos on NASCAR vehicles but now other sports are mulling the idea of ads on uniforms and equipment. Horseracing, the NBA, all sports are considering it.

The digital age has already enabled ads to be placed where ads don't actually exist. For example, there are continually-changing billboards behind the batter in televised baseball games. That would be distracting to the pitcher, so they don't appear in real life, only on your TV screen.

There's a new magazine called "Other Advertising" dedicated to the new forms of advertising intrusiveness. That's where I read about digital outdoor billboards that sense the FM station playing in your vehicle and change the display to match demographic choices that align with your choice of programming.

American Technology Corporation's HyperSonic Sound system and Holosonics' Audio Spotlight are perfecting the ability to direct audio messages to individuals passing nearby. So, for example, based on the RFID chip in your purchases, each person in a checkout line would hear a different ad. (Full disclosure: there is a message about ATC's HSS system in the song "Paranormal Radio" on my ELECTRO BOP album.)

AdverInfoEduTainment.
When I first wrote about the ways advertising messages were being placed inside almost every activity in the universe, I ended the article with some predictions that many people found outlandish, including:

* Debit card scanners in TV sets, so you can order during a commercial with the flick of your remote.

* Barcodes in songs, so you can download from iTunes or Real Rhapsody by swiping your XM or Sirius player with your Visa or MasterCard.

* Credit cards built into wristwatches.

* Interactive ads, where you get to star in a five-minute escape from reality.

* Holographic projections of commercials from postage stamps, car and house keys, magazine covers, etc.

* Microchips embedded under your skin, so YOU will be the receiver for TV, radio, satellite, telephone, and global positioning system signals

I was interviewed on many morning radio programs about how Big Brother might take over all forms of communication. This made for humorous drive-time banter, but what some people overlooked in my list of prognostications was the fact that every one of them had already come true by the time the article was published. They're not all being used in the marketplace due to high costs, but the announcements of their existence have been made.

Ad Industry Usefulness.

Without advertising, marketing, or PR, vital communication is thwarted and sales suffer. Company payrolls are cut and jobs are lost. Industries like manufacturing, packaging, transportation, and retailing are all hurt. Without us, parts of the economy evaporate like a puddle of water on sun-baked concrete.

So, what do we need to do? First, let's own up to what's going on. We justify things by developing highfalutin' names like "branded entertainment," "product integration," "street teaming," "buzz marketing," "positioned journalism," "secured placement," and the like. But when faced with intrusive technology for your marketing messages, ask yourself if you'd like to be assaulted by it. Let's treat consumers like someone we know. Let's treat them with respect instead of like a mark, a patsy, a rube, or a flock of sheep.

Second, can we attempt to insist on wit, taste and genuine humor in the ads and PR we create?

We advertisers are, at best, invited guests into people's homes or the public space. At worst, we are party crashers or unwanted intruders. And we're overloading everything with annoying messages.

Imagine if we behaved in this manner in our daily lives:

"Hi, Shirley! My good morning message is brought to you by Henderson's Hardware, for all your home improvement needs."

"Thanks, Jim! My Have-a-Nice-Day reply is courtesy Magnum Magnificence, your best choice for a complete line of lighting fixtures. Come to Magnum Magnificence and see the light."

Before it's too late, I hope we all see the light.

Scott G owns G-Man Music & Marketing Miracles in Los Angeles (http://www.gmanmusic.com), where he creates radio commercials and composes music for radio and TV spots. Scott adds: "Speaking for voiceover performers, please stop asking us to yell your message, and please stop giving us 72 seconds' worth of copy to read in 60 seconds. Speaking as a composer of commercial music, please don't ask us to rip off other artists' songs."