Search Engine Optimization And Why You Gotta Use It?

Writen by Gerardas Norkus

E-commerce is a cut throat business. You have to arm yourself with the proper know-how and the tools to make your site a cut above the rest. Each day, more and more sites are clambering to optimize their rankings in websites and if you lose your guard, you may just get trampled on and be left in the abyss filled with so many failed e-commerce sites.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a term widely used today by many e-commerce sites. For the past few years and the next ten years or so, search engines would be the most widely used internet tool to find the sites that they need to go to or the product or information they need.

Most people that use search engines use only the ten top search results in the first page. Making it to the first page, more so to the top three is a barometer of a sites success in search engine optimization. You will get a higher ratio of probability in being clicked on when you rank high. The more traffic for your site, the more business you rake in.

But, it is essential to grab a hold of that spot or make your ranking even better. As I aforementioned, each day is a new day for all e-commerce sites to make them selves rank higher using search engine optimization. It is imperative to make your site better and better everyday.

So just what is search engine optimization and do you have to use it? The answer to why you have to use it is an easy one. You need search engine optimization to be number one, or maybe at least make your site income generating.

With search engine optimization you can get the benefit of generating a high traffic volume. Let's just say you get only a turn out of successful sales with 10 to 20 percent of your traffic. If you get a hundred hits or more a day, you get a good turn out of sales already. If you get only twenty to ten hits a day, you only get one or two if not any at all.

So once again, what is search engine optimization? Search engine optimization is utilizing tools and methods in making your site top ranking in the results of search engines. Getting yourself in the first page and better yet in the top half of the page will ensure that your site will generate public awareness of your site's existence and subsequently generate more traffic, traffic that could lead to potential income and business.

Search engine optimization requires a lot of work to be fully realized. There are many aspects you have to change in your site or add as well to get search engine optimization. These will include getting lots of information about the keyword phrases that are popular in regards to your sites niche or theme.

You may also need to rewrite your sites contents so that you could get the right keyword phrases in your site without making it too commercial but light and informative. There are certain rules and guidelines to be followed with making your site's content applicable and conducive to search engine optimization.

You will also need to collaborate with many other sites so that you could get link exchanges and page transfers. The more inbound and outbound traffics generated by sites among others are one of the components search engines uses to rank sites.

Try to search the internet for many useful help. Tips, guidelines and methods for search engine optimization are plenty to be found. Read many articles that can help you optimize your site in search engine results. The more knowledge and information you gather the better. This will all help you in getting those high rankings. This may require a little time and effort in your part but the benefits will be astounding.

If you can part with some money, there are many sites in the internet that can help you in search engine optimization. There are many sites that help in tracking keyword phrases that can help your site. There are also some content writers that have lots of experience in making good keyword laden content for your sites that have good quality.

Act now and see the benefits garner with search engine optimization. All of these will result to better traffic and more business for your site and company.

Subscribe to Gerardas Norkus' free Internet marketing newsletter at http://www.netmarketingstrategies.com and discover heaps of tips, tricks and secrets that will quickly boost your online sales and profits.

Search Engine Optimization and Web Site Usability

Writen by Kristy Meghreblian

Build a Web site and the people will come.

Ha! If it were only that easy! The Web is the one sales environment where the customer has total empowerment. They have all the resources (i.e., your competitors) just a mouse-click away.

Not only are you in competition with the millions of other Web sites owners who sell the same product/service as you, but you are also competing for users' time and attention. While search engine optimization and submission can bring you the traffic you need, only you can ensure that visitors will stay on your site by giving them a reason to want to stay. That is where Web site usability comes in.

What is Web site usability?

The International Standards Organization (ISO) defines Web site usability as the "effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction with which a specified set of users can achieve a specified set of tasks in a particular environment." In simpler terms, usability is how efficiently and effectively users can accomplish what they are trying to do when they visit your Web site.

Now that you have an understanding of usability, we'll explain the basics of what a Web site should include to make the most of the user experience:

Content is king

Let's face it, people visit Web sites for content -- they want information. Sure, it helps if your site is visibly appealing as well. But, without the right content, the results of the user experience can be fatal to your business. They simply won't come back.

Here are a few tips to remember in regards to content:

1. Be concise. Research shows that reading from a computer screen is about 25% slower than reading from paper or other print medium. To that end, you will want to edit your writing to say the exact same thing in half the words it would take if you were writing on paper. Also, think back to the last time you came to one of those really long-winded Web sites where the content may have been great, but you still had to scroll and scroll and scroll to get to the end. It can be a nuisance. So, keep your pages short.

2. Make your content scannable. When people use the Internet, they are looking at mass amounts of information. Help them get to the core of what they want by using bulleted items, short paragraphs, and subheadings to make it easier for them to find what they are looking for.

3. Write without error. There is no excuse -- absolutely none -- for poor grammar, typographical errors, and misspellings. If you own a computer, you have access to spell-checking and grammar-checking technologies. Use them. These small details will reflect upon your site. If you don't convey professionalism on your own business, how will you be conveyed to potential clients? Can they trust you with theirs? Before uploading any new content, proofread it. Then, turn it over to someone else for their input.

4. Write as if you were a Public Relations pro. Granted, many of us aren't PR exec's, but you should know how to market your business. Use the lingo that is most appropriate for your business. While you want to provide information, your main goal is still one thing: to sell. So, write to sell.

5. Maximize your keywords. As part of the search engine optimization process, you went to great lengths to select keywords and phrases that are most appropriate for your business. Be sure to use them whenever possible (without being overtly redundant) in your content.

6. Refresh, refresh, refresh. Web sites should be updated on a regular basis -- don't let them go stale. Add new products/services, update users with new information and tools, do what you can to change your content and keep users coming back for more.

7. Know your audience. Since most audiences vary in terms of experience level with both your product/service and their experience level with the internet, you will want to simplify things more than ever. You don't want to talk to yourself - make sure potential clients understand your product/service. The best way to do this is to create content that is informative, yet easy to understand for even the newest of the newbies.

Web site design

Secondary to content is the actual design of your Web site. While the user comes to your site specifically for information, they also will want to enter an area that is easy to use and visually appealing. Here are some usability tips regarding Web site design:

1. Avoid long load times. While the latest technology for Web sites is incredibly interesting and fun, lots of graphics, Flash images, and audio can create long load times that make the user wait. And, if customers have to wait too long, they may leave -- and never come back. As a guide, users will generally wait for a site to load for ten seconds before vacating.

2. Make your pages easy to read. A common error in Web usability is the incessant need to create the prettiest Web site that ever existed. We've all seen them - every color from the Crayola box of 64 has made its mark on these pages. And, with a little bit of color usually comes a lot of cute little images that dance across your screen. In all seriousness, resist the urge to do this. Not only will it hoard a lot of memory, but it will drive your users crazy. Black text on a white background is the easiest to read. If you really want a colored background, stick with a lighter shade, but remember to use black text.

3. Create a well-organized site. Maintaining a consistent look and feel throughout your site is critical. The navigation you use on the home page should be carried out throughout your Web site. Clear navigation can either make or break your site. You are basically providing your users with a road map to your products and services. Don't let them get lost along the way.

4. Consider your space. Content should amount to 50-80% of your page design, with navigation taking up approximately 20% of the space.

5. Stay consistent with design elements. Select one or two (maximum) fonts and stick with them throughout your site.

6. Have a secure and automated server. Amazingly only 20% of current Web sites are secure.

7. What can you do different? This is probably the most important thing to remember when designing your site. Think about your business and your competition. What are you doing differently that will make users visit your site? Once you find out what that is -- whether you offer the lowest prices, have a special widget that no one else sells, or have reputable customer service -- capitalize on that one thing by incorporating it in your design elements.

Conclusion

There are good sites on the Internet and there are an equal number of bad sites (if not more!) out there. The good sites provide for a smooth user experience - easy navigation and easy-to-find information. The bad sites are slow to load, difficult to navigate and leave the users frustrated before they can even get to the information they initially needed. If you've already invested the time and effort into developing a Web site, you should take a serious look at the usability of your site. Here's an easy homework assignment: Some day, when you've got a few hours to spare, surf the Internet and make note of sites you think are good and which ones drove you absolutely crazy. Investigate the qualities of those sites and what made them good or bad. Pretty soon, you'll start to see some patterns that you can learn from and implement into your own usability strategy. Remember, usability is all about creating a unique and enlightening user experience. Usability is the name of the game -- isn't it time you started playing?

About The Author

As Submit Today’s copywriter and editor, Kristy Meghreblian has written online content for many successful companies, including Monster.com. She has successfully combined her excellence in journalism with the delicate art of keyword density as it relates to search engine optimization. As a result, she has helped many Submit Today clients achieve top ranking. Submit Today is a leading search engine optimization, submission and ranking company located in Naples, Florida.

kristy@submittoday.com

Search Engine Optimization and the News

Writen by Bill Hartzer

Believe it or not, the news can be a search engine optimizer’s best friend. By keeping up with the latest news, trends, or “buzz” in your industry, you can bring more visitors to your website which ultimately will lead to repeat visitors or increased sales.

No matter what industry you’re in, at some time or another there’s going to be news that will impact your business or industry. When someone hears about a topic in the news they frequently turn to a search engine to learn more about it. If your website is ranked well for terms related to that news item, you’ll get valuable traffic to your website, which frequently will mean more sales.

Recently, while browsing some telecom news sites for the latest news and industry trends, I noticed that the FCC here in the USA was going to announce a key decision and new policy that could potentially affect all of the telecommunications companies in the United States. The FCC was, in fact, going to announce that decision on a particular date, and they frequently published their decision online. Since one of the websites that I was working on sold products that would be of interest to telecommunications companies in the USA, I quickly created new content on that website that mentioned the FCC decision. I also speculated on some of the keywords that people would search for if they wanted information about that FCC decision.

Luckily, after searching at Google, Yahoo!, and MSN, I was able to determine that there were currently under a dozen web pages that mentioned the upcoming FCC decision—which meant that as an SEO there wasn’t going to be much ‘competition’ for search engine rankings related to those keyword phrases. To make a long story short, I created the content, targeted certain keyword phrases relating to that FCC decision, and got some links to my new web pages. When that FCC decision was announced, everyone in the telecommunications industry turned to the search engines for more information—and they easily found the website I was working on, which helped to brand the company’s telecommunications products. Within a matter of weeks, the company’s sales soared to new levels.

By creating content related to news and events that a company’s potential customers would search for, you can get more visitors to the website. And you can frequently get great search engine rankings because not many other websites will feature information about that topic. The best way to take advantage of this is to speculate about news or events that might happen, or be very quick—as soon as news breaks put up a web page about the subject—you can always remove the page or update it as necessary later.

Press releases can bring a website or business media attention. When a website or company is mentioned in the news, people turn to search engines. The only drawback is that in order to issue a press release or get mentioned you really have to have some news to report. In any case, if you issue a press release make sure that you include links to your website as well as links to the most important pages on your site—many online media outlets will include those links in articles as long as they know about them. Qualified visitors are also a bonus, especially when someone reads an article about a product and the company’s website is mentioned. So, whenever you issue a press release, make sure that you’re ready for the extra surge in traffic your website will receive.

You don’t have to be a reporter or journalist. And you don’t necessarily need to update your website with all of your industry’s news—leave that up to the media or to industry trade journals. However, you should be aware of major events going on in your industry—and don’t be afraid to update your website with news or information about these industry events.

Having a blog is sometimes a good option for a website, although it’s not good to have a stale blog (one that’s not updated on a regular basis). So, if you’re not into blogging or don’t have someone who can update it at least a few times a week then blogging is probably not for you. But just because you don’t have a blog doesn’t mean that you can follow the industry trends—and create website content that’s timely, newsworthy, and “fresh”.

I’m sure we’re all aware of the catastrophic events related to Hurricane Katrina. If your business wasn’t directly impacted by the hurricane, you still would be able to take advantage of the news event. If your website sells computers or hard drives, your potential customers might be interested in knowing about how they can protect their computer or hard drive in the event that a hurricane or flood is going to affect the area where they live. This is a drastic example, but nonetheless it would be an opportunity to create additional timely content on your website.

As a website owner or someone who optimizes a website, the news can be a great inspiration for adding valuable content. And adding valuable content that’s timely will certainly lead to being found for more keyword phrases related to your website’s topic. Oftentimes, adding timely content quickly will allow your website to get those new web pages in the search engine’s index before the competition does. Less competition means that it’s easier to get top search engine rankings. In many cases, if you’re one of the first to feature that new timely information, other websites looking to create web pages about that subject will naturally link to the information on your site—which means more links and better search engine rankings in the future.

Bill Hartzer is a successful writer and search engine marketing expert who has personally created hundreds of websites over the years. Bill created his first website back in 1996 to help promote his former database software business. It was then when he learned about the power of the search engines and web search, which helped potential customers find his business online.

Bill Hartzer has over 15 years of professional writing experience. He has survived stints as a writer for television, as well as a technical writer for several computer software companies in Florida and in Texas. Mr. Hartzer combines his writing and online skills to create compelling and useful websites for corporations worldwide. Mr. Hartzer focuses on the optimization in the business to business arena, but applies these optimization skills to business to consumer websites, as well. He currently is the one of the Administrators at the Search Engine Forums website.

Search Engine Optimization and Submission Tips

Writen by Ryan Joseph

Bringing visitors to your site from the main Search engines is more of a process than one event. The first step is to make sure your webpages are'Search Engine friendly'. This process is also called 'Search Engine Optimization(SEO). You can begin by checking your keywords and making certain you have the appropriate balance in the main body of your webpage, and that these keywords are in your title as well. The title may be the most important area of your site to put your primary keywords or keyword phrases. Be sure that you do not try to target more than a few keywords or keyword phrases.

Meta tags, which are the invisible tags at the top of your html code, are of less importance nowadays. But you should probably include your keywords there nonetheless, as the tags are still used by some search engines when 'spidering' your site for inclusion in their database. When making your Alt tags for your images, be careful not to place too many keywords there as the search engines appear to be getting wise to this practice. This is often called "keyword stuffing and it is a shady or "black hat" seo practice. In severe cases it could possibly lead to your website being banned from the search index. Not a good thing. It is vitally important to have your site properly optimized before they are submitted to the primary search engines. Many individuals optimize each specific page for a different search engine, but I suggest that you focus on the biggest Search indexes like Google and Yahoo (which should not be confused with the Yahoo Directory, an entirely different entity although a part of the same portal). Some major Search Engines such as Lycos appear to be fading in relevence rather quickly so try to focus primarily on the big players for the time being. After the Title tag the next most important component of your site for putting keywords is in the body, the main part people see. As a general rule of thumb, you should have around six to seven hundred words in the body of your home page. A search engine optimization method that works well is to analyze the web pages that currently have a high ranking for your targeted keyword. Then find the ratio of keywords are in the document and then be sure your page has a similiar ratio. A good place to find more information in this regard is searchenginewatch.com.

When designing html pages, be sparing with java scripting and particularly flash, because certain search engine have difficulty reading it properly. Google even advises this in it's webmaster guidelines: "If fancy features such as [...] Flash keep you from seeing all of your site in a text browser, then search engine spiders may have trouble crawling your site.". Whether the Search Engines recognize flash pages or not, you might decide not to use Flash regardless since many of your visitors may use slow connection and they will not necessarily be thrilled about waiting for your animated company logo to load. They may even be a tad upset about it. And then there are those who have yet to install a flash player. But If you are truly bent on using it then at try to at least provide links to other pages which have enouph text and keywords that the search engines can readily find.

On that note, also be wary of images when making your site map. If your site navigation employs image links, add text links so that search engines can find your pages. Another thing to be wary of in your site design is frames. Generally speaking, I advise agains them since the possible negative results seem to outweight the benefits. After you have optimized your html pages, the next step is to submit them. You can submit your web url by going to the "Add URL" pages of each search engine you want to be added to. It is probably best to do this yourself because each search index has it's own instructions. You can find detailed information about this at searchengineguide.com. In many instances you can simply submit the homepage (index.html) and the rest of the website will be spidered thereafter. Web directories such DMOZ, Yahoo, Joe Ant and Web World Index will ask for a description and possibly some other data, while many search engines (like Google or Alexa) only ask for your URL or a URL plus email contact info. If you do not have time to submit your site yourself, there are a number free automated submission sites which can help, although they may not be as effective. Addme and Submitit are popular. If you go to Google or Yahoo just type "free url submission" and a variety of these sites will come up in the search results.

For related articles go to articles go to Home Business Resources and find more useful tips.

Ryan Joseph is a writer/researcher. More info at
http://www.home-business-match.com/

Search Engine Optimization and Site Maps

Writen by C. Pabst

You may not think there's a connection between proper search engine optimization and site maps, but you'd be surprised. Think about what might happen to a visitor of your site. If he gets lost he may go looking for your Sitemap link, and if you’re a good designer you’ll have one for him. Not only do human visitors like sitemaps, so do search engines and there lies another ingenious way to beat your competitors in search rankings.

Search Engine Optimization, remember, has everything to do with both your human customers and the search engine spiders as well. In fact, while the code that search engines use to seek out and index your site is quite complex, what they’re actually looking for is the same thing as your visitors: good relevant content.

So where do site maps come into play with search engine optimization? Well, a number of places actually but probably the most important thing is the simple fact that a sitemap tells the search engine spider what your site looks like and it does so by holding its hand all the way through and up and down your site.

You’ve surely already discovered that anchor links (those usually blue underlined ones that lurk within content paragraphs) should be keyword rich and logically named.

For example, an anchor link at the end of a cooking tips page shouldn’t read “Next” or “Part 2.” It should read, “Next Step – How to Cook Fluffy Eggs.” See the difference?

Now imagine that ALL of your sites pages are appropriately named, all of them keyword rich and logically named for your human visitors. When you put all of these into your sitemap page, search engine spiders will “read” every single one of them. They’ll find all of your aptly named pages in all of their keyword splendor and index them exactly as such.

So…long story short, when people search for content in Google, for example, your site could come up because one of your pages is optimized and named for that particular subject. You might not have ever even manually submitted that page to Google, but because you gave Googlebot (the spider that searches your site) a site map and all those tasty names, he knows exactly where to find what your customer is looking for.

Instant gratification, both for the search engine and your customer as well.

C. Pabst is an author, entrepreneur and the owner of Work From Home Businesses. 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 - A Must

Writen by Alec Duncan

As you surf the web take a look around at many of the sites you see. Do you notice anything that seems strange? Well, let me point it out to you. There are hundreds of thousands of web sites that just don’t get much traffic. Some of these sites house hundreds of articles, reviews, tutorials, tools, products, forums to mention a few things, yet still they do not receive large amounts of traffic. What is their problem? They have the content. What is left?

The problem is these sites aren't optimized for the search engines. SEO, Search Engine Optimization, SE Friendliness, however you refer to it doesn't matter, the fact is it works and I'm going to tell you what's involved.

Before we continue let me familiarize you with some relevant terminology in my own words.

**Search Engine Optimization**

Search engine optimization can be referred to as the addition and modification of all variables and extended variables of a web site in hopes of achieving a better position in the search engines. By variables I mean components of a website such as META tags and content. By extended variable I mean things such as links from other sites.

Different SEOs, search engine optimizers, may have different opinions on this but alas this is only my own.

**What is a Search Engine Optimization Company? **

A search engine optimization company is a company that offers the service of creating and adjusting all the variables involved in search engine optimization in order to get your web site the best ranking they can achieve, during the designated project period, for all the major search engines.

**Search Engine Optimization Hurdles**

Back to the question of why these sites rich with content aren't bringing in the numbers. There are several reasons why sites small and large aren't optimized for the search engines, fortunately these can be remedied.

1. Many webmasters/site owners believe in "If You Build It They Will Come". This attitude will get your web site no where fast. Sure if you build it you will get users maybe even a decent amount of users but you will not be unleashing the real potential of your web site.

2. Not feeling that your site can do better than it is. Websites can always be further optimized. Search engines change their algorithms all the time so what worked 2 months ago may not work as well or at all in present times. For any of you that fee you can get your site optimized better, think of the story of the Little Engine and don’t think you can, KNOW YOU CAN.

3. Laziness is also a major contributing factor. Many webmasters feel it is just too hard or too time consuming to do search engine optimization.

This is partially true. Search engine optimization is not easy but then again, anyone can do it. It does take time though and time is a precious commodity. In situations where you just can't devote the time to search engine optimize your site I would recommend seeking the services of a professional search engine optimization company. You can choose one here http://www.lilengine.com/seo-companies.php

4. Time + cost = a deterrent. For a situation like this I would recommend optimizing little by little on your own. Eventually you will become better and better at it and be able to accomplish more in less time.

5. Another problem is many people think "Well my site is only a small site, there is no way I will be able to compete with the larger sites that have top spots in the search engines". If you think like this I’d like to say this to you. It is possible that that if you optimize your web site you may not be able to compete with the larger sites and may not be able to get a page 1 or 2 ranking in any of the search engines, BUT, what if you did. Always shoot for the stars so if you fall short you will at least hit the sky.

Now for those of you who plan to better your websites via Search Engine Optimization here are the stages you need to follow in order to have an efficient and effective SEO campaign.

**Planning Your Search Engine Optimization Campaign**

Planning is an essential factor in your SEO campaign. Knowing exactly what steps you are going to make and in what order and how you are going to go about achieving each of those steps will save you not only time but it will save you frustration as well. Planning is essential.

**Researching the Most Effective SEO Strategies**

What works and what does not. You will need to learn as many optimization strategies as you can that are currently effective with the search engines. This will be one of the most time consuming steps in your SEO campaign as you will have to sift through information as well as participate in SEO related forums to get additional information from professional. You can take this process in stages and apply your newly gained knowledge as you get it. There is also some useful software available both free and paid that will greatly help with this effort. WebPosition Gold is one of the more popular ones.

**Search Engine Optimize Your Site**

This should be done in stages so you can see the effectiveness of the applied strategies you are using. Don’t change your entire site all at once, instead, change a few areas at a time and see what results they produce. If you are satisfied with this then move on and optimize another section.

Search engine optimization does not only deal with your site it also deals with the relationship other sites have with yours and yours with theirs. Keep this in mind when utilizing your link building strategies.

**Monitor Your SEO Progress**

There are many ways to do this you will have to find the best method for you. You will need to monitor your search engine ranking for the keywords you are targeting after each update. Changes should be recorded and used as references to monitor progress and for strategy adjustments. There are many tools for this process as well. I recommend SEOCount.com for monitoring your progress on the Google search engine as it is very easy to use and you can monitor several domains and keywords all from within the same account. It also gives you the option of viewing the number of backlinks.

These steps follow the Plan Do Review methodology which is a proven strategy for engaging in any task. It is again unfortunate that there are so many webmasters who overlook this entire process; hopefully this article will stop you from making this same mistake. For more information on search engine optimization visit http://www.lilengine.com

Copyright ฉ LilEngine.com 2003

About The Author

Alec Duncan is the founder of Li'l Engine a search engine optimization site. Get more great SEO tips at http://www.lilengine.com and visit their new Web Hosting Resource at http://webhosting.lilengine.com as well as http://www.grindinggears.com for Open Source Development information.

ald@lilengine.com

Search Engine Optimization & Ranking

Writen by Sarah Reiter

Whether you are new to Internet marketing or a seasoned website developer, knowing how to effectively utilize linking campaigns, website submission, and unique content will have the greatest impact on the success of your website regardless of its’ purpose. You are probably already aware of these marketing tools but are not sure how to use them to your sites’ best advantage. In order to help you determine the most effective way to capitalize on each of these online merchandising utilities for increased website success, you need to know the what, how, and why information for them.

So, what exactly is a Search Engine? How do they work? Why are they important to cater to? According to Dictionary.com, a search engine is “a website whose primary function is gathering and reporting information available on the internet or a portion of the internet.” There are basically two types of Internet search services: search engines and directories.

A search engine site uses “software spiders” or “web crawlers” to index websites and retrieve the requested information. Google, AltaVista, Hotbot, Go.com, Excite and Web Crawler are examples of internet search engine services. An Internet search directory uses human input by reviewing directory submissions from users and website owners to fill their indexes. Yahoo!, AOL Search, MSN.com, Lycos and Snap.com are some of the top rated search directories.

It is important to understand, cater to, and work with search engines and directories in order to increase your websites’ visibility. Search engine services which utilize “web spiders” and “crawlers” to sift through their indexes, are greatly affected by changing web pages, page titles, body content and linking. Whereas a search directory looks for information only in the website descriptions submitted to their site, thus changing your website pages will have no effect on your rank in a directory.

Why is search engine ranking important? Because most potential customers never look beyond the first page of a search listing and with a poor page ranking, you will have little to no traffic. Regardless of which type of search service is being utilized, the single most important way you can affect your page ranking is by having good content on your site. It must be relevant information with links to further relevant information on other websites. In the war for page ranking, content is king. And fluff won’t do, in fact it could negatively impact your page ranking.

The next most important factor for increasing page rank is by implementing a linking campaign. However, you must be stringent about who you link to and how many links you have. Too many irrelevant links will also negatively impact your websites’ page rank. You must choose carefully by making sure the sites you link your website to have relevant information similar to your own. Linking for the sake of gathering links is useless and harmful. It is much better to link to and be listed on a corresponding site with very few links and an excellent page rank rather than being one of a multitude of inconsequential links listed on a poorly ranked site. The idea is simple…have good relevant content on your site and link to other sites with good relevant content.

Hopefully you know have a feel for the importance of search engines, page ranking and site linking. Just remember that “too much is not a good thing” when it comes to developing your websites’ page ranking and marketing. Too many links and too much irrelevant content will hurt your site not help it. Stick to the basics: excellent and useful content with links to more useful content. Put yourself in your potential customers’ shoes – would you want to read a bunch of fluff or waste your time scanning useless information? What would you do if after clicking on a link you found even more useless drivel? Click that red “x” in the upper right corner – wouldn’t you.

Sarah Reiter is president of Creative Agent Solutions, a virtual marketing company that specializes in real estate services. Creative Agent Solutions is a member of the International Virtual Assistants Association (IVAA), the Southeast Valley Regional Association of Realtors (SEVRAR) and Scottsdale Association of Realtors in Arizona (SAR), as well as a Certified Virtual Assistant (CVA) with the Settlement Room ™.

Search Engine Optimization - A Do-It-Yourself Guide for the Small Business Owner

Writen by Colleen Happ

So your company has a website – an important step to validate your company, boost its visibility and increase its sales. Now how do you get it to show up on Google and the other search engines like Yahoo and MSN?

A high search engine ranking for your website is essential. At least 85% of people looking for goods and services on the internet find them through search engines.

To increase your website’s ranking on search engines, you could hire a company to do it for you. There is a whole search engine optimization (SEO) industry that will gladly take your money. SEO is simpler than it is made out to be, and there are several steps that you can do yourself to increase the rank of your website.

1. The content of your website is key. Search engines check to see if search words appear close to the top of the page and their frequency on the page. You must first determine what the key words that your customers search with. Consider the website from the perspective of a potential customer and try to understand what they would be searching for on the web. Aim to have 100-250 words on each page with those key words used as often as possible. Those same key words should be included in the title tag of your coding, but keep it to six words or less. (this is the coloured bar at the top of the page). The site at http://www.related-pages.com/seoTools.aspx?cb=wgyr has some great tools to help you optimize key words.

2. Link Popularity. This is a factor that is extremely important in search engine rank. Almost all of the search engines use link popularity to rank websites. Inbound links matter most, and highly ranked sites linking to your site are worth more that lower ranked sites. If you can provide content that other sites want to link to, you will move up in the rankings. This means that you may have to actively solicit links to your content and perhaps write articles for other websites.

3. Proper Page Structure. This can be tricky for people who don’t know HTML, but it really isn’t that complicated. Your pages should be coded correctly so they are easier for the search engines to index. Your site should have easy to follow text navigation, and you should avoid using Flash to build your entire page because it makes the site harder to index. If you want dynamics on your page generated by other languages such as JavaScript, you should have these codes in external files. There is also an html validation tool at http://validator.w3.org/ that is useful. Errors in programming code and incorrect html can keep the search engine robots from indexing your web pages. Keep coding clean and simple.

4. META Tags. This may sound like something out of a science fiction movie, but it is very simple code that should be included in your site because its makes it more inviting to the search engine spiders that crawl the internet.

5. Don’t Cheat. Don’t try to ‘spam’ the search engines by including invisible keywords repeated hundreds of times or by repeating key words in META tags. The engines are getting smart and will penalize you for this. They may even drop your site all together.

6. Patience, Patience, Patience! It can take weeks for the search engines to re-index and re-rank your site once you have made changes or if you have a new site. Search engines are smart, but they taken time to sort through the vast amounts of information that’s thrown at them. If you are patient, you will see results.

7. Many of the major search engines still include a free submission section for their listings. It may take 6-8 weeks (or more) for your listings to show up, but Google, AltaVista and Yahoo still accept free submissions. Since search engine rank is key for success on the internet, you may want to budget for search engine optimization and consider paid listings (Yahoo), or pay-per-click advertising on Google.

Good web design is a balance between what looks great and optimizing your site for search engines. Your content must be good enough so that other sites want to link to it while at the same time include key search words that will draw potential customers. You also need to have your site built correctly and take the time to manage it and keep it fresh. Now you are well on your way to having a high ranking website on Google. Good luck!

Colleen Happ designs effective and affordable websites and graphics. Her portfolio can be viewed at http://www.happconsulting.com. She offers free one hour consultations to show how an effective website can benefit your business.

Search Engine Optimization - A Beginner's Guide

Writen by Claude Beavers

Getting your site listed in the top search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, or MSN is no small job. There is lots of work that needs to be done to guarantee the highest placement possible, and even more work is needed to keep your ranking for any period of time. Here are some simple tips and strategies to keep your site listed, and listed well, without spending any extra cash on pay per clicks.

Optimizing your site for the best search results

Linking and Links to Your Site

Getting links to your site is one of the most important jobs you have when trying to properly optimize your site for search engine listings, regardless of which search engine you are attempting to get listed in. Having links to your site assures that it will be found by the spiders of the major search engines, and the more links coming to your site, the more pages from your site are going to be listed in any given search engine. The more popular the site, the more exposure you get, both from the search engines and the general browser. Link trading, or exchanging links to other sites on your page for links to your own on their site, is an excellent way to get started in getting some links to your site. There are thousands of sites out there with automated link exchange pages, where you simply fill out a form and place their link on a page of your site, and you get a link from theirs. You can easily get 20 to 50 links a day from such pages, although they aren't as high quality as the others you can find.

Any site on the internet with a "Links" or "Resources" page can be a potential link exchange partner. Simply find the sites that relate to yours, even in a general sense, and send them an email requesting a link exchange. Be sure to have a link to their site on your links page and give them a link to the specific page their link is on. It also helps to have your links dispersed into categories, rather than having one long page with 1,000 links on it. This will make people more eager to trade links with you due to it being much easier to find their site on your links page. Keep a list of the sites you have emailed, and mark off which ones have or have not replied and have or have not placed a link to your site. If after two weeks no link is present, or the owner of the other site has not replied, simply delete their listing from your links directory and move on. There are enough sites out there, no matter what topic you relate to, that link exchanges are not difficult to find. These types of sites generally have a higher popularity and higher quality traffic than the instant submissions, although it does take a bit longer to accumulate the amount of links you need.

Another way to get links quickly would be to sign up at one of the various link exchange websites like linkpartners.com. These will usually charge a small subscription fee, but you will get a large amount of links in a relatively short amount of time. Remember when dealing with these type of sites to deal with only links from your particular category, as it will help more in the long run. Also, be careful who you link to within your own category. Try to stick with high-popularity websites that show up high in the rankings on your favorite search engine. Having quality over quantity with links, as well as most other optimizations, is vital if you plan on being ranked highly for any period of time.

Also, try to keep your links coming in. With a massive burst in incoming links that completely dies the next month, the search engines grow suspicious. Either try to spread out that massive burst out over the next few months, or keep the incoming links at or above the number you got last month. With this approach, the major search engines "see" that you are not only gaining in popularity rapidly, but you are continuing to grow in popularity instead of dieing out.

Content

Content is another major factor in how you will be ranking in the major search engines. Having fresh, new content every month, or better, every day, will show that your site is not stagnant. It will also keep your visitors happy. Nobody will come back if your site never changes... they will move on to one that is updated more often. A great way to do this is through goarticles.com or other article sites like it. You can copy an article to your site (leaving the article fully intact, of course... you don't want to break any copyright laws) and have free, original content, every day if you would like. Again, it is best to use content that is directly related to your site, not only for the sake of your rankings (although you will have original content, it will not be related, and so it will be thrown out as "fluff" by the major search engines), but for your visitors as well. Nobody wants information on the newest video game when they visit a flower shop online.

Ever-changing, original content is very important to the search engines, as it shows your website is growing and popular. Even with one new article a day, you will be surprised at the results. If you have the time, you can even write your own articles and content and place them on your site. This content will be completely original, and nobody else on the internet will have a copy (or if they did, you can track them down and exercise your right to copyright as an author). Not only can you get original content by writing your own articles, but you can post them on goarticles.com for free with your name and a link to your site at the bottom. You provide content to the online community and they provide you links back to your homepage. A win-win situation either way you look at it.

Keywords

Keywords are words within your meta tags that you would like the search engines to list you under and pay special attention to. Picking keywords can be tedious and difficult at times, but good keywords can make the difference between lots of traffic or no traffic at all. Search for sites on your favorite search engine that relate to your own and check what keywords they have chosen. You can do this by going to View -> View Source on the menu bar. The keywords will be marked by a " " tag. See which keywords they are using that you may want to use as well. Keep a list of up to 50 of the keywords you think will be the best match for your site and add them in to your meta tag. As always, be sure that these keywords directly relate to your site. This will help your listings in the search engines, as well as help browsers find the site they are actually looking for.

Descriptions

Provide descriptions in your meta tags for each one of your pages. Use descriptions to provide an outline of what each particular page on your site is built for. Keep them clear and concise, and don't load them up with keywords. For example, for your main page, use a description that contains the slogan for your website and a brief outline of what your site is meant for. For SuperFaster.com you would say something along the lines of "Online Marketing Information, Tips, and Strategies - We provide free articles on all you need to know about website promotion." With clear descriptions, the search engines will not consider a particular page a "duplicate listing" just because it has the same title as your other 30 pages, and it will make it easier for browsers to find what they need.

Alt Tags

Alt tags are descriptions of images on your website. These can be seen when you mouse over picture, and can be seen by the spiders of the major search engines. Having a description of a picture makes it easier for a spider to understand what is actually on the site. If, perhaps, you have a tutorial on your site describing how to set up a web hosting account, and this tutorial has screen shots for people to follow instructions easier, you would want to make an alt tag for each screen shot. This will allow the spider to see that not only do you have a tutorial teaching your users how to create an account, but it comes with screen shots instead of random images of your dog or family.

Pictures that are part of the template for your site don't necessarily have to have alt tags, since they are purely for visual effect. For graphical buttons it would be beneficial to have alt tags, to explain to the spider that these are links to other portions of your site. Although these are not really necessary either, it never hurts to have tags explaining where a button will take you once it is pressed.

For further information on Search Engine Optimization, stay tuned for "Advanced Search Engine Optimization"

You can see other articles by Claude Beavers on this topic at:
Website Promotion Articles and Resources at Superfaster.com

Search Engine Optimaization Seo Tips

Writen by Mann Bhatra

Search Engine Optimization uses a combination of techniques, tools, and technical know-how to get results .Search engine optimization (SEO) is a set of methodologies aimed at improving the visibility of a website in search engine listing. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) involves the careful optimization of corporate web sites to effectively increase their visibility in the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Alta-Vista,and many others. The higher a Web site ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that that site will be visited by a user. The higher a Web site ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that that site will be visited by a user.

• Meta Tags

• Navigational links

• Rich Content

Meta Tags:

Meta Tags are very important for your website's visibility. Many search engines read them from your site when you submit it to them .Major meta tags that you can use:

Meta Title
The only resource type that is currently in use is "document" This is the only tag that you need to put in for indexing purposes.

Meta Description
Depending on the search engine, this will be displayed along with the title of your page in an index. "content" could be a word, sentence or even paragraph to describe your page. Keep this reasonably short, concise and to the point.

Meta Keywords
Choose whatever keywords you think are appropriate, seperated by commas.

Navigational links:

at the right or at the bottom, but not on the left, of the page. When the search engines "read" your site, they read from the top left to the bottom right. Search engines place an emphasis on the first 100 words or text on the site. You do not want these words to be navigational links or Javascript. Ideally, you want to have your heading tags with your keywords in the beginning of your page. This being said, placing your links/JavaScript on the right or bottom of your page ensures the search engine spiders get to the text first, giving more weight to what's important on your page.

Rich Content:

The more content you have on your site the more likely someone is to find what they're looking for when they get there. Keep your site very content rich. Have a lot of pages.Update the site even twice a day if you have the time. Updating your site does not mean that you copy paste content from other sites.That will only push your rankings further down. Don't have any duplicate content. At the same time ,dont spam multiple content across the same website. When a search engine views or reviews a website, which they do at least every few months, it looks for specific characteristics found in the content of website landing pages.
For information about Search Engine Optimaization visit http://www.googleseostar.org

This article was written by Manisha bhatra of Google Seo Star http://www.googleseostar.org
for more information about Search Engine Optimaization visit http://www.visaflex.com and http://www.masthyderabad.com

Search Engine Musical Chairs

Writen by Sean Burns

News broke this week that Yahoo has purchased the Inktomi search engine for around US$235 million. This is an interesting development in the search engine industry that may impact greatly on exactly where sites get their traffic from. Another new development in the past few weeks is the change to the HotBot service but first, I'd like to look at the ramifications of the Yahoo/Inktomi deal.

Here's a bit of background information on how the Yahoo and Inktomi search engines work. I'm sure everyone knows Yahoo but not everyone may be completely aware of how their search engine works. Yahoo is a directory. This means that it is a categorised list of sites that are listed by human editors. Getting listed in the Yahoo directory requires a yearly payment for commercial sites. You can get listed for free if you have a non-commercial site but it is very hard to do and can take months. Yahoo provides additional results when you use their search function that come from Google. In the past, Yahoo has used other search engines to provide these results (including Inktomi) but has used Google for the last couple of years.

They initially used results from other search engines to just compliment their own. So, if someone searched for something that wasn't in their directory, they could still get results. The way it worked was that they would provide results from their own directory first and then a user would click on "web pages" to get more results. Strangely, Yahoo actually changed the way this worked during the year so that the results from a search were a mix of listings from their own directory and Google with the Google results being the more prominent of the two. This has essentially made the payment of the US$299 per year for a directory listing an unnecessary expense. Many people still use the directory to browse for sites but, in my experience, more people use the search function.

Inktomi is a full crawler based search engine that provides results for other search engines. They do have a web site but no-one uses it to actually search - it's more of an informational site. Inktomi's results formerly appeared in many search engines but in the last few years, their popularity has declined. The main site that currently uses Inktomi is MSN but Inktomi only provides the fifth level of results. MSN provides sponsored listings from Overture, their own Microsoft sites, their own human edited directory results, LookSmart listings and then Inktomi. So, Inktomi does drive traffic to sites but far less than a search engine like Google.

So, what does all this mean to us? It's hard to say at the moment but there are three options. Either nothing will change (which is unlikely), Yahoo will use Inktomi together with Google on it's site or it will dump Google and use Inktomi for it's search results. Yahoo actually owns part of Google, maybe 5%, so there is a chance that they will keep using their results for this reason. Also, Google provide far better results for searchers than Inktomi so Yahoo would be making a mistake to replace Google. But, apparently Yahoo is annoyed that Google has become competition to them through Google's own site and that Google's news search service is also providing competition.

Without a crystal ball, it's very difficult to know what is going to happen but it's worth making sure that you are prepared for all occurrences. There is really very little that you need to do because it is only the popularity of Inktomi that may change. Even without the searches from Yahoo, Google will still be the biggest search engine in the world due to the fact that it's own site is very popular and it's results are also used by AOL (amongst others). So, what can you do to get the most from Inktomi?

Inktomi is the only major search engine that uses meta tags. This is actually the reason that it is not as popular as before because meta tags allow webmasters to "trick" Inktomi into thinking a page has more relevant content than there really is. Therefore, Inktomi's search results are not very good. However, as there is a good chance that Inktomi will now become popular again, you need to make sure that you have your meta keyword and meta description tags in place. Make sure they are relevant to the page that they are on - you don't want to be caught "spamming" their search engine. The other thing that will probably make a difference is to get other sites to link to you. Link popularity makes a difference on all search engines except possibly AllTheWeb.

I'll keep you updated here with any news on what Yahoo decides to do and any changes that I find out about the way the Inktomi generates results.

As I mentioned above, the other major search engine news in the last month is that HotBot has finally updated their site. HotBot is owned by Lycos and was quite a popular search engine a few years ago. It has become far less popular lately - since it was purchased by Lycos and was just left to "die". It's results largely came from a mix of the ODP, DirectHit and Inktomi. DirectHit has since become Teoma which is owned by AskJeeves but HotBot went for months after DirectHit ceased to exist saying that it's results were coming from them.

So, HotBot has essentially become another meta search engine - like DogPile or Excite. It now works pretty much like Netscape does. A searcher can choose which search engine they would like their results to come from. The search engines that you can choose from are Fast (AllTheWeb), Google, Inktomi and Teoma. This may mean that HotBot starts to get some of it's market share back but as webmasters, there is nothing that we can do to target HotBot. All we can do is target the search engines which provide it's results.

About The Author

Sean Burns is the author of the WebmastersReference.com Newsletter - http://www.webmastersreference.com/newsletter. More than five years of experience in site design, marketing, income generation, search engine optimisation and more is passed on to subscribers - hype free. Sign up today to get real information of real value to webmasters.

seanb@webmastersreference.com

Search Engine Metrics: Organic Search vs. Paid Placement

Writen by Lawrence Deon

Let me preface this report by citing advertisers in 2004 have spent 4 Billion dollars on search engine marketing according to the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO).

Website marketers cited Search engine positioning was the top method to drive traffic to their sites (66%), followed by email marketing (54%). Source: Direct Marketing Association. Accordingly, the most cost effective way to market your web site online is to obtain several top 10-search engine rankings in the major search engines for your keywords.

According to a recent Jupiter Research Survey, searching on the search engines is one of the main uses of the Internet among 79% of users. Source: September 2002 Jupiter Research Survey. So that being the case, whatever your promoting you’ll want to make sure it can be found on the first page of the search engines results page.

The reason is numerically simple. An Iprospect Survey in 2002 reported that 78% of web users abandon their search if the first 3 pages don't provide an answer to their question, and 28% don’t scroll past the 2nd page of results. Source: Media Post article reporting results of Spring 2002 IProspect survey.

Combine those facts with the Internets explosive growth rate of 1.8 Million people worldwide going online every week for the very first time, Source: Official Guide To Internet Promotion and you can soon appreciate what a top 10 ranking can mean to you.
Google receives approximately 39.4% of all search engine traffic. Yahoo receives approximately 30.4%. They’re simply the largest search engines being utilized online today.

Bringing up the rear is MSN at 29.6%, and AOL 15.5% then Ask Jeeves with 8.5%. Source: Nielsen//NetRatings January 2004

How much traffic is that? Well, Google and its partner sites were reporting a whopping 250 million searches a day in February 2003.

Overture and its partners were reporting over 167 million searches per day. Inktomi reported 80 million followed by LookSmart with 45 million per day.

FindWhat reported 33 million while Ask Jeeves reported 20 million, Alta Vista reported 18 million and finally Fast reported 12 Million searches per day. Source: Searchenginewatch.com 2004.

With all said, you can easily see how your search engine rankings are directly proportional to the traffic your web site receives, and your site traffic is directly related to your potential to profit online.

Oh, and in case your wondering how much money is spent online; a recent Forrester Research Report indicated that online spending reached $95,700,000,000 million in 2003!

That's a cool 95.7 billion dollars. Projected online spending is estimated to grow to $229 billion in 2008! A whopping 139% increase in online spending! Source: Forrester Research

Now with these facts in mind I’m confident you can clearly see what a top 10-search engine ranking can mean for your bottom line. Although it does leave a question unanswered in my mind, what has a higher ROI… organic search engine optimization or paid search?

According to SEMPO’s key analysis, the U.S. & Canadian SEM Industry Size Estimate by tactic in 2004, organic SEO accounted for 12% of the market share or $492,057,200 while Paid Placement accounted for $3,341,878,176 or 81.8%.

Interestingly, 9 out of 10 respondents are actively engaged in organic SEM marketing programs accounting for 89% of the respondent advertisers. This trend can be contributed to the average cost of popular keywords continuing to escalate.

If the escalation continues to rise it could make paid search engine advertising exponentially cost prohibitive for all but the largest advertisers… the 900lb gorillas!

Simply put, ROI is outpacing inflation: SEMPO’s key analysis indicates advertisers could afford to pay on average 33% more for their keywords and remain profitable, while they say prices have gone up 26% on average in the last 12 months. That’s leaves a 7% advertising margin to maintain current profits for 2005!

SEMPO’s data also noted that advertisers will get smarter about managing their paid placement programs before they cut back on spending.

This is also consistent with a report released by Nielsen/NetRatings indicating that the growing demand for search engine advertising is outstripping the supply of currently available advertising space.

These findings seem to indicate the inventory of keywords is approaching a critical demand problem however; most advertisers felt they still have some degree of price flexibility in their paid placement programs before they will reach the threshold of diminishing returns.

Is there any wonder why organic search engine positioning has gained popularity for online marketers in 2004? Could it be higher (ROI) return on investments?

SEMPO also cites that 43% of advertiser respondents have shifted their budgets away from other marketing programs for Organic SEO.

So what does it all mean? Let the numbers speak for themselves.

Organic SEO is undeniably gaining favor over the lower ROI paid advertising. This is evidenced by virtue of the fact that paid advertising is becoming less profitable.

Although paid advertising will continue to hold a large portion of the market share, as paid advertising returns diminish and keyword costs soar my early 2005 forecast is for the materialization of a progressive organic SEO market trend to facilitate the need for advertising space.

Copyright 2005 Lawrence Deon

Lawrence Deon is a Search Engine Optimization/Marketing Consultant, Author and Developer of the popular search engine optimization and marketing model Ranking Your Way To The Bank. http://www.rankingyourwaytothebank.com

Search Engine Marketing – What It Is and How Your Business Can Benefit From It

Writen by Jonathan Casuncad

Simply put, Search Engine Marketing or SEM is the fastest, most powerful, highly-targeted, most dynamic, highly-measurable and most cost-effective marketing strategy that can give your business the power to reach potential customers anywhere in the world anytime for a little as USD $0.05 cost per customer acquisition or even for free!

Search Engine Marketing or SEM is about making sure that your Web site appears on the top 20 of search results every time potential customers search for whatever products and/or services that you offer on any of the major Search Engines including Google, Yahoo and MSN which collectively accounts for over 90% of all Search Engine originating traffic.

There are of course other smaller Search Engines that focus on niche industries such as Kayak (www.kayak.com Travel Search Engine) and country-specific Search Engines like Baidu (www.baidu.com) which is very popular in China.

How Popular Are Search Engines?

A study last November 2005 finds that the number of people who use Internet Search Engines to find information has jumped over the last year, claiming a solid No. 2 spot behind e-mail as the most popular activity online. In the year 2003, 250 million searches were made daily on Google alone!

How Does It Work?

On the Internet, whenever somebody wants to find something, they use Search Engines. As spam continues to lessen the effectiveness of email as a marketing tool, Search Engine Marketing is fast becoming the marketing strategy of choice for companies who want to reach a global audience 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, either for free or for as little as USD $0.05 per visitor. As the Internet becomes more and more a part of our everyday lives, the greater their role becomes in helping businesses connect with their customers at that crucial point in their buying decision process (when they are searching for it).

Right now, there are probably people… potential customers who are looking for whatever products or services you are offering on any or all of the major Search Engines. When potential customers type in the keywords that they are searching for and press that “Search” button, do they find you or your competitors instead?

How can you get your business to appear on Search Engines?

Of course, you first must have a Web site. If you don’t have one, get one designed by someone who has a decent understanding of Search Engine Optimization. I’ve come across business Web sites that are so badly designed from an SEM perspective that you can’t even find it even if you search for the company name or business name itself! Even worse, their sites are designed in a way that prevents instead of facilitates their visitors to transact with them.

There are basically 2 ways for you to get your Web site to appear on Search Engines. You either get it listed on the “organic” or natural search results by doing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or you launch a Pay Per Click (PPC) Campaign for the keywords you want your Web site to appear for. Ideally, you should be doing both because a PPC campaign can start driving highly-qualified traffic to your Web site almost instantly while you wait for your SEO campaign to gain momentum and get your Web site within the top 20 of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page), otherwise known as “organic” or “natural” search results, which can take months to happen.

What Is Search Engine Optimization?

To get your Web site to appear on the SERPs you need to launch an SEO campaign. The main problem with SEO is that it can be very difficult and take anywhere from several months to over 1 year before you can achieve good rankings and appear within the top 20 rankings or top 2 pages of the organic search results which is all the results that most people are willing to see before they make a decision and choose what Web site to ultimately visit and do business with. Getting your Web site listed in the top 20 results is going to be a constant battle, especially if you are in a highly competitive industry and your competitors are also actively doing the same thing.

How your Web site is designed determines in great part how well its Search Engine rankings will be. Do you adore that lovely Flash animation on your home page? Loose it! Search Engines can’t see that Flash animation and they rely almost exclusively on text to determine the relevance and consequently, the ranking of every Web page.

What Is A Pay Per Click Campaign?

Pay Per Click or PPC campaigns are basically ads (Sponsored Links) that appear alongside the organic search results whenever someone uses a Search Engine to search for anything that he’s interested in. The reason why it’s called Pay Per Click is because you spend only when somebody actually “clicks” on your PPC ad and not every time somebody sees it. These ads are controlled and are made to appear only every time specific “keywords” are searched for. The level of control an advertiser has over his PPC campaign is so high that he can control exactly how and who gets to see his PPC ads and most importantly, how much he spends for it. For as little as USD $0.05 per click on Google and USD $0.10 on Yahoo and MSN, you can start driving highly-qualified visitors to your Web site.

What Are Its Advantages Over Traditional Marketing Mediums?

While you may get an increase in sales when you put out an ad on TV, radio or print, it is almost impossible to track how well your sales were influenced “directly” by your ads. With Search Engine Marketing, you would know exactly how much you are spending and how much actual revenue you are getting for each cent that you spend for it. You can even know where your customers are coming from using Web Analytics such as the popular and free Google Analytics.

The ability to control your marketing expenditure, track your campaign’s performance, identify and target your market, a truly global reach, measurable results and being able to make changes to your campaign on the fly makes Search Engine Marketing far superior to traditional marketing medium.

How Effective Is Search Engine Marketing?

It is not impossible to convert 50% of your Search Engine originating traffic. The real beauty of Search Engine Marketing is that it allows your customers to find you instead of you trying to find them.

How much does it cost?

The cost of any Search Engine Marketing campaign depends greatly on the scope and extent of it. The more keywords and the broader the audience you want to target, the more it’s going to cost but the greater the benefit would be. Maybe the more important question is… “How much is it costing your business by not doing Search Engine Marketing?”

Jonathan Casuncad has over 6 years of Search Engine Marketing experience and has worked for several American SEM companies. Web site: http://www.sem-pros.com Mobile: +63915-4065427 Skype: jonathan.casuncad Yahoo Messenger: jonathancasuncad

Search Engine Marketing - What Does It Take To Rank These Days?

Writen by Tony Sulecki

Intro.

Search engine marketing has changed so drastically over the past few years, that one wonders where it may be heading next. Currently, Google, Yahoo, and MSN search engine host 95% of all searches done online, and there doesn't seem to be any signs of serious changes. But what can we do to rank highly in them consistently?

One-way links

It seems that inter-site linking is all the rage, and most know that just exchanging links with random websites will not get you the rankings you want, and they are right. The days of exchanging links with any and every website out there are over, and have been over for sometime. One is better off identifying their niche, and focusing on obtaining one-way links from websites and directories. This can be done in a variety of ways such as:

• Writing articles and submitting them to directories
• Submitting your website to top directories such as joeant and skaffe
• Giving away free information with the stipulation the user link to where they got the material, which is you
• Actively participating in forums that match your products, and niche
• Start a blog and keep it updated

Tags

Fortunately, there are head tags that still work over all search engines. The title tag, and the description tag. The meta keyword tag no longer matters in Google, and Yahoos search engines too much, though they are still weighted by msn. Msn actually likes this tag quite a bit, so I would recommend still using your keyphrases in this head tag.

Keywords

When first starting out, Its best to start with smaller keyphrases then move in to larger ones. This will get you traffic, and keep you afloat, while you go for the bigger ones. Not only that, it gives you sense of accomplishment, and keeps you moving forward. This is very important, as many people get stuck in a rut after about 3-4 months with no rankings, and give up. It's important to start small. Not only to pay bills, but to keep you going in the right direction.

Link Exchanges

Yes, link exchanges still work. Believe it. Though there are quality standards these days.

• Only exchange link with websites that are in your general niche market. For example, if had a fishing related website, I would not want to exchange links with a cleaning service website.
• Do not exchange with website with a single page link directory, with 200 links on it. First off, Google only indexes the first 100 links on each page, and secondly, these types of sites are starting to be punished by Google, Yahoo.
• Only exchange with a website that has a clearly defined link directory, that is broken down into categories, and is linked from their homepage.
• Do not exchange with websites that have a grey bar, when using the Google toolbar. This indicates they have been punished by Google, and for linking to them, you could in turn be punished.

Keep at it

This could quite possibly be the key to ranking for competitive phrases. You have to stay positive, and keep working steady, everyday. This of course, comes with the stipulation that you have identified the best keyphrases for your site, and are confident of your ability. Rankings do not happen overnight, and for more competitive phrases, might not happen within the year. This is the harsh truth, but, with the right knowledge, and strict work ethics, you can certainly achieve the success you expect online.

This article was written by Anthony Sulecki, the writer of the WPS Search Engine Marketing Solutions book. He is always open for questions, and email.

Search Engine Marketing Through Content

Writen by Keith Mallinson

If you currently have a website that is only a few pages long, you may fear that your site may not rank highly in search engines. But, this does not have to be the case. What does matter is the content on those few pages. Knowing what content to include on your pages will help rank your site.

The basic point is this, you don't have to have a large website with page upon page of information in order to rank with a search engine. What you need is content rich pages, pages that will trigger the search engine quickly.

However if you have multiple pages and want it to rank high on the search engines, each page should be keyword specific to one keyword. Meaning, that if page X is about dogs and page Y is about caring for them, you should have a keyword for page X and one for page Y, instead of using the same for each. That way, your site will draw off both of these keywords and not get stuck in limbo with one.

By doing this, allowing each webpage to have its own keyword, you allow your site to rank higher in the search engine in multiple areas. In other words the same site can have many rankings because each page will have its own listing and keyword on the search engine. This way you get more hits to your site. And, after all this is the goal! Marketing your site through content can help those with few webpages or many, either way you can gain a higher ranking by using this method.

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
optimizationhttp://www.article-exchange.com

Search Engine Marketing; Three Tips

Writen by Arun Singh

Ranking high is search engine results is one of the most rewarding web marketing strategies available. But how is it actually done?

1. Unique Title Tags - The title tag of a web page should describe what is on the page. Why? Because search engines use that copy to determine what the web page is about, and it's what search engines display as blue hyperlinked text in their search results. People tend to click on the search results that are aligned with that they searched for. Make it easy for search engines to understand what your site is about by using appropriate title tags.

2. Use Search Terms in Body of Page - It's amazing how many people would like to rank competively for a given search term, but haven't actually used that search term on their web site. Search engines are amazing but they're not mind readers. Throw them a bone by actually using the terms you'd like to rank competitively for within your site's copy.

3. Link Popularity - Assuming you've covered steps #1 and #2, search engines should now understand what your web pages are trying to communicate. However, that doesn't mean they'll consider your site to be the most important site on the internet for those terms. When it comes to determining importance, nothing is more important than having links to your site from other web sites. The more links you have compared to other sites trying to rank high for the same terms, the higher your site will rank in search results.

That's it. Cover those three steps, and you'll capture a ton of free and relevant traffic through search engines.

Search Engine Marketing: The Race for Popularity and Profit

Writen by Jay Peterson

Search engine marketing (SEM) can deliver large numbers of qualified prospects and the most cost-effective marketing vehicle for driving qualified traffic to your website. Search Engine Marketing is the first solution in the industry, helping you to optimize your site’s relevancy and visibility to improve your search ranking options.

A comprehensive search engine marketing campaign should also aim to persuade prospects to take the specific actions you want them to take.

The following group of search engine marketing services is available to help you exceed your online marketing goals:

Natural Search Engine Optimization. This is also known as organic search engine optimization. A specialized process that involves analyzing your websites’ underlying code, architecture and visible content and making enhancements so that the location is returned more prominently in the natural search result of spider- based search engines.

You also have to evaluate and update continuously your natural search engine optimization methodology to keep up with the ever- changing search algorithms used by the major search properties and to keep pace with any changes made to your website as new pages are added or updated.

Natural search engine optimization includes:

• Search Engine Submissions. Present the pages of your site so that they will be included in the indexes of the major search engines and returned prominently when customers and qualified prospects doubted keywords that relate to your website's offering.

• Directory Submissions. Submit key sections of your website to appear within the four major online directories.

• Keyword Research. Find out which keywords and phrases will bring the most qualified traffic to your website.

• Website Content Enhancement. To make your site more appealing to search engines you should develop and enhance your website's content and navigational structure.

• Website Competitive Intelligence. Be able to detect what your competitors are doing and find out how you are going to position yourself against them

• Website Conversion Auditism. Determine the obstacles that your website poses to visitors that try to perform a “conversion action” (buy, register, download, request more information, etc.). Be able to learn how to build momentum toward conversion

• Link Popularity Enhancement. It helps increase and improves the quantity and quality of external websites that link to pages on your site in order to improve your site's visibility within search engines.

Pay Per Click Advertising Management. A search engine marketing that requires you to pay a fee every time someone click’s your websites from the ad that you placed on the search engine results. The more you bid to pay per click for a specific keyword and more effective, the higher your website will rank in the paid search results.

Paid Inclusion Management. A critical component of your comprehensive search engine marketing strategy.

Web Analytics. Use to measure and maximize the results by breaking down the website statistics to a smooth level and organizing the data into practical categories.

International Search Engine Optimization. Ensures that your website achieves outstanding visibility within foreign search properties.

Having a success search engine marketing, websites should be designed nicely and wonderful. But the most important thing, people should visit your site. No matter how beautiful it is with all the bells and whistles it will be useless if you’re site is not being visited. The more visitors you have the higher possibility of securing orders and getting more clients and the higher chances for the search engine marketing success.

Jay Peterson writer, web designer marketer. http://www.TicTacWebsites.com is the easiest do-it-yourself website builder on the web. No programming or design skill required. Get your small business online in just 5 minutes with http://www.tictacwebsites.com loaded with 30+ business features.

Search Engine Marketing - The Past, The Present, And The Future

Writen by Carmen Jackson

1997 – 1999 were the early years of search engine era. Internet Marketing and more specifically search engine marketing mainly consisted of submitting your sites to the search engines. These "voices from the past" are still heard today when this or that Search Engine Optimization company and / or automatic submitting software will claim to do search engine promotion for you by submitting your site to hundreds and thousands engines and directories. The search engines' indexing programs, called "robots" or "spiders", looked through all of the HTML code of a page and used some page ranking algorithms that they kept in secret.

Those days were spammers' Heaven: it was rather easy to get your site ranked high. You could just use your keywords lots of times on the page, in the META tags, HTML comments etc. and hide it from the human visitors by making the text tiny or completely invisible with the help of HTML tricks. The search engines didn't have any sophisticated technique to recognize this kind of spam, and such sites usually got high rankings very easily. Today, you still can find some samples of this primitive optimization (however you will have to give it a hard try, because nowadays most of such Web projects have been banned by the search engines for excessive keyword usage).

The only exception was Yahoo which has always been indexed by humans who could in most cases identify and ban spamming pages.
Gradually, search engines started recognizing spam and applying corresponding penalties to Web pages using spam methods. However, search engine optimizers were always one step behind the search engines in finding new ways of cheating the indexing algorithms. Hence each search engine is committed to delivering only relevant results to its visitors, the engines needed to take control away from the spammers and auto-submitters. Many began to try different ways of indexing.

The Rise of Google

If someone is asked today about the first search engine to remember, the answer will be Google in 100% cases. Google has started its way to be the King of search engines in 2000 and in 2002 its right for this title has been firmly established, with around 70% of searches done on the Internet. While other search engines were focusing on transforming to universal portals, Google kept a simple and – which has become its distinctive feature – fast interface that solely targeted delivering relevant search results.

Google also developed advanced features such as indexing and searching PDF (portable document format) and SWF (shockwave flash) files. Additionally, Google's sophisticated techniques to use the "off-the-page" factors made it extremely spam-resistant. Google's dominance has become steady in 2000 with Yahoo having switched from Inktomi to Google as secondary search result provider. Now, Yahoo uses the combination of Overture's and own search software and index repository, thus being fully independent on Google, however, without any slightest impact on the dominance of the latter.

Global Consolidation

By 2001, the results of all major engines were produced from a number of mixed / hybrid sources. Yahoo search results combined Yahoo-directory listings, Overture (PPC) results, and Google results. MSN provided results from Overture (PPC), LookSmart , and Inktomi.

The years 2002 and 2003 brought major reshuffles among search engines: in this period, Google purchased Blogger.com, Yahoo bought Inktomi, and AltaVista and AllTheWeb became a part of Overture. Also, there were many shifts caused by emerging search engine partnerships. Further in this course we will give you a complete and actual chart of relationships between the contemporary search engines.

Search Engine Marketing Today

If you thought nowadays search engine marketing can still be done by acquiring (and using) an auto-submission software, drop this idea since now on. Search engine marketing requires an integrated approach to improving site content, quality and popularity. For a Web site to reach its top potential, it must incorporate target audience analysis, competitive analysis, cost per click optimization, and - last but not least - copywriting and copyediting. And, because things keep changing, search engine marketers need to devote a good deal of time staying on top of the SEO industry and its trends.

Today very few (and mostly inexperienced) optimizers / marketers would use spam methods to achieve high ranking. In many cases, spamming and the so-called "black-hat" SEO is recognized by automatic spiders, for these become more and more intelligent. Even though we describe major spamming methods in the end of this course, we do it only in the sake of your awareness. We do NOT recommend using them, as there's no guarantee at all they can help, whereas it's very possible that your Web visibility can be seriously damaged as a result.

The Future of Search Engine Marketing

Search engines have already developed into sophisticated systems, and no doubt they will continue to enhance their technical aspect, with improved capabilities to index pages that are located deeply within the site (many links away from the initial page). Also, their abilities to handle dynamically generated pages (e.g. shopping carts) can be expected to grow. Among other perspective trends are advanced non-HTML content indexing (such as PDF and graphics), improved ability to rapidly integrate new content such as news using XML feeds or other technology, organization of search results into logical categories (sometimes referred to as clustering), and other advanced features. For insights into the future of search, you could visit Google Labs ( http://labs.google.com). This is the beta area where Google showcases some of its upcoming technologies.

However, the traditional "highest-bidder" approach makes SEM feel more and more like traditional print advertising. The Integrated Approach to SEM anticipates that in future, best marketing efforts will aim to leverage the three components: paid advertising and analytics, all-sided site and content optimization and qualitative off-the-page factors enhancement. That is why we prefer to call the functions provided by Web CEO "Search Engine Marketing" rather than "Search Engine Optimization". When all is said and done, it is the traffic you get and the way this traffic converts that matters – not even your site rank on a search engine. You can rank worse than your competitor, yet the percentage of your visitors that turn into buyers will be so high that you actually outperform your competitor several times.

About the Author

Carmen is the VP Client Relations of Ms. SEO Inc., a Calgary based Search Engine Marketing & Internet Marketing Company. Ms. Seo Inc. works with their sister company Ms. Hype Inc., a Calgary Website Design Company, and their parent company Cre8 Hype Solutions Inc., a Calgary based Internet Marketing Company, to offer their clients a powerful online presence.

Search Engine Marketing – The Full Package

Writen by Richard Brennan

After conducting extensive research I have come to the conclusion that there is a great deal of misunderstanding surrounding the subject of Search Engine Marketing. The greatest misunderstanding is in confusing the terms Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

One would think that those individuals claiming to be SEO experts should be knowledgeable about the subject and recognize the clear distinction. Apparently this is not the case; the internet is full of misguided information, from so called experts. Proving, I suppose that the industry is liberally spattered with cowboys.

To start, let us first define the term “Search Engine Optimisation” (henceforth referred to as SEO).

SEO

SEO is the process of manipulating the structure and content of a website in such a way that it will perform better in the search engine’s organic listings. The techniques involved can be sub-structured into several areas of activity, as detailed below.

1) Page readiness – Search engines expect to crawl clean HTML code. Every page of a website should be validated to eliminate errors and sloppy coding.

2) Site readiness – Search engine web bots follow the links on your web pages and thereby find new pages to index. If a web bot meets a broken link it cannot continue spidering your site. Make sure you have no broken links. Also, provide a site map. A tool for creating site maps is available at my website, www.pro-seo.co.uk/ror-sitemap-generator.shtml.

3) Keyword selection – It is vitally important to select the right keywords for which a particular page is to be optimized. The most obvious keywords are not always the best choice, and are often mega-competitive. Choose wisely.

4) Site structure – Your website should be structured in such a way that each page can be optimized for a maximum of two keywords. Do not try to optimize for a lot of keywords on one page. Remember, you have to write for your users. Writing copy is a balancing act that keeps both users and search engines happy, and is better achieved on a well structured site.

5) Copy writing – the visible text on your web pages should be structured to include the two most important keywords for that page’s content. Get the keywords into headers. Work the keywords into paragraph text, having your keywords appear near the beginning, near the middle, and near the end. Make some keywords bold, some italic and some underlined.

6) HTML tags – The most important of these is the Title tag. Get both keywords for that page into the Title tag, without repetition. For example, if your main key phrase is “diet plans”, and your second phrase is “diet supplements”, the Title tag should read “diet plans and supplements”. Do not repeat the word diet, to search engines it may look like spamming. If your main concern is to improve your Google ranking, you may have overlooked the Meta keywords and Meta description tags, don’t, there are more search engines than Google and they can all bring traffic. Also, get the keywords into H1 tags, H2 tags, alt attributes, and very important, your link text.

And after doing all that for every page in your website you may be asking: so where does SEM come in?

SEM

SEM includes SEO plus all the other things you can do to boost your visibility in the search engines and increase targeted visitors to your website. A condensed list may be as follows:

1) SEO (see above).

2) A link building strategy.

3) Pay per click (PPC) campaigns.

4) Banner exchanges.

5) Press releases.

6) And any other activity that will get your website noticed.

SEM then, is the full package. Whereas SEO techniques are a vital, but not the only, component of that package.

Richard Brennan is a search engine optimisation and marketing consultant, and founder of proSEO Zone.

proSEO Zone specialises in improve Google ranking techniques.