Make Money Online

Search engine optimization is the practice that website publishers engage in to increase their popularity in the search engine results for their chosen niche. Search engine optimization users hope to gain higher priority for their chosen search terms in the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN Live. Search engine optimization, when done correctly, can have a profound impact on any business, online or off, since it enables thousands or even millions of internet users to better find the optimized website whereas without optimization they may not have found it at all.

Search engine optimization (SEO) software includes tools that help webmasters research their chosen markets in order to hopefully rank better in the search engines. SEO software also sometimes automates much of the research needed in order to accomplish this goal. While many SEO Software offerings are not worth their asking price due to being outdated or irrelevant from their inception, some search engine optimization software gives a competitive edge due to the resources they provide.

Some examples of features offered by SEO software:
• Find competitors’ websites that rank higher. This can be a very useful function because once a competitors’ website is found, their methodology in ranking higher can be reverse-engineered and thus beaten.
• Backlink searches. Backlinks are the backbone of the internet since search engines utilize links to crawl websites for data and determine how each website should be ranked. A website that has backlinks relevant to its content will place much higher in the search engine results than one with little or no links.
• Alerts webmasters to how many pages of their websites are indexed. Since search engines only index web pages and not entire sites in their results, it is important to know what has to be done to ensure that all relevant pages are indexed in order to better understand what methods are successful and which ones are not.
• Finds penalized websites that websites are linked to. This is a very important feature of any SEO software. A website that is penalized means that it has been dropped from the popular search engines because it has been involved in unscrupulous activity. Linking to such websites can hurt the linking websites rank in the search engines. This feature helps webmasters eliminate that problem.

Search engines are constantly working to evolve the algorithms that they use in order to rank websites for relevant content so SEO software also continues to evolve. The savvy webmasters utilize SEO software to elevate their websites so that they are able to receive maximum exposure.

In the internet market Google and SEO process are conjunct. And presently, this conjunct is at first place to divert the visitor’s passage directing at your web site. It may happen that even if your site is at first place in the Google, very less or almost no hits to your website. Plenty of big internet marketing companies put their hands up against Google. Google is the only search engine that frequently updates its algorithms and places new challenges in front of these companies. Many web sites get affected daily by this attack of Google. To steer clear of getting castigated by Google, there is only one tunnel to go and it is just follow their SEO Delhi Company e-Fuzion process rules. I know it looks like simple solution but most of the simple solutions often forgotten while facing the tricky challenges. SEO Delhi Company e-Fuzion and its software developers’ uses this black cap tricks to obtain maximum search engine result and there fore Google updates their algorithms frequently. If you want to gain a short term result, it works like a guaranteed to you. When you optimized your web pages, log files can show you the specific keywords used by the visitors for your website that is their hit are targeted by the specified keyword. You must be very studies and selective regarding this. Only the risk is that future your website may get barred by Google and al famous search engines. Who believes in long term internet business which must follow the rules and try to be a moral SEO process developer? In SEO Delhi Company e-Fuzion services you find many search engines that are emerging owing to the popularization of vertical search in united sates and other countries.

The materialization of upright search engines, which is the most modern trend in web searching methodologies, enables the search engine optimizers to have quick look at the wide and multiple web sites that are available on the internet. Some of the latest search engines provide file about the primary customary searching boards. Search engines are used mainly because they cut down on the search time.

Google has announced the addition of some truly useful features to make Google Sitemaps an even better tool for the web. They’ve given their site a facelift and made it easier to navigate. They asked for feedback and they listened. Hopefully, the result is something everyone will love.

A feature that many webmasters will be happy to know about is the notification of violations. No longer will they be left in the dark about what is happening. They will know if they have violated the webmaster guidelines and why.

The rules are pretty simple. Create your site that is truly helpful to your users and avoid doing naughty things just to increase your ranking. Linking to bad sites, hidden texts or links, installing viruses, trojans or other “badware” are just a few of the reasons why your URL will not be included in any Google index.

You don’t even need to look far to know if you have a violation. Google notifies you directly on the summary page of your account. They also place a link to webmaster’s guidelines so you can double check that your site is once again in proper form to be included in Google’s index – this is the second new feature.

Google does not want to exclude any sites that are good. It is possible that the violations were unintentional. It may even be that the webmasters truly have overlooked some items on their site. Google says clean it up and get the chance to be re-included.

Re-inclusion is absolutely simple and easy. Once you see the violation notification, check what needs to be fixed. Correct the item that Google felt is a violation of their rules. Now all you need to do is click on the request reinclusion link on your summary page, or the link at the Google Sitemap home page, and fill out the form. Just don’t forget that you don’t need to request reinclusion if you haven’t received a violation.

If you’re a new webmaster and need a helping hand, Google has a help center for webmasters. It has all the information you need to know about Google Sitemaps. If you have questions about Googlebot, crawling, indexing, ranking and the like, this is the place to go. If the answer you’re looking for isn’t there, no worries; the Google Sitemaps community is there to interact with as well.

By the way, not everybody by the way receives a notification of violation. Google has chosen not to notify certain webmasters of their penalty in certain cases. For example, they will not notify a spammer that he’s been caught. Doing so will only alert him that they have caught on to his game and possibly trigger his making even sneakier ways to get in.

On the whole, these improvements are wonderful additions and long overdue. Google really wants to improve their services and the best way is for people to keep using their products and giving feedback. The team behind Google is definitely listening.

One of the most useful utilities that the engineers and think tank at Google have ever devised is the Google Sitemaps program.

The said program, which is a product of their much publicized and much vaunted policy of allowing its engineers to spend 20 per cent of their paid time on personal projects, has been a boon to many webmasters, website operators and SEO professionals because it has made certain aspects of their work far easier and more intuitive.

Google’s decision to come out with Google Sitemaps is based mainly on the desire to present more intuitive and better search results to users. Because of the current limitations presented by web crawling, there is a high probability that not all pages in a website will be noted and registered with the search engine. There are also many variables and factors that are not addressed with the current methods and technologies used for website submissions. These limitations are what Google Sitemaps seeks to address.

Google Sitemaps was officially started in June 2005. This handy utility makes the submission of web pages to Google easier. The added features though are the detailed reports that is also generated by Google Sitemaps. In order to use the Google Sitemaps program, a person need only download a free open source tool called Sitemap Generator or use one of the many 3rd party applications. These utilities are what helps in creating a sitemap of the webmaster’s website using the Sitemap protocol that is being backed by Google itself.

The complement of new features that are part of the Google Sitemaps programs also means that it has become a great tool for search engine optimization professionals. The automation of these features has made it easier for SEO professionals to do their job and formulate the proper strategies to increase the page ranking of a website.

For example the “top search queries” feature of Google Sitemaps allows you to see the top search queries that not only returned the client website as a result as well as those that Google searchers actually clicked on. This feature also allows you to see the top position for the website in the search results generated for either set search queries. The positions indicated are an average of the movement for the last three weeks.

Since any type of error can have a detrimental effect not only on the functionality of the website but with the page ranking of a website in Google, the report function of Google Sitemaps is a big help to SEO professionals. With the new feature, a webmaster or SEO professionals can download information straight from the Sitemaps account into a comma separated value (CSV) file. This file, which can be accessed through any text editor or spreadsheet software can contain the specific details of the website, including the errors generated (via dead links, broken links, etc) or statistics. The good thing is the file can even contain the information for all of the websites operated by SEO professional and included in the Sitemaps account. This is monumentally beneficial because it fully automates the search for any dead or broken links that may otherwise be a tedious chore if done manually. The good thing here is that this is periodically updated so you will know if the changes incorporated into the website will produce broken links.

Have you seen a site without links? There will not be a site without links. If a site does not have a links pointed to it we can say that site is almost a dead site. If we do not have out bound links it wont matter but we should have inbound links. Even a site with best content isn’t worth much when there are no inbound links to it.

So, after building a website it is important it appears high in search engine rankings. The best way to get good targeted visitors are search engines. Many visitors to the web site come from search engines. The most popular search engines use link popularity in their ranking algorithms (how sites are evaluated). Improving link popularity moves sites up in the ranking and a high position in search results. Back links play a very important role in the search engine ranking. You also must have quality links to make the search engine take notice of your site. No quality links means you will never get a high ranking.

It is important to keep in mind the quality of the site before getting links from it.

1. If your link is placed on a page with hundred other links it would not give any value.

2. If you can not reach the page where your link is placed probably do the search engines. Hence your site receives no value from such link.

3. It serves no value if you get link from a site which has been banned by google.

Also avoid getting links from sites

1. Which have hidden links / text on it.

2. Link farms – sites which link to every site indiscriminately.

It would be useful to get links from the sites with similar content. For ex: If you have a ringtones site getting links from other ringtone, mobile, music etc sites would be useful.

Although one way links are best it would also help to have relevant reciprocal links from the similar sites. You link to my site and I link to your site. That’s what reciprocal link exchange is. It is best to have themed resource pages to do link exchanges. Each page should be on a particular theme. Then you can put the out bound links according to the theme or you can also give links on the content page as it is most useful to the users who visit your site.

Blogs can be a very marketable and very profitable tool if used correctly. Profiting from blogs is just a matter of grabbing the attention of an audience and not doing any actual salesmen selling. In this article you will learn the 13 most essential steps to successful blogging.

1) Where to start?

You should begin your blog with a free blog hosting service such as Journal Home. I don’t say that because I’m the owner, but a free blog host is very rewarding for a new blog. Starting with a free blog hosting service allows you to begin blogging instantly without having any advance knowledge of scripts, hosting, or programming. It allows you to build an audience and buzz for your blog. It allows you to focus on your content and not the internal maintenance of the blog. The best benefit of starting with a free service, is in the case your blog doesn’t become successful you do not lose any money or are you left holding the bill. The great thing about a blog is that they are organized in chronological order, your latest entry is displayed first. When your blog traffic grows greatly and you are ready to upgrade to your own domain then you can simply make your last blog entry the announcement of your “move”. Simply add a last entry stating that your blog has “moved” and type the new blog URL address. Which directs visitors to your new blog site, keeping your following, without a major inconvenience to anyone. Upgrade as you need to…but only when you need to!

2) Niche

A niche is a targeted product, service, or topic. You should first decide on a product, service, or topic which interest you. Choose an area which you can enthusiastically write about on a daily basis. You can use keyword research services like Google Zeitgeist or Yahoo! Buzz Index to find popular searched topics. It does NOT matter if your topic is popular as long as there is a audience for your topic and the topic is precisely focused then your blog should be successful. Anything can be considered a niche as long as it has a target audience no matter how large or how small the audience is. A blog about your cat can be a niche or a blog about the species of the cat family can be a larger niche market, if there are people who are interested in hearing about your cat or the species of the cat family, then you have a niche…you can even choose to build your audience for a market which an audience does not exist, but first you must build your blog.

3) Update Daily (nothing less)

This step is a must and not a suggestion. Updating your blog daily not only keeps your blog more interesting to readers, but it also gives your blog fresh content on a day to day making it more appealing to search engines. Not updating your blog on an occasional holiday or one day here and there is understandable to most, but missing days at a time or weeks is unacceptable and will most likely result in your blog being unsuccessful. To keep your blog traffic and retain your visitors interest it is a must to update your blog daily with multiple entries. Though, I am seeing a growing trend of successful blogs that are not being updated daily, but they are successful and have a stable audience who continue to visit their blog daily. Regardless, these blogs are still updated weekly with multiple entries. Until you have a steady audience you should try to update your blog everyday with at least 3 or more daily entries. The best way to accomplish this is to set aside 1-2 hours a day for tending to your blog and adding new entries. It may even be wise to schedule a set time which you dedicate to your blog each day. Give yourself work hours and treat your blog as a job, what happens if you don’t come to work for days or weeks…you lose money or worse you get fired! Same applies here…if you don’t update your blog for days or weeks you’ll lose visitors.

4) Traffic

It’s no secret. You must have traffic to profit from blogs. There are numerous ways to build traffic. Paid advertising, free advertising, viral marketing, search engine marketing, RSS/XML feeds, and word-of-mouth. You should always use your blog URL address in the signature of your email, forum discussions, message boards, or any other communication media. You should submit your blog URL address to search engines and blog directories. You should submit your RSS/XML URL feed to blog ping services like Technorati, Ping-O-Matic, and Blogdigger. You should confidently share your blog with family, friends, co-workers, associates, and business professionals when it relates. Many blogs can be considered as a collection of articles, for this purpose you should submit your blog entries (those that are valuable and lengthy articles) to content syndicators like GoArticles.com or ZapContent.com. Once submitted your articles can be picked up and published by others. The trick is to make sure you include your Blog URL address in the “About the Author” passage. What this does is create link popularity and backlinks for your blog, when someone picks up your article from the syndication then publish the article on their website the “About the Author” passage is included with each publication and the link you included is followed, crawled, and indexed by search engines. Imagine if your article is popular enough or controversial enough to produce 10,000 publications across the web. The search engines is bound to find your blog in no time with that many publications and credit you a authority on the topic, in return increasing your rank on search engines. The small effort of writing a well written article is rewarding. You should try to write at least 1 full length article every week for syndication and submit your article to at least 10 article syndicators.

5) Track Your Blog

How do you know if your blog has traffic? Just because no one is leaving comments doesn’t mean your blog isn’t growing. Many visitors do not leave comments but they are returning visitors. I know it sounds crazy but with blogs people are more interested in what “you” have to say! Many visitors do not comment their 1st, 2nd, or 3rd time. Some do not comment at all, but are active daily visitors.

Tracking your blog does not have to be overly sophisticated usually a simple free page counter like StatCounter.com or Active Meter will do the trick. Install (copy/paste) the code into the html of your blog template and start tracking your visitors. Its better to use a service which gives you advanced traffic analysis, such as keyword tracking information, referral information, and search engine information. Visitors, returning visitors, and unique visitors should be standard for any page counter service you choose.

6) Listen to Your Audience

When using the proper page counter you should begin to see how others are finding your blog and if through search engines then which keywords are being used to find your blog. If constantly your blog is being found by 1 or more keywords then focus your blog around those keywords to make it even more powerful. When writing entry titles and entries use the keywords as often as possible while keeping the blog legible and interesting.

7) Multiple blogs

Use multiple blogging accounts (free) to attract more people. This means you should have a blog with JournalHome.com and others. The more blog accounts the better (be sure to read and adhere to the Terms of Service for each site). You can copy/paste from 1 blog to all others. Having different blog accounts is like having a publication in different newspapers. This enables you to attract more visitors and this also increases the chance that 1 of your blogs will be in the search engine results for your focused keywords.
Short and Concise

Aside from the lengthy article a week for syndication and publication your blog entries should be short and concise (if you can help it). Sometimes there are exceptions to the rule and you have no choice but to blog lengthy entries, but try to avoid this as much as possible. You do not want your blog entries to become hours of reading. Visitors like to easily find information and skim through your entries. It is good to be detailed and provide useful information, but do not include useless information or run away sentences that veer away from your topic. Stay keyword-focused.

9) Digital Art

Try to include non-advertising graphics, pictures, photos, and art in your blog entries. Not too much. Once a week is fine. Graphics can sometimes bring your blog to life. Of course, the content of the blog is the most important aspect and you do not want to overshadow your content with graphics, but displaying graphics can add a bit of spice to the blog. Be choosy about your graphics and make sure they fit your entry topic. You should add content with the graphic, at least a caption. Original graphics, photos, pictures, and art is recommended.

10) Keep it Personal

A blog is most successful when it is kept personal. Try to include personal experiences which relates to the topic of your blog entry. Stay away from the business style of writing. Write with a more personal style and use first-person narratives. Do not write any of your entries as sales letters, instead share product reviews and personal endeavors.

11) Interact With Your Visitors

You now have the traffic you deserve. You should begin interacting with your visitors. Create a regular theme such as: “Monday Money Tip” or “Picture of the Week” which entices your readers to look forward to each week.

Give your readers advance notice about a product, service, or topic which you are going to review and then talk about later. If the President was scheduled to give a speech then in your blog you should state that you “will discuss the speech and give your opinion after the speech airs. Comments will be appreciated”.

Try your best to find exclusive information that not many have. Do not disclose any confidential or secret information which is deemed illegal or can potentially get you into trouble, but try to get the scoop before everyone else does. Such as: If your blog was about Paris Hilton (the socialite) and you had a blog entry about “Paris Hilton Getting Married” then it would be interesting to your readers if you had a actual picture of Paris Hilton engagement ring. Give your best effort to dig and search the internet for exclusive information and you will possibly come up with something useful. Your readers will appreciate this and they show their appreciation through word-of-mouth referrals. Imagine how many readers will tell their friends, family, and others about information they only can find at your blog.

12) Make Money

Once your blog has gained some real momentum and your blog traffic is increasing then it is time to start thinking about turning your traffic into profit. You should use contextual advertising, like Google Adsense or Chitika. Contextual advertising is usually text links which use the content of your blog to publish targeted ads on your blog. The payout is usually based on a pay-per-click model, meaning for ever click an ad receives you are paid a small percentage of the profits. In addition to contextual advertising it is good to also use graphical advertising such as: BlogAds.com, Amazon.com, MammaMedia, or General Sponsored Advertising.

13) You’re a Professional

You’re a professional now! What are you still doing with that free blog hosting service? It is time to upgrade to a domain hosted solution. You need to get a web host and choose a domain name for your blog then check its availability. Select the blogging software you wish to use, such as: Squarespace.com, WordPress.org, MovableType.org, TypePad, etc. When you have your new blog domain setup and ready for traffic then it is time for you to announce your move on all your previous blog accounts. Your last entry to the blog should be a “move” announcement. The title should be “Moved” and the blog entry should state something like “I have a new home for my blog, please bookmark and follow the link: http://www.YourNewBlogDomainName.com”. This way all returning visitors and new readers should not have any problem finding your new blog domain. Plus, search engines can easily index and crawl your new blog, since your old blog should already be popular with the search engines.

At the level of a professional blogger you may want to team up with 1 or more other bloggers. This will create a more interesting and more powerful blog. The old saying “two heads is better than one”, more authors mean more advertising and exposure because each author will have a vested interest in the blog. The idea of a team blog is to make it profitable and rewarding for all authors, while continuing to target the blog topic and keeping the blog interesting for visitors.

Following these blogging techniques should make your blogging experience much more rewarding. There is no guarantee that your blog will become popular or a household name, but the effort should at least put you one step closer. Making money online is not an overnight experience like many may think, but making money online is definitely a foreseeable possibility. As well, growing popularity on the web is not an overnight experience, but through time, dedication, and persistence you will be rewarded with all the royalties of blogging.

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The vast resource of information available on the internet today is in the form of various classes. For example, when we talk about a mosquito repellant – there are websites that market the product, websites that offer manufacturing know-how, websites that provide simple information on the topic and websites that just simply talk about mosquito repellants. The importance of information posted on a business website is always to the end of selling and making profits.

Therefore, the information which is business oriented should be displayed to the customers at all times. Now that all this is taken care of, how to make sure that a particular website is found by the visitor? There could be millions of websites dealing in the same product. This is where the concept and process of search engine optimization comes in. The need to develop or design the site to be search engine friendly takes the drivers seat here, in an effort to optimize a particular site out of the billions on the internet today.

Search engine majors like MSN, Google, Yahoo and AltaVista crawl through the internet perpetually by using programs called bots or spiders. Their function is to read the websites and file them into a category and finally index them in a huge catalog. When a visitor accesses a search engine and types in his search criterion, the search engines scan their indexes for a match and display the results, out of which the visitor can select a website to visit. Exactly how this index is made is still a puzzle that many professionals are trying to solve. However, thank god for small favors, some secrets are known.

Using these known secrets, it is possible to design a website by keeping them in mind to ensure that the website ranks highest in the search engine results. In this multi-pronged advantageous process, the higher a website is ranked, the higher is the traffic. Moreover, if the website stays there continuously, it builds credibility amongst potential customers and the traffic builds automatically.

The whole process of search engine optimization generally takes about 3 to 4 months after the design phase is over. This is the time taken by the crawlers to finalize the index after numerous visits. Submissions to search engines is another option but not necessary because, all search engines automatically crawl and find new websites on a continued basis.

The demand for search engine optimization is immense today.

“Search Engine Importance
Almost all net users search for solutions and information by using search engines. With search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask Jeeves, and AOL Search, it’s difficult to think of any other way of finding information on the internet.

Before search engines and the internet, it was not so easy to get information. Today, search engines can instantly return uncannily accurate results instantly from a selection of millions of websites.

Search engines are able to catalog these sites using either crawler-based technology or human powered directories. Before October of 2002, Yahoo’s directory was entirely indexed by hand. Now it’s mainly only small portal sites that build their directories by hand based on human judgment.

The large search engines like Google use web crawlers that “crawl” through the internet indexing the content on the pages. Each time they encounter a link, the crawler splits and another crawls through the linked site.

Google is a pioneer in crawler-based technology. Its crawlers, called Googlebots, spider the web constantly and harvest web pages for the input of the main Google database. Once crawlers return the information, Google uses their patented complex algorithms to make judgments about how a site should rank.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of designing web pages that fit the criteria that search engines weigh when deciding whether a page is relevant to a search query. Those that match the search most accurately, rank at the top of search result pages. Building or rebuilding your site with SEO in mind can and will improve your search ranking when handled and maintained by a knowledgeable expert.

Sites that meet critical search engine criteria will rank higher than those who don’t. Aside from a very lucky guess, optimizing pages for search engines is the only way to ensure that your pages have top page of visibility. As access to SEO knowledge becomes more accessible, competition for the top rankings will become even fiercer. 411webinteractive, a search engine marketing company, offers personalized SEO solutions for websites. Its SEO application has been developed for maximum effectiveness without sacrificing design the of a website. It also ensures that your website is accessed by all search engines. If you’re ready to start gaining more exposure for your website through higher search engine rankings, visit www.411webinteractive.com and learn more about solutions for your business.

“

Ah, the joys of link building and search engine optimization. If you have a new site, here is a tip that you might want to consider. Then again, you may just want to pitch it.

Link Building for SEO On A New Site

Link building simply refers to an issue known as relevancy. When ranking sites in search engine results, Google tends to list the site that is the most relevant. There are a lot of factors that go into determining relevancy, but the number of other sites linking to yours is one of them. This is why a site like the one for the IRS is high in search results for tax issues even though it does not trade links per se.

Ideally, you want only inbound links from other sites that are relevant to the subject of your site. If you have a plumbing site, you want links from other plumbing or home improvement sites. Despite all the junk email you receive, links from casino and pharmacy sites are not going to help the rankings for your plumbing site. They will hurt the rankings because they are not relevant.

When building links to your site, Google favors a slow, steady increase in links. If you want top rankings on Google, you should follow this mantra with one exception. If you have a new site, you need not be a slave to this approach.

As you probably know, new sites are not ranked by Google. Instead, your site will sit for six months or so in the much discussed Google sandbox. Given this fact, you really don’t need to worry about Google for the same period of time when it comes to your links. Google isn’t going to rank you anyway, so picking up the pace isn’t really a problem.

With a brand new site, I prefer to create as many legitimate, relevant links as possible as soon as possible. The reason is I find it beneficial to start aging the links as soon as possible. Links to your site tend to grow in value the longer they exist on another site. From my point of view, why not maximize the number as quickly as possible? It isn’t like it is going to hurt your rankings on Google. You aren’t going to have any!

In taking this approach, I am not suggesting that you purchase links, use link farms or so on. I am just suggesting that you maximize your link trading efforts immediately to build up as many links as possible and get the aging process rolling. As you approach month four in the sandbox, you can start scaling back your efforts to a more slow and steady approach. Its worked for me.

When you sell on eBay, it’s important to know how to take advantage of the kinds of markets you encounter in the different seasons. As a rule, the summer months are slow and the winter period is fast, but there’s more to it than that.

It Depends What You’re Selling.

Your sales won’t necessarily be slower in the summer than in winter – they might just be different. If you’re selling sports equipment, for example, you’ll probably find that surfing gear sells in summer while skiing gear sells in winter. You should make sure you are aware of any seasonal variations there will be in your particular market, and plan in advance to take advantage of them.

Selling in Peak Season.

The holiday season is eBay’s peak, and the best time to be selling on eBay – the December rush is relatively short, but if you play it right then you could make half your year’s profit over those few days.

In the holidays, people are looking for presents, and eBay run more advertising than usual targeted towards buyers, not sellers. Target your auctions more towards new users than experienced ones, writing easy-to-understand descriptions. If you have any items that are in demand, try listing some at auction and some with high But it Now prices, to see what works best.

The chances are you’ll be surprised when the Buy it Now auctions go almost instantly and the auctions rack up bids like nobody’s business. It is important to remember, however, that most of these buyers will only buy from you once.

Selling Off-peak.

For the rest of the year, the market is far slower. Don’t worry though – you can still make money. It’s a little like being a stockbroker: you can make money whether the market is good or bad, if you know what you’re doing.

Remember that your target market is a little more ‘expert’: you’re mostly selling to people who know what they’re buying, and know what they want to pay. Cater to this by providing a service suitable for these customers. Show that you know what you’re selling and sell things consistently and you’ll have people coming back again and again.

Here’s one extra tip that you might try. If you know of items that have a consistent value, it might be worth buying up as many as you can cheaply in the summer, storing them for half a year, and selling them during the winter rush. If you’re willing to give over a little space for storage, you can make a lot of profit for little effort. After all, you don’t even have to take the items out of the packaging the last seller put them in.

If you’ve tried searching for a few more eBay tips using the big search engines like Google and Yahoo, then you might have come across someone offering to sell you all the secrets of eBay success for a ‘low, low price’. In the next email, I’ll let you in on their little secrets for free.

SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimizing and refers to a set of good practices that teach you how to improve your website so that it would be easily tracked, indexed and ranked by search engines. Getting your site indexed by Google and other major search engines will help you attract visitors and increase traffic.

It is the process of increasing the amount of visitors to a Web site by ranking high in the search results of a search engine. 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. It is common practice for Internet users to not click through pages and pages of search results, so where a site ranks in a search is essential for directing more traffic toward the site.

SEO helps to ensure that a site is accessible to a search engine and improves the chances that the site will be found by the search engine.

Basic SEO Tips:

1. Insert keywords within the title tag so that search engine robots will know what your page is about. The title tag is located right at the top of your document within the head tags.

2. Use the same keywords as anchor text to link to the page from different pages on your site. This is especially useful if your site contains many pages. The more keywords that link to a specific page the better.

3. Make sure that the text within the title tag is also within the body of the page. It is unwise to have keywords in the title tag which are not contained within the body of the page.

4. Do not use the exact same title tag on every page on your website. Search engine robots might determine that all your pages are the same if all your title tags are the same. If this happens, your pages might not get indexed.

5. Do not spam the description or keyword meta tag by stuffing meaningless keywords or even spend too much time on this tag.
6. Do not link to link-farms or other search engine unfriendly neighborhoods. A good rule of thumb is if your pages do not contain any words that reflect the content of the site you are linking to, do not link to it.

7. Do not use doorway pages. Doorway pages are designed for robots only, not humans.

8. Title tags for text links. Insert the title tag within the HTML of your text link to add weight to the link and the page where the link resides. This is like the alt tag for images.

9. Describe your images with the use of the alt tag. This will help search engines that index images to find your pages and will also help readers who use text only web browsers.

10. Submit to the search engines yourself. Do not use submission service or submission software. Doing so could get your site penalized or even banned.

So in this way Search Engine Optimization, is important, and helps to bring more visitors and Link Exchanging, is important because it can drive more visitors then search engines, once established. Directories ad valuable content for your customers/visitors, and this it improves your SEO.

Visit us:

http://www.halfvalue.com/top-articles/seo-resources.html

The first step to developing any search engine optimization effort is picking keywords. The general consensus is pick keywords with solid amounts of traffic and a minimum of competition. At the risk of being laughed off the Internet, here’s a different view.

Going Big…Going VERY Big

Should you do research to identify keywords receiving lots of traffic? Absolutely. Of this group, should you identify the keywords with the lowest amount of competition? Again, yes. After all, who would be foolish enough to try to attack keywords with a few million competing sites? Well, me for one.

People that go for a keyword phrase like “for sale by owner” [2 million plus searches a month and KEI of 0.000000000…] are often dismissed as amateurs with unrealistic expectations. For those of us that have been in the business for some time, this bias deserves some reconsideration. The motivation is greed…pure and simple greed.

Seo greed is arises when one achieves top listings in Google, Yahoo and MSN for a site. Using the example above, assume the client is a car-listing site and you’ve conquered all the listings for “car for sale by owner.” Yes, it took 15 months, but the client is happy and so are you. Or are you?

After a few weeks, you start thinking, “Damn, I should have gone for the phrase ‘for sale by owner’ and the extra 700,000 searches a month.” You start getting visions of changing the site, but the anchor text in links and so on is already set. In the end, you feel dissatisfied because you want more, damn it!

A Different Approach

Okay, I am not advocating you throw competition analysis out the window. You should absolutely find keywords that have solid traffic and low competition. If nothing else, you need short-term carrots to keep you motivated. That being said, you must also plan for the inherent evil greed in your twisted little seo soul. Don’t even try to deny it.

Here it comes…

I am advocating you go for keywords with monstrous amounts of traffic, competition analysis be damned! Yes, I know. What a fool.

Throwing caution to the wind, I am even going to argue that…[drum roll]…you consider one-word keywords! I know… Blasphemy!…Insanity!…Stupid Moron…etc. But think about it. When you’ve accomplished your goals with low competition keywords, why not have a go at the biggies? What if you get them…even a few?

Putting it all together, my theory is this. Identify the low competition keywords, optimize your site and so on. Just make sure you also throw some “wishful thinking” keywords. If the optimized site survives for three or four years, you might just be thankful you did.

I’m off to optimize for the keyword “travel.” Lets see, Expedia is listed number 1 with a page rank of 8 and 67 thousand back links on Google.

Ha! Expedia I mock thee!

Looking for somewhere online to meet new people, discuss hobbies, plan events, or just have fun chatting? Internet forums have been around for some time on the web and often are free and easy to setup. Forums are basically online discussion web sites where people share information and chat grouped around a set of topics. One example might be a local photography club. You could setup topics around types of cameras, locations for shooting, local events and meetings, printing tips, etc. Often there are administrators and moderators that help to keep the discussion orderly and on topic.

Some items to consider when starting an online forum include…

Cost – Often you can find them for free. There will probably be some advertising on the site, but don’t most sites now a days?

Features – Does the forum support avatars, private messages, user levels, themes, etc.

Security – Is it possible to create forums that only register users can post in? Helps to avoid those spammers.

I cannot stress the last one enough. You should be completely able to control who is in your forums. One bad apple spoils the bunch. On that same note, it is common for a forums to have moderators. These are people that help enforce the rules in the forum. Make sure your choose your help wisely. When it comes to administrators, there should only ever be one. Administrators have the keys to the city and can set your forum ablaze.

Finally to make a forum a success you need to attract people to it to join. Obviously if it is for a church or some other established group, this is relatively easy. Tell your friends, family, club members. If you are starting from scratch, do the same. Tell people, show people, invite people. Check to see if your forum site is listed in search engines like google. Once you get past that initial setup and recruitment your will soon be on your way to having a forum that you and your friends can enjoy.

Google calls Sitemaps “an experiment in web crawling”. In general, you place a sitemap on to your web server. This helps the crawlers identify the pages you have and add it to the search index. And when you update your site map (after changing a page or adding new content), it also marks the pages you’ve changed and makes a note of what order to review it.

It’s a lot more systematic and efficient than random crawling, where there are no guarantees that the web crawlers will pick up on the most important pages. So even if it requires an additional step for web developers, it’s greater assurance that all the hard work you put into your content actually shows up in the searches.

Google Sitemaps was developed partly to resolve the problem encountered by big websites, wherein web crawlers would skip over some pages and fail to index some of the content. Considering the effect this can have on your search engine optimization efforts, that glitch can have a big impact on your ranking. And for websites that regularly change content (like product sites), you’d want your new stock to actually register—especially when you’re promoting a hot, trendy item.

So in short, to get your site into Google, you’ve got to make it easier for Google to find you—via their map. It’s not as complicated as it sounds. You just need to use a software tool to create a sitemap in Google’s chosen XML format, upload that to your site, and then send a URL notification to Google. And since you’re doing that anyway, make an HTML sitemap for the other search engines (Yahoo, MSN, etc.) and then include a link to it in an unobtrusive corner of your website. Many of those software tools can do that for you.

Is it expensive? Not really. For smaller sites (less than 500 pages) you can find several free Google Sitemap Generators. Look for those that allow you to restrict the directories that are being searched, and give instructions as to which files to index and which to avoid. This can be programmed through the filters and settings. For your convenience, you’ll also want one that lets you include PDF, .doc, .xls, and .zip documents.

Larger sites may require a trained webmaster, who can install a program on the site to help you index it and generate a sitemap. Of course, you can do it on your own (and again, you’ll find many XML sitemap tutorials and software on the Internet), but with 800 pages to handle you probably have other web administration worries to think about. It’s just easier to pass it on to a professional. Or at least, invest in a very efficient XML software that will take care of most of the details and has several tools and functions at its disposal.

Once you’ve chosen a program (or hired someone to set it up for you), you’ll have to create a Google account. They don’t charge for the service, and you’ll want to get features like tracking the status of your Sitemaps and reviewing the diagnostic information for your sites.

Now, you’re ready to conquer Google.

Recently I wrote an article discussing the merits of using free reprint articles on your website to increase your search engine ranking. (The article explained how Google loves lots of content on your site, how it loves that content to be regularly updated, and how you can get lots of keyword rich content for your site, absolutely free. See http://www.divinewrite.com/Top_Ranking_Free.htm .)

A few days after publishing, I received a ‘please help’ email from Loren, a small business owner. Her website is all about glass art (http://www.headchangearts.com ), and she wanted some clarification on some of the points I made in my previous article. Loren’s questions were good ones, and the answers important, so I thought I’d publish them.

Q: We have a site for glass art. From your article, I gather that if I create an articles page with free reprint articles (written by other people) containing ‘glass art’ type keywords, I’ll get higher search rankings for those keywords? Is that correct? If so, what page comes up in the rankings? The article itself or my Home page? Also, if the article is being used by other webmasters, won’t the search results also include their version of the article?

A: In answer to your first question, yes, having an articles page with keyword rich free reprint articles generally has the effect of increasing your ranking. Google thinks highly of sites with a lot of helpful content, but it all comes down to whether other webmasters do as well. If your site contains heaps of helpful content about glass art, other webmasters in the glass art field (be they suppliers, distributors, or competitors) will be inclined to link to you simply because that link implies (to their customers) an association with you. That association boosts their credibility because you’re obviously an authority in the field. It also may help their own search engine ranking a little as Google will then see them as part of an expert, credible community of sites (although the benefits of this for the linking site are minimal and arguable). So, in a roundabout way, I’m saying that yes, article-based content can help your ranking, but only if it increases the likelihood that other related sites will link to yours.

As to the question of which page (the article itself or your home page) displays in search results, that really depends on which page has the most links to it*. If you have an article which is just THE BEST source of info in the industry, and everyone’s linking to it, that page will display in the search results. This is good because people who click on this result are interested specifically in the content of the article. So when your website displays, they get the information they want, and they’ll be pleased. And assuming your navigation is clear and easy to use, it is likely they’ll at least visit your home page.

And finally, yes, if other sites have published the same article, they may display in the results alongside you. The same is true of the original author’s website. But it’s important to remember that, generally, the site with the highest PR will rank highest in the results, and it’s this site that most users will visit. You just need to work hard to make sure that’s you! For an example of how this works, do a search for a very specific term related to the article of mine which you’ve obviously read. Search Google worldwide for “Google’s love affair with content” (including the quotes). You’ll notice that the no.1 result is actually a page on EzineArticles.com which contains my article. The page on my site (DivineWrite.com) containing the article only ranks no.2. This is because EzineArticles.com has a higher PR than DivineWrite.com, and overall, the keywords are considered more relevant to the rest of the content on their site than they are to mine. Obviously, this means that a good article can display several times in the same search results, but that’s ok – it simply adds to the perceived authority of the article and the sites containing it.

* Above I say that the page that displays in the results will be the one with the most links to it. There are some complicating factors here. For instance, the text in a link plays a big part in how effective that link is. A link to your site that says “Click here” or “check this site out”, won’t do you as much good as a link which says “Glass Art sales” or “glass art creator”. So if lots of people are linking to the page containing the article, but the text in their links is generic, then that page may not rank as highly as a page with fewer – more keyword rich – links pointing to it. Of course, this assumes that both pages are equally well optimized for search engines and for the same keyword phrases.

I know that the above is a very specific question and the answer is full of ifs and buts, but hopefully this exchange will answer a few questions for a few people.

Happy reprinting!

A web site only gets high rank, if visitors visit the particular web site again and again. Here the repeated and copied sites just down in the level of ranking. With SEO Delhi e-fuzion a web site can easily reached in a higher place. It is particularly based on new creativity along with new excitements. Search engine optimization process is differ with each other in this process links with SEO (search engine optimization0, SEM (search engine marketing), PPC (pay per click) etc. It is fact that large number of people who uses internet through uses out the world and do not have good knowledge in SEO. But here the SEO Delhi company e-fuzion offers different processes to provide a good ranking in the Google the top most search engine. Search engine process is totally depends on good content with creativity. Web masters optimizes the web sites with using common terms and phrases with respect to their web sites and they either follow the United Kingdoms English and International English and searching process optimizes the sites accordingly. It uses the vibrant color of spelling to make the site more eyes catching. For getting good site ranking the web site just need to add some creativity. If the site includes ant repeated words or copied from any where. Searching process just play the role of investigator in the online marketing. As a investigator searches bad activities like that SEO Delhi company e-fuzion searches the words of the content is they are repeated or not. If they are not repeated then these searching processes provide a good position. The SEO is totally depends on the good probability. It makes life web sites life easier by which it makes a blooming path. The SEO Delhi company e-fuzion provides all the facilities to the web site development and also makes it more profitable.

From the above discussion we just come to know that SEO Delhi company e-fuzion always brings an inner happiness by providing a good ranking to a particular web site. Which just uses some key words? And the most important point some people mask the misspelled words that are they uses in the same color of the text as their page color hence not visible to human but can crawl by search engine Process. A searching process always develops only by search marketing process, and for promoting a site SEM also plays a vital role.

If you subscribe to the micro persuasion model of public relations, then you would agree that the Internet is the new frontier in marketing. Blogs are increasingly becoming the medium of choice for companies and entrepreneurs in bringing their brands and products closer to consumers. E-commerce sites are fast becoming widely-accessible, and a variety of products can now be purchased online, from clothes, to computers, to cars. The World Wide Web is one big conversation, and companies are vying to join in, get to talk back, and get feedback in return.

The essential thing for a company to do is to initially create an online presence. As long as you’re there, online and accessible over the Internet, people are bound to seek you out, in their quest for information. Imagine how much more business you can generate if you actively pursue marketing activities online. Imagine if your company website or weblog comes out as number one in Google for a generic search on your product or service. You can literally bring your brand closer to hundreds of millions of people who go online.

This is what the Internet Marketing Blog is all about. Here, we intend to share whatever knowledge and expertise we have to help businessmen and entrepreneurs harness the power of the Internet in effectively marketing products and services. We will explore the various avenues by which you can spread the word about your company or brand. We will help with the best practices and most sustainable methods-this is a fickle industry, after all. What’s in today may be passé tomorrow. So we would delve into both tried-and-tested and new-and-upcoming Internet marketing techniques.

Blogs and Blogging.

The concept of Web 2.0 has given power to the consumers of information to be content-producers themselves. Blogs and blogging have become indispensable tools in marketing one&s products, services, and brand. With blogs, companies can join in on the big conversation, and hence reach out directly to their clients, with a very effective talkback mechanism.

Search Engine Optimization.

What used to be a black-hat, or illicit, trade is now a recognized profession in the Information and Communications Technology industry. Search engine optimizers, or SEOs, pride themselves in being able to quickly, effectively, and legally raise a website&s rankings in the popular search engines, in order to attract more clients, and hence generate more business. After all, majority of online business is generated from fresh traffic, or first-time users who come straight from the search engines. It’s always a good feeling to be number one on Google, or at least on the first page, for relevant searches.

Online Revenue Streams.

We will also discuss how you can actually earn revenues online, through the various pay-per-click advertising, referral, and affiliate programs available. We shall also explore the different models, from contextual ad-generation, to fixed, per-impression advertising.

These are only some of the very exciting topics we intend cover on the Internet Marketing Blog at http://www.theinternetone.net. The Internet is abound with innovative and interesting ideas, and business people and entrepreneurs should keep abreast of what&s new. The next wave of new millionaire-minting ideas can be just around the corner. Thus, it pays to be informed.

Keyword marketing-the importance..

In the Field of SEO-Search engine optimization choosing keywords is one of the most important tasks. You should choose keyword wisely. Choosing keyword is not a guessing Game but it is an art.

Why to choose keywords?

As you probably aware of search engine traffic. Search engine traffic is very very important for success of any website. It is estimated that approximately 65 to 85% of traffic (average) coming from search engine (however is depends on how you promote your website).search engine is only way to create highly targeted traffic. You can improve visitor to sales ratio of your website if you successfully receive traffic from search engine. Or improve your revenue by attracting more visitors.

If you are selling Music CDs online. If your website is on top for key Phrase like “Music CD” on all Major search engines then just think how many people will search for Music CD in a day?? I think lots of. Now. This is the way you are getting visitor searching for Music CDs. However there will be lots of search in a day for term CD like

[1] Software CDs
[2] E-Book CDs
[3] Video CDs
[4] Game CDs etc…

But traffic coming form these terms is Meaningless for you to create sales. So your page should be relevant only for Key phrases like music CDs, audio CDs etc … so it will be better to choose Keywords related to your business rather than selecting randomly or blindly. I hope you will now able to understand importance of choosing better keywords

How to choose keywords?

There are lots of tools for choosing better Keywords like Nichebot, overture keyword suggestion tool, Wordtracker etc…First decide “what is your target market?” and then use these tools. Example you are selling E-books related to website design. Than you should first research how many people every day search for ‘Web Design E-books” go to Nichebot.com for that and simply search Web Design E-books. Nichebot will provide you count of last 60 days for this Key Phrase. We can see that Count for this key phrase is………..Or Go to Wordtracker.com site and search for this keyword Phrase and you will see related information on specific key phrase and you will be able to get information related to this keyword. Phrase.

They will provide you all related keywords

Example: For “Directory submission” you will see following related or nearly related Keywords. (This can also help to receive ONLY targeted traffic…)

Related term-count(average search in two month)
Directory submission-3978
Search engine directory submission-679
Search engine submission software directory-266
directory internet submission-163
directory website submission-159
directory engine search submission-133
directory submission services-129

Follow this Url to know more>> http://www.nichebot.com/kd/?term=directory+submission

you can follow one of the following tool for keyword research.

[1] wordtracker.com
[2] Nichebot.com
[3] inventory.overture.com/

Here is a list of top free Keyword research tools. visit it.>> http://www.seo-resources.inetzeal.com/top-free-seo-tools.htm the list include keyword suggestion tools,keyword analyzer tools,keyword density checker tools and lot more..

Now you have to decide which Keyword is less competitive for your website and you can easily reach on top. Based on that you should place these Keywords on your site..

Where and How to place these Keywords?

You are now familiar with keyword/key phrases. Now Question is ‘where to Put these keywords?” here are some places where you can place these keywords

[1] Meta tags
[2] Title Tags
[3] Through out the Description on the page

Meta tags:-

Meta tags are invisible for Visitor and as you might know search engines like Yahoo, Google, MSN are Not providing weight to them to rank your page. But still you can place your keywords in Meta title, keywords and description section.

Title Tags:-

This is very important place where you should place your keyword for better ranking in search engine. The main Keywords must be here for which you are optimizing your site. Try to include its synonyms Key phrases / keywords also to receive traffic of related keywords. Example you can create your title like this way
Buy Music CDs online: The shop for buying audio CDs online
You are including your two targeted keywords here.

Description:

After title tags this is also one of the most important section where you can place your keywords. But don’t go over bound .density of keywords/ phrases should be 7-10%. Otherwise search engines will consider it as keyword stuffing and your rank will go down rather than improving

Other places where you can place these keywords:

Images: –

you can choose name of images like music_cds.gif audio_cds.jpg etc rather than 0545.gif and image.jpg! This will improve relevancy of your page for related keyword

Name of domain, Sub directory and sub domain:-

Before you choose any domain name, directory or sub directory you should consider your keywords/ key phrases and also choose them according to your target market.

Example:

Just look at my site. I selected sub domain for my site like http://directory-submission.inetzeal.com/ and http://link-building.inetzeal.com/ for targeting my keywords. Now see source code of Page http://directory-submission.inetzeal.com/ you will find that to improve relevancy of my page related to keywords I also kept name of my logo like this directory_submission_and_link_building.png .then I placed title like Directory submission service. And placed this keyword phrase in whole description.now my page is relevant for keyword phrase “directory submission”, “directory submission service”. Or ‘web directory submission” etc…

I have chosen every sub domain according to this to improve relevancy for specific keywords

I strongly recommend you to choose your sub domain or sub directory wisely. if you are creating just a page then you can select like this …./directory-submission.html because search engines text matching will match this keyword and will rank your site on top with your competitor

So, like this article? It took two days to write. Any feed back good or bad are always appreciated. You can contact me at http://inetzeal.com/contact_us.htm

When it comes to setting your website apart amongst the competition, you need to know a few things. You can’t just expect to slap a website up on the net and have traffic run to you. If you really want the traffic, you will have to learn search engine optimization tactics to go along with your basic internet marketing knowledge. In today’s game, it’s not enough just to hope that traffic will turn up. The best websites are the ones who are going out and bringing in their own traffic.

What is search engine optimization, or SEO as it’s called for short? It’s the process by which websites make their content more efficient. Search engines pick up on certain things, and if you are able to turn your website into a place full of those items, you will be on top of the search engine lists.

For example, when someone types in a search phrase into Google or one of the other popular search engines, the results will come out as their rankings would suggest. Google ranks these pages based upon their relevance, popularity, and a host of other factors. SEO tactics can help you climb to the top of those rankings lists, so when people enter a search into the search engine, your site will come up on top.

If you are a website owner and you don’t really know what you’re doing, then take heart. There are many companies out there who are willing to help you. They will take a look at your website and tell you with a great deal of accuracy what it would take in order to make your site more efficient. Maybe your content does not have as many keywords as it should? Maybe you are using duplicate content that is pushing you down in the ratings? Whatever the case, the internet marketing professionals can help you in this regard.

The important thing to remember about search engine optimization is that the tactics are always changing. The search engines update their ranking systems all the time, so you need to be aware of the changes. You have to be adaptable and know exactly how to keep your site on top of the game if you want to have any hope of being successful. A good start to improving your website’s SEO efficiency is to have content that is filled with juicy keywords. This is something you can probably do on your own without too much trouble. That isn’t the only aspect of SEO that you have to keep in mind, though.

By knowing all of the popular and useful search engine optimization techniques, you are giving your website a fighting chance. Otherwise, your website will have absolutely no chance. All of your competitors are out there making sure that they are getting as much traffic as they can pull in. If you don’t do this, then you are short changing the potential of your website.

How to Trick the Search Engines
In a Zen sort of Way

Everybody is looking for the magic formula that will get their site listed on the first page of Google. Because of this, the internet is full of search engine optimization experts that are willing to take your money once they sell you on their new theory of Google’s algorithm. You have your choice of SEO Consultant to full fledged SEO Corporations all willing to take your money and optimize your site. None of them will promise specific results.

That’s because Google is a very sophisticated search engine and their algorithm changes constantly. Google’s algorithm has one primary goal and that is to deliver relevant content. All of this effort is to identify good websites with quality content and to weed out the sites that are “optimized” to trick the algorithm. Therefore… if you have a good website with quality content then “optimizing” your site may be counter-productive if there’s even a slight chance that Google would think you’re using tricks.

That’s right, let Google’s algorithm smell your website optimization techniques and your status as a good website with quality content may be in jeopardy. Google is looking for websites whose webmasters are putting their time and energy in to building and maintaining a good website with quality content not spending their time and energy trying to trick the algorithm. So, the best thing you can do is to put your time and energy in to the reason you built your website in the first place. Whatever that reason may be, it probably was not to learn and practice SEO techniques.

Be organic. Be yourself, even be one with your website. Google likes sites that are organic and built by people with a clear purpose. Understand and embrace the algorithm. Do not fear it and try to trick it. It is there to do good.

As I’ve said before, don’t lose sleep over search engine optimization, lose sleep over conversion rate. Spend your time maximizing your site for your visitors. A good site with quality content will get top rankings naturally.

So, the trick to tricking the search engines is to have no trick at all. How much easier can that be?

If search engine optimization was a major player in your marketing plan, here’s a great site to learn about other website marketing methods: http://www.wilsonweb.com/a/go.to/Ogre

- JD

Google has had a feature out for some time which allows webmasters to create a sitemap file to help Google’s crawlers find and index content.

It sounds like a great idea. After all, it’s much easier to feed the crawler the content then hope it finds it on it’s own.

But is a Google sitemap worthwhile? Is it even necessary?

When the Google Sitemap program first started my thought was “That’s kinda cool but what’s the real benefit?”

So, I thought I’d try it out and submit sitemaps for a few sites that I own.

When Google Sitemaps first came out it was very difficult to figure out what all the entries meant as well as how to actually create the sitemap.

Sure, it was XML based, and I could plainly see what they expected but when you have a large site, how do you go about creating this?

Then Google came out with http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/sitemap-generator.html, a sitemap generator which is a program intended to help you create a sitemap for your site. This does help speed up the process but unless you are a developer it is a little difficult to implement.

Also, you need access to your server to run the script required to generate the sitemap. If you are unsure you should check with your web host to see if you have terminal access to execute Python scripts.

Personally, I’ve never tried the Google Sitemapper tool but I have used others. For example, on my personal blog which uses Moveable Type, I found a blog post which shows How to build a Movable Type Google sitemap template http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/archives/2005/06/google_sitemaps.html. And I’ve used Xenu and an Excel spreadsheet http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=199253 which works great as well.

Now that the sitemap creation is covered, let’s get into the question at hand. Is a Google sitemap really worth the effort?

A few months ago I would have said no, but lately Google has been adding features that make me think otherwise.

For example, if you’ve gone through the verification process (which is really just placing a blank HTML file on the site and having Google find it) and ensured your 404 errors are properly configured you can get access to a wealth of additional intel.

One such feature is the “Top Search Queries.” This tells you which queries were used when your pages appeared in the search results but may not have been clicked on.

In other words, these are actual searcher queries that were performed on Google where your site may have appeared but not had click-through’s.

From a keyword research point of view, this is a huge advantage to you. By monitoring your sitemap stats you can easily see some of the terms people are using and perhaps determine what you need to do to rank higher for those terms so you too can get the clicks that your competitors are receiving.

If you don’t have ready access to log analysis or other stats, the Google sitemap can also tell you what terms actually drove traffic to your site.

In other words, these were searches performed on Google that actually generated clicks for your site.

There’s also a wealth of other information. For example, “Crawl Stats” shows you how Googlebot sees your site, errors generated by it, and even a PageRank distribution chart detailing how well PageRank is distributed.

So, if you are like me and wondering if a Google sitemap is worth it I’d say yes, it is. The information provided, while mostly technical, can help you troubleshoot problems as well as provide ideas to help you improve your positioning.

For starters, what is a blog? In general terms, it is a sort of interactive, regularly updated online journal. A blog owner is called a blogger, the activity of keeping a blog is called blogging, and the blogging community and everything related to blogging is collectively known as the blogosphere.

How are blogs created? There are several options. The cost-free way is to start a blog at one of the countless free blog services, such as the Google service called blogger. Another option is to use one of the free blog scripts and install it at a paid or free hosting service. Such free blog scripts are also numerous, the most popular of them being wordpress. It is also possible to sign up for a paid hosting service with an already installed wordpress blog, but this service is somewhat costlier.

Now let’s assume that we already have a blog. The next question is: Where do we get content? Choose the subject for your blog. It may be your professional occupation or hobby. In any case, you must have solid knowledge of the subject. For instance, if you are a proctologist, you may write about hemorrhoids, their treatment, prevention and suchlike as long as these are not scientific articles, but materials written in layman&s language. To give you a more practical example, if your hobby is dogs, write about them and people will enjoy it. There is another way to get content. The web has many services offering free articles. All you have to do is select the most interesting ones and publish them. In this way you can quickly fill your blog with content.

Moving on to the question of promoting your blog, it is worth noting that blogs are better indexed by search engines than ordinary web sites due to the specifics of the algorithm used in blogs. For instance, a new article in a well-promoted blog may appear on the search engine results page already on the following day. Of course, this requires registration in special catalogs devoted to blogs, which is what you will do next. Another way is to publish articles with a link to your blog. There are also services meant for just this purpose.

But most importantly, a search engine needs external links to your blog from other web sites. These should be good links generating heavy traffic. What does it mean? It means that ideally the link should be on the web site&s main page. What’s more, this page should have a PR rating of at least 4 (PR or Google Page Rank reflects the significance of any particular web page). Five or six such links will do more than hundreds of other ordinary links. How can you get such links? There are also various options. For instance, you can find a resource thematically related to your blog and offer its owners to reciprocate links. Finally, you can buy such links. The higher the web site&s PR rating, the more such links will cost you.

Now let’s move on to the question of how you can earn money from your own blog. The scheme is quite simple: traffic is converted into money. Your income increases proportionately with the traffic volume. One way to earn from a blog is to place ads, which is done most often through google adwords. Another way is to participate in partnership programs associated with the subject of your blog. So if your blog is devoted to dogs, you should advertise flea control products and other dog-related merchandise. A third way is to sell your own merchandise or services. Of course, you can combine several ways of generating income in a single blog. Last but not least, remember that strength is in numbers, which is why it’s a good idea to maintain several resources at the same time.

Analyzing traffic to a site is a key factor in tweaking search engine optimization and marketing campaigns. Determining how people get to your site is critical. Surprisingly, few sites take advantage of the data available on their servers.

Server Logs

Typically, there are two server tools available to you. Server logs are on your server and analyze site activity. The log keeps track of the files created on the server, the number of times there is a request for the file, where the hit came from and the exact phrase typed in by the person accessing the page of the site. Every system is different, but these basic elements should be included.

The second tool, a traffic analysis program, is pretty standard for most hosting companies, but you may have to ask them to turn it on. The programs analyze the raw data from your server and convert it into fascinating charts, diagrams and statistics. Most of the information is overkill. You have to be careful not to get overwhelmed by numerous ways to look at the data. Try to focus on the following information:

1. What sites are sending you visitors?

2. What search engines are sending you traffic?

3. What keyword phrases are people using to find your site?

4. How often are major search engine indexing robots visiting your site?

As you access the data, you are going to find some very surprising things. Actually, you are probably going to be stunned.

Initially, you are going to be amazed when you see which keyword phrases that are sending traffic to your site. Many of the keywords will not match your meta tags. Instead, they will be a combination of various keywords on a particular page. This is reflection of the fact that search engines mix and match your keywords as they see fit. So, should you change your meta tags to reflect the phrases shown in the data? No. The data you are seeing typically reflects keywords with little competition. Since you are already getting traffic from them, keep focusing on your original goals.

In looking at your data, the second key piece of data is identifying where the traffic is coming from. This data often falls under the “referrer” heading. By reviewing the data, you can see what search engines are producing data for you. If you are running advertising on a site, you should also be able to track the campaign.

The final area to analyze is the robot visit information. Depending on the program, the robot information may appear under “robots” or “user agents” headings. Robots are programs used by search engines to index web sites on the net. In reviewing your data, you should be able to determine how often the robots are coming to your site. If at all possible, make sure you add new content to your site before the next visit. The robots for the top search engines are Yahoo – Slurp, Google – Googlebot, and MSN – MSNbot.

In Closing

Analyzing the traffic to your site is a key element to marketing your site. The more you know about your customers, the more you can cater to their needs.

Introduction
So you have completed your website, great! Now how are you going to attract visitors? If you do not let them know you’re there, your visitors will never find find you. How are you going to sell products when users don’t know that you exist? SEO will make your website noticeable on the internet, and this small guide will help you bring targeted visitors to your website.

Optimize your website
The most important part of your website is quality content. Search engines (such as google) will crawl your content and index it into a database. If your content does not match the product you are selling, you will not attract targeted visitors. It is therefore very important that you choose your (key)words very carefully. For instance, if you sell calculators on the internet, make sure you mention the words calculator, calc, math and more calculator related words on your website. However, be careful not to mention the words too often, or search engines might think your website is spam, which will result in a very low rank (search engine position) within the search results.

Linkbuilding
When more websites link to your site, the more attention you will get from search engines, which results in higher ranking. When you create and receive links from other websites to your website, make sure important keywords are used as anchor keywords in the hyperlink. If you sell calculators online, use a link such as; “buy calculator” instead of “click here”.

Target your audience
Leave your link on website where your potential customers meet, for instance forums or discussion boards related to your website. Do not spam your website as this will be noticed by crawlers and will eventually result in a blacklist entry.

Offline targeting
Be sure to market your website offline as well. Advertise in local newspapers, tell everyone about your website, etc.

Add a sitemap to your website When you want search engines to crawl your entire website, the best thing to do is adding a sitemap to your website.

Make sure searchbots can read your website
Searchbots can only read plain text.websites. No matter how beautiful your flash animation is, searchbots cannot read the content inside that animation. Therefore, try to avoid Flash animations on your website when there is content involved. Same story goes for JavaScript.

Do NOT use frames
Never use frames to design your website! Lots of search engines simply skip webpages with frames since they are a difficult to be seen apart from each other by visitors. For instance, if your framepage would consist of menu.html and content.html and your visitor would land on content.html, he would not have a menu to navigate through your website.

Stay away from bad neighbourhoods and don’t spam!
Do not be tempted into leaving your link on abandonned guestbooks, forums or spam your link on every website you can find. Do not exchange links with spammy websites (such as pharmacy websites) either. The risk exists that google will classify your website as a spamsite and will block your website from any search results.

Building links doesn’t always have to be so stressful. Many sites tell you that they’ll increase your links by 1000 overnight if you spend $39.99! I’m here to tell you, it’s not the quantity, it’s the quality.

Although quality does help, it’s hard to judge what is quality and what isn’t. The first comes first, reciprocal links aren’t all that great, so don’t spend hours upon hours of sending hopeless spam mails to sites who, if you had good content, would link to you for free.

The best way to gain links quickly is article submission. One article, if well written and of high quality, can generate 10-15 links. Think of the possibilities! Write one article a day for a week and you may end up with 100 links. And that is, 100 non-reciprocal links.

Why are non-reciprocal links so important?
Well, I will tell you. Search engines, such as Google and Yahoo!, are now counting reciprocal links for less. There is even speculation of the recent update that Yahoo! is penalizing sites which have links pages.

Even if this were not the case, non-reciprocal links are more important for one reason, visitors. Visitors don’t like to see sites with worthless links to websites they don’t want. Why have a link to a travel website if you are in entertainment (besides the obvious, but you get the point)? Even if you do have a reciprocal link to a site which is your competitor you may lose visitors by giving them a higher link popularity.

Should I not link to anyone then?
No. In fact, you should link to as many authoritative sites as possible (authoritative sites are sites which are ranked 1 or 2 throughout your genre).

Links are very important on every site. Don’t just give them away, choose carefully. Link to authoritative sites with great content you know your visitors will appreciate. Just ask yourself, “If the links are not for the visitors use, what use are they then?”

So, I’ve done the whole article submission thing, what other ways can I gain link popularity?
Directories and great content. Content is king and is becoming more-so with the evolution of Search Engines. When a site owner finds an article useful he or she generally places a link to it, even if it is just a blog, it’s still a link. But whatever you do, don’t do the silly thing and spam blogs, that will only get you banned.

Directories are also a major part. If you can write a great description and have an editor in your field at DMOZ.org, submit it and forget it. Either you will get in or you won’t. If there isn’t an editor, try becoming one. It will only take a few hours of your time, just don’t get too hopeful.

If you can’t get in DMOZ, don’t worry, there are tons of other useful directories out there. Tons of FREE directories. Don’t spend $10-$20 on a directory submission unless you know they are worth it and can generate quality traffic. Google and others are starting to crack down on directories who require a fee in order to get listed.