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Posts Tagged ‘MSN’

Make More Money Online With A Blog

July 28th, 2010 Comments off

Did you ever consider to start your own blog to make more money on the internet? If not, you really should, because by tapping into the blogging scene you can easily increase the profitability
of your website.

Just right now is a great deal of hype and talk about blogs, but when one strips them down and looks at them clearly, they discover that a blog is nothing more than a web site. In essence, a blog is a website featuring an easy to use content management system that allows for quick updating in chronological order. The roots of blogging trace back to online journaling and community-building efforts, but approached from a business perspective, blogs are uniquely positioned to make you money. Their structure, treatment from search engines, and ease of use make them a wonderful moneymaking tool.

The structure of blogs is perfect for revenue-producing efforts. This is because the sites are, invariably, heavy on content and are naturally organized in an intuitive fashion. Regardless of what platform one uses for blogging, they will be able to produce a content-based site featuring a series of potentially well-targeted pages.

Search engines love content. Textual content keeps search engine spiders well-fed and persuades them to visit again and again. Google, Yahoo and MSN reward informative sites chock-full of information with better positioning in search results and index these sites quickly. Because blogs are content-driven, they serve as a model for how to build a “cooperative relationship” with a search engine. In the end, effective blog use produces high search engine rankings and, thus, great traffic levels. Traffic, of course, is a key to profitability. It is hard for a site to profit if no one sees it! The traffic advantages vis-à-vis search engines is one of the chief selling points of blog use.

If you are familiar with running a traditional website, you have undoubtedly learned two things. First, success will hinge, in large measure, on your ability to provide fresh content to your visitors. Second, adding new content to a static site can be a definite hassle.

One must write the content (or pay to have it written), convert it to HTML, insert it into the static page and then upload the page to the server again. The inefficiency of doing this makes it all too tempting to “overlook” making updates as frequently as one should.

Blogging solves this problem. All major blog platforms allow users to create new “posts” (which are nothing more than blocks of content) via an easy interface and to add them to the blog with a few simple mouse clicks. The result is empowering. Instead of dreading content updates, webmasters can actually look forward to adding new material in moments. Whether a blog user writes their own content or outsources the job to a pro, adding the new text is a simple and convenient proposition. This makes it easy to build the content-rich sites that soar to the top of the search engine rankings. It also creates a heightened level of stickiness for the blog, making return visitors far more likely. That traffic, when coupled with the right moneymaking strategy produces impressive results.

If you are relying exclusively on traditional static websites for your online ventures, you may want to reconsider your perspective. Using a blog affords some unique advantages and can be a great way to create profitable, highly-visited sites that require minimal effort.

So why not start blogging today?

Buying expired domains for PR, does it still work?

July 21st, 2010 Comments off

I’ve done some experiments over the past few months about expiring domains with PR to see if it is worth your while to catch these expired and deleted domains.

My idea why I would like to use expired domains is the notion that old domains are favored than new domains, and to get instant PR.

So I set out to find deleted domains with PR that I can register. One characteristic of domains I was looking for was that the domain still had a PR, and it was still listed in google.

I won’t be mentioning the actual domains here as I need to control the results and prevent people from making backlinks to these domains.

I registered about 4 domains, some have PR2 and PR3. Some have a few pages indexed, some have a few thousand. I also bought a couple of new domains for my new projects.

I found out that google rarely visits these domains so I need to prime it but with some fresh backlinks. After creating some backlinks to these domains, two domains eventually lost their PR. These two domains have only a few pages indexed in google. In one domain, I did a 301 permanent redirect to the new index page. This domain retained its PR. One key difference this domain has compared to the other two is that this domain has thousands of pages indexed in google.

In another domain, I did a 301 and redirect it to a fresh new domain. The result is that the new domain got indexed faster and more pages were indexed compared to another new domain I registered at the same time. However, PR was down to 0.

There is also a case where I did a 301 redirect from an old deleted domain with PR and never got any benefit from it.

In conclusion, there is still conflicting results on whether buying deleted/expired domains. Some works, some don’t. However, what seem to work is that…

a. Old delete domains does contain traffic from existing backlinks. If the old domain has tons of backlinks, it still does generate some traffic.

b. Other search engines such as yahoo and msn do not seem to have an biases against expired/deleted domains.

Categories: SEO Tags: , , , , ,

Affiliate Marketing starting off in the world of E-Commerce

July 16th, 2010 Comments off

So you have a website but its only displaying your information you created at the moment, which could be on anything and any subject. So you think I need to do more than just my business on this website and then you open up a whole realm of possibilities.

You have to think about a real world shop for example your paper shop that you may go to in the morning will be mainly selling papers but will also probably have adverts in the window. So from this example you can see that although he is doing his main business from selling papers he is also renting out advertising space.

You need to view your website in the same manner either you are selling something yourself you may also want to put other ads that complement your website and bring in extra income from this.

The main thing to decide is how you are going to go about doing this there are two main methods there are providing context based ads from people like Google, Yahoo, and MSN there are general affiliates that you have to look for.

There is already a lot of information about contextual based advertising and I can recommend that if you are website owner that looking at Michael Cheney’s videos are probably the best source of information.

As for affiliate marketing the two main players are commission junction and click bank and you can go to their respective websites and get an account and before delving into just whacking up ads anywhere, sit down plan your web page.

Look at Google’s hot spot in there help file for advertisement placement you need a google account to access this but it s not that hard to get one.

Both click bank and commission junction have extensive help to get you started on the road to affiliate marketing and I know that it is well worth the time in planning and maybe doing a dummy run just to see how the ads and affiliates work and getting an understanding of the programs involved.

This is not a get rich quick system it’s more of a steady method of generating extra income from your website without putting a great deal of effort in.

When entering this market also remember there are some major players in this field who generate large sums of income from these methods but they don’t do this by trial and error. The main thing to remember is that when you have a method that works stick to it as long as possible.

The affiliate marketing game or business is very fast changing field of opportunities and you may be lucky to hit a particular niche to be very successful you have to look at new trends and do a lot of research on a wide range of subjects.

I have been in the affiliate marketing business around three years now and I’m still surprised by the speed of changes to what is hot and where did the traffic come from. You need to arm yourselves with the best tools available but it’s not easy to get advice on what will suit your needs.

Keep up-to-date with the newsletters provided by commission junction and click bank and you can’t go too far wrong. I wish you success in the fields of Internet marketing.

Search Engine Optimizers May Offer SEO through e-Fuzion

July 12th, 2010 Comments off

Search engine optimizers may offer SEO as a stand-alone service or as a part of a broader marketing campaign. Online sources are used to gather facts or difficult validate the processed facts from extra than one basis to confirm the steadiness of the numbers. It makes your web site more accessible and improves the amount of clients who see, and therefore, visit it. Search Engine Optimization. 7 billions pages on the web by previous year. One of these questions might be: what is search engine optimization? Really it’s a process to achieve the top rank. Search engine optimization consultants expanded their offerings to help businesses learn about and use the advertising opportunities offered by search engines, and new agencies focusing primarily upon marketing and advertising through search engines emerged. The crisis is not the quantity of in sequence but discovery the necessary reliable in sequence is essential beginning the huge marine of facts is a big confronts. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the capacity and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via natural search results for targeted keywords. SEO Delhi Company gives you a goal to lunch on a peak level. Although the in order gather is exact, it is obligatory to create certain that the basis is applicable. As a marketing strategy for increasing a site’s relevance, SEO Delhi company e-fuzion considers how search algorithms work and what people search for. While there is a huge quantity of data existing, for processing this data into dependable in order is a chief duty in promotion study. This technical way is a very easiest process for making money. com for more information about this. Other, more noticeable efforts may include adding unique content to a site, ensuring that content is easily indexed by search engine robots, and making the site more appealing to users. This has posed as a confront to the researchers to get applicable websites since many good sites do not come out on the top of search results because low quality sites are focusing on SEO Delhi company e-fuzion to get them ahead. SEO Delhi Company always uses key words scrutiny. SEO Delhi Company includes the accurate key words in the content of your web pages which will bring the embattled consumers to your website.

This software can show you who are your competitors and you can actually request a partnership with them. In internet world Google, Yahoo, MSN Search is the most popular search engines.

Categories: SEO Tags: , , , , , ,

Search Engine Ranking

July 10th, 2010 Comments off

Everyone knows that top ranked sites get a lot of traffic, BUT is that because they are “top ranked” or is it because they get a lot of traffic that makes them top ranked?

Which comes first the Chicken or the Egg?

The eternal question, here’s a way to answer it, in relation to Search Engines anyway

First, the major Search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN, all have different formulas for calculating how they rank a site and these formulas are always changing so it’s impossible to know exactly how to optimize a site for top ranking all the time.

One thing is fairly certain though and it doesn’t matter if this changes or not because the means of achieving a top rank will on its own, provide more traffic than we would get from a top ranking position anyway! I’m talking about INCOMING LINKS.

I’ve seen Log reports from a site ranked consistently in the top 5 positions on all major search engines, which show that less then 20% of all traffic is coming from the search engines, and the rest is coming from incoming and reciprocal links.

To learn more about incoming and reciprocal links go here

Incoming links are links from other sites and pages that send people to our site.
Reciprocal links; are links from our site to someone else’s and a link from them back to our site.

Having a large numbers of reciprocal and incoming links is good because while giving us more traffic it also makes us rank highly in search engines. As explained above it doesn’t matter if we don’t rank so well in the search engines, because we have more traffic from the incoming and reciprocal links anyway. So more traffic better rank, better rank more traffic, it’s perpetual motion!
If you would like to see how Alexa determines ranking here’s a quote from their site.

“The traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users and is a combined measure of page views and users (reach).”

(Taken from: http://pages.alexa.com/prod_serv/traffic_learn_more.html )

Categories: SEO Tags: , , ,

Four Questions Before You Look For Affiliate Programs

July 3rd, 2010 Comments off

I’ve been receiving emails from people asking for my advice on which affiliate programs are the best, who pays the most and most often, and many other basic questions. I’d like to answer those questions on this forum, but I can only type so fast.

I went out this weekend looking for content that I could publish here temporarily while I got down to writing. I had a hard time finding unbiased content. Most of the so-called reviews out there are infomercials, and that’s not what I was looking for with this blog. So you’re going to have to bear with me. I’ve been looking and learning and reading and talking, and I’ve got a lot to say. I just need the time to write it down, and I will, starting tomorrow. No, really I will.

In the meantime, you need to ask yourself this — are you ready for an affiliate program, or Internet Advertising in general? I put together four questions you should ask before you embark on your affiliate program or any Internet advertising.

Before I get to the four questions you should ask before you enbark on your affiliate program, I am going to review two concepts that I use often here on Affiliateblog. The first is what I call the macro view of your Internet presence:

Incoming visitors – Internet Presence – Sales or Actions

You are really running two campaigns with your Internet presence — the first campaign is concerned with getting visitors to the site, and the campaign is ongoing. The second campaign is to get those visitors to do something. That something may be just to spend more time at your site, or it may be to sign up for something or buy something.

The other represents the process of Internet advertising:

Impression – Click – Action

Most affiliate programs pay publishers in the last part of the process, the Action. I’ll be using both of these concepts in my questions. So here we go…

1. Do you know enough about your visitors?

There are literally thousands of affiliate programs out there. While some affiliate marketing hubs are experimenting with context-sensitive serving of affiliate banners and banner rotation on affiliate sites, YOU will be the one to decide what kind of products and services you want to offer your visitors. This seems like a minor detail, but it is a major factor in your success.

If you haven’t already, take a look at the stats for your web site over the past month or so. Where do your visitors come from? Have you paid for Google, Yahoo or other search engine traffic? What are the keywords that people used to get to you? More complex and specific search terms tend to result in more immediate conversions, while broader search terms may result in sales later. If people get to your site using what you believe to be broad search terms, you need to be sure that the cookie life (the amount of time that passes between someone from your site visiting the affiliate merchant’s site and the sale) is long.

Do you have textlinks or other advertising on other sites? Do you know the demographics of the visitors from those sites? Have you spoken to the webmaster, owner or manager of the sites on which you advertise and asked him or her about their visitors? Do you know the websites? Have you visited the sites that advertise on the same sites as you? When you investigate all of these things a profile of the visitors to your site should begin to emerge.

Which search engine brings you the most traffic? If it’s Google, the user is slightly more apt to be male, and in the middle (of MSN, Yahoo and Google) as far as propensity toward buying something (42% more likely than the average user). There’s a terrific article on marketingvox.com if you want to see more details. You can also find some interesting demographic info on the major search engines from AQABA.

You should pay particular attention to the domains of your visitors. If you have a lot of AOL traffic for example, you should consider that the profile of the average AOL user is 35 or older (77%) and married (62%).

If you have trouble with textual representation vs. graphical representation (as I do), there is a terrific product called VisitorVille that takes your web logs and animates them. The text is represented as pictures (buildings, people, buses for the search engines, etc). You can see it here. Disclaimer: I am a VisitorVille affiliate.

After all this you should be able to sit down and come up with the profile of a typical visitor. This profile should hopefully include estimates of age, country of origin, education and income.

Try to think like your visitors. Try to anticipate their interests and the products and services they might want to purchase. Affiliate programs raise the bar from PPC — your payment comes at the end of the Internet marketing process (the Action) rather than at the beginning (Impression or Click) like Google Adsense or Doubleclick. You need to apply more brainpower to the process, and you’ll make more money if you do it right.

2. Is your site perfect?

You’re asking someone to buy something from your site. If the pages have sloppy html code, broken links or instability from a bad Cascading Stylesheet, it makes you look cheesy. We’ve all been uncomfortable buying something off a cheesy website. You don’t want to be that website.

Let’s start with the html code. Are you sure there are no errors in it? Have you used an html checker like the one at W3C? I find mistakes in my code all the time. Unless you check your code on several browsers in several resolutions you might not catch an error. The validator will. If you use Cascading Stylesheets you should also visit the CSS Checker.

Speaking of validators, you should check your links often. W3.org also has a link validator.

The site should also be optimized for search engines, be easy to understand and navigate, and should have a sitemap for people (and spiders) to find their way around. You should have had ten of your closest friends take a look at the site and give you their feedback, and you should always listen to unsolicited comments from users with an open mind and place value on them. If someone takes the time from their busy day to send you an email about your site, they feel strongly about it and you should take a close look at what they’re talking about.

Understand that if your Incoming Visitors campaign is not working right, you’re wasting your time with your Sales or Action program.

3. Do you know what kind of ads you’re going to use, and where the ads are going to go?

People have been ignoring banners for ten years. That’s why they shake and make sounds (someday I’ll tell you about the screaming match I had with a creative director the day we put out the first talking banner ad) to try to get your attention. Where you put it on the page is going to make a huge difference. Briefly — banners need to go somewhere the eye naturally rests (next to the masthead, near the navigation, at the bottom of the page).

Placement of any ads is a huge part of getting them noticed or clicked.

A lot of people (including me) believe that text ads should be placed at natural breaks and be close to the same in text size and color as the text. You need to surf around and look at where people place their ads, and you need to figure out where you think they would work on your site.

If you plan to create pages for some of the products you endorse (a great idea), you need to figure out how prominently you want to place the advertising. Most people won’t buy something if they believe you’re shilling for a particular company. They will buy from someone they believe honestly endorses the product or service. You need to figure out how to keep the distinction.

4. What’s your hunch on the right kind of offers for your site?

I ask this question a lot. Now that you have a better idea of the demographics of your visitors, try to decide on which action you think they would be more apt to take — pay-per-lead, pay-per-sale or even pay-per-click (hard to come by) on your site.

If you have a general interest website that gives away free stuff it’s probably going to be difficult to sell people products from that website. It might be smarter to try to get them to sign up for a free products newsletter from one of the affiliate programs, or you may want to look for offers that target the age group of your site rather than offers that target a specific interest. You might be looking for smaller-ticket sales or only leads. Leads get the user to the end of the advertising process chain, but require less of a commitment.

Try to come up with the four, five, six or fifty ways to slice this all up, by type of action, by type of sale or lead, or any other way you can come up with. Then you can go out and find the different offers that might appeal to your visitors. When it comes time to place the ads, try to put different ads in similar spaces on the same pages, and see how they do.

Get your questions answered and you’re ready to take the plunge into affiliate marketing.

Online Auctions: Watch Your Ezine Subscription grow Exponentially

June 10th, 2010 Comments off

Online Auctions are often called the “Entrepreneurs Dream’, because it is the easiest and the cheapest way to make money. And who doesn’t want to make money and grow rich? The online auction giant eBay has more than a million hits a year. And these are targeted customers. Unlike the regular auctions, in online auctions the customers are already there and they will come to you provide you go about it the right way. So how do you build your ezine subscription list with online auctions? Here are a few hints-

1. Decide who your targeted customers for your ezine are. For example if you are selling herbal health products, then customers who are interested in computers wont be looking at your site.
2. Choose the correct category for your products. To get an idea how to do this you can visit one the online auction sites. For example if you are selling leather belts, you can list it under apparel and accessories. Again, you have to list if it is for men or women.
3. Then you have to offer your item to the customers. To do this successfully you have to describe your product in a very positive and seductive way? How do you do this? List out the different colors of leather belts available, different sizes of belts. Offering a guarantee is also a sure way to make people know that you are genuine. You can also use positive feed back for previous customers who have bought the product from you.
4. A picture speaks a thousand words. So make sure you have good photographs of the product, so that customers can have n idea of the product that they are going to get.
5. Make sure that your product is listed with a very attractive headline. As the space for headlines is small in online auctions you have to express a lot with very few words.
6. Work in references and links throughout your sales copy to your ezine. Mention your ezine many times throughout your online auction site. Put your listing on some of the biggest online auction sites on the Internet. Some of the big online auction sites charge for a listing but it is free on smaller online auction sites.

Some of the online auction sites are listed below—

http://auctions.amazon.com

http://auctions.cnet.com

http://auctions.lycos.com

http://auctions.msn.com

http://auctions.yahoo.com

http://www.ebay.com

Once your ad is put up then it is time for you to put up your feet and relax. Your ad will create a steady stream of subscribers for your ezine.

Categories: Auctions Tags: , , , ,

A Mind-Blowing Technology

May 20th, 2010 Comments off

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In search engine, optimization a client crapper intends different technologies, which should be applicable for scheme sites promotion. In the online marketing the scheme sites senior puts a field role for a scheme promotion. In the online business, a scheme sites main center of magnet is writing, and through only the writing, a scheme place crapper intends promotion. For the scheme, content scheme senior is a enthusiastic care for the customers. In SEO Delhi, consort e-fuzion the intelligent impact entireness rattling alacritous and exposes as competitor for another organizations.

Categories: SEO Tags: , , , ,

How-To Get Your BLOGS Site Feed Listed In Yahoo! and MSN Within HOURS, Is Easier Then You Think

May 14th, 2010 Comments off

BLOGS… they seem to be the talk of the Internet marketing world these days, and for good reason.

Not only do the Search Engines love them for there Content Rich pages, you also have the ability to plug your Blogs “Site Feed” into an RSS feed and then have it syndicated to thousands of websites and directories giving your content more exposure to your target audience.

RSS(Real Simple Syndication) is a very Powerful technology that has been around for quite some time and when used correctly, can build an audience overnight.

If you want a crash course on what RSS is, in more depth, since the nature of this article is to show you how to get your Blogs “Site Feed” listed in Yahoo! and MSN, I’ve provided a link to a page full of articles on RSS related issues. http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-articles.htm

Now, depending on where your Blog is hosted, whether its through a free service like Blogger.com — http://www.blogger.com or hosted on your websites server you should have a “Site Feed URL” that has the .XML extension.

This is your “Site Feed URL”.

You&ll usually locate it within your Settings area of Blog control center.

Here’s what mine looks like as an example:

http://theiwe.blogspot.com/atom.xml

This URL is intended for a RSS News Reader, so disregard its appearance.

Once you find your “Site Feed URL”, copy and paste it into Notepad because you’ll need it for the next steps coming ahead.

Now, what you need to do is go and set-up an My Yahoo! and My MSN account.

I’ve provided the links for you below.

– My Yahoo! ==> http://my.yahoo.com

– My MSN ==> http://msn.com

It should only take you about 15-20 minutes at the most.

If you already have accounts with My Yahoo! and My MSN, read on.

This is assuming you already have your accounts set-up, so your next step is to Login to your My Yahoo! account.

When you login, you’ll be taken to your Yahoo! page immediately.

What you want to do next is go look under the Yahoo! search box to the left and click on the “Add Content” link.

This will bring you to a new page.

From there, over to the right by the “Find” button you’ll see an “Add RSS by URL” link, click on it.

A new window will open with a “Web Form”. Simply copy and paste your “Site Feed URL” from Notepad into the web form and click on the “Add” button.

Now, you should see your Blogs name infront of you. Simply click on the yellow “Add To My Yahoo!” button and your feed will be added.

The next thing you should see is your “Site Feed” with your “Headlines”.

Click on one of them, it should take you to your Blog, to the desired Headline you chose.

Your My Yahoo! page should Now have your Blogs “Site Feed” Headlines listed at the bottom.

Scroll down to check. If you don’t see them, it sometimes takes up to 24-48 hours for them to appear, so just check back later.

Now that thats done, everytime you update your Blog with NEW content, it&ll “Automatically” update on your My Yahoo! page and everybody else&s pages who have subscribe to your feed, plus, within 24-48 hours your feed will get Spidered and Indexed by Yahoo!.

Talk about getting the word out in a HURRY with very little effort on your part.

This is “Viral Marketing” at its Best in my mind.

And… it’s so simple to implement.

Okay.

Now it’s time to do the same to your My MSN account as what you did above to your My Yahoo! page.

Here’s the link to go login(click on Sign In from main page): http://www.msn.com

Once your login to your My MSN account you should see an “Add Content” link under the MSN logo to your left. Click on it.

A pop-up should now be displaying. Simply copy and paste your “Site Feed URL” from your Notepad into the web form provided and click the Search button(the green button with the arrow).

You should now be looking at Check Box with your Blogs name beside it. Check off your “Site Feed URL” and then press the OK button at the bottom.

PRESTO! Like magic… your Blogs site feed has now been added to your My MSN page which will then be spidered in the next 24-48 hours and Indexed by MSN.

That’s the Power of BLOGS(Web-Logs) and RSS(Real Simple Syndication)combined with two Internet giants.

The only thing you have to bring to the table IS, fresh, quality content that your audience WANTS, and do it on a regular basis.

I post my articles that I write on a weekly basis, making my Blog called… The Internet Wonders Blog – http://theiwe.blogspot.com – a search engine Magnet!

You can do the same because I just showed you HOW.

In conclusion, creating BLOGS and using RSS as a vehicle to syndicate your Blogs content is a Sure-Fire way to get your content spidered more frequently by search engines and the exposure it deserves, which in turn, will build you a large audience of buying customers that TRUST you.

Easy Ways To Get Your Web Site Noticed by Search Engines.

April 19th, 2010 Comments off

Almost everyone knows that when a person wants to know something on the Internet they turn to search engines like MSN, and Google to find what they are looking for. This makes it very important for web site owners to know how to get their web sites ranked well on search engines, so that the people doing the searching can find their web site.

The first thing you should know is that the job of a search engine is to bring up the web page, that is most relevant to the search.

Search Engine Optimization isn’t rocket science!

The job of the web site owner is to make their web site more relevant than other sites. The other job they need to do is make sure the web site gets submitted to search engines. Do those two things and you are getting some attention well needed from the search engines, the reward is free targeted traffic.

I wrote an my first article titled “The plug-in Profit Home Business Review.” Now I didn’t know too much about writing articles at the time so this happened to be dumb luck. After a few weeks I did a search to find that my article got placed on the first pages of MSN, GOOGLE and Yahoo, when I searched for “plug-in profit site”( E-Commerce business). Surprised to see that the article was ranked higher than hundreds of thousands of possible sites, I looked into the reason for my article’s great success.

When you read the article you’ll see that the article is extremely related to the plug-in profit home business site. The title after all was called “The Plug-in Profit Home Business Review.” The content is all about the program and mentions the name of the program several times. To sum things up this is what made my article step in front of my competitors.

I soon applied my new found knowledge into my own web site. I built my web site around the keyword, “plug-in Profit site. I made the title of my home page “plug-in profit home business site” Now days you will see somewhere on the first pages of the search engines internet5kincome.com when a search for “plug-in profit” is done. You may even find my first article hanging around. This proves that content is still king when it comes to search engines! I will also add the title helps out a great deal too!

In my efforts I made a mistake on my web page, I created a link titled :”Can taking on-line serveys really make you money? Click here to find out”.

Notice the misspelled word serveys. While the rest of the world spells surveys with a “U”. I spelled this one word with an “E”.

I am embarrassed to say it, but that mistake placed my site on page 1 when a person searched for “on-line serveys” this winning mistake brought a surprising number of free traffic.

I am amazed at how many people spell surveys with an “E”! (The mistake has been corrected, but it is something you should know!)

When experimenting with search engine optimization, or SEO for short. Track your web site’s performance with a tracking service. I use opentracker.net for my web site’s tracking. This service will show you where all your visitors come from.

If a visitor was referred by a search engine, obviously the visitor did a search. The tracker will tell you what keyword the visitor searched for. That keyword is something you should know, so that you can build on it, to bring in even more traffic. You may be surprised at what you find out from the web site tracker. I was surprised that so many people spelled surveys wrong, but I would have never found out if it wasn’t for the web site tracker.

Experimenting with SEO is well worth the time. Set your sites on what people are searching for, and build your web site around those keywords, and you might find your web site on the first page.

Understand that not all search engines will rank your web site the same, try different search engines to see where your site shows up. MSN.com is one of my favorite engines to use because this site indexes web pages more often than others. This will help you to see if your experiments work a little faster that using the other top named search engines.

I hope to see your web site on the first page of the search engines real soon.

Categories: SEO Tags: , , , , , , ,

Shorten Your Blogging-RSS Learning and Submission Curve

March 12th, 2010 Comments off

A blog is a frequent, online publication of comments, web links, and news. It is an online Enzine of sorts. People maintained blogs long before the term was coined, but the trend gained momentum with automated published systems, most notably is blogger.com. Thousands of people use services such as Blogger alone.

So start your blog now and be ahead of the crowd for a change. A secret I’ll share with you here before going any further is after you set up your blog goto
FeedBurner and follow the instructions to burn your feed. Then publicize your feed by inserting the msn and yahoo chicklets to your blog.

I know it sounds complicated but if you can follow simple instructions and cut and paste it should only take a few minutes. Caution you must be familiar with HTML so as not to make mistakes. If you’re not sure ask a friend or if you don’t know anyone I’ll be glad to assist. This info is for you if you’re familiar with the web – if you’re a newbie it&ll take a bit longer to implement

Once the chicklets are installed onto your blog, login to them using your yahoo and msn id&s and add them to your my msn and my yahoo templates. From then on when you make an entry to your blog it&ll automatically log itself onto msn and yahoo and broadcast itself to the web in addition to your rss feeds. Once this is done goto
PingOMatic and ping your blog to be indexed within days; not weeks or months.

Here are the reasons you should not ignore Blog advertising:

Remember when all search engines were free, and simply submitting your web sites got you listed quickly? Gone.

Then it was FFA pages, they brought in a ton of free traffic, built links to your site, and added to your mailing list like crazy. Tried one lately? Safelists were an online goldmine for a while… until bottom less email accounts were introduced.

Website sumbmissions now can take anywhere from 2 to 8 weeks to be indexed. While blogs and rss feeds can be indexed anywhere from 2-8 days which is better for you??

So once again I implore you to be one of the first in line and not be last again. This is the new trend just beginning to breakthrough. A few years or months from now you’ll be able to sit back and smile as you watch the rest of the net stampeding to catch up.

Understanding Paid URL Inclusion

February 21st, 2010 Comments off

The Internet contains numerous search engines, some of which offer what is known as “paid inclusion.” This means that you pay the specific search engine an annual fee for your web page to be included in their index.

Of course, every search engine already has an automated program commonly called a “spider” that indexes all the web pages it locates online, and it does this for free. So whether you pay or not, your web page will eventually be indexed by all Internet search engines, as long as the spider can follow a link to your page. The major issue is, then, how quickly your page is indexed.

A search engine that offers a paid URL inclusion uses an extra spider that is programmed to index the particular pages that have been paid for. The difference between the spider that indexes pages for free and the spider that indexes only pages for a fee is speed. If you have paid for inclusion, the additional search engine spider will index your page immediately.

The debate over paid URL inclusion centres around the annual fee. Since the regular spider of these search engines would eventually get around to indexing your web page anyway, why is a renewal fee necessary? The fee is necessary to keep your pages in the search engine’s index. If you go the route of paid inclusion, you should be aware that at the end of the pay period, on some search engines, your page will be removed from their index for a certain amount of time.

It’s easy to get confused about whether you would benefit from paid inclusion since the spider of any search engine will eventually index your page without the additional cost. There are both advantages and disadvantages to paid URL inclusion, and it is only by weighing your pros and cons that you will be able to decide whether to spring for the extra cash or not.

The advantages are obvious: rapid inclusion and rapid re-indexing. Paid inclusion means that your pages will be indexed quickly and added to search results in a very short time after you have paid the fee. The time difference between when the regular spider will index your pages, and when the paid spider will, is a matter of months. The spider for paid inclusion usually indexes your pages in a day or two. Be aware that if you have no incoming links to your pages, the regular spider will never locate them at all.

Additionally, paid inclusion spiders will go back to your pages often, sometimes even daily. The advantage of this is that you can update your pages constantly to improve the ranking in which they appear in search engines, and the paid URL inclusion spider will show that result in a matter of days.

First and foremost, the disadvantage is the cost. For a ten page website, the costs of paid URL inclusion range from $170 for Fast/Lycos to $600 for Altavista, and you have to pay each engine their annual fee. How relevant the cost factor is will depend on your company.

Another, and perhaps more important, disadvantage is the limited reach of paid URL inclusions. The largest search engines, Google, Yahoo, and MSN, do not offer paid URL inclusion. That means that the search engines you choose to pay an inclusion fee will amount to a small fraction of the traffic to your site on a daily basis.

Google usually updates its index every month, and there is no way you can speed up this process. You will have to wait for the Google spider to index your new pages no matter how many other search engines you have paid to update their index daily. Be aware that it is only after Google updates their index that your pages will show up in Google, or AOL results.

One way to figure out whether paid URL inclusion is a good deal for your company is to consider some common factors. First, find out if search engines have already indexed your pages. To do this, you may have to enter a number of different keywords, but the quickest way to find out is to enter your URL address in quotes. If your pages appear when you enter the URL address but do not appear when you enter keywords, using paid inclusion will not be beneficial. This is because your pages have already been indexed and ranked by the regular spider. If this is the case, your money would be better spent by updating your pages to improve your ranking in search results. Once you accomplish this, you can then consider using paid inclusion if you want to speed up the time it will take for the regular spider to revisit your pages.

The most important factor in deciding whether to use paid URL inclusion is to decide if it’s a good investment. To figure this out, you have to look at the overall picture: what kind of product or service are you selling and how much traffic are you dependent on to see a profit?

If your company sells an inexpensive product that requires a large volume of traffic to your site, paid inclusion may not be the best investment for you; the biggest search engines do not offer it, and they are the engines that will bring you the majority of hits. On the other hand, if you have a business that offers an expensive service or product and requires a certain quality of traffic to your site, a paid URL inclusion is most likely an excellent investment.

Another factor is whether or not your pages are updated frequently. If the content changes on a daily or weekly basis, paid inclusion will insure that your new pages are indexed often and quickly. The new content is indexed by the paid spider and then appears when new relevant keywords are entered in the search engines. Using paid inclusion in this case will guarantee that your pages are being indexed in a timely manner.

You should also base your decision on whether or not your pages are dynamically generated. These types of pages are often difficult for regular spiders to locate and index. Paying to include the most important pages of a dynamically generated website will insure that the paid spider will index them.

Sometimes a regular spider will drop pages from its search engine, although these pages usually reappear in a few months. There are a number of reasons why this can happen, but by using paid URL inclusion, you will avoid the possibility. Paid URL inclusion guarantees that your pages are indexed, and if they are inadvertently dropped, the search engine will be on the lookout to locate them immediately.

As you can see, there are numerous factors to consider when it comes to paid URL inclusion. It can be a valuable investment depending on your situation. Evaluate your business needs and your website to determine if paid URL inclusion is a wise investment for your business goals.

Categories: SEO Tags: , , , , , , ,

The Best Way How To Improve Link Popularity

February 19th, 2010 Comments off

There are many ways how to improve link popularity. If you are webmaster who is hungry for better ranking in search engines, this article was written for you. There are hundreds of factors which determine your search engine position. Except on-page factors there are off-page factors too. And these factors seem to be most important for big search engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN.

When I speak about off-page factors I mean not only the number of the links pointing to your website. If you want to achieve top positions in search engines you must care about relevance of your back links. Let’s say you are a web designer. In your case the most valuable links are from another web designers websites. Very valuable will be links from related industries like web hosting, search engine optimization (seo) or webmaster tools. By contrast, link from site like online casino will have minimal value for you. From this reason exchange links with relevant websites only. Internet is full of sites related to yours so why waste your time with gaining worthless back links?

When webmasters exchange links, a lot of them care too much about pagerank of partner’s website. Yes, you are right — link from PR8 site is better then link from PR0. But keep in mind that those new sites with PR0 will grow with time and their PR will grow too. It can easily happen that you exchange a link with PR0 website today and after 6 months this site gain PR5+. And now let’s answer this important question: What is easier — get link on PR0 website which will grow or on PR5+ site? From my point of view each link has big value as long as it is from relevant website.

Let’s look at another factors used by search engines to determine the value of back links. You have probably heard terms “one-way” and “reciprocal” links. One-way links are links where webmaster of site A links to site B but webmaster of site B doesn’t link back to site A. Reciprocal links are links where webmaster A links to site B and webmaster B links back to site A. There are two important facts:

1. One-way links have a little higher value for search engines. Search engines suppose that one-way links are most likely natural and predicate the quality of the linked website.

2. Reciprocal links have a little lower value from the reason mentioned above. But it is easier to get reciprocal link then one-way link (In case that your site is quality, of course. For poor websites it is always difficult to gain back links). Anyway relevant reciprocal link is always better then one-way link from unrelated website.

The last factor I will describe in this article is the age of the domain. If you get link from the 5 years old domain the link will have higher value then link from the new site. Many spammers register domains for one year, use them as link farms and when they are banned by search engines (it takes probably less then one year) then they don’t renew this domain and register a new one. On the other side, if the site is a few years old and had never used any unfair SEO tactics, search engines give this site higher importance.

So if you are trying to improve link popularity of your website, don’t forget that it is not only about pagerank. You need links from quality websites. Making your website the best in your field is the right way how to get these valuable links.

Affiliated.net Announces the Launch of Peeker Video Ads

January 28th, 2010 Comments off

www.Affiliated.net, an Ad Network focused on ‘Web 2.0’ technologies, is announcing the initial launch of its first video ads combined with animations. Their unique approach has broken records and drastically increased CTR% and Conversion rates online. They have ‘broken free’ from embedded video, and create customized videos for advertisers and major brands. The approach is likened to many TV Networks, which they have termed “Peeker Ads”. The advertisements ‘peek’ or animate onto webpages much like you see on major TV Networks now. The new approach online is unobtrusive and visitors seem to enjoy watching these video ads to learn more without having to leave the page or open a new window.

“This approach is interesting as it has increased eCPM drastically when compared to any other form of creative,” says Ricky Ahjua, Director of Online Marketing at Affiliated.net. “The advertisers love it because it is customized video produced for their product or service. Video right now is very hot and publishers are ‘cashing in’ as well because of the new found space these peeker ads present. These give publishers the ability to instantly plug into true targeted video advertisements that are generating click through rate percentages 20% and higher. It is a new frontier of online advertising.”

Affiliated.net seems to have perfected the process, utilization and monetization of video advertisements and brings videos quickly and efficiently to any campaign to increase and enhance online campaigns. They are definitely on the front edge of the wave; large advertisers such as www.Google.com and www.MSN.com are both looking into like technologies.

Merchants and Publishers get these videos peeker advertisements absolutely free when they partner with the Affiliated, letting Affiliated shoulder the cost of production while increasing ROI and conversion rates for merchants, in most cases for a revenue share partnership.

“Publishers are often constrained by limited tools and services provided to them by their networks” says Chris Kautz, Director of Business Development at Affiliated.net. “Affiliated’s videos are provided with customizable players and peeker ads to blend in with sites and give a variety of options as to a video’s look and feel.” They have complete control over how many times these videos are played for a viewer, delay time, positioning and so on. These are merely the first options available, after the initial run of these videos; more options will be gradually added for the publishers benefit. Affiliated.net is constantly working to improve its offerings and provide more options for its partners.”

About Affiliated.net:
Affiliated.net has taken the next leap in Affiliate Marketing and produced the highest responding vehicle on the internet today – Video!
We have opened the world of online video advertising to Publishers and Advertisers with the launch of a Web 2.0 Ad Network. To learn more about Affiliated.net visit www.affiliated.net.

Categories: Affiliates Tags: , , , , ,

The Forgotten Fundamentals of SEO

January 25th, 2010 Comments off

Introduction:
Firstly, thank you for taking the time to view my SEO hints and tips e-book on the often forgotten aspects of SEO. This book was written from the collective knowledge and information gathered by Chris Diprose, owner and manager of Kanga Internet. Kanga Internet are located in Melbourne, Australia and they focus on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Web Development for the Joomla Content Management System (CMS).

With Search Engine Optimization there are lots of unknowns, educated guesses and knowledge gained from personal and associative experience. Google, Yahoo and MSN keep their cards close to their chest when it comes to revealing how their ranking systems actually work. They tell the community trickles of information on what things can affect search engine results, how they can be improved and what to do in certain situations, but mostly knowing what to do to achieve good results is achieved by studying and hard work. Much alike other SEO consultants I have gathered information from various sources and worked constantly on improving results for customers. I am always looking for new intelligent ways to improve search engine results. I believe in “White Hat” (or more appropriately, “Grey Hat”) principles.

Edition 1 of this e-book is intended for people looking to improve their websites from the ground up. I address SEO design fundamentals; the things you need to consider before embarking on any text and keyword analysis. I hope you find these hints and tips useful.

Enjoy the readings herein.
- Chris Diprose

The Website Revelation – What owning a website actually means.
As a Web Developer and SEO consultant I deal with many existing website owners who are looking to modify or improve their website. I also deal with many people who are looking to start their web presence with a new website. Through both of these interactions there is often a common theme; a misunderstanding or an attitude. I call this a misconception of reality, as often the reality of what the Internet can actually do for the persons business and what they think it can do differ massively.

Often it is presumed that by simply owning a domain and having a website built and published on the Internet, thousands of people will magically find the website, visit it and buy their products. “If you build it, they will come” should be removed from the vocabulary as soon as possible if you are to adjust attitudes to the underlying search technology. As a businessman in the real World, it is obvious that it would not happen outside of the Internet ether, so what is so different online? Maybe it was the Technology boom 10 years ago that caused a rift in understanding or maybe the buzz that caused the meteoric rise in the stock prices of Tech Companies, I can hear the thoughts of the small businessman, “surely this can be replicated for my business” – in answer I would say, “well, it is unlikely, but you should be able to achieve some results over time”.

It is most important when taking on a project like Search Engine Optimization for a website, to know that it is important to be committed for the long haul. It is no small task and sufficient funds need to be allocated to the project. Delivery deadlines need to be correctly scoped against required changes, in order to meet client expectations. The key points of responsibility to the SEO project are in knowing that there are big changes near the start and during setup but the changes do not stop after setup, there are a continuous ongoing refinements to the design and system over time. In this regard I find it important to manage expectations and set realistic long term goals on what a website can be expected to achieve and in what time frames those goals hope to be met.

So what should your goal be when you are delving into SEO for your website? Well, everyone’s goal is exactly the same; improve page rankings, improve page visits and hits and finally gain more sales through the website.

When it comes to SEO and achieving these goals you have to have principles and my main principle is, “Good websites get good ratings and bad websites get bad ratings or none at all.” As time goes on with the improvement of search engine technology and the refinement of search engine results this statement becomes truer and truer. I believe in results through “white hat”(reads; “Grey Hat”) principles and methodologies.

What are “white hat” principles? I guess I would compare it to doing things the honest way and the right way without risk. So develop a good site, promote good linking, have good informative content and keep working on it and then you are on the road to good rankings through “White Hat” principles.

So, why should you do things the “white hat” way? Well, search engines do have some kind of understanding, an artificial intelligence. They soon catch on to websites spamming or linking to websites with no relevance and bad cross linking. It’s about being smart, in for the long term and wanting your business to grow organically, naturally.

So how do I go about improving my site and making it optimized for search engines naturally? Well, that’s why you’re here! So let’s run through few of the things you should be doing in your websites from a fundamental level.

Domain names:
When choosing a domain name, choose one that is relevant to the product or service you are going to provide and that is as simple as possible. There are considerations of branding and product/service provided that should go into this choice. Involvement of marketing personal and product understanding is required but also consultation with your SEO professional is advantageous. In this step I would say, take some time and choose wisely. Keep it simple and easy to remember, often saying it out loud will make it clear whether it can be understood by a simple man.

It is a strongly held belief by many SEO professionals that buying a domain which is older, and that has been around for a while, means it will not be sand boxed by Google. What’s the sandbox effect? Well, it refers to what Google does to a website or domain that is new or is relatively unknown by Google. In many instances Google’s Sandbox effect relegates the new domain to sub-optimal inclusion in search results. Regardless of the sites optimization it lowers the websites relevance and ranking to the term searched upon. If you can use your old business domain name, then consider this very important.

If, however, you are buying a new domain name then keep it relevant to the product or service being sold or offered on the website. Keep it close, relevant and simple. Relevance is primary.

Location specific domain or international domain ( .com or com.au)? Personally I think dot com’s are better, mainly because they appeal Internationally but if you want to you can keep it location specific and to your region then consider purchasing all similar higher level domains, yourdomain.com and yourdomain.com.au, if you can.

Choosing a Host:
Fast, reliable and gives you all you that you need and want. Preferably gives a unique IP. Again some SEO professionals believe this can also have a detrimental affect in Google rankings but from my experience it sometimes does and it sometimes doesn’t. I have had some sites come in with high PR rankings on shared IP’s and others when I shifted to a new IP the PR of the site jumped, so this is still a bit of a mystery when it comes to Google rankings. I guess a consideration

Traffic considerations: When choosing your host ensure the plan you are on can be expanded so that any new increases in traffic can be accommodated accordingly.

Site Design:
There are several fundamental things to consider when you are modifying or designing a website.

Flash:
Flash is has been popular for a few years now and I truly believe it has its place. It is a great way of showing many products or services in a small area, has great visual impact if done properly and can set a good friendly tone to the website visitor. Having said that, I also hate flash; it can be an absolute nightmare when it comes to search engine optimization.

What you should know about flash; it cannot be read by a search engine as the search engine cannot read the text or the images contained within it nor can it interpret what is in the pictures being shown.

When it comes to flash I would suggest, not making your whole website flash. If you are designing a new website and you want to use flash then use it in high impact areas to capture the attention of your intended audience but use it sparingly. It is important to ensure that as much text content(to a maximum discussed in my next book, generally 300-500 characters) is available on the webpage and in simple HTML.

Frames:
Many older websites were designed with frames. Frames are where the main home page is actually a frameset page that includes several other pages into it. This makes the page hard to index in search engines and should be avoided. While Google do now index framed sites, it is important to note that most of the other top search engines still cannot follow frame links. They only see the frameset page and ignore the rest of the inner frames. This presents an SEO problem to us because it is highly likely those inner pages contain our content keywords.

Nowadays this is not really a huge issue as it is so uncommon for a designer to actually use frames but the easiest way to resolve the issue would be to enforce a no use policy on frames.

Page Layout:
According to research the Googlebot trawls web pages from left to right and top to bottom. So given this little tidbit of information it is clear that you should be putting our most valuable keywords and information on the left and near the top. Of course this is a blanket statement and does not take into account design principles and beautification. Just keep it in mind during design of page layout. Position your move relevant keywords to the left of the page and near the top.

Good HTML Coding:
A lot of HTML generator programs out there bloat HTML to the point it is 3-4 times larger than what it would be if you hand coded it. Keep it simple, use a text editor, edit your HTML the old school way; until there is a HTML generator tool worthy of use. If you can’t code HTML then do a search on the Internet and find a decent, free, e-book and learn how to do it.

Javascript:
This is very popular among many web development professionals for menu’s, popups, scollers etc etc. It would be my suggestion to use simple plain HTML menu’s or as little Javascript as possible in web pages. There are many small JavaScript menu’s out there that are slim on JavaScript code to reduce this issue and make it almost negligible. Don’t over clutter your site with JavaScript as it increases page size, page load times and the search engines won’t understand it.

Image Sizes:
Keep them small and use only what you need to. This is essential for decreasing page loading times and getting information onto the users screen as soon as possible.

Overall page size and loading:
The overall page size is an important factor. It should load quickly and be easily trawled. If you have followed the HTML hand coding, used minimal javascript, used simple table layouts and good image sizing then you should be fine. There is much evidence that supports the fact that Google and probably the other search engines also, do not like to scan huge files, so keeping your overall HTML page size below 25k is my suggestion.

Dynamic URL’s and page/file names:
Dynamic pages are roadblocks to high search engine positioning. Especially those that end in “?” or “&”. In a dynamic site, variables are passed to the URL and the page is generated dynamically, often from information stored in a database as is the case with many e-commerce sites. Normal .html pages are static – they are hard-coded, their information does not change, and there are no “?” or “&” characters in the URL.

Pages with dynamic URLs are present in several engines, notably Google and AltaVista, even though publicly AltaVista claims their spider does not crawl dynamic URLs. To a spider a “?” represents a sea of endless possibilities – some pages can automatically generate a potentially massive number of URLs, trapping the spider in a virtually infinite loop.

As a general rule, search engines will not properly index documents that:
• contain a “?” or “&”
• End in the following document types: .cfm, .asp, .shtml, .php, .stm, .jsp, .cgi, .pl
• Could potentially generate a large number of URLs.
To avoid complications, consider creating static pages whenever possible, perhaps using the database to update the pages, not to generate them on the fly.

Slightly Off Topic Thoughts:
The topics covered here are not considered completely SEO topics but in terms of overall objective – increasing sales, this section is very important. Take these things on board, consider them, consult with your designer and marketing team. Make educated and informed choices on these topics when considering your audience and what your website objectives are.

Screen Size:
Over 65% of all screens in the World are set to run at the 1024×768 resolution. Of the remaining percentage, 13% are running at 800×600, 20% running at larger sizes and 2% are unknown. So this affects the way you design. It would be my suggestion to always design for the smallest user to visit your site, but often I find 800×600 restrictive so I tend to design for slightly larger. Not large enough to make an 800×600 user angry but large enough to make it look good on larger screens also. I weigh up my target users, my intended amount of content and find some happy medium. I generally design for 1000×620 as this is the perfect amount of real estate for a 1024×768 user when they have the browser top bar and status bar and Windows taskbar.

colors and themes:
One important aspect of marketing – selling – is the use of color. Meanings are attached to colors in the same way meanings are attached to words.

• Gold is the color of wealth and prosperity.
• White is the color of pure innocence and cleanliness.
• Pink is the color of femininity and softness.
• Green is the color of natural things and freshness.
• Red is the color of danger and stress.
• Blue is the color the calmness, intelligence. The majority of the World selects blue as a favorite color. It often represents “trust”

Use of color to establish an image or a brand is common in the marketing community, yet when you visit the websites of many search engine optimization professional’s, it’s obvious that color significance plays no part in their own web optimization. Some of the colors I found on SEO websites:
• Baby Blue, a color which implies weakness.
• Red, a color which implies risk, or danger.
• Orange a color which implies a cheerful “levity”. Orange is one of Americans’ least favorite colors.

Although color selection is off topic for SEO I would consider it a very important factor in what SEO is trying to achieve, in the end, for your website – selling more product, creating loyalty to your brand and customer impact. color research is something you should seriously consider. In summary of color choices I would suggest studying and learning more about your customers, researching color choices and their relevance to your underlying products and making informed choices on these in collaboration. If in doubt then I suggest sticking to safe and trusted colors within safe eye pleasing designs.

Gifs for logos and jpgs for pictures:
Ensure you are using gifs for logos and background placements and jpgs for photos on your website. This helps reduce size and improve clarity of the web site overall.

Browser:
It is vitally important to ensure your web page works in both IE, Firefox and Opera. Testing other browsers is also an advantage but these are the main three in use nowadays (2007). I think quoting stats on the browser breakdown are irrelevant as you need it work in all browsers. W3C cross browser compliance is great for this.

So, this brings us to the end of Volume 1: Fundamentals of SEO Web Design. There are many things to consider when designing a website or modifying a web site to make it more SEO friendly. Clearly I have a few more volumes left in SEO for websites.

Categories: SEO Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

SEO contests a new effective way of internet marketing

January 12th, 2010 Comments off

First, let me explain you what a SEOcontest is. A SEOcontest is a contest where every webmaster can build a website or page about a special keyword. There must be no results in the targeted search engine for that keyword or keyphrase. So most contests have not existing words in them or have the site name of the sponsor in the keyphrase. Like the ambatchdotcom seocontest. Where you need to rank number 1 in Google for the keyphrase ambatchdotcom seocontest. And when you become number one in Google or another search engine and you stay at that spot until the end of the contest you win the main price. Normally thousands of dollars.

But how can a simple seocontest sponsor make profits from such a contest if it costs that much? That will be explained in this article.

The most big contests dure a couple of months or even half a year. So it can attract a lot of webmasters/SEO’s because they can jump in any time, even if the contest is already going on for a month. And big prices attract big amounts of media and participants. So you’re brand gets big attention for a long time.

Also, most contests contain the main keywords or the site name or the sponsor of the contest. Like the ambatchdotcom seocontest. The sponsor is ambatch.com. The contest is already going for a month and there are allready over 500,000 participants who promote the name ambatch.com. So when you start a SEOcontest you will be known in the whole webmaster world. Also a lot of contests like the Cpayscom2 Online Casino contest have they’re main keywords in them. In the Cpayscom2 Online Casino contest the keyphrase is Cpayscom2 Online Casino to rank in msn at the first spot. But cpays.com is an affiliate program for online casinos, so the participants are not only promoting the main sponsor but also the main keyphrase of that sponsor.

In most contests there are rules. A common used rule is that you have to place a link back to the sponsor of the contest. So in the Cpayscom2 Online Casino you have to place a link back to cpays.com with the text online casino. But every participant has been optimizing their website for the keyphrase Cpayscom2 Online Casino. That keyphrase contains the words online casino. So every backlink from a participating page is a high value backlink! And if there are 500,000 participating websites, it makes the sponsor a huge jump in the serps and lots of traffic and….MONEY!

Categories: SEO Tags: , , , , , , ,

What is the most effective way to build links for your site

December 12th, 2009 Comments off

I have seen in many forums that now a days website owners are little confused regarding link building for their site. They are not very sure what link building strategies they should adopt. Not to mention Google and yahoo heavily rely on quality back links. Content optimization is always a factor but these two search engines are heavily relying on volume of links and of course quality of links. A link back from a page where there are hundreds of links would not help you much. At the time of link building most people forget about the importance of link building. A theme based link back is more powerful than 20 non relevant link backs. Some times people reject link exchange request due to lack of pr of the link page. But you should know that relevancy is more important than page rank of a link page. If you get an offer for link exchange then first check if the site is any way related to your business ? If yes then check it’s link page for (a) Number of outgoing links on that page (b) Does that link page has all kind of sites ? (c) Does that page is accessible from home page ? These 3 are must.

We often get questions that our site is new, no one wants to exchange link with us. Yes it’s a big problem for any webmaster. But think if you propose a link from some of your other websites to the webmaster then he’ll certainly exchange link with you. But what if you don’t have any other site, then how you can do one way link building ? Many seo companies, including us provide this kind of service at very reasonable rate, you can hire those companies. Let’s get back to the topic. There are thousands of sites for any category of sites you have. If you start gathering a list of relevant sites through search engine you’ll get bogus data/ search results after you cross page 20 or more. So it’s not a solution to gather sites from search engines. You should follow your competitors link backs and then approach relevant ones for link request. How you’ll find link backs list of your competitors ? it’s very simple just use linkdomain:www.yourcompetitorurl.com in yahoo search to find link backs of that site. Then sort relevant ones for your site and then email those sites such a way that they should feel interested to your proposal. You should know here that One way links are many times more effective than reciprocal link building. So if you have other relevant site then you can use that site to propose a link exchange to your relevant sites. If you don’t have any other site to propose link back then you can always use directory submission, Blog submission join forums to get some links to your domain.

Hard problem what anybody face at the time of link exchange if you don’t have page rank on your proposed link page. 80% link requests get trashed because of “no pr” or “low pr’. After directory submission, Blog submission wait for next Google PR update. You’ll surely get pr 3-4 if you have 100-150 link backs. Now when you have good Pr then start link building for your site. If you are going to propose a well established site be sure you linked back the site first. Otherwise they may reject your proposal. The process I’m discussing here is actually 3 way – for your site A you are proposing a link back to site B from your site C. So this is 3 way link building. This kind of link building is hard to get detected by search engines because they can’t find a clue. But remember you should host your site C on a different server with different ip. For this different server and ip factor search engines can’t detect the link.

But here is a big question – is it completely valueless if we do reciprocal link building ? NO it’s not. reciprocal link building has value but not as one way. Search engines now understand that both sites have mutually agree to show each others link to gain link popularity. But in case of one way it can’t trace a link back. That’s why it gives more value to those one way links. Why one way links are important ? Think of a situation : can you ask Google.com or yahoo.com to place your link on their home page ? No, if you even do they’ll not place your link. But many web sites place a link of google/ yahoo/ msn on their page. That creates the one way link for those domains. They are doing nothing to get a link back. When a site continues to get more and more one way links then search engines also start to think that the domain must be important so other sites are linking back. I would suggest you do mixture of everything. 1) Do one way link building 2) submit your site to free and paid directories 3) Make your own Blog and submit it to Blog directories 4) Use article submission.

Categories: SEO Tags: , , , , , ,

Google Page Rank Is Dead – Part III

December 11th, 2009 Comments off

Is it really dead?

In an online forum post from WebProWorld.com (A discussion on Google), people from all over are speculating about what is going on. In fact, one member was quick to point out that the last big shift Google had, we saw the PR system go down as well. This begs the question…

Are we on the verge of a BIG PR shift? or,
Are we seeing a Google marketing scheme just to shake people up?

In many ways, Google needs to be improved upon their “broken down PR system”. There are so many areas if they payed attention to forums and blogs all around the world, they would have more than enough feedback about their PR system to fix this growing PR issue.

Page ranking is a potentially a great system. It CAN be a great system if it directly ranks websites properly by content, relevance, and not simply by the number of links pointing to an individual website.

These days, you see a website with 15 “medium relevant” links pointing to it while its front page holds a PR of 7-8 out of 10. How do you justify that?

What will it mean if Google’s PR systems stays down?

I believe it will mean a big shift to online marketing. Many newbies out there that are barely legal when it comes to SEO have an opportunity to measure everything they do. In turn, the newbies may even sound professional to their clients. Take away these tools and you are left with true marketing gurus that have stood the test of time and can deliver results for themselves and their clients.

The internet is vastly growing into a pool of professional fakes and scammers. This is really giving the internet marketing community a bad name. Without the Google PR, many people won’t be able to prove their results nor will they have that “fake respect” that you get from having a website with PR 7/10.

What about MSN and Yahoo?

In growing efforts to keep up with MSN and Yahoo’s strong and growing marketing campaign, Google may be feeling left out these days. Many people think that their PR system is simply a gimmick; a gimmick that attracts a lot of attention. By disabeling this system, you create mass fear and confusion. Bad publicity is still publicity neverless?

So, is Google trying to create a buzz?

This could be possible and it could be possible that everything will be back to normal within a couple of days. We won’t know until time catches up with us.

Until then, take this “dark saga” moment and find other ways to build your business online. Don’t worry about what Google is doing, worry about what you are doing to improve your internet marketing campaign.

Categories: SEO Tags: , , , , ,

An SEO Glossary – Common SEO Terms Defined

December 3rd, 2009 Comments off

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has become an essential weapon in the arsenal of every online business. Unfortunately, for most business owners and marketing managers (and even many webmasters), it’s also somewhat of an enigma. This is partly due to the fact that it’s such a new and rapidly changing field, and partly due to the fact that SEO practitioners tend to speak in a language all of their own which, without translation, is virtually impenetrable to the layperson. This glossary seeks to remedy that situation, explaining specialist SEO terms in plain English…

AdWords

See ‘Sponsored Links’.

algorithm

A complex mathematical formula used by search engines to assess the relevance and importance of websites and rank them accordingly in their search results. These algorithms are kept tightly under wraps as they are the key to the objectivity of search engines (i.e. the algorithm ensures relevant results, and relevant results bring more users, which in turn brings more advertising revenue).

article PR

The submitting of free reprint articles to many article submission sites and article distribution lists in order to increase your website’s search engine ranking and Google PageRank. (In this sense, the “PR” stands for PageRank.) Like traditional public relations, article PR also conveys a sense of authority because your articles are widely published. And because you’re proving your expertise and freely dispensing knowledge, your readers will trust you and will be more likely to remain loyal to you. (In this sense, the “PR” stands for Public Relations.)

article distribution lists

User groups (e.g. Yahoo, MSN, Google, Smartgroups, and Topica groups) which accept email submissions of articles in text format, and then distribute these articles via email to all of the members of the group. See also ‘article PR’.

article submission sites

Websites which act as repositories of free reprint articles. Authors visit these sites to submit their articles free of charge, and webmasters visit to find articles to use on their websites free of charge. Article submission sites generate revenue by selling advertising space on their websites. See also ‘article PR’.

backlink

A text link to your website from another website. See also ‘link’.

copy

The words used on your website.

copywriter

A professional writer who specializes in the writing of advertising copy (compelling, engaging words promoting a particular product or service). See also ‘SEO copywriter’ and ‘web copywriter’.

crawl

Google finds pages on the World Wide Web and records their details in its index by sending out ‘spiders’ or ‘robots’. These spiders make their way from page to page and site to site by following text links. To a spider, a text link is like a door.

domain name

The virtual address of your website (normally in the form www.yourbusinessname.com). This is what people will type when they want to visit your site. It is also what you will use as the address in any text links back to your site.

ezine

An electronic magazine. Most publishers of ezines are desperate for content and gladly publish well written, helpful articles and give you full credit as author, including a link to your website.

Flash

A technology used to create animated web pages (and page elements).

free reprint article

An article written by you and made freely available to other webmasters to publish on their websites. See also ‘article PR’.

Google

The search engine with the greatest coverage of the World Wide Web, and which is responsible for most search engine-referred traffic. Of approximately 11.5 billion pages on the World Wide Web, it is estimated that Google has indexed around 8.8 billion. This is one reason why it takes so long to increase your ranking!

Google AdWords

See ‘Sponsored Links’.

Google PageRank

How Google scores a website’s importance. It gives all sites a mark out of 10. By downloading the Google Toolbar (from http://toolbar.google.com), you can view the PR of any site you visit.

Google Toolbar

A free tool you can download. It becomes part of your browser toolbar. It’s most useful features are it’s PageRank display (which allows you to view the PR of any site you visit) and it’s AutoFill function (when you’re filling out an online form, you can click AutoFill, and it enters all the standard information automatically, including Name, Address, Zip code/Postcode, Phone Number, Email Address, Business Name, Credit Card Number (password protected), etc.) Once you’ve downloaded and installed the toolbar, you may need to set up how you’d like it to look and work by clicking Options (setup is very easy). NOTE: Google does record some information (mostly regarding sites visited).

HTML

HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is the coding language used to create much of the information on the World Wide Web. Web browsers read the HTML code and display the page that code describes.

Internet

An interconnected network of computers around the world.

JavaScript

A programming language used to create dynamic website pages (e.g. interactivity).

keyword

A word which your customers search for and which you use frequently on your site in order to be relevant to those searches. This use known as targeting a keyword. Most websites actually target ‘keyword phrases’ because single keywords are too generic and it is very difficult to rank highly for them.

keyword density

A measure of the frequency of your keyword in relation to the total wordcount of the page. So if your page has 200 words, and your keyword phrase appears 10 times, its density is 5%.

keyword phrase

A phrase which your customers search for and which you use frequently on your site in order to be relevant to those searches.

link

A word or image on a web page which the reader can click to visit another page. There are normally visual cues to indicate to the reader that the word or image is a link.

link path

Using text links to connect a series of page (i.e. page 1 connects to page 2, page 2 connects to page 3, page 3 connects to page 4, and so on). Search engine ‘spiders’ and ‘robots’ use text links to jump from page to page as they gather information about it, so it’s a good idea to allow them traverse your entire site via text links. (See ‘Link paths’ on p.21. for further information.)

link partner

A webmaster who is willing to put a link to your website on their website. Quite often link partners engage in reciprocal linking.

link popularity

The number of links to your website. Link popularity is the single most important factor in a high search engine ranking. Webmasters use a number of methods to increase their site’s link popularity including article PR, link exchange (link partners / reciprocal linking), link buying, and link directories.

link text

The part of a text link that is visible to the reader. When generating links to your own site, they are most effective (in terms of ranking) if they include your keyword.

meta tag

A short note within the header of the HTML of your web page which describes some aspect of that page. These meta tags are read by the search engines and used to help assess the relevance of a site to a particular search.

natural search results

The ‘real’ search results. The results that most users are looking for and which take up most of the window. For most searches, the search engine displays a long list of links to sites with content which is related to the word you searched for. These results are ranked according to how relevant and important they are.

organic search results

See ‘natural search results’.

PPC (Pay-Per-Click advertising)

See ‘Sponsored Links’.

PageRank

See ‘Google PageRank’.

rank

Your position in the search results that display when someone searches for a particular word at a search engine.

reciprocal link

A mutual agreement between two webmasters to exchange links (i.e. they both add a link to the other’s website on their own website). Most search engines (certainly Google) are sophisticated enough to detect reciprocal linking and they don’t view it very favorably because it is clearly a manufactured method of generating links. Websites with reciprocal links risk being penalized.

robot

See ‘Spider’.

robots.txt file

A file which is used to inform the search engine spider which pages on a site should not be indexed. This file sits in your site’s root directory on the web server. (Alternatively, you can do a similar thing by placing tags in the header section of your HTML for search engine robots/spiders to read. See ‘Optimizing your web ’ on p.22. for more information.)

Sandbox

Many SEO experts believe that Google ‘sandboxes’ new websites. Whenever it detects a new website, it withholds its rightful ranking for a period while it determines whether your site is a genuine, credible, long term site. It does this to discourage the creation of SPAM websites (sites which serve no useful purpose other than to boost the ranking of some other site). Likewise, if Google detects a sudden increase (i.e. many hundreds or thousands) in the number of links back to your site, it may sandbox them for a period (or in fact penalize you by lowering your ranking or blacklisting your site altogether).

SEO

Search Engine Optimization. The art of making your website relevant and important so that it ranks high in the search results for a particular word.

SEO copywriter

A ‘copywriter’ who is not only proficient at web copy, but also experienced in writing copy which is optimized for search engines (and will therefore help you achieve a better search engine ranking for your website).

search engine

A search engine is an online tool which allows you to search for websites which contain a particular word or phrase. The most well known search engines are Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

site map

A single page which contains a list of text links to every page in the site (and every page contains a text link back to the site map). Think of your site map as being at the center of a spider-web.

SPAM

Generally refers to unwanted and unrequested email sent en-masse to private email addresses. Also used to refer to websites which appear high in search results without having any useful content. The creators of these sites set them up simply to cash in on their high ranking by selling advertising space, links to other sites, or by linking to other sites of their own and thereby increasing the ranking of those sites. The search engines are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and already have very efficient ways to detect SPAM websites and penalize them.

spider

Google finds pages on the World Wide Web and records their details in its index by sending out ‘spiders’ or ‘robots’. These spiders make their way from page to page and site to site by following text links.

Sponsored Links

Paid advertising which displays next to the natural search results. Customers can click on the ad to visit the advertiser’s website. This is how the search engines make their money. Advertisers set their ads up to display whenever someone searches for a word which is related to their product or service. These ads look similar to the natural search results, but are normally labeled “Sponsored Links”, and normally take up a smaller portion of the window. These ads work on a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) basis (i.e. the advertiser only pays when someone clicks on their ad).

submit

You can submit your domain name to the search engines so that their ‘spiders’ or ‘robots’ will crawl your site. You can also submit articles to ‘article submission sites’ in order to have them published on the Internet.

text link

A word on a web page which the reader can click to visit another page. Text links are normally blue and underlined. Text links are what ‘spiders’ or ‘robots’ use to jump from page to page and website to website.

URL

Uniform Resource Locator. The address of a particular page published on the Internet. Normally in the form http://www.yourbusinessname.com/AWebPage.htm.

web copy

See ‘copy’.

web copywriter

A ‘copywriter’ who understands the unique requirements of writing for an online medium.

webmaster

A person responsible for the management of a particular website.

wordcount

The number of words on a particular web page.

World Wide Web (WWW)

The vast array of documents published on the Internet. It is estimated that the World Wide Web now consists of approximately 11.5 billion pages.

MSN and Yahoo Communities (The Basics)

November 23rd, 2009 Comments off

I’m sure at one time or another, we’ve all explored either an msn or yahoo community or both. Communities are a FREE service that allows us to build and manage, discussion groups, family sites, business communities etc.

These communities can be a powerful tool to promote your business only if you know how to use them effectively.

There are 100&s of very popular communities that allow anyone to post as many “Classified Ads” as possible. Unless you to spend hours doing this, I suggest you leave if be for the time being.

What I’d like to focus more on is “WHY” you should create your own msn and yahoo community for yourself!

See, many of the best search engines will pick up your community because of the sheer size and popularity of msn and yahoo.

Also, I see many marketers wasting a lot of time because they are trying to promote too many services or opportunities at one time. A community will allow you to add ALL that you promote into one site and then all you have to worry about is promoting that one site!

This won’t happen over night and learning how to easy it is to build and manage your own community will be posted in the next issue #2.

Before we get into that, you’ll want to join the “Top Rated” communities in the business sections. Doing this will allow you to familiarize yourself with what is “the norm” with these communities. Also, after you’ve made the necessary adjustments and you’ve prepared your own community, you’ll be using all the top communities to promote your own.

I must apologize to those who have never joined and msn or yahoo community. You&ll need to sign up for a user passport which is simply an msn or yahoo e-mail and password.

For an msn passport click below:

http://register.passport.net/default.srf?sl=1

For a yahoo passport click below:
Yahoo Passport Sign Up

When signing up for an msn community, you’ll want to click the option “READ ALL MESSAGES ONLINE”. This way you won’t fill your e-mail account with countless messages that are posted everyday… Also, click on “KEEP MY E-MAIL PRIVATE” so that you don’t get any junk this way either.

And now you have the basics of communities, please look for the sequel to this article titled:

“Building and Managing your own community”

Categories: Forums Tags: , , , ,

Part Three – Keywords, Tags, Categories – Oh Vey! I Am So Mixed Up!

November 20th, 2009 Comments off

Okay so now we know all there is to know about content and keywords. Hah! But you did get the basics. It may be a good point to stop and talk about Keywords, Tags, Categories and all that as well. Logically, in progression this should come much later, but because there seems such misunderstandings about Technorati, Del.icio.us and other tagging systems, it may be a good place to put this down.

These articles began because of a thread at Absolute Write called “What Is Your Technorati Rank?” On perusing that thread I realized that many writers were placing their hopes in something that just was not going to happen. More so, they were actually misreading the importance of certain “rankings” and thus ignoring the more important factors.

If you read the previous articles in this series you now hopefully understand “keyword basics”. So we are going to use Technorati for our example.

So along comes techie #1 and says:

“Hey, you know what. Blogs are becoming mainstay business. They are great for people with no knowledge of HTML and you can literally put up a web-site Weblog in minutes. So now they are multiplying over the net faster than rabbits, and the Search Engines are ignoring them for the most part as most of them contain personal musings and ramblings. So why not create a sophisticated search engine for blogs?”

“Great idea,” says techie #2, “a search engine from blogs. And that means anyone who has a blog will want to register with us. But how are we going to build it. Obviously, normative search engine technology is not what we want.”

“You know what?” says techie #1 “we are going to take keywords, call them by a different name and create a closed system!”

And thus Technorati was born.

What essentially goes on in Technorati, is you define what you write with “tags”, Technorati tags. These are keywords, (with a special HTML parameter). Keywords just like you will learn to use in your meta tags. Technorati then in a CLOSED SYSTEM connects all the blogs with the same keywords. Technorati does not look at content to a great extent (to my knowledge), they pay attention to the tags re: keywords that you input. If you do not input keywords they use your keywords in your Blog setup.

Okay this is great for all those people looking for blogs say about hairdressing. So they come to Mr. and Mrs. Hair&s blog because the Hair couple input keywords as Technorati tags. Simple.

Technorati now goes one step further. Technorati rates your blog based upon a few parameters. One of those “important” parameters is how many other people in the Technorati Network (Only those IN the network, or those using Technorati tags) have linked to your blog or a post on it. So by gaining links (there is no concept on Technorati as “bleeding links” as far as I know), you move up in the ladder. But even Technorati also keeps track of how popular your blog is. You can have 200 links into your blog, but if no one visits then your standing will not go up to the top 100.

Okay, that is Technorati. Important for bloggers? Well it is a popular site, and growing. So the answer would be yes. Important for Google, MSN and Yahoo — not on its own…yet there is one critical Caveat.

When someone links to your site in a blog or web site, the href HTML links are in the code. The Search Engines when they read the code with their bots (see how much web lingo you know already!) sees these links. Those get added to the amount of sites linking to you. They are “hot links” or “back links” into your blog or posts in your blog. So linking not only works in the closed world of Technorati tags, but also works in the Wide World of Search Engine placement. Those links are important. Now if you get linked in a very popular blog, that counts for a lot in the world of Search Engine placement. (As we discussed in the previous articles.)

So while it is nice to know your Technorati ranking is going up, what is IMPORTANT is to remember to use their tools of tagging and linking to get others to discover and link to your blog. That gets noticed by the Search Engines. Not immediately to be sure but if you are being hit a great deal and have links to you, sooner rather than later the Search Engines will pick up your blog and your keywords. They will NOT look at the Technorati tags though, they will look at your meta tag keywords and your content. (Oy Vey! so many things to remember)

Del.icio.us and others work on the same concept, though del.icio.us is more centralized and called a “social book-marking service”. Just remember the rule of thumb:

The more sites that link to you and your post, no matter for what reason, the better it is for you and your position in the Search Engines.

Okay now what are Categories? Categories really belong in Wiki format, and this is not the scope or place to discuss Wiki and the technology behind it. I own a new Wiki site, and you are welcome to peruse JewishPedia because on a Wiki site you can view all the code to each article.

Categories in blogs (WordPress implements them automatically) are a way to search for something. I have Categories in my blog, but this is a code implemented Category Listing in Google&s blogger system, where when you click, the blog does a Google Blog search in my blog for all articles related to that word. And thus it depends on Google&s specific Blog Search Engine (not their regular search engine).

Remember, Google and others have specific Blog search engines. It is important to be on the top in those as well, BUT for mainstream, if you are using a Blog for whatever reason, your goal is to be in the normative search engines as well, and in a good placement there.

So there you have it. Tags = Keywords. Technorati uses them in the closed world of Technorati. The employ linking counts as well. These keywords and links, if done correctly, are also very useful for Search Engine rankings if your blog is popular. deli.ci.ous uses them for “social” blogging.

So don’t give up on Technorati. Just don’t believe it is the golden answer to be good rankings in the Search Engines. It is but one of the myriad of possibilities.

“The more sites that link to you and your post, no matter for what reason, the better it is for you and your position in the Search Engines.”

Google And Your Domain Name

November 10th, 2009 Comments off

Google, being the largest and most used search engine and is extremely important to optimize your website for. As a matter of fact, if you optimize your website just for Google you’d find your rankings in Yahoo! and MSN will jump up higher than your ranking in Google. I’ve optimized many websites that show up in at least the top 20 listings in Google and found that in each case they ranked higher in Yahoo! and MSN usually in the top 3 positions with most in the number one spots.

Most everyone agrees that with Google content is king. So writing good copy with just the right amount of keyword phrases, for keyword density is important. And natural anchor text links is second to the throne, which takes lots of work and proper timing to do properly.

Third in line are keyword phrases (notice I said phrase because single keywords are almost impossible to optimize for), which need to be researched to find the right phrase for you and not used to often in the content/text to get the right density. Used to often and you’ll hurt your ranking.

Fourth in line are the Meta Description Tag which when used properly can actually bring visitors to your website who wouldn’t normally come there. Of course there are several other factors involved with getting that elusive number one spot.

But what most everyone often overlooks is what I call the fifth element which Google uses to determine their ranking of a website and that’s the domain name.

People, even SEO companies, don’t either know the importance of the domain name to Google or take the time to chose the proper name for the website. Most just use their company name or what they conceder a “Cool” name for their websites. Now, unless your company is well known or at least well known in its field, using a basically unknown company name is pointless. Even more pointless is the “Cool” name.

The entire reason you optimize your website is to get visitors from search engines, so why not use all the tools available to get the best ranking possible for your website.

Use your domain name as one of those tools. Instead of your company name or the “Cool” one, use a keyword phrase, one that describes your product or service. Take your time in choosing the proper name. Make sure that it will work best for your website. If you not sure ask your friends and relatives what keywords they would use to find your product or services on the Internet. You might be surprised at what they would use.

You have the keyword phrase that you know will work. But before you jump online and get that domain name there are a couple of things you may still need to do.

Let’s say you’re the owner of Mike’s Bikes and you specialize in Colorado Mountain Bikes so you figure to kill two birds with one stone and use the domain name mikescoloradomountainbikes.com to keep your name in it along with using the keyword phrase. Now this might make sense to you but you’re not Google. You’re not going to like it but you need to drop the mikes out of the name because it’s dead weight.

So now you’ve got coloradomountainbikes.com but wait before you burn up the keyboard use Colorado-mountain-bikes.com instead. Why? Because Google sees this as three different words and would see coloradomountainbikes.com as a single word. When people are doing a search they will not be using coloradomountainbikes, they are going to use Colorado mountain bikes. The bonus is that your domain name now becomes a keyword phrase used by Google when it performs a search.

Categories: SEO Tags: , , , , ,

Which Off-Page Factors Matter Most To The Search Engines

November 9th, 2009 Comments off

Off-Page Factors That Search Engines Look For

The exact way in which the search engines rank the pages of a web site is not known to anyone outside of the inner circle of engineers working for Google, Yahoo, MSN etc. However there are some general principles on what is considered to be positive factors that can influence your rankings.

These factors relate mainly to the quality and quantity of incoming links to your site. Although outgoing links also play a part, they are not as important as incoming links.

Quality of Incoming Links

Quality is based on the perceived importance of the website linking to you. If the link is one way (you don’t reciprocate by linking back) it carries more weight than a reciprocal link.

Another factor to consider is the relevance of the page that is linked to. It’s no good having a page from a gambling site linking to a page on a health site. The more closely they match the better.

Relevance of On Topic Theme Content

Based on your sites content, the search engines determine the theme of your site and the relevance of your individual pages to your theme. This is one of the reasons why it is so important to focus on a niche topic and not go too broad.

The search engines are looking for sites that appear to be natural and not contrived to beat their algorithms. If your site has lots of incoming links but they all went to the same page, this would not appear to be natural. Similarly if lots of your links come from the same site or even the same server, this would raise alarm signals with the search engines and they could penalise your rankings.

Tip:

Do not try and fool the search engines by purchasing links from so called “link farms” or other dubious schemes. You may succeed for a short while, but the search engines will always catch you out and penalize your site heavily.

In Summary…SEO is not an exact science… a page could rank no 1 with Yahoo and not even be in the top 100 with Google. Similarly, a page that ranks well today could rank poorly tomorrow. Don’t get too involved with trying to figure out what you are doing wrong. Stick to the basics of producing lots of good quality original content related to your niche and get as many quality incoming links as you can.

A good idea is to get some help in the form of step by step instructions and coaching videos designed specifically for newbies.

Categories: SEO Tags: , , , , ,

Improving Search Engine Rankings – Patience Is The Key

November 3rd, 2009 Comments off

I have written before about the benefit of articles and how they provide one way links back to your website and therefore improve the importance of your website and thus its ranking in the search engine results. The articles you write have the chance of spreading slowly around the web and ending up within ezines or on other websites or blogs. All of which provide links back to your website. So once you have over thirty articles out there the links can grow exponentially. Just consider what can happen if you have one hundred articles published? Two hundred articles?

The magic figure is said by some experts in this field to be 250 articles, it is then that this exponential growth in links and traffic to your site can be truly seen. I do not have personal experience of this yet as my own figure sits at 35 and this number is already having remarkable results as reported in a previous article. If you average 10 articles a month which is what my own aim is, then after 2 years you will have reached this magic figure of 250.

At the same time your website will have aged a further two years which will also benefit it and it will be viewed as one of the more important web sites.

Patience is the key element in promoting your website. If you want your site to climb up through the rankings then you must have patience. Do not be swayed into parting with money on the promise of instant high rankings. They can be achieved but will not be permanent and on Google in particular this is becoming increasingly more difficult to achieve as the algorithm becomes more complex.

Why do you have to be patient? Google in particular requires a little patience. Google likes to see one way links pointing back to your site but will only count and use links after they have matured for some time. So your articles may not appear as links for about 2 months and then as they mature further they will assume more and more importance in the eyes of Google. Consequently you may have 100 recorded backlinks but another site with only 50 backlinks is still ranked higher. This is presumably due to your links being still young and not ‘fully matured’. Once they do so you will leap ahead.

With Yahoo the situation is similar but the time delay is less. You should start to see these links appearing after possibly 2 – 3 weeks.

MSN is the fastest of the search engines to pick up and recognise these links which may very well happen within days.

Consequently you should see very nearly immediate effects in your ranking on MSN and then a few weeks later with Yahoo finally followed after 2 – 3 months your rapid rise through Google.

Have patience and keep the articles flowing as you will ultimately see the rewards for this endeavour and the most important thing is that your rise in the rankings will not be short lived.

Categories: SEO Tags: , , , , , ,

A Banned Site Re-indexed By Google and MSN Live within 24 hours – EASY!

November 2nd, 2009 Comments off

So it seems it is possible and over at http://www.omg-1.com the experiment is proving itself.

The question was ‘Can we take a banned site – No pages indexed in google, yahoo or live and can we give it life and PR rank?’

Well it took 2 days for a banned domain to enter the MSN Live and the Google Indexes. Now thats fast.

But how was it done

Actually the website is set up as a tutorial on how to succeed with SEO seach engine optimization. It is a step by step guild to soring in the SERPs ranking.

Just take a look at all the free tools offered all over the internet that practically force the search engines to index you. Take a hint and follow the links on this site, they take you to amazing free optimization tools.

So here are the basic steps that got this domain re-indexed after being banned.

20 September 2007 -

1. Added content- index.php | experiment.html | report.html | paid-directories.html

2. Put together an article about the ‘Website Directory Submission Experiment’

3. Submit the article to digg.com, please if you are a member please then digg this story!

3. Wait as long as I can to submit our article below to 640 Article Directories with Article Submitter.

I want this website submission experiment webpage to be indexed by google first! This will secure that http://www.omg-1.com is the original source article and then we will not go into the googles suplimentals index. We do not want google to assume an articles site which we submitted to is the article source. Make sure you get your articles into the big article directories!

4. Continue to submit to the web directory database, placing the site into eg. http://ww.webdirectory.za/business/internet/promotions/

5. SEO TECHNIQUES

– Placed TARGET=”BLANK” on all outgoing links I have so many outlinks to very reputable sources. It is smart to keep people on your site, so let them view your suggested outgoing urls, but always leave your site page open. I even placed TARGET=”BLANK” on affiliate links such as

Website Submitter | Article Submitter

Then I went ahead and placed up meta tags with an off beat title to the site

<.title>That is only 10c for a permanent link pointing to your website!<.title>

its actually a one line sales pitch. In the description i just cut a block of text out of my main body

<.meta name="Description" content="We will hand submit YOUR site to 2000 FREE DIRECTORIES for $200 US That is only 10c for a permant link pointing to your website! Compare that with adwords | SEO search engine optimization is link building." /.>

and pasted it straight in as the meta description. I also use this description across all directory site submissions and acticle site submissions.

Also FORCE GOOGLE to visit your site in everyway possible

1. Reinclusion request.
2. ADD URL.
3. Place Adsense.
4. Place a google search form on your site.
5. Set-up adwords campaign and force google to scan your sites keywords! How?

Use the capaign keywords tool and select the option ‘Site Related Keywords’

Here is what Google scanned, so we can see an insight into what Google thinks about this site, and it’s a perfect result!

5. Setup an Adwords Campaign using the suggested keywords, create some Adwords Adds. I have posted my Adds below!

6. I added the very important OnlyWire button

7. Place http://www.omg-1.com to these directories ASAP!

8. Free email subscription service set up on the site for you to sign up to receive our SEO strategy techniques and discounts.

9. Placed a free translation script on the site to cater for foreign language visitors. 10 x the pages to index for the engines.

PS. please note that we are already indexed in Google and MSN Live after one day, 20 September 2007.

Will it last?

Probably not as we will be indexed but now categorized and themed and adjusted within the SERPs.
So we will come and go – but indexed for two major engines within two days is very good!