Make Money Online

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Also avoid getting links from sites

1. Which have hidden links / text on it.

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

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

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

Backlinks are a highly important and necessary part of any successful website. Backlinks are essential for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) because they help to judge the popularity and importance of the website based on their backlinks to other sites. That is the main reason there are so many directories online. One well known directory is the Canadian Business Directory. Ca that is well known for accepting Canadian only businesses. You get listed and you get a backlink, simple as that.
Search engines use a number of standard criteria to rate sites on the web and backlinking is high on the list. Backlinks are actually rated by the various search engines by keywords and the content of the backlinked sites.
For example, if your site is about how to cook a hamburger, you would do better by linking to a site about recipes or food preparation than by linking to a site about downhill luging. Why? Because search engines actually cross check the content of not only the link, but the actual sites the link is connecting so they (search engines) can make sure the webmaster is not trying to gain higher SEO by doing things like running several unrelated sites at the same time and linking them together, using hidden links, or using automatically generated pages.
Backlinking is an effective way to generate website visits, but you have to understand that you site will not become popular overnight. Backlinking is a way of getting that needed traffic to your site and you have to do it correctly and smartly.
A great way to achieve visits is by linking to other similar or related sites to yours. For instance, let’s use the hamburger example again. Sites you would want to link to would be sites for frying pans, barbeques, or sites that are associated with growing the cows.
By doing this, the search engines will pick up on the fact that you are using quality links that fit into the area of your site’s expertise.
Another way to create strong backlinks is through hyperlinks. When you are creating your hyperlinks, don’t simply put “Qlick here”, use “Visit the tips page for hints on how to make the best hamburger.” This will ensure your links are using the same terms as your site and those you backlink to.
If your business is in Canada then submit your web site to this Canadian Directory to improve your backlinks.

http://www.canadianbusinessdirectory.ca/

If you are interested in trying to make money from your blog, you probably want to know how you can best optimize your blog for great search engine results. After all, most people stumble upon blogs when doing a search for something. If you use these optimization tips effectively, it may be your blog more people are drawn to. So, check these tips out and experiment with your own blog. Note what has the best results and stay with it. Change the other things around a bit until you get the results out of them that you want.

Simple Content

Many experts say that the best way to optimize your blog is to keep everything very simple. You can choose one quality content topic and make it your base. Then from there you can use variations of the topic in order to keep everything going. This may seem like a broad and useless tip, but once you get into blogging more and more, you understand how important it is.

Put More Out There

If you are trying to get more of a presence on search engines, be sure that you have something to show. The more content you have, the more likely you are to show up on a search engine. Bigger sites always do better than smaller sites. It is simply a numbers game. Search engines will see your site in a different manner, depending on how much content you have. The more content you have, the more there is a chance there will be that someone will stumble onto your site.

Ask Search Engines for Help

Few people know that you can actually submit your site to search engines. Submit your site’s URL and ask to be put into the index. This can take a while, but if they do list you in the index, you will see a larger increase in traffic. Beware however of a service that asks for money in exchange for getting your sites into search engines. These can be a little misleading at times. There are ways to do this without needing to pay anyone at all.

Keyword Pay

A great idea for optimization is to identify the most popular keywords. By doing this, you are essentially targeting the keywords that people most often search for. When you do this, you have an edge over the competition. When you know exactly what the people are looking for, you can give them just that. Once you have a list of keywords, simply create articles that use these keywords. By creating these articles, you are putting yourself out there to be found. When someone does a search for those keywords, your blog just might pop up on their screen. Be careful not to use the keyword so much that your article does not make sense however.

Daily Updates

If you really want the best optimization, you should update it daily at the least. The more you update it, the more often search engines will index your blog. Therefore, you will want to be sure your blog is always fresh. Adding new information is the best way to update your blog. The more new information you have, the better off you will be! Just be sure that when you do update, it is for a good reason. You should always remember that content can have a purpose, but it should always be quality content. If you compromise content, you are only allowing yourself to strip the creativity from your project. If you are happy with doing that, by all means go ahead. However, as a writer, you will have a certain responsibility to web surfers. Unless you want everything on the web to be useless, do your part!

Use these tips to help optimize your blog and get the most from search engines. The more you post and use these tips, the more results you will see. If you earn your living from the number of clicks your blog or your ads get, this will essentially mean more money for you. You can use all of them or some of them. Experiment with them to see what works best for you and your blog. Put these tips to use and watch your results rise today!

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

1) Where to start?

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

2) Niche

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

3) Update Daily (nothing less)

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

4) Traffic

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

5) Track Your Blog

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

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

6) Listen to Your Audience

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

7) Multiple blogs

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

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

9) Digital Art

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

10) Keep it Personal

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

11) Interact With Your Visitors

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

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

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

12) Make Money

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

13) You’re a Professional

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The demand for search engine optimization is immense today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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SEO Delhi Companies help the clients in worldwide to reach their online business. With their know-how tools and successfully and competent help you to attain the top rank of the search engines results, gain traffic and visibility and earn proceeds. But of track, you have to make sure that you select the right variety of SEO Delhi Organization. According to the visibility issue its a major value for any website, because of SEO Delhi Companies comes our website in search engine through SEO process. By its ranking the web design companies in Delhi have started search engine optimization or search engine marketing services as additional services. But for result oriented search engine optimization and internet marketing services you need to go for only a professional SEO company. Now days there are many SEO Delhi companies have been weaved mostly in Janakpuri, Gurgaon, NCR and rest of the major Indian cities. All these SEO Delhi Companies present in market and offer their SEO services with different names and prices. Even if you have good knowledge of SEO and you try hard to get a good ranking, your site doesn’t do well. It is clear that your site needs to be optimized and maintained on a regular basis. It is an ongoing process which requires a lot of time. So in this case, it is desirable to hire SEO services for your web site.

In market you find many SEO Delhi companies but among them e-fuzion is one of the best company, which offering best facilities for web services. It hampers the elements in reading and indexing of your pages can be functionally, page design and its content. They need to work on relevant keywords. Tools to determine keywords- what tools they use for searching keywords. What methodology they use for keyword analysis. If you need to collect some information about SEO Delhi companies for your site promotion then e-fuzion is the best one for you.

Does it seem like no matter what you do your website just won’t climb up in the search engine rankings? If so, your web site may not be optimized well enough for the search engines to increase your rankings. There are some very important factors that determine where web sites are ranked. These factors are referred to as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques and they can make all the difference in your sites rankings.

Here are some of the most important factors that the search engines use in determining your rankings:

1. Web Site Content

Content on your site is one of the most important factors for successful search engine optimization. Your web site should provide valuable information on specific subjects relevant to your web site. Furthermore, your content should be updated regularly. It’s not enough to just put up a few content pages full of information on your site and then never add to it. This is a continuous process that will help your search engine rankings if done correctly.

It’s also important that you don’t try to trick the search engines by flooding them with multiple versions of the same page, repeating the same content over and over. Doing that will not help your rankings and will eventually lead to your site getting banned from the search engines.

2. Link Popularity

Inbound links are very important for achieving high search engine rankings. Most of the search engines today regard link popularity as one of the most significant determinants of your website’s rankings.

Here are some of the best ways to get inbound links:

* Articles – Writing and submitting articles to website’s and article directories is a very good way to get inbound links.

* Content – Not only will adding quality content help in your rankings by itself, it will also help you with your link popularity. Other webmaster’s will want to link to your site because it is valuable to them and their own visitors.

* Directories – Submitting your site to online directories will help you gain inbound links.

* Blogs – Start a blog that you update frequently with information related to your website’s niche. Then, link to your site from the blog. You can also submit your blog to various blog directories to get even more inbound links.

* Link Exchanges – Simply find other quality sites related to yours and ask them to link to you in exchange for a link back to them. This is not as effective as it used to be but it is still a pretty good way to get inbound links.

When trying to increase your link popularity remember that the more inbound links you get the better, but quality is always better than quantity. Stay away from low quality sites, FFA’s, and sites unrelated to yours.

The next things that should be considered when doing SEO for your web site are the on-site and the off-site elements. Some of the on-site elements are the title tag, Meta tags, heading tags, ALT tags and highlighting of the text using the bold tag. The Link text is an important off-site element.

On-Site Elements:

3. Title Tag and Meta Tags

Meta tags help describe the page where they are placed. Though today the Meta tags are not nearly as important as they once were and are definitely not the only things the search engines look for when indexing your site, they are still somewhat important in deciding the relevancy of the page for a keyword search.

Search engines focus on three primary tags to help them determine the relevance of a website for a particular search phrase. The Title Tag, Meta Keywords and the Meta Description…

Ideally the title tags should contain less than 64 characters with your most important keywords in them and should definitely be relevant to the content on the page. Do not stuff keywords in to the title tag!

The Meta description tag is a summary of the page and its contents. This Meta tag should be 200 characters or less and should contain keywords and phrases you hope to be found for, but it should also read like an introductory lead-in for the page and be appealing to the reader. The description you provide for your page has to convince the visitor that they have found exactly what they were looking for.

Probably the least important Meta tag to search engines is the keyword tag. However, it shouldn’t be ignored. Keyword tags should be less than 1000 characters. This tag should include important keywords and phrases consistent with the body text, title, and content of the page. Be specific and accurate with the keywords and key phrases in this tag. Again, do not stuff keywords here… they should only be those that are actually on the page and do not repeat any word more than 3 times.

4. Heading Tags

The heading tags are given more weight than the ordinary text. The higher the H tag the more weight it carries. You should make use of the heading tags to highlight the important keywords and headings of your page as well as the paragraph headers.

5. Bold Text

Bold text is given a little more weight than ordinary text but not as much as heading tags. Make sure to enclose some of your keywords in bold tags when they appear on the page.

6. Alt Text

The alt tag provides alternative text when images cannot be displayed… This might happen if the users have set the browsers only to download the text and not the graphics, or if the images are too heavy to download for the user’s internet connection. Only include important keywords relevant to your site and the image and do not stuff keywords in them.

Off-site elements:

7. Link Text

This is a very important factor in search engine optimization to gain higher rankings. The link text can be on pages within your site or what other web sites use to link to you. Either way, it is important. If possible the target page’s main search term should be included in the link text instead of just the URL. Do not use identical link text for every link, but do include the target page’s main keywords in the link text. Links carry more weight when the text around them is relevant to the target page’s keywords and phrases.

Following the above SEO information will help tremendously in your search engine rankings. Remember that the search engines are advancing all the time. Don’t try to trick them because they will eventually catch on and that could mean the end of your web site. Stick to the basic techniques above and you will increase your search engine rankings without fear of being banned or dropped.

Link building in a nutshell, is the process of getting other web sites and web pages to link to your web site. These links will not only drive direct targeted traffic to your pages; but more importantly will increase your overall search engine visibility and rankings. Building a solid incoming linking structure for your site is one of the most effective techniques used by search engine optimization professionals to improve your search engine rankings and boost the overall amount of traffic any given web page receives. However the process of building incoming links to your site can be a daunting and tedious task when just getting started. The purpose of this essay is to outline the importance of building a strong linking profile for your site as well as offer a handful of key strategies that any webmaster regardless of marketing budget can employ to climb to the top of the search engine ladder.

1.) Purchasing Links and Sponsored Reviews

Paying other web masters to place a link on their site back to yours is probably the easiest and most straight forward way to generate links to your site. However the down-side of purchasing or renting links from other web masters is that it can become a very expensive venture, not to mention you need to pick and choose your potential candidates vary carefully. There are many services out there to help connect you with other web masters that are interested in selling links from their web pages, however you will save yourself a lot of time, and money by working directly with other web masters as apposed to paying a middle man to act as a link broker. Unfortunately there is no set standard on determining what any given link is worth: however you should pay careful attention to a few key factors before cracking open your wallet and spending your hard earned money on a paid link. These things include but are not limited to the number of incoming links the candidate site itself has, it’s overall page rank, the age of the site and finally the search engine saturation (number of pages indexed in the major search engines) of the site. When approaching a web master to purchase links from make your goals as clear as day – and ensure that he or she knows you’re interested in purchasing a link for Search Engine Optimization reasons. You need to ensure the link will not be cloaked (hidden from search engine spiders) or nofollowed (marked to inform search engines not to follow the link with the rel=”nofollow” attribute) as either of these conditions will make the link relatively worthless from an SEO stand point.

2.) Comment and Post on Related Blogs and Message Boards

Even a web novice can find a litany of blogs and message boards for any given niche or market to post comments and feed back . I strongly encourage you to register on message boards related to your topic or subject and include links within the signature of your posts and messages. The same goes for blogs and commenting. There are many blogs that will allow you to include a link back to your site either within the content of your message, or make your user name a clickable link back to your site. However there is a fine line between spamming and offering valid comments, posts and responses to community based web sites and blogs. Making obvious spam posts such as “Cool site, check my site out at …” will likely get your IP address banned from the web site or network, and can negatively impact the reputation of your brand or web site. If you don’t have a valuable view point, or comment to offer other readers of the site you’re posting on, you’re better off not commenting at all.

3.) Write User Testimonials and Product Reviews

Writing user reviews or testimonials is an under appreciated technique to create a wealth of back links to your site. Most often when you write a review for a product or service you’ve had success with, the web master will include a link back to your site in the signature of the review. This technique is simple and straight forward; if you’ve purchased a product or service write up a short 100 – 300 word review for the product outlining it’s strengths and your positive experiences and include your full name, and web site address in the signature of the review. Nine out of ten times the web master of the site you’ve written the testimonial for will be more than happy to include and activate the link when they post the review onto their website.

4.) Develop a Free Online Service or Software Application

Most people wouldn’t even consider spending their valuable time developing an application or online utility to give away for free. However the benefits of creating and distributing a free online utility or software application can create several 1,000 back links to your site very quickly. A perfect example of this is creating a small, easy to use Mortgage Calculator with javascript and offer the code to embed the Mortgage Calculator onto other web pages. Include a link back to your site within the coding of the Mortgage Calculator perhaps in a copyright statement at the bottom of the application and require the link as a condition for using your free application.

5.) Write Articles and Distribute Them Online

Assuming this isn’t the first essay you’ve read on improving the amount of links to your web site, you should be well aware that writing articles and submitting your articles to the popular article directories is a fantastic way to generate many back links to your web site. The premise is simple yet effective; Write a handful of articles geared toward your topic and subject matter and distribute them to the many article directories on the Internet. Often times when your article is posted on these article directory sites they will include an authors bio, or resource box. Within the authors bio area you want to include a little information about your company or product(s) as well as a link back to your site. Whenever your article is picked up by other web masters or syndicated across other popular web sites you will receive a free one way link back to your site. Repeat these steps over and over to build several 1,000 links back to your web site. This is an amazing technique as your only investment is a little time to write and submit an article.

6.) Submit Your Site to Directories

Over the past few years links from directories or web indexes has become less and less valuable. However there are still a handful of well trusted and high quality directories that you should consider submitting your site to. This will boost both your linking profile, as well as your page and trust rank. Some of the most notable directories to submit your web site to in no particular order are DMOZ, The Yahoo! Business Directory, JoeAnt, Gimpsy, GoGuides, Linkopedia and Uncoverthenet. Though most of the directories l’ve mentioned here are not free to submit to, the cost of submission is well worth the price as the links you’ll receive from this investment are quality one-way links that carry a good amount of page trust and rank. When submitting your site to any of these directories, pay special attention to the category you are submitting your web address to, make sure that you are submitting your site to the most relevant, and related topic to the subject of your own web site. As this will ensure that you’re submission is not denied, or skipped by the directory editors once it gets reviewed.

7.) Exchange Links and Build Partnerships

Link exchanges or trading links with other web masters is another technique that has lost a little of it’s gusto over the years, however this method of generating back links does still hold a bit of value and should not be overlooked. Many webmasters dedicate a page of their site titled references or resources and use this page to link out to other web pages that have agreed to link back to their site. As mentioned above this technique is not as effective as it once was; however picking and choosing web sites that are well trusted and ranked by the search engines and that are related to the topic and subject mater of your own site promise to be well worth the effort. Finding other web sites that are prime candidates to exchange links with are those that are linking out to other relevant sites in your field or niche. Once you’ve found a web site that you’d be interested in swapping links with, contact the web master via email with your offer. When soliciting another web master for a link you want to write a personal email message and refer to specific content and aspects of his or her web site. Doing so will show the prospective linking partner that you’ve actually taken the time to give their site the once over before sending your solicitation; as a result you will be far more likely to receive a positive reply. As with purchasing paid links you want to ensure that the site you are requesting to exchange links with doesn’t end up cloaking it’s outbound links (hidden from search engine spiders) or nofollowed (marked to inform search engines not to follow the link with the rel=”nofollow” attribute) as either of these conditions will make your link relatively worthless from an SEO stand point.

In this article we’ve discussed 7 of the most effective, and commonly used methods to generate a massive amount of incoming links to your web site. With any luck, after reading this article you should have a handful of ideas and techniques in your tool box that you can employ to kick-start your web site’s model for success. Building links to your web site is by no means a set-it and forget-it facet of web marketing and requires time, dedication and ongoing analysis. You can never have too many quality incoming links to your site and once you’ve had a small taste of success with link building I’m confident you’ll be hungry for more.

I have a quick question to ask you… “do you know How-To set up your own BLOG and RSS Feed so you Too can take advantage of all the benefits Blogs and RSS(Real Simple Syndication) have to offer you and your business?”

If you answered NO, your not alone.

I didn’t either at one time, but that didn’t stop me from finding out How-To on my own.

So basically, what I’m trying to say is by the time you finish reading this article you’ll be a master at setting up your own Blogs and RSS Feeds in a matter of minutes by simply following my simple &Step-by-Step& instructions below.

With that said, Buckle Up, put your thinking cap on, grab yourself a beverage and get ready to learn…

“HOW-TO Set Up Your Own BLOG and RSS Feed In Less Than 5 Minutes…”

Know lets go to Step #1.

Step #1. Go set-up an account with Blogger.com.

This is probably the easiest part of all, which is simply setting up an Blogger.com account at http://www.blogger.com.

Go there right now. It will take you to Blogger.com&s homepage.

Once there, you’ll see an orange arrow pointing to the right that says…”Create Your Blog Now” … click on it.

That’s Step #1.

Step #2. Creating your account with Blogger.com.

If you thought Step #1 was easy than Step #2 will be a breeze.

Simply select a Username and Password that you’ll remember followed by your Email Address.(You don’t have to use your primary email address, you can use a Free web-based email account like Hotmail or Yahoo! if you like. Your choice.)

Then check the box that says “I accept the Terms of Service”.

Now proceed by clicking on the orange arrow that says… “Continue”.

That’s Step #2.

Step #3. Naming your Blog.(Very IMPORTANT!)

Now, depending on what your Blog is about your going to want to use your target &Keywords& within the name of your Blog, its description and the URL.

And there’s a good reason for this simply because this is what the Search Engine spiders are going to see first.

They&ll first see them within your Blog name which is at the top of your Blog that your visitors see, they&ll see them within your description of your Blog and then they&ll see them within your Blog URL that you choose.

Why is this SOoooo important?

By using your &Target Keywords& within those areas I just outlined, thats what the SE&s will use to index your Blog under so when someone does a search for those target keywords, guess whose Blog will pop-up within the results depending on your competition?

That’s right, Yours!

The SE&s will also use those area&s I outlined for your SE listing within there results index.

Here’s an example for a quick &Case-Study& for you.

This is one of my Blogs I have.

Go to: http://internet-marketing-tactics.blogspot.com

You&ll notice my Blog title, description and URL all have the &Keyword Phrase&… Internet Marketing Tactic.

To take this a step further, I want you to go visit these search engines MSN, Yahoo! and AlltheWeb and type in “internet marketing tactics” within there search boxes so you can see where my Blog sits within those SE&s so you can see the importance of having your Target keywords within those area&s I mentioned earlier.

MSN

http://www.msn.com

Yahoo!

http://www.yahoo.com

AlltheWeb

http://www.alltheweb.com

In the MSN SE results my Blog is #1 for that keyword phrase, in Yahoo! I’m #11(not bad) and in AlltheWeb I’m #18.

Of course these positions will very in time but just as long as you get the point of WHY you need to use your Target keywords within those 3 areas.

Lets move on.

Now, your last step for Step #3 is to simply type in the &Verification Code&.

Once you’ve done that, click on the orange arrow below that says… “Continue”.

Step #4. Choosing your template.

If everything went well in Step #3 and that Blog name you chose isn’t taken you should be looking at a bunch of Blog templates Blogger.com offers.

Simply select the one you like most and then click “Continue”.

CONGRATULATIONS!

You just created your first Blog and completed Step #4.

You should now be looking at an orange arrow that says… “Start Posting”. Click on it and it&ll take you to where you can start posting whatever it is you want.

Now that you have set-up your Blog your probably wondering… “where does RSS fit into this formula?”

Step #5. Locating your RSS Feed URL.

What can I say, I always leave the Best for last.

Assuming your still within the Blogger.com &Posting& area you’ll notice a bunch of tabs at the top labelled, Posting, Settings, Template and View Blog.

Click on the &Settings& tab.

This will take you to a sub-menu with a bunch of other options.

Out of all those options click on the one that says… “Site Feed”.

And there it is.

It should look something like this:

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

This is the URL you’ll want to use to promote your RSS Feed with to the RSS search engines and directories so that everytime you make a post, the RSS SE&s and directories will be &Automatically& notified and updated with your latest information bringing your Blog more exposure to your target audience.

That about sums it up for this tutorial, but, just before I go I’ll leave you with a few articles I wrote earlier on RSS promotion to help you get the Most out of your Blogs and RSS Feeds.

Here are the links:

http://www.internetwondersezine.com/article_13.html

http://www.internetwondersezine.com/article_14.html

http://www.internetwondersezine.com/article_16.html

Now that you are armed with this information that I just revealed to you, you should have no problem setting up and getting the MOST out of your Blogs and RSS Feeds.

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

Link Building for SEO On A New Site

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It Depends What You’re Selling.

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

Selling in Peak Season.

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

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

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

Selling Off-peak.

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

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

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

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

If you own a website and are located anywhere in Europe, especially the U.K., you’re probably well aware of all the attention surrounding the Eurid offering of .eu domains to the public. .Eu domains have been long awaited and their popularity is expected to be similar to .com domains. These domains were originally only available in what was known as the Sunrise 1 and Sunrise 2 stages. Sunrise 1, the first of the three stages, began on December 7, 2005. To be considered for a .eu domain, applicants chose a domain name had to be related to a registered trademark. This policy greatly restricted the number of applicants that could apply for a domain. The Sunrise 2 stage was offered on February 7, 2006 and allowed applicants to reserve domains related to both unregistered trademarks and company names. The purpose of the Sunrise phases was to allow well established companies the first rights to their desired domain names. As with other types of domains, many times people will purchase a number of domain names hoping to resell them at an elevated cost. Unfortunately, some individuals have even tried using domain names that are similar to well known companies hoping to gain exposure for their product or business.

The last stage known as the “Landrush” became available on April 7, 2006. This final stage allows much greater flexibility for persons wishing to register a .eu domain. Basically anyone who resides in the European Union or who has a business located there can qualify for a .eu domain. Much like other domain extensions, .eu domains are now being assigned on a first come basis. This has caused many companies and businesses to scramble in an effort to acquire their desired domain name. If a domain name under the .com extension is not available, a similar domain ending in the .eu extension may be available instead.

After the opening of the Landrush stage, the sale of .eu domains has skyrocketed. To date there are well over 1.7 million registered domain names and the numbers are expected to keep growing. Many experts believe .eu domains will some day come close to the number of registered .com sites. If current registration trends continue, this could very well occur.

Discount Domains, a company specializing in website design and web hosting, offers .eu domains to the public at an affordable price. They hope to soon become an accredited registrar with Eurid in order to provide additional high quality service to the public. Customers can purchase top level domain names from Discount Domains for their business or organization. The only requirement is that domain names must be registered for a minimum period of two years. The company also offers a wide range of services including domain transfers, web hosting, marketing expertise, and search engine submissions. Discount Domains offers many options for customers wishing to register a .eu domain.

When choosing .eu domains for your business, there are some important points to remember. As with any type of domain name, it is a good idea to choose a .eu domain that is the same or very similar to your business or website name. This will make it much easier for customers and clients to remember. Even if they forget your website address, by running a search on your company name, they can quickly locate your domain name and link to your site. Using your business name within you domain name is a valuable resource for search engine purposes.

If your requested domain name is not available, the provider may suggest similar domain names to the one you suggested. Be careful when considering this option. First of all you will need to make sure that your domain name is not easily confused with other similar names. When marketing your site, be sure to use the entire .eu domain name. This will help to alleviate any misunderstanding or confusion. Lastly, it is much easier to purchase your domain name first before designing a new business or choosing a company name. Trying to come up with a domain name for a well established company can sometimes be a headache. Often times the desired domain name may already be taken. If you plan on establishing a new website or opening a business in the near future, you can greatly benefit by choosing your .eu domains ahead of time.

Internet marketing and search engine optimization hinge on knowing what keyword or keywords web search surfers are searching for on the web. By doing extensive keyword analysis you can zero in on the best keyword terms to use when setting up pay per click advertising, writing keyword articles, and optimizing web pages.

Not only is it necessary to know what keywords are searched for the most but also how many times particular keywords have been searched. There are a number of effective tools available for keyword analysis and keyword suggestion.

Yahoo Search Marketing

Yahoo has an excellent tool for helping webmasters and Internet marketers determine what keywords people are searching for on a monthly basis. This tool, located at http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/srch/index.php is powered by Yahoo Search Marketing that was previously known as Overture.

Wordtracker

One of the more popular tools for doing keyword research is Wordtracker.
WordTracker can be found at http://www.wordtracker.com/. Keyword results provided by Wordtracker are compiled from Dogpile and Metacrawler. Wordtracker is not free but with the ability to do targeted keyword research the results can quickly pay for the software.

Once you have done some preliminary research you will need to decide which keywords or keyword phrases to target in your Internet marketing campaign. It is best to choose keywords that have a good amount of traffic without too much competition for placement.

For example, let’s say you are marketing a variety of photography books and you search on photography only to find that it had more than 1,000,000 searches last month. The competition for placement with this keyword is probably going to be pretty tough. Try researching on more targeted phrases such as nature photography, landscape photography, photography books, etc.

You will likely find that these terms have less monthly searches and much less competition. There will be a lower search to competition ratio. Generally, a keyword with 30,000 to 50,000 monthly searches is going to be one that you can compete for in terms of placement and being found on the search engines. Instead of spinning your wheels marketing for those who are searching for photography instead create multiple campaigns that market to more targeted keyword phrases.

You can evaluate the search to competition ratio by taking the number of searchs of a particular keyword and dividing by the number of web site which return for that keyword when searched. The higher the number the better. For example, if you have a keyword that is searched for 100 times in a month and when you search on that keyword you return 1000 results then the ratio is 100/1000 or 0.10. If you have a keyword that is searched for 100 times but there are 10,000 search return results then the ratio goes down to 0.01. The larger the ratio the better in terms of your ability to be competitive.

Finding the best keywords to use in your web site promotion is vital to effectively driving targeted traffic to your web site. Take the time to find out what people are searching for and your efforts will pay off in terms of traffic and sales conversion.

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

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

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

Basic SEO Tips:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Visit us:

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

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

Going Big…Going VERY Big

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

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

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

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

A Different Approach

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

Here it comes…

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

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

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

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

Ha! Expedia I mock thee!

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

Some items to consider when starting an online forum include…

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

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

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

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

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

Getting in-bound links to your site is one of the most important things you can do for generating traffic to your site:

* It helps to get your site listed in the search engine.

* It helps to boost your position in the search engine.

* It helps to build small streams of traffic to your site.

Links to your site are normally given by also giving a link from your site to the other one. These are called reciprocal links or link swaps. And naturally there are a few services available to automate the link somehow.

Some of these services will automatically add the link to your site and the other site once your link request is approved (through some software to be installed on your site).

Some will simply point you to sites which do use link swaps and who are interested in hearing from you.

Some will also check that the link to your site remains in place, and email you if it disappears. It’s then up to you to either contact the owner of that site to find out why the link has vanished, or to remove the reciprocal link on your site.

But there is one thing they do not do, and which you need to watch for:

How would a visitor to the other site FIND the link back to your site?

Because you can be sure that if a human visitor cannot find it, then it’s unlikely that a search engine will.

Let me give you an example: Andrew was using the service at LinkMetro.com to get links to one of his sites. Someone had a site on a related topic, and they requested a link back to Andrew’s. He checked the link back to his site, and everything looked OK. The other site had requested a link back to their homepage (rather than another specific page), so Andrew checked out that home page.

What did he find?

* No links to the “link directory”.

* No link to a “related sites” page.

* No link to a “resources” page.

It seemed that the link directory on that other site was not linked from the home page of that site.

The other site was requesting inbound links back to its home page, but effectively hiding the return link from the search engines and from website visitors. And that makes the link back to Andrew’s site useless – it’s like that link doesn’t even exist.

So next time you get asked for a reciprocal link, check the route that people and search engines would use to get from that site over to yours. You might be surprised what you find.

I first encounter about vdeck control panel about a year ago, while I search for web hosting plan online. In today market, the 3 most common control panel are: cpanel, vdeck and h-sphere. Cpanel appear to be the most preferred hosting control panel, and follow by vdeck. Its very easy to use and it come with tons of features.

Keep your eye open, because vdeck 3.0 is coming. And its interface look and feel is much like cpanel. And it come with lots more features. With integrated web design tools. Not one but three tools to choose from. Integrated icon designer, and integrated SEO tools which includes search engines submission.

There are few big hosting company that are solely using vdeck control panel. For example startlogic hosting and ipowerweb hosting. Their hosting plan only offered in vdeck control panel. And my experience using them, so far so good. Everything cpanel can do, vdeck can do as well.

If you haven’t seen a vdeck control panel, you can visit this startlogic review blog and take a look at the vdeck control panel at this link http://www.startlogicreview.org/startlogic/startlogic-vdeck/ This is the vdeck 2, and the latest version 3 will look much better than this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now, you’re ready to conquer Google.

You have decided to open a site online, but are not sure where to start. This brings us to the subject of the online turnkey sites.

Online Turnkey Sites – Good and Bad

An online turnkey site comes in a couple of variations. All of them are designed to give you a base to work off for your ecommerce efforts. The idea is to create the fundamentals of a site and then let you go to town with it. Depending on the platform, using one of these platforms can be a good or bad move.

Let me save you a ton of money from the outset. If you are considering an online turnkey site that is fully contained, to wit, it gives you a site, domain and products to sell, you are going to have a very difficult time making money. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, your site is no different than all the other turnkey sites sold by the same company. Why would prospects come to your site instead of any of the others? Simply put, there is no way to make your site standout. Further, your marketing will be a major pain. Many pay-per-click search engines will not let you list the site because they only allow one listing per affiliate program and they will consider a turnkey site as one. Further, you will have difficulties pursuing any search engine rankings because you will have little ability to change the site. I strongly encourage you to avoid these online turnkey sites like the plague.

There are online site builders that work fine. These services essentially give you the ability to control the design of your site, and require you to have a domain as well as your own products and services. On the high end, you can find massively flexible page builders with databases tied in covering everything from customer service management to inventory tracking. Most can also be customized to your particular needs.

This second set of platforms, known as online site builders, are really the way to go. The days of learning and hammering out html code for pages has gone the way of the horse and buggy. The online site builders give you convenience, flexibility and control over your online venture. This allows you to manipulate the site as you gain a better understanding of your market and all things Internet. Minor elements of html coding are still needed, but nothing that will set you back or be confusing.

An online turnkey site sounds like a great thing at first blush, but it can cost you in the long run. Make sure you understand what you can and cannot do before committing to a system.

There are many webmasters that find writing articles for their site to be a very tedious task. Many people who need to write articles also procrastinate as much as they can to delay the amount of writing they need to do. Many people dread writing articles because they find researching for the topic and writing down original materials will be too taxing on them.

You need to have your creative juices flowing and simply downloading an article would be plagiarism or tantamount to stealing, not exactly. Have you ever heard about public domain? These are articles written down by many authors that have declared their works to be public domain, which means anybody can use it for whatever purpose they want.

While most authors would prefer to copyright their work for their rights, there are also a number who doesn’t mind sharing their work. Public domain articles are not owned by anybody and can be used and abused by anyone. The writers have waived their rights to their works and it is out there for the public to make use of.

You can use public domain articles in helping you write your articles. With the public domain articles you can simply edit them to your own style and rewrite them as you please to make it suitable for your needs. All the ideas are there already and its just a matter of finding the write article with the topic or subject you need.

This is probably the easiest way to write articles. You don’t need to scour around the library or the internet for hours for information and start an article from scratch. For webmasters who are looking for articles to fill their site and to generate a high ranking for their website in search engine results, they can just modify the article by infusing keywords and keyword phrases related to their site.

A webmaster or website operator do not risk any chance of getting sued for copyright infringement because they are public domain, once again meaning that anybody can use it. Writing articles by using public domain wont require as much work as writing one from scratch would. You save a lot of time also.

One good factor in using public domain articles for your site or for any project is that you save a lot of money. You dismiss the need to hire experienced and seasoned writers that some website operators use to write their articles. While a single five hundred worded article would only set you down 10 to 15 dollars, this cost will drastically increase when you need hundreds of articles to fill the needs of your site.

For those who needs articles to generate newsletters or an e-zine, public domain articles will be very beneficial. You do not need to count on your contributors or pay writers to write down articles for your newsletter or e-zine. You can fill all the pages without any cost or the worry of being sued and sought after by the writers. You can simply copy the articles and place them on your newsletter and e-zine.

Public domain articles are a virtual untapped resource that many people fail to realize the true value. The power of articles, keywords and keyword phrases have been deemed invaluable these past few years for many internet based businesses and sites that want to rank high in search engine results.

The number of article and content writers have grown significantly due to the rise in the demand for articles. As newer and newer topics and subjects have arisen, there are many demands for new articles to be written. An industry has been formed and this is a worldwide demand.

Public domain articles have given a great alternative for those who are cash strapped as well as do not have the time nor the skills to do their articles for themselves.

Searching for public domain articles is as easy as 1 – 2 – 3. You can search for them in search engines and do searches in many directories for the topic or subject that you need. Read them and simpy copy paste them to a word processing program and simply edit them to suit your needs.

SEO which is commonly known as Search Engine Optimization is meant to increase the visibility of the website. For a commercial website it means a lot. If your website is not getting traffic, means that website is not getting visitors and it directly means that website is not able to sale any thing. Just because a website is not getting visitor it won’t be able to fulfill the desire of its owner.

Hence, a website is always requiring visitors and for that we will have to do the search engine optimization of that website, so that visitors can come to the website and we can convert them into customers.

When I first started doing search engine optimization in year 2004, the term SEO was not well known to me. I was not at all aware from it. Like me, there were so many people around me who even don’t know what is the word SEO means. Even today some people asks me is it Senior Executive Officer, as if CEO means Chief Executive Officer.

Hence we can say that SEO is not a well known term in India even today, but yes after three years I can see a huge difference. Most of the people who are using internet for any means are a bit aware from it. A few years ago, there were so many people who are not even aware from websites. Then comes the world of net banking, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank etc. played a huge role in increasing the role of internet in common people. Also social network sites like Orkut played an important role in increasing the usability of internet in India.

Now an era has arrived when people are looking for there own websites, and they are also aware from the fact that it should have good visibility too. Hence, demand of website design and development and SEO is increasing day by day. As the number of websites will increase demand for SEO will also increase. Hence, I can see a good prospect of search engine optimization in India in near future.

Also from the market point of view, work of SEO is quite costly in western countries, and it is quite cheaper in India. Hence, people are use to outsource there work to India. They use to take work from there and then outsource it to India so that they can get the work done in a cheaper rate, and they can get good cost for it. Hence, scope of SEO in India in near future is quite good.

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What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

It can be defined as the process by which a site’s rankings in the search engines are increased for the keywords it is optimized for. Good SEO keeps both the user and the search engine in mind. Things that look beautiful on your site may have a negative influence on your site’s ranking. Good content ensures return visits. Keyword enriched content ensures that people will find your site.

How many people do you know who actually look at the fourth or tenth page of a search engine’s results page? Most people only look at the first ten to twenty search results. SEO can get your site ranked in the first bundle of results.

Aspects of SEO: Content

The web is indexed with keywords. The user types in a keyword string, exact phrase or a single keyword to find a relevant page. Information specialists make use of advanced searching techniques to find deep web content such as information imbedded in databases or dictionaries, but the average user thinks of the first thing associated with his query and types it in. That is why broad keywords on your site will not generate enough traffic because many thousands of pages have that exact keyword. You need specific keywords and keyword phrases.

There must be enough content on the page. Too little information guarantees that the keywords cannot be repeated enough without keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing is where there are too many of the same keyword on a page. Search engines will rank your page lower if they see your page as stuffed.

Keyword density must be balanced with their relation to the rest of the page. This means that your main keywords must appear in certain areas of the page. They must preferably stand out from the rest of the text. There are a number of ways to do this but it is a new topic.

SEO: Meta Tags

There cannot be enough emphasis on Meta tags. Meta tags are in the invisible part of your page. It forms part of the source code. This is where the Title, Description, and Keywords, are placed for the search engines. Most engines will not be able to find your site if a Meta Tag is not present. This area is very important because this is where you place your main keywords and the description of your site. Once again, the relation to the title, description and content becomes important. Don’t stuff this area with long descriptions since the search engines will throw your page out if the description is too long, or the keywords repeated three or more times. Keep a balance.

You must write a robot.txt file for the spiders to exclude certain parts of your page. The reason is that most of them cannot read Java, and CGI scripts. There are a number of extensions to pages that will lead to exclusion from search engines.

Other SEO factors that also influence the way your page will indexed:

- ALT, TITLE, and AUTHOR tags.

- Number and quality of links to your site.

- Links from your site.

- Sitemap for search engines.

- Names of links to your other pages.

- Color and total number of links

These are just a few of the online and offline factors that influence your ranking. SEO is needed to make your page visible on the Internet where you have to compete with other sites.