These days, search engines are placing more emphasis on incoming links to a website when evaluating rank. The reason being is because they are difficult to obtain from trusted sources (a “by the book” website such as the Dmoz directory) and it is a good way to partially eliminate the group of people who abuse the “on the page” factors of optimisation (page spamming). How is this so? Well, if you have someone who is abusing the “on the page” factors and they have no trusted links to their page (they will most likely not get any at all due to spam) then there is no chance of them getting a good listing. However, people have worked out ways in getting a large number of links, through link farms and other tactics, regardless of the quality of their website. As the search engines are aware of this, it brings us to the topic of how one link can be better than ten.

Obtaining one link from a trusted source can be very difficult in the sense that they do not issue links to just about anyone. If you have a good website with relevant information, then you will get them. It is for this reason one link from a trusted source can better a multiple of links from other websites. As a trusted source website is “trusted” by search engines, it will also trust the websites it links to. If you have ten links from your best friends, it will help you in some sense, but no where near as much as the one link from a source like Dmoz, unless one of your friends has a very reputable website amongst the search engines.

Having too many irrelevant links could harm your website’s visibility in the search engines. What is meant by this is having links from websites that have no relation to yours. An example of this would be a site about cars linking to another site about medicine (unless the sites are reputable and have a good reason for the link i.e. there is a relationship made between cars and medicine). Search engines will pick up on this sort of link and will give it no weight in boosting your visibility. Obtain many of these irrelevant links, then it could be seen as spam (like a link farm tactic) and that will lower the popularity of your website within search engines.

The key here is to focus on quality and not quantity. Gaining a few good / relevant links will take you much further than a lot of irrelevant links. To get these quality links, start off by placing your website in directories, but be sure to avoid any “on the page” spamming as this will not get you accepted. Once search engines have acknowledged a presence of relevant links, follow up on it and research some ways to obtain more. As time passes, you will notice that your website’s performance will increase, as the links age, provided you have carried out search engine optimisation. Avoid obtaining the irrelevant links even though it may be tempting to see fast results. It will only be a matter of time before a search engine realises the spam tactic, and as the saying goes “fast rise, fast fall”.

To be successful in affiliate marketing business is not an leisurely project and it will never occur overnight. It’s simply like an in progress assignment where you want to check and try several advertising strategies and tactics. This could even call for you to sign-up with various affiliate programs just to find which merchants performs all right.

Some other misconception that expect to gain a lot if they place all but 20 affiliated banners on exactly one niche. Well it won’t actually work the way you believe it would since once your site is overflowing with too several banners, it will appear like a link farm and visitors will not be curious and won’t even bother clicking on any of those banners. So if you actually prefer to promote several affiliate programs in your website, make sure that they swing with the theme and subject from the rest of the articles on your niche. Keep in mind that three to four affiliated links in your site are decent, depending on the size of the web page.

There is as well some who consider that if they add affiliate materials to their site, they can get sales at once. Possibly they simply don’t know that affiliate marketing is totally about advertising. Whenever there’s no traffic hitting your site, how could you expect to acquire any sales? Recall that the to a greater extent you advertise your affiliate link or the site where the affiliate links are placed, the more clickthru’s these links are likely to receive.

If you would like to be involved with or you’ve already joined an affiliate program, but you have the above misconceptions regarding affiliate marketing, then, you might need a mentor to help you work where to start out and what to do ready to succeed.

In the dictionary, the word mentor is defined as a wise and trusted instructor or counselor. Generally, these individuals are experts in the subject area they are into. They can give skillful advice and direction as well as supervision to another individual. So when we say affiliate marketing mentors, they are experienced counselors that have made affiliate marketing their specialty. Affiliate marketing mentors can be those persons that have already been successful in affiliate marketing and are always willing to share their experienced-based knowledge from the viewpoint of both the affiliates and the web merchants. And that’s the reason why we come up with this page. It is aimed to give you the stuffs that affiliate mentors should possess and follow and why do they need these things.

Of course, it’s beneficial for an affiliate marketing mentor to live and utilize many theories and generalities regarding your business but there’s nothing more helpful and effective than telling the client what works today and what are the things that could probably work in the future and if the trend changes. As a mentor, you should be one of the sources of knowledge for your client and the first one to teach them on how to generate more affiliate income. You too, need to be knowledgeable and equipped with the keys to success for affiliate marketers as well as for merchants. And you should guide your clients as they try to do the things that can help boost their profit because once they do well in that business, it can be counted as one of your great achievements. This also makes you a successful mentor.

There are some articles on affiliate marketing that says, in order to be triumphant in affiliate marketing business, you need to encompass and develop these traits: persistence, patience and thirst for knowledge. And as a mentor, it is your job to help your clients take in these traits within themselves. Once they’ve already developed the abovementioned character, it’ll be very easy for you to explain to them that attaining success in affiliate marketing requires sweat, blood and of course, hefty time commitment. These traits will also teach them not to give up.

Furthermore, before you coach your client to be expert in SEO, link exchanges, email marketing, newsletter marketing, reciprocal exchanges and advertising in forums, you should first become expert on these fields. They&ll sure find it hard to learn these things alone and without supervision from the one who knows best. So be sure that you are knowledgeable on these things before you accept any invitation to be a mentor. Yes, being a mentor is way harder than succeeding in affiliate marketing but this task is very rewarding especially if your client become victorious. The failure of your client is your failure too so you must do your very best to be able to bring your client on tour to success. Again, it is never an easy task and there’s nothing you’ll be able to do about it. After all, that’s what affiliate marketing mentors are for.

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.

1. Dare to Lead

Don’t just be a follower; you can set new standards in affiliate marketing. This statement does not mean you should learn the nice good qualities of successful Internet affiliate marketers. You can take new ideas from the success of successful Internet marketers. But you can think differently and creatively. Creativity is the first thing every successful affiliate marketer possesses. You can creatively design your website, plan a promotional campaign and generally play your cards correct. Set standards and be a leader, let others follow.

2. Learn the Basics

Learn the basics of closing a sale. Learn from the innumerable websites in the Internet that sell products and services. Be a constant learner of marketing. This way you will know what sells and what does not. Goal setting, planning and implementing of the plans correctly make you a successful Internet marketer. Set daily, weekly and monthly targets, then lay down the plan and follow up with the implementation of the plans.

3. Set Priorities

Everything you plan to do to promote your new affiliate product may or may not be necessary or fruitful. Separate the tasks as immediately essential, moderately lesser and unessential. Cutting down on unessential tasks saves your efforts and gives you more energy to concentrate on highly essential tasks.

4. Learn the art of Giving Before Receiving

You can’t bind horse before the cart. To receive something you need to give something. Here what you give before you take is information, tips and strategies to maximize the use of products you sell. For example if you sell photography items, provide in your website useful information about the care of different photographic products and continuously update the information with whatever you learn. Thus you learn to give before you receive.

5. Network

Network with fellow affiliate marketers. Help someone if needed. Don’t shy away asking help if needed. Affiliate marketing is not a ‘I Win, You Lose game’. Everyone can benefit from combined strengths.

6. Widen your Horizon

Don’t put all your eggs in the same basket. Diversify your efforts. This advice is not a license to dilute your focus. If you are the affiliate of a company that sells digital camera, you will have a good idea about digital cameras, its components etc. Instead of setting your focus solely on digital camera for a specific company, become an affiliate of different companies that sell digital cameras. Also sell digital camera components like memory sticks, batteries, flash units … You simply give yourself more exposure to a variety of opportunities.

7. Never Quit

Last but not least. This one tip you need to bind to your heart. Early setbacks and losses are only natural. In such occasions, heartlessly dump the products or services that bring you low or no returns. Cut down costs. But never ever give up your career. You can find profitable products to sell that will give you profits. If you really want to become a successful affiliate marketer, you must see such setbacks as essential natural learning points.

Most so-called search engine optimization specialists are people who slap keywords and keyword phrases inside of HTML tags without considering an overall online marketing strategy. On the other hand, there are people who can write for the search engines, analyze site statistics, have a thorough knowledge of spider-friendly HTML, have considerable experience with SEO in multiple industries, and stay up-to-date on search engine happenings. These are the true search engine experts.

This article addresses five important points to consider when looking for an SEO specialist to work on your site.

Search Engine vs. Directory. A true search engine optimization specialist knows the difference between a search engine and a directory, and will keep the two types of web sites separate in their promotion strategies. The strategies for being listed well in search engines are completely different from the strategies for being listed well in directories.

Search engine optimization is designing, writing, and coding (in HTML) a web site or some of its pages so that there is a good chance that these web pages will appear at the top of search engine results for selected keywords and key phrases. Factors that affect search engine rankings include keyword concentration, keyword placement, link popularity, and so forth.

Directory enhancement is the process of selecting the most appropriate categories for a web site and writing descriptions that concisely and accurately describe the content of the site or a web page without keyword stacking. Factors that affect directory placement are selecting the right category and writing a good description.

Reconsider hiring an SEO specialist who consistently refers to directories (Yahoo!, LookSmart, Open Directory, etc.) as search engines.

Keyword Research. A majority of an SEO specialist’s time should be spent on researching the keywords your target audience is most likely to type in a search query and incorporating these words and phrases into your web pages. You will undoubtedly be surprised to find what your audience is typing in.

The most important tags in an SEO specialist’s arsenal are title tags and the main body text. Meta tags, alternative text, and comment tags are supplemental; having extra keywords in these tags alone will not give long-term results.

Guarantees. No one should guarantee a search engine ranking. Search engines regularly change their algorithms. What works one day might not work the next day. Search engines want to differentiate their results from one another. They want “fresh” results from their spidering efforts to appear when ready, and to flush their index of spam whenever possible. It is for these reasons that they tweak algorithms.

Software. Programmers who make software that steals other sites’ content to generate gateway pages are not search engine experts. Companies whose sole business is generating gateway pages are not search engine experts. (We have yet to see gateway page get good link popularity.) You can spot these companies by learning whether they host the pages themselves and “redirect” the user to your domain.

To get the best long-term results, a web site should be constructed with quality content and a navigation scheme that search engines can spider. Software cannot generate this type of web site.

Cloaking and Gateway / Doorway Pages. Search engines have made it very clear that the web page delivered to the search engine spider and the web page delivered to the end user should be the same. If not, the search engines consider it spam and will have the site promptly removed from the search engine database.

Many search engine optimization companies use scare tactics to convince people that cloaking is necessary. They will tell you that others can figure out your online marketing strategy just by looking at your web pages. (“Stealing your meta tags” is a common scare tactic used.) This is not an accurate characterization of the situation at all. In fact, we outlined above that meta-tags alone are simply not effective.

If the content of your page is stolen, then it is copyright infringement. Cloaking can hide copyright infringement behind the stealth script. This is one of the many reasons why search engines dislike cloaking and eventually may ban its use. Other reasons might be that search engines lose control over where they direct users. If a stealth marketer swipes code for a top position of “flowers” and then redirects the searcher to a furniture outlet store, it harms both the engine and its users.

Stay safe. If the search engines ever decide to ban cloaking, stealth or IP delivery, you will be safe if you never used it.

In conclusion, to get the best long-term results in both the search engines and the directories, build a good web site. Make your pages easy to read. Give the search engines and your end users a navigation scheme that they can easily follow.

Learn to write your content using the words and phrases your target audience will type into a search query. By giving your target audience exactly what they are searching for via a search engine query, you are not only giving your target audience what they are searching for. You are also adding value to the search engines.

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

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

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

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

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

Affiliate marketing is defined as a revenue sharing relationship between advertisers or merchants and online publishers or affiliates. It is a low cost way for merchants to sell their products and services.

In this type of online business, you don’t have to take any risk because you only have to pay the affiliate once the result is achieved. Once a customer is gained, a portion of the profit from that customer will be given to the affiliate as commission. Usually, an affiliate gets a commission for referring clicks, leads or sales to the merchant’s website. The said affiliate income can be a fixed dollar amount or a fixed percentage.

From this simple commission-based referral system, some affiliates become experts on this field. In fact, some of them are gaining more than five figures every month. However, among the thousands of marketers, only 1 to 5% of them reached this level. And if you’re among the lucky ones who achieve this so-called elite level, you can now be aptly called a “super” affiliate.

This means you are capable of achieving noteworthy percentage of sales or traffic on your merchant’s website. Super affiliates are not only experts on search engine optimization; they are also great in newsletter marketing, email marketing, reciprocal linkages, keyword optimization, link exchanges, advertising in forums and other methods to advertise and promote their products and services.

But how does a person become a super affiliate? And how can they overachieve their way to super affiliate stardom? Making your way to super affiliate stardom is not that easy; and it surely won’t happen overnight. Bear in mind that you need to embrace some tactics, carry out effective online business strategies and of course give hefty time commitment. You can’t be a super affiliate without blood and sweat and without the following traits – patience, persistence and thirst for knowledge. Matched with efficient strategy, these three traits provide you the formula towards super affiliate stardom.

Affiliate marketing strategies are a bit difficult but they are achievable; you just have to work hard on it. First, look for a unique and exceptional niche and focus in it. The reason why most people in the affiliate marketing business didn’t turn out to be very successful is that they try to offer almost everything under the sun instead of giving all their attention in a particular niche market. If you want to become a super affiliate, try not to scatter all your efforts; concentrate on your niche and make it grow by means of promoting, advertising and selling it well.

The next step you must do after you have established your affiliate storehouse is to promote it. Most affiliates resort to pay-per-click engines. But what’s more advisable is to discover how to accomplish organic search results or better yet, hire a search engine marketing company. Through this, you can be saved from losing all your profits on pay-per-click engines.

Then, familiarize yourself with your product and know your audience. Remember that credibility builds trust. And you can only make information that puts up your credibility if you know the products and services your site is offering. If you’re target audience don’t trust you, how could you expect them to purchase from your affiliate storehouse? Moreover, if you take time to learn the products and services you are recommending, it will be way too easy for you to establish a website that converts well, which will enhance your affiliate income in return.

Try to promote and resell products from different merchants. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this strategy because it is just a way of protecting your business and broadening your horizons to be sure that you won’t experience the so-called famine effect. Aside from that, promoting different merchants on the same site provides your site visitors a handful of destinations to choose from. This strategy will also make you aware on what your visitor want to see and it can also help you find out how well various merchants perform against each other.

As mentioned earlier in this page, a super affiliate wannabe should have this trait – thirst for knowledge. It is because this trait can help him or her stay updated and remain on top of the trends. If you are knowledgeable in internet marketing, then you know that what was adopted few months ago may not be applicable at present. So it is important to seek knowledge and make sure that you are updated on what’s new about affiliate marketing daily. Keep in mind that super affiliates take time to read, learn and embrace the changes in online marketing business.

And what’s most important? Never, ever give up. Being engaged in affiliate marketing business is hard, that’s why you must be equipped with patience and persistence. Check your statistics and find out the things that are working and those that are not. Make changes if the situation calls for.

These are just few suggestions and ideas if you want to boost your affiliate income. Let me reiterate, you have to be patience, persistence and knowledgeable. Then, follow the above mentioned strategies and you’ll surely find yourself on the road to super affiliate stardom.

There are many types of blogs or purposes for blogs and a certain number of tactics are applicable to just about all of them, so here is a -short- list of tips for marketing and optimizing a blog:

1. Decide on a stand alone domain name www.myblog.com or directory of existing site www.mysite.com/blog. Sub domain is also an option blog.mysite.com. Avoid hosted services that do not allow you to use your own domain name!
2. Obtain and install customizable blog software – WordPress and Moveable Type are my favorites.
3. Customize blog look and feel templates – aka design.
4. Research keywords and develop a glossary – Keyword Discovery, WordTracker, SitePoint, SEOBook Keyword Research.
5. Optimize the blog:
* Template optimization – RSS subscription options, social bookmark links, HTML code, Unique title tags, URLs, Sitemap
* Add helper plugins specific to WordPress or MT
* Create keyword rich categories (reference your keyword glossary)
6. Enable automatic trackback and ping functionality.
7. Create Feedburner Pro account and enable feed tracking.
8. Setup Google acount for Sitemap, validate and prep for future submission.
9. Identify authoritative blogs, web sites and hubs for outbound resource links and blogroll.
10. Format archived posts, related posts.
11. Enable statistics for tracking – Performancing, Google Analytics, ClickTracks.
12. Submit RSS feed and Blog URL to prominent RSS and Blog directories / search engines.
13. Engage in an ongoing link building campaign.
14. If podcast or video content are available, submit to Podcast and Vlog directories.
15. Submit blog url to paid directories with categories for blogs – Yahoo, BOTW, bCentral, WOW, JoeAnt.
16. Optimize and distribute a press release announcing blog.
17. Request feedback or reviews of your blog in relevant forums, discussion threads. If you have a resourceful post that will help others, point to it.
18. Research and comment on relevant industry related blogs and blogs with significant centers of influence.
19. Post regularly. If it’s a news oriented blog, 3-5 times per day. If it’s an authoritative blog, 3-5 times per week, but each post must be unique and high value.
20. Monitor inbound links, traffic, comments and mentions of your blog – Google Alerts, Technorati, Blogpulse, Yahoo News, Ask Blogs and Feeds.
21. Always respond to comments on your blog and when you detect a mention of your blog on another blog, thank that blogger in the comments of the post.
22. Make contact with related bloggers on AND offline if possible.
23. When making blog posts always cite the source with a link and don’t be afraid to mention popular bloggers by name. Use keywords in the blog post title, in the body of the post and use anchor text when you link to previous posts you’ve made.
24. Use social networking services, forums and discussion threads to connect with other bloggers. If they like your stuff, they will link to you.
25. Remember when web sites were a new concept and the sage advice to print your web address everywhere you print your phone number? The same advice applies for your blog.

Thanks to the birth of professional search engine marketers the top ranks are saturated with the pages of companies that can pay for such insight. That said, it’s certainly possible to employ high ranking tactics in your own website. Actually, the most basic tactics can move you up from an 800 position to a 300. However, it’s the top of the scale where efforts seem almost inversely exponential or logarithmic, you put a ton in to see a tiny change in rank.

How do you meld the ambitious overhauls required to attain significant ranking and NOT compromise the design of your site?

Design Can’t Be Ignored

If you have an existing site, you’ve probably tied it into your existing promotional content. Even if you’ve allowed your website to cater to the more free form of the net, it should still be designed as a recognizable extension of your business.

The reasons for doing so are valid, and can’t simply be ignored for the sake of achieving a first age position, can they? If your research into search optimization leaves you shuffling around thoughts of content, keyword saturated copy and varying link text, you are correctly understanding some of the basic pillars of search engine optimization.

And, you aren’t alone if you have this disheartening thought—If I do all this SEO stuff and reach number one across the board, who would stay at my site because it’s so stale and boring I’m even embarrassed to send people there!

There are two ways to successfully combine design and SEO. The first is to be a blue chip and/or Fortune 500 company with multi million dollar advertising and branding budgets to deliver your website address via television, radio, billboards, PR parties and giveaways with your logo.

Since chances are that’s not you, and certainly not me, lets look at the second option. It begins with some research into your market, some thoughtful and creative planning, and a designer who is a search engine optimizer, and understands at least basic CSS and HTML programming techniques. Or a combination of people with these skills that can work very well together.

Design is for brochures, instant results are for the web

That’s not the whole truth, but it will help compare and contrast design and SEO. In reality, SEO needs the quantity and detail of supporting text that a brochure has, but good web design has to catch a viewer’s attention in 5 seconds. It’s pretty difficult to read and absorb the content of an entire brochure in less than 5 seconds.

Search engines need rich, related, appropriate, changing and poignant content. And for them to rank you, all of that must be on your pages. But if it’s not well organized and broken down into bite size chunks, no one is going to bother learning about what you’re offering.

Construction 101- Attractive Design and SEO

Sadly, it’s very difficult to optimize a site without completely overhauling it. You’ll soon understand why. Design and SEO must be strongly rooted into every aspect of each other, possessing a true, symbiotic relationship. Lets look at a simplified example of this. Lets say you are optimizing a page for the keyword phrase, “pumpkin bread recipe.”

From a design standpoint “Pumpkin Bread Recipe” would be the heading for the page, in a nice, readable font with the words perhaps an orange-brown color. And lets add a fine, green rule around it.

There are many ways to create that simple, colored heading. However, there is only one way that is best for both design and SEO. That is to use Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS. In addition, that line of code containing “Pumpkin Bread Recipe” needs to be as close to the top of the page as possible (which CSS also allows).

To a viewer, the recipe text might be read more if it were located to the right of a photo of a buttered piece of pumpkin bread on a small plate next to a lightly steaming cup of coffee.

SEO needs to read that ingredient list and baking instructions. Search engines now understand on a rudimentary level that the ingredients are indeed related to the optimized words- pumpkin bread recipe.

Additionally, it would take many extra lines of code to make a table in this example if you didn’t use CSS. Search engines don’t like extra code. In fact, given enough times, that “extra” code will make the keyword phrases seem less important and hurt rank.

Note: In the page code, a few thousand characters more than you need to get all of that content organized would normally just add to your page load time, and might be acceptable. But to a search engine, that time can really add up. It wont read through page after page, site after site, billionth after billionth character of unimportant code to find the relevant text. Therefore, the less code, the better your chances. Moral- Less code, more content.

SEO usually means REDO

In the previous pumpkin example, CSS will eliminate the need for almost any extra code at all, and provide the means to place the text to the right of the photo.

Now, imagine that someone had already created this page, but done so using other programming methods. The page could very well be W3C compliant, well programmed and got the job done. However, without designing and programming for optimization as in the above illustration, the end result would have no significant rank compared to others that do.

You can be sure that there exist at least 30 web sites built to rank for the keywords “pumpkin bread recipe”. Note- why did I use the number 30? It’s safe to assume if you’re not on the first three results pages of a search, you’re not being seen.

While this is a simple example, hopefully you understand that it would be impossible to optimize this simple page without redoing it. This isn’t always the case, but extrapolate this into detailed, multiple pages in an entire website and the issue is greatly magnified.

Aesthetic Importance vs. Traffic

Everyone has an idea of what they want their site to look like. The pretty factor- splash pages, cool flash and graphics must now be justified as to their importance to the bottom line. If you want/need to establish an online presence, you will have to make some compromises in these areas.

Understand exactly the role your site should play in your company marketing.

Ask- What is the goal of your website and who is its audience? Is it for existing clients to see? Is it to reach new clients? To venture into yet untapped market segments?

Ask- How strongly do your other marketing efforts promote your site?

Ask- Is your website an extension of your existing collateral that must reflect the same graphical look?

Ask- Is your website meant to assist to your sales force or is it your sales force?

Chances are you wont have any single answers. That’s ok. It will give you some meat for your designer/SEO to digest and develop a solution for you.

Real case of Design balanced with SEO and salability

If you sell jewelry solely online, you must have a catalog of exceptional photography and detailed, high-resolution close up images. But, you must be optimized and rank well if you want to sell any of that jewelry.

If such a company approached me with this project, my recommendation would be this: If you sell a product, people have to see that product. Lots of good images. The site should be slick and sheik and easy to navigate. The home page has to capture the buyer’s attention. If it’s very expensive jewelry, the site should have a lot of class and elegance. If it’s home made jewelry, the site shouldn’t look home made.

However, as you have no store front, if the online community can’t find you, you’re business will fail. So I’d have a very optimized home page with some discussion of the quality of your product, the history of your company, etc. This is also great sales copy. Ad a few special catalog pieces with descriptions below some smartly placed gifs, jpegs and readable type graphics built out of CSS and you’ve got a cool to look at, content rich, well optimized layout.

I’d make the link to your catalog very obvious and prominent. Note the catalog is not the homepage. I’d also include subsequent well written, in depth pages about the history of some specific pieces. Load them with targeted keywords and a few images. Again, make your catalog link very prominent. In doing so you’re creating relevant content for search engines AND providing additional pages that can rank.

The catalog can be database driven, simple and changeable, and you have the foundation to build your search rank.

Planning Your Site

If your designer is not a search engine optimizer, hire one to work with your designer from the initial development stage of your site. If you would like a visible presence that is not dependant on traditional marketing efforts to get your name around, then you will have to optimize.

However, with advances in html and css, text itself can be a very flexible and attractive design element with endless possibilities. Site optimization consists of some rigid, unbendable rules. It can be intertwined successfully with very creative and attractive design. If your Designer and SEO aren’t the same person or company, make sure they have the same, close working relationship.

We therefore recommend that you research about search engine optimization, in order to select the best positioning service, you have to know what to expect, and the minimum requirements for a successful search engine submission.

There are numerous search engine submission companies in India. They offer online search engine optimization services and search engine marketing solutions. Most of them follow updated practices in the industry.

You should choose a search engine submission company, which has several years of experience in this field and have been able to make their presence felt by providing efficient and effective Internet Marketing Services to their clients. Look for updated techniques and processes to head in the right direction and get the best services for you.

Beware of a search engine submission company offering you a chance for “aggressive submission” or offering any unrealistic guarantees for minimal cost. Beware of any search engine submission company that talks about using the following tactics to gain you greater exposure:
• Shadow or additional domain names used for search engine ranking purposes
• Pages set up just to rank highly with no or little use to your users
• Pages that quickly redirect to another page or website
• Hidden text or links.
• Any page that shows one thing to a search engine and another to your users
• Duplicate pages

Be sure to ask the search engine submission company for evidence of results gained for their own website along with their clients. Look out for any company using any unethical tactics for short term success; in fact, it is highly likely that they will be banned from the most important search engines in time.

The area of SEO is very complex and it’s permanently extending. New companies and consultants seem to appear out of the blue. SEOs use a wide variety of search engine optimizing tactics, with different efficiency levels. Consequently, before hiring an SEO consultant, it is very important to make sure you’ll be getting what you need. Apart from what you’ll be able to find out from the SEO itself, you can also perform a previous research on your own.

Things to find out on your own

• Find out for how long has the company been in business. This should be listed on their website.
• Search their website for previous projects to find out whether they have a marketing related experience.
• A reliable company also has client testimonials and case studies to prove they are able to keep their customers satisfied.
• Be skeptical with companies that email you out of the blue to advertise their SEO services.
• Beware of SEO companies that claim they can provide a #1 ranking guarantee. Ranking is determined by many factors that are beyond the SEO’s control.
• Beware of SEOs that claim they have a priority submit or special relationships with Google or other search engines. There’s no such thing.

Things to ask the SEO consultant

Do they include link building in their SEO services?

A professional SEO consultant doesn’t limit to building keyword rich content, but also incoming links from relevant website to increase your PageRank.

What are they doing for website conversion enhancement?

A high traffic is meaningless unless your website provides what the users are looking for. A good SEO consultant uses several conversion enhancement techniques, such as copywriting strategies, site usability, call to action tactics and advanced conversion reporting.

Do they help you with calculating your ROI (Return of Investment)?

SEO services can be quite expensive and you need to calculate your potential returns. ROI depends on various factors, such as target population, size of your market place, the sales value of your services and the number of people searching for them on the Internet etc. An experienced SEO should be able to help you predict your ROI.

Do they use SEO best practice and anti-spam methods?

There are many SEOs that use various strategies to trick search engines in thinking your page is more relevant than it actually is. No SEO consultant will admit to using spamming and other unethical strategies, so you can’t ask him the question directly. However, ask as many questions as possible about the methods they will be using and make sure you receive straight answers.

Do they put a limit on the number of search phrases?

Many SEOs have a limited number of phrases they will optimize for. However, if you’re paying a monthly retainer to the SEO Company, they shouldn’t do this. Even though there are a few phrases more important than others, the rest shouldn’t be neglected either.

The first thing a good SEO consultant will do is perform an analysis on the current state of your website and provide a Website Analyzing report. Further analysis should be performed on a regular basis and your website traffic should be permanently monitored. A professional consultant understands the difference between bulk traffic, getting to your website for irrelevant keywords, and qualified traffic. Making the right choice will provide you with qualified traffic, as well as well-structured pages and a high usability level.

Copyright © 2006 Andreas Obermueller

If you’re the least bit serious about promoting your website(s) online then you have probably heard the recent cry that one’s website needs links coming into it. Lot’s of links. And without these many, many links one is the proverbial billboard in the desert waiting to be seen by those thirsty for sustenance.

Well after these several years that I’ve been on the internet I too heard the call and have followed the many internet bandwagons that have rolled into e-town touting the next ‘latest and greatest’ snakeoil software to get one traffic that they won’t believe.

You know the cry… ‘The traffic explosion your favorite web guru gets – and it’ll only cost you $795 to attend this three-day conference to learn how to play with the big boys (and girls) online.’

Sound familiar? To most owning one or several websites it will.

But after being dragged around the reciprocal linking millstone over the last several months in a valiant attempt to obtain many reciprocal link exchanges and closely monitoring all completed link requests I can truthfully say that that job in itself is a bugger to track and stay on top of.

Why?

Because for the most part one has to rely on one common denominator in that equation… people.

I finally realized that this tactic of getting traffic ‘for free’ and having it prove itself as viable was indeed true. Link-exchanges do work. But they ARE work too.

But with me being the type of person who writes with my eyes closed (literally), I was told by a couple of e-friends that I should pursue ‘articles’ more vehemently. I didn’t know what they meant so what I did was find out about a couple of the bigger article directories on the Net and I submitted a couple of my writings to them. And then I promptly forgot about this process because it was extremely labor intensive.

And with me being a relatively lazy fellow at times I ‘moved on’ to other tasks that seemed more to my liking. And ease of use.

But after getting relatively burned out with this link-exchange stuff and dogging real live people to honor link exchange requests after I had ‘nicely’ place an unexpected link to their site on my site, I was tired of this whole process.

~~~~COMMENT~~~~
Yes, I know there are automated processes and software out there that will do this linking stuff for one, but again, I’ve also read how the SE’s are ‘onto’ these tactics and reciprocal links aren’t as effective as they used to be.

But they are still effective, that’s why I still honor the odd link exchange request I get. I just don’t spend all my time doing this anymore.

But getting back on track to the actual subject of this article…
~~END COMMENT~~

Back a couple of months ago, I somehow received an email about a new software program that would do ‘article submissions’ almost automatically.

But let me first digress somewhat and tell you what ‘article submitting’ is.

Article submitting may sound kind of formal and only for ‘writers’, but it isn’t.

Essentially, anytime one writes something of extended length, even a longer webpage, they’ve written an ‘article’.

Think about it. If you have a website that you’ve personally written, then you have written articles related to the subject of your website.

So, if your website is all about the best way to burp babies, then you have a whole bunch of ‘articles’ that you’ve written about parenting, specifically, burping babies.

What you can then do is submit these articles throughout the WWW and get yourself known as a baby burping expert.

But even more importantly, you can take each of the webpages you’ve written on your website and turn it into an ‘article’ – add a link BACK to your site in the footer of the article – and voila! you have written an article and ALSO obtained a link back to your site whenever someone else uses that article.

And all this without having to hassle with e-chasing that non-compliant link partner to honor their link exchange with you.

Sound cool? It is.

Now, like everything else, there is a downside to all this article writing.

It takes time to do.

First you have to have written YOUR OWN articles/webpages. And then you have to personally submit them to any of several hundred article directories floating around in cyberspace.

And of course there is the whole idea of you having the motivation to do this submission stuff too, so let me share a little bit of motivating statistics with you.

Remember how I mentioned earlier about having piddled with submitting a couple of stories/webpages I had written to several of the major article directories? Well, that was about 14 months ago. And remember how I told you that I did this and then promptly forgot about all this article submission stuff?

Well, over those 14 months since I did this, which by the way only took about one hour to do, I now have about 300 STATIC, incoming links to my site from those two articles being posted around the Internet. Yes, 300 incoming, NOT reciprocal, links.

And so what I did was after I received that email from someone touting this article submission software was to do some research on this whole article submission automation software process.

What I came out of this research with was that as of now there are two main article submission software programs that allow one to automate most of the process of doing this sometimes laborious task.

And since it is so repetitive and sometimes painstaking to do manual article submissions I thought that this would be one way to get me back into this process that I think is well suited for the way I like to promote my business online. With words, that is.

After much mental deliberation, and financial detailing, I opted to go for an article submission software that was released during the summer of 2005. Besides it being almost one-third the price of the other main player in this article submittal software e-competition going on, it also appeared to have a lot going for it with a money-back guarantee and a manual and good developer-support.

So I bought it several weeks ago and have been using it everyday to promote several of my websites by submitting ‘articles’ I’ve written to the several hundred article directories included in the automatic submissions this software does for the user.

And to say the least, the results, so far, are extremely impressive.

One little statistic. Remember those two articles I submitted 14 months ago and obtained over 300 incoming links from doing so? Well, I’ve used this software to continue submitting them to other article directories included in the software program.

And now that 300 incoming links number now numbers almost 700. Yes, 700 incoming links from just those two articles. An increase of approximately 400 incoming links, in just five weeks.

To me, those are some GOOD results. Especially without having to chase other humans to reciprocal link with me, building link webpages, tracking linking emails, checking links, buying tracking software, and all that stuff that goes along with the reciprocal linking process.

So, if you’re tired of buying links and chasing other website owners for reciprocal link exchanges, do consider using content you’ve written as a way to get links, and eventually traffic, into your site.

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Since the beginning of the understanding of Search Engine Optimization – SEO – there have been tons of different theories developed about how to do it “right”. The truth is, however, that there is no one single method that is one hundred percent known to be better than the rest. Since the large search engines such as Google and Yahoo! don’t release the details of their ranking elements – in addition to the fact that they are constantly changing what these elements are, and how they are weighted in the grand scheme of things – we can only apply the efforts that have been tested and have worked for a given online marketing effort.

The following are the SEO techniques that have been known to work for marketing strategies used by experienced web designers and webmasters. Keep in mind that SEO is an ever-changing experience, and that while these techniques will work for you today, they may not be the same when tomorrow arrives.

1. Google AdWords – this is an SEO technique specifically offered by Google to make certain that you are indeed getting use out of the keywords you want to use. This technique is considered to be quite cost-effective for achieving good search results for your website. It works by allowing you to state the maximum amount that you are willing to spend on a daily basis on your chosen keywords. This can be changed monthly as you witness the results that the Google AdWords SEO technique brings you.

2. Overture Keywords – similar to Google’s AdWords, you can choose the keywords you want, however, you cannot limit your daily spending, so this may be an issue if you’re on a tight budget. However, it has been found to be quite cost effective when balanced against the number of new visitors and active customers created.

3. Yahoo! Regional Directories – when you have your site indexed by Yahoo! Regional Directories – a place where submission is free – then you will always be in their list. Many new clients are found through this reliable process.

4. Keywords, Site Descriptions, Alt-Tags, Title Tags, and Page Content – these are the main focus of SEO experts and SEO businesses today. These are the five elements that take the most amount of effort when optimizing websites. It all has to do with what is contained within the coding of your website. Unless you are truly confident that you know what you’re doing, it is very beneficial to hire a professional SEO company to ensure that you’re including all of the right elements, and doing it properly. Have this done before you submit your site to the different search engines, or re-submit your site after you’ve done your SEO for your website. SEO is well worth paying for to ensure that it is done properly. Professionals will know which keywords to use, how to use them, and how to make sure that they are properly laid out for search engine spiders to crawl the site. Furthermore “illegal” tactics will never be used, which can result in having your website permanently banned from search engines.

5. Online Directories – by submitting your website to any number of different free online directories, you will have an excellent new path for prospective customers to follow to find you. Many are free, others include a nominal charge. If there is a fee involved, do some investigation into the directory first, to make sure that it is worth the money.

6. The Open Directory Project – this is one of the primary resources utilized by the big search engines such as Google for sending their spiders out to crawl new sites. The directory is entirely maintained by humans – that is, every site submitted is reviewed and indexed by a person, not a spider. This does mean that it takes additional time to have your site indexed, but it is well worth the wait.

7. A Blog – adding a blog to your website is a fantastic method for continuing to attract new and repeat visitors to your website. They are drawn to the fresh new content that is constantly being added.

8. Make It Great – Search Engine Optimizing (SEO) is only as good as the website it supports. If you bring lots of visitors to your website, and it has nothing to offer them, or the content is terrible, all of your efforts will be in vain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Did you believe this? If your like me you’ve probably seen a million pages and emails like this that claim they can work miracles for you in all the search engines. They claim everything from having inside information or special relationships with Google and all the search engines.

The simple Truth is this: No one can guarantee top listings on any search engine, in fact, no one can even guarantee that you’ll ever be listed. So beware of big claims and unethical SEO firms as there are many out there.

So how do you get top listings in the major search engines. Let me try to answer that as simply as I can without thoroughly confusing you. CONTENT – yes that’s right… content is still king… the more you try to fool search engines the more damage you’ll do to your rankings. Search engines are getting smarter and smarter and they have seen every trick in the book done by every unethical SEO/SEM firm and spammer out there. So don’t fall pray to the hype and false claims.

Here’s the big Search Engine Secret

Well Written and Related Content, Relevant Page Titles and Meta-tag Descriptions. So there you have it, the secret is out… if anyone tries to tell you different or convince you otherwise – put away your check book and run. Yes, there are other things you can do to help your rankings using the 3 items above and a few more.

How to improve your chances in the search engines rankings:

*** Know your top keywords.. Use Yahoo’s Keyword Tool http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/?mkt=us〈=en_US or Goggle’s Sandbox https://adwords.google.com/select/main?cmd=KeywordSandbox to find what users are actually typing into the search engines to find sites like yours. Once you have all your top keywords – don’t loose them… you will use these over and over and over again.

*** Use your top keywords in the content of your pages, in your page titles and in your mate-tag descriptions. I don’t mean to use pages that are filled with nothing but keywords, use them in Real Sentences. Pages that are nothing but keywords will hurt you in the search engines, this is called keyword stuffing and will hurt your rankings or worse yet, get your site delisted or banned from the search engines. Simply take your current site content and use your top keywords in appropriate places where they make sense in real sentences.

*** Don’t over use keywords or try to use to many on one single page. Have your main keyword in the title, the description and a couple times on the page content is usually sufficient. Do this for every page of your site optimizing it for the subject of that particular page using the relevant keywords from your research. I see so many sites with the same Title and Meta Descriptions on every page. Make sure yours are different.

*** Get as many high value links as possible. Best way to determine High Value links is to install the Google Toolbar at http://toolbar.google.com/ and use Google’s Page Rank to determine link value. You can also use out PR Tool at http://www.i4market.com/tools/rankcheck.html. The higher the rank the better. You may have to pay for links on PR7 or higher sites – but don’t pay too much. You can also use Alexa Traffic Rank or their toolbar – http://www.alexa.com/. The more High Value links you have the better your Search Engine Popularity will be.

*** Install Link Exchange Software… but be selective about the link exchanges you approve.

*** Add value added relevant content to your site, such as articles, news, blogs or tools related to your business or industry. This will increase your search engine saturation. A site with 100 pages of good quality content has much a better chance of being found than a site with only 10 pages.

*** Use Google XML Site Maps or find and company that will create one for you. http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/about.html

*** Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map is larger than 100 or so links, break the site map into separate pages.

*** Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. Search Engines do not recognize text contained in images or flash content. If you must use images, then always use the Alt tag to describe the link.

*** Check for broken links and correct HTML.

*** If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a “?” character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few. Don’t use “&id=” as a parameter in your URLs, as Google does not include these pages.

*** Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).

*** Make use of the robots.txt file on your web server. This file tells crawlers which directories can or cannot be crawled. Make sure it’s current for your site so that you don’t accidentally block the spiders from content you want included.

*** Understand the difference between a Search Engine and a Directory. A Search engine uses spidering technology and will search the web for new sites. Directories will not seek you out and you will have to be tell them about your new site manually.

*** Revisit your keywords on a regular basis. There are a 1000′s ways to search for the same thing, search patterns change from time to time. You’ll want to keep up with those changes.

*** Submit your site to the search engines if it has never been submitted or you are not listed in that particular engine. Most search engines still have a free submit for the “Natural Listings”, yet they may not be easy to find. You can find Google’s ADD URL here http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl

*** Submit your site to the Directories including Yahoo! and DMOZ. DMOZ http://www.dmoz.org/ is the Open Directory Project and is used to power thousands of other sites and directories – Inclusion in this directory gets you links in 1000′s of other sites. DMOZ is also the directory Google uses. http://directory.google.com/

WHAT NOT TO DO.

– Don’t Use hidden text or links
– Don’t Use doorway or gateway pages.
– Don’t Use pages that redirect users to other places.
– Don’t use any type of cloaking technology – no matter how great it sounds. It might work for a short time – but you will get caught.
– Don’t use Flash content for important information. Flash is an application that is completely invisible to most search engines. Flash is good for animations and other page elements – not for an entire site unless you also have an html version.
– Don’t Use Misleading or overly repeated words
– Don’t Use Bait and Switch tactics… they don’t work.
– Don’t Use Duplicate sites or pages
– Stay away from Free For All or Link Farms schemes, as these will only hurt you.

There are many things that affect your rankings then just the content on your pages, so DON’T obsess about being #1 – you may never get there no matter what you do. Your time is better spent operating your business in areas you have more control over.

Following the above guidelines will get you the best results your site will achieve. That’s not to say that there is not more you can do – but these are the main items that will effect your rankings in the SERP’s (Search Engine Result Pages). The internet a huge place and technology changes all the time – so do the search engines – a site that is #1 today might be #1001 tomorrow.

You can try to do all this yourself or you can hire a company that specializes in SEO/SEM (Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing), however beware, there are many that will separate you from your money quickly and leave you with little to no results. We suggest you take some advice from Google concerning selecting an SEO firm for your company. http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/seo.html

Above all else – remember this – There are NO GUARANTEES in any type of marketing campaigns, be it on the web, in print, on television or radio. So spend prudently and select your Marketing firm wisely!

Should you choose Affiliate Marketing Program as an Internet Business? YES.

Affiliate Marketing Program is a great way for anybody to start a home-based, Internet business. It offers a wide range of products and avenues to make good money quickly. Due to its potential, it is one of the most sorted ways to make an income through the Internet.

The most common reason that people do not get started in Affiliate Marketing is because they are not aware of what it is all about.

How can we earn a sizeable income through Affiliate Marketing Program?

To promote and sell other peoples products. The beautiful thing about this is that you have a great variety of products and services at your disposal. To help you in the Affiliate Marketing Program, there are many training materials that will enhance your Affiliate Marketing capabilities and help you to increase your income.

By selling other peoples products, you save a lot of headaches. You do not worry about keeping your books, stock or having good customers support. All these burdens are taken off your hand and you can have a good sleep. Your product or service provider will be handling all this challenges. You only worry how to increase your income. So you need to have some good training materials and guidance given to you step by step in Affiliate Marketing.

No doubt there are so many products are out there in the market, it is advisable to choose products that interest you. This will help you to effectively advertise and promote the products or services. You must not allow your temptation to sign up for several products. The secret is choosing wisely. Do not select products that you do not know or not familiar with. My reason to say this is your interest and passion for a product or services will prompt you to be creative.

Remember that there is a very stiff competition out there. You must know what your competitors are doing. Do not ignore them, find out what are doing check them out. This maybe tough but will benefit you when you are planning your marketing strategy.

What you have read is the tip of the iceberg. It would be very wise to spend some money and subscribe to a good Affiliate Marketing Program where you will be taught step by step the tactics to gain a sizeable income in a short time in Affiliate Marketing journey.

Marketing is not something to be forgotten when delving into an online business. Marketing is in fact just as, if not even more important today in promoting a website than any offline business. So what does it take to market on online business? Well, it’s the newest strategy on the market and it’s called Search Engine Marketing.

In the same way a business would choose an advertising company to lead an advertising campaign, an online business should choose an online advertising company to lead their search engine marketing campaign. Effective marketing requires the experience and expertise of professional advertisers. For a website, this means knowledge and understanding of the internet, and more importantly, of search engines. Search Engines dictate the way people shop online.

A search marketing company is the best way to get your site some online exposure. There are a great number of tasks to get a site ready for search marketing. Keyword research, placement, and selection are all an essential part of targeting your market. Search marketing companies have the tools and the technology to select the best keywords and keyword phrases for your audience. Other important considerations for site include overall website design and theme. There are many factors in design that can affect the way search engines rank a website.

Website hosting is another important key to search marketing. Exclusive search marketing services include a complete analysis of your hosting account to ensure good service. If your hosting partner causes your site to be down frequently, it can be detrimental to your search marketing campaign. If your site is down when a search engine comes to visit, this can be bad news. It’s also important that you have all day access to your files to work on the site. Most importantly, there may be banned sites on that hosts IP address, and this can cause the search engines to automatically ban your site also.

Once your site design and hosting are up to par, search engine marketing dictates a vigorous campaign to market the site. Advertising consists of tactics to increase the visibility of a site, to get it noticed in more places by more search engines. A search engine marketing company will submit the site to major search engines, and other sites used by search engines to rank sites. Once a site is submitted, it must be maintained carefully and monitored frequently to assess rankings.

The industry of the internet and the search engines is changing everyday. To make a business successful, it has to keep up with the ever changing trends. A company with exclusive search marketing services can help a business meet its goals and reach success. With marketing a website, the guidelines are specific and the results are real and the success of a business is not worth gambling with.

It has the advantages of:

- having thousands of products under several categories including

- all products are digital. This means that the product can be downloaded immediately rather than having to wait for it to be shipped.

- signing up as an affiliate to any product within the Clickbank marketplace is extremely simple

Despite these advantages, most Clickbank affiliates struggle to make a few hundred dollars per month. However, there is an elite few “super-affiliates” that are making well over $1,500.00/month.

These folks are using Clickbank to create and grow a successful online business with affiliate marketing.

How can you as new Clickbank affiliate achieve this? The following is a summarized lists of what would be required is the knowledge of how to:

1) The ability to find the most profitable products. With thousands of product available, you have to be able to sift through the crowd and find the products that:

(a) Pay good commission – at least $20.00

(b) Are in great demand – You can find out which products are in demand by doing thorough keyword research.

(c) Have a good sales page – try to promote products that you have brought because that means that the sales letter was good enough to convince you to purchase.

2) Create your own affiliate websites (sending visitors straight to the merchants website through your affiliate link is common, but terrible mistake).

Tips:
* One of the best kind of affiliate sites to create is a review site!
** When creating affiliate sites, think about ways to make your site unique

3) Create landing pages with an opt-in mechanism which allows you to capture the names and addresses of visitors. This is very effective. When you capture your visitors information, you can follow up with them, which has been proven to increase your conversion ratio.

4) Once you have captured the names of your visitors and have built a substantial subscriber list, you have to how to convert them into buyers… and even better… long term customers.

5) Get FREE *targeted* traffic to your affiliate sites. There are a number of strategies which are free but are proven effective in getting quality traffic to your site. These include:
(a) Writing articles and submitting them to article directories
(b) Posting at forums and online boards
(c) Using signature files in emails and forums
(d) Surf for traffic exchange sites

These are some of the techniques currently being used by a handful of Super Clickbank Affiliates. These are the techniques you need to learn to start seriously increasing your earnings online.

Too often, companies ignore search optimization or shelve requests for it simply because senior management does not understand it well enough to provide the necessary leadership and support. And if top management does not view it as priority, marketing and sales people are disinclined to pursue it. They will apply traditional, “accepted” tactics, shying away from one of the most efficient, measurable ways to get in front of prospects.

Too often executives focus on the technical aspects of SEO and lose sight of the more important strategic aspects. Meta tags, spiders, hits and visits don’t mean much to company stakeholders and shareholders. Results—in terms of better leads and more of them—do.

Here are a few questions every CMO should ask (and be able to answer):

What do we want our web visitors to do?
Whether your desired response is a demo request or a completed inquiry form, management should know and agree upon this ‘primary’ action and communicate it to all stakeholders. You may have a few different actions that you wish to track.

How many search visitors per month actually do what we want them to do?
Since we are only talking about SEO in this article, we are only interested in search visitors. Knowing this number now and tracking it each month, will give you quick insight into the quality and quantity of your search traffic. Do not be surprised to learn that as much as 99 percent of this traffic is not taking the desired action. Pulling in the right traffic and converting it into bona fide leads is a never-ending challenge. Knowing how well (or poorly) you’re doing in this area is a big first step.

What percentage of search visitors leave our website within 10 seconds?
This magical statistic, which I like to refer to as ‘short visit syndrome’, obviously relates to all of your web traffic. But focusing on search visitors tells us a couple of things. First, are you pulling in the right search traffic? Second, is your website doing an adequate job of ‘hooking’ them or giving them what they are searching for? It is not at all uncommon for companies to spend lots of money and resources to drive search traffic, only to have the overwhelming majority leave within 10 seconds.

Which search phrases are we focusing on?
You want to come up on the search engines for the phrases that your best prospects and influencers are likely to type. You’d be surprised at how differently people actually search, compared to how your sales and marketing people think they search. This is because most searches occur in the research and investigation phases of the buying cycle. In fact, more than half of all B2B searches for purchases over $50,000 occur between two and six months before a purchase is ever made. And often, the person doing the searching may not have the technical understanding of your product or service. The key is to consider carefully how your audience searches (there are some great research tools out there) and come up with a list of approximately 20 phrases that become your company’s target phrases. These are the phrases that you should measure and focus your resources on.

How often are we appearing for our target phrases?
Too often, a webmaster, marketing manager or even CMO assumes everything is up to par because the company appears at the top of Google for their company name or some extremely specific, non-competitive phrase. It’s important to know how often you are coming up on Google (as well as other major engines like Yahoo and MSN) for your target phrases as a whole. While it may be more rewarding to focus on where you are coming up, it is more productive to see where you are not currently coming up, and thus missing opportunities.

How often are we appearing compared to the competition?
If it’s important for you to know which major tradeshows or events your competition attends and exhibits at, wouldn’t it make sense to know how often your competition is being found on the search engines compared to you? After all, the Internet and search engines have become the largest, most prolific tradeshow on earth.

Tying It All Together With The Big Picture
Obviously, there are other and even more important things that a CMO would want to know about an SEO effort– number of opportunities generated, cost per opportunity, revenue produced, etc. Many executives assume that someone is tracking this information and reporting on it. But more than likely, no one is. Beginning to capture and act upon some of the basic points in this article could be the catalyst to help measure the true effectiveness and production of your internet efforts.

All of this data should be readily available to you if your company has developed a prudent search optimization strategy and implemented some basic and widely available tools. If you are not getting this information, you are missing an increasingly important business development medium. Compared to the amount of energy and resources you are currently spending to generate new business, SEO may be the most effective and cost-effective way to fill your pipeline.

Well, this all leads to the title of the article and will answer the question what is the “Benefit of Expired Domains”. You see when an domain has been in use by another person and this person allows the domain to expire without renewing, the domain name is placed back into the pool of “domains for sale”. This is where the benefits begin to show, just like a new domain name, the expired domain name is available to anyone who wishes to purchase it. What is the difference between a new and expired domain name? Simple, the expired domain name has already been in use. This means that the previous own has likely invested a great deal of effort and time, not to mention money into the promotion of that domain name.

Furthermore, this means that the expired domain is likely all over the internet, with a multitude of back links. Think about it, taking possession of an expired domain name means less work for you and more time for other, more important issues. You will have the opportunity to take advantage of the work that someone else has already performed. The expired domain could already be listed with many search engines, forums, directories, and a wide variety of other websites that have this link already on them.

What does this mean? Because the previous owner already did most of the legwork, it leaves less for you to do. The traffic specific to that expired domain now becomes your traffic, which leads to your sales, and ultimately your revenue. All of this because someone else was kind enough to do the work for you already and let the domain name expire.

Now surely you would know by now, that if you were to purchase a brand new domain name, you would have to do all the advertising, promotion, SEO work, submission to search engines, forums, and directories yourself. That is a lot of time, effort, and money spent on your part and trust when we say it takes a lot of all of the above to make a new domain work. It makes sense to take advantage of an expired domain does it not? We think so, you should find the expired domain of your choice today and begin taking full advantage of the legwork that has already been done for you and use it for your website.