Why do search engines look for "inbound links" for ranking websites?

Dear friends, ranking high at the search engines for a keyword which has high demand is every marketers dream. No matter what your website about, a fully loaded super store or a hobby site, you need traffic and search engines have a capacity to provide an unending supply of thousands of visitors (if your niche has that much demand) at zero cost.

Actually it would be wrong if we say that search engines send traffic at zero cost. There is a price you need to pay to rank high and that’s TIME. Yes, it takes time to reach there.

there are many factors that undergo a normal Search Engine Optimization exercise and building “inbound links” is considered one of the most challenging tasks involved today. To understand better why search engines look for inbound links, let’s take a real life example.

For a moment forget the Internet, forget you website/search engines
anything that has to do “ranking high”, just read this small
story.

There was a young boy Jim, about 21 years old. He was a fantastic painter. He painted in water colors on canvas. His favorite subjects were landscapes, natural beauty, mountains, etc…He could spend hours painting and playing with colors. Colors were his passion, his life.

He lived in a small village that was away from a major metro city. With a small population, no one really visited this village very often. Jim was very happy with his passion of painting.

One day Jim’s uncle visited his home on a Sunday. When he saw Jim’s paintings he thought Jim has got an inborn talent of colors, of looking towards the surrounding beauty that he was able to capture on canvas. His was a special skill that very few people have. So he suggested Jim to move to the city to display his work to people out there. Jim assured him that whenever he gets the opportunity he would definitely make the best of it.

Then the golden day arrived. Jim was listening to a radio station, when he heard the announcement of an exhibiting of paintings to be held in the metro city. Jim thought this is what I was looking for an quickly rushed to the city at his Uncle’s place to arrange for the formalities.

Five of Jim’s paintings got selected and displayed at the metro city exhibition. He got a tons of post and is still getting from his fans and now the best part is he is making thousands of bucks just from a single painting. He is happy and wealthy too. His passion is keeping satisfied and now he is famous guy. The villagers are proud of having him in their village.

OK… now what’s this story got to do with SEO..you ask..

A lot…If you read the story again you will discover that Jim is already happy when he is in his village, spending most of his time with paints and brushes. But when he displays his work out to public, his work is admired by more and more people. It has to do with “numbers”. Again when no one knew about his talents, he still was a great painter, but now because now thousands of
people say that “Jim is a great painter” his value becomes magnified thousands of times.

Now if Jim launches his website on water color paintings where do you think it must rank.. You see, it’s a numbers game. Of course it’s also important that who recommends Jim as a great painter. But Jim doesn’t care, he’s already taken all the care for years polishing his painting skills. All he knows is producing great quality paintings for his customers which are ready to pay him truckloads of money.

There is a simple exercise to do. Put yourself in Google’s shoes, imagine that you are Google.com [:-)] and then look at Jim’s new website. If I am a regular Google user I will take all the care to see that my search results for the keyword “water color paintings” show up results that are best and most importantly recognized by experts in the art industry.

This is true for every search engine out there, including Yahoo! and MSN, because they want to retain their users.

Here “inbounds links” come into picture. The number and the quality of inbound links is the only way for the search engines to recognize the quality of the website it is supposed to rank. Of course as I mentioned there are many factors that a search engine will look for, but inbound links can have a major impact on your rankings.

Again if Jim wants his website to rank well for many years to come, he will have to keep on producing quality work just the way he is doing now. Most people think that search engines are money machines, just build a website, get is indexed and forget about it. But it is getting a long term goal now a days to rank high at the search engines. As I said it comes at the cost of TIME. If you are ready to go for it, creating traffic through search engines
will be one of the most profitable skills you will ever learn in this lifetime.

I hope this article was useful….

Copyright Shrinivas Vaidya

Ebay Auction Starting And Ending Day Strategies.

It’s usually when auctions are about to end that they get half their bids – sometimes they even get their only bids. If you want your item to sell for a good price, then, it makes no sense to let it finish on a day and time when no-one’s going to be around to care.

Selling to Business.

If you’re selling business equipment and have mostly business customers, you should really aim to have your auctions finishing between 9am and 5pm on weekdays. It is worth, however, trying to avoid mornings and avoiding the ‘lead-in’ and ‘lead-out’ that takes place on Monday and Friday themselves.

Selling to Home.

If most of your sales are to private customers having it shipped to their own home, then you want your auctions to finish when these kind of customers will be around. Unfortunately, these times are the opposite of what they are for the business customers. The ideal time to catch a home customer is on a Sunday evening.

List for Durations.

In order to get your listings to end on a particular day, you can simply change the duration of your auctions depending on what day it is. For example, if you mostly sell to home customers and the day today is Thursday, then your auction needs to run for either 3 or 10 days to hit a Sunday. If you sell more to business and the day today is Friday, then:

a 1 day auction would be bad (finishing on Saturday),
3 days would be alright (Monday),
5 days would be good (Wednesday),
7 days would be good (another Friday),
and 10 days would be alright (Monday again).

You could draw up a little timetable of when you should and shouldn’t be listing depending on the days of the week – make it red, amber and green, traffic light style, and stick it on your wall.

Schedule Listings.

Of course, if that all sounds like too much trouble then there is an easier – if more expensive – way of doing things. Simply use any of the many tools that let you schedule listings (almost all listing programs and sites do) – you can set the start date for any day and time you feel like.

Be aware that you might have to pay a few cents per listing for this if you do it through eBay. With some software, you may also need to leave your computer on all the time, so the software can start the auctions when it’s supposed to. The advantage of this method, however, is that there will be no per-listing fee, since the auctions were scheduled through your computer and not through eBay.

If it’s the home market you’re after, then you might not have realised what one of the most powerful things to sell on eBay is. I’ll give you a clue: it’s not consumer electronics, or media products. It’s what eBay is famous for. Check out the next email for more.

Tips for Selling Collectibles on eBay.

Yes, collectibles! Collectibles are where eBay started, and they’re still one of its biggest areas – however much they might want you to believe they’re not. eBay’s most hardcore and long-time users are almost all collectors of something or other – it is quite common to post what you think is a mundane item, only to have collectors suddenly go to war over it because it is somehow linked to something they collect.

Collectors are the people on eBay who really do pay top-dollar for things that seem like junk to you and I – not to mention to the people you’ll be getting your stock from! That’s why you can make so much profit on collectibles. Here are a few tips.

Go to people’s homes. People’s homes are full of things that someone out there collects – they are the best and cheapest source of collectibles out there. Sure, you might find something if you hang around at enough garage sales, but you’d have competition. Getting invited to people’s homes to look around should be a dream for you, and one you’re doing your best to make a reality.

Buy on other auction sites. You’ll be surprised how much money you can make if you buy the collectibles that people sell on smaller auction sites like Yahoo Auctions, and then list it on eBay. These sellers will often be perfectly knowledgeable about their item, but simply getting a lower price because they serve a smaller marketplace. Sometimes you can almost double your money.

List in non-collectible categories. If your collectible doesn’t have a category of its own under ‘collectibles’, you might prefer to list it in a category that has something to do with the item but nothing to do with collecting. What you will often find is that people browsing a category for their favourite thing will pay more for your collectible than actual collectors would.

Do lots of research. Never list something you think might be valuable without searching and searching to dig up every piece of information you can on it. Everything you find out is likely to be useful when you come to list it.

List every tiny, tiny detail. Remember that collectors really care about the most seemingly insignificant things. An item from one year can be worth thousands while the one from the year before is near-worthless, or an item that is one shade of a colour can be worth far more than one of a subtly different shade. It’s not worth puzzling over and it’s not worth trying to pass your items off as something they’re not – just make sure you put absolutely everything you know in the description.

When you are listing items that require close research and description down to the tiniest detail, however, don’t be tempted to steal someone else’s work! Whatever you do, don’t take another seller’s description and try to pass it off as your own, as this could have all sorts of consequences for you. Our next email gives you a guide to eBay’s policy on ‘description theft’.

SEO and its current use

It is indispensable therefore to get the attention of major search engines as well such Google, Yahoo, Alltheweb.com and others. In order to get high rankings you should have well-optimized content. SEO copywriting is a special technique that allows search engines to get more high rankings for your web site. This method by which your web site is found by major search engines is one of the most effective as it is most frequently used by the visitors of your web site. Moreover, it is one of the most cost-effective methods as well. Online advertisement might cost a lot, besides your potential client might not even pay attention to it. Certainly you should bear in mind what type of business you provide as well as what type of clients you intend to target. That is why it is very important to develop effective marketing strategy with the search engine optimization process. You should know the keywords by which your web site is found by your visitors. Needles to say, that the web site of dental company is found by other keywords than the site of law firm.

This technique allows your site to be ranked higher and increase free traffic on your web site. In writing of SEO content copy it important to remember that one should not attempt to write a completely new web copy rather one should concentrate on the revising and reediting content written by copywriters. Remember that final product should be “suitable for reading” both by search engines and people. The survival of many web sites depends on the traffic got by major search engines. Once your text ha been written and has been submitted, the search engines starts looking for relevant words in it. The pages of your web site will be ranked higher if more relevant keywords appear in the content of your web site. Finally, try either to read about this process or even hire some professional who can handle this task for you. Remember that if SEO process is performed incorrectly it might ruin rather than help your business.

Essentials of Search Engine Optimisation Campaign

The search engine optimisation (SEO) process consists of designing, writing, and coding web pages to increase the likelihood that they will appear at the top of search engine results for targeted keyword phrases. Many so-called SEO experts claim to have reversed engineered search engine algorithms and use strategically created “doorway pages” and cloaking technology to maintain long-term search positions. Despite all of these claims, the basics of a successful search engine campaign have not changed in all the years we have provided these services.

To get the best overall, long-term search engine positions, three components must be present on a web page:

Text component

Link component

Popularity component

All of the major search engines (AltaVista, FAST Search, Google, Lycos, MSN Search and other Inktomi-based engines) use these components as a part of their search engine algorithms. Sites that have (a) all of the components on their web pages, and (b) have optimal levels of all the components perform well in the search engines overall.

Text component

Since the search engines build lists of words and phrases on URL’s, then it naturally follows that in order to do well on the search engines, you must place these words on your web pages in the strategic HTML tags.

The most important part of the text component of a search engine algorithm is keyword selection. In order for your target audience to find your site on the search engines, your pages must contain keyword phrases that match the phrases your target audience is typing into search queries.

Once you have determined the best keyword phrases to use on your web pages, you will need to place them within your HTML tags. Search engines do not place emphasis on the same HTML tags. For example, Inktomi reads Meta tags; Google ignores Meta tags. Thus, in order to do well on the entire search engines, it is best to place keywords in all of the HTML tags possible, without keyword stuffing. So no matter what the search engine algorithm is, you know that your keywords are contained in your documents

Link component

The strategy of placing keyword-rich text in your web pages is useless if the search engine spiders have no way of finding that text. The way your pages are linked to each other, and the way your web site is linked to other web sites, does impact your search engine positions.

Even though search engine spiders are powerful data-gathering programs, HTML coding or scripting can prevent a spider from effectively crawling your pages. Examples of site navigation schemes that can be problematic are:

1. Poor HTML coding on all navigation schemes: Browsers (Netscape and Explorer) can display web pages with sloppy HTML coding; search engine spiders are not as forgiving as browsers are.

2. JavaScript: All of the major search engines cannot follow links embedded inside of JavaScript, including but not limited to mouseovers, arrays, and drop-down menus. Note: Even though reputable designer resources claim search-engine friendly scripts exist, many of them are untested and unproven.

3. Dynamic or database-driven web pages: Pages that are generated via scripts, databases, and/or have a?, &, $, =, +, or % in the URL can present spider “traps.”

4. Flash: Currently, none of the search engines can follow the links embedded in Flash documents.

Therefore, to ensure that the spiders have the means to record the data on your web pages, we recommend having two forms of navigation on a web page: one that pleases your end users, and one that the search engine spiders can follow.

Popularity component

The popularity component of a search engine algorithm consists of multiple sub-components:

Link popularity
Click-through popularity
Web page popularity

Attaining an optimal popularity component is not simply obtaining as many links as possible to a web site. The quality of the sites linking to your site holds more “weight” than the quantity of sites linking to your site. Since Yahoo is the most frequently visited site on the web, a link from Yahoo to your web site carries far more “weight” than a link from a smaller, less visited site. Other outstanding sites that can help generate excellent popularity are LookSmart, the Open Directory, and About.com. Non-competitive, industry-specific sites (such as javascript.com) are also excellent link development resources.

Obtaining links from other sites is not enough to maintain optimal popularity. The major search engines and directories are measuring how often end users are clicking on the links to your site and how long they are staying on your site (i.e., reading your web pages). They are also measuring how often end users return to your site. All of these measurements constitute a site’s click-through popularity.

The search engines and directories measure both link popularity (quality and quantity of links) and click-through popularity to determine the overall popularity component of a web site.

Search Engine Optimization for Dynamic Websites

What are “Dynamic Websites”?

Dynamic websites are websites whose pages are generated on the fly. Unlike static pages (primarily .htm/.html pages), dynamic pages are generated when an user triggers an action through that particular page.

Here is a sample dynamic URL-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/search/results.pl?q=%22dynamic+websites%22&tab=news&go=homepage

As per the above example of www.bbc.co.uk, the dynamic part (i.e. the part) of the URL which changes as per surfer request is the part after the question mark (?)

What are the problems that search engines face in indexing Dynamic URLs?

1. Search engines often consider a dynamic URL as an infinite set of links.

2. Since dynamic URLs find maximum application in online shopping carts, there is a possibility of incorporating a session id to a particular page. As session ids of that particular page change, the search engine spider needs to index an infinite number of copies of the same page, which is a Herculean task for them.

3. Proceeding with the same logic presented in point # 2, indexing the same dynamic page might overload the servers of the search engines and therefore prevent the search engines to present with the most relevant information in the fastest possible time.

Here is what Google says about indexing of dynamic websites -

Reasons your site may not be included: Your pages are dynamically generated. We are able to index dynamically generated pages. However, because our web crawler can easily overwhelm and crash sites serving dynamic content, we limit the amount of dynamic pages we index. (Source – http://www.google.com/webmasters/)

What are the options that you have in order to make a search engine spider index your Dynamic URLs?

1. Use of softwares – Exception Digital Enterprise Solutions (http://www.xde.net) offers a software which can change the dynamic URLs to static ones. Named XQASP, it will remove the “?” in the Query String and replace it with “/”, thereby allowing the search engine spiders to index the dynamic content.

Example –
http://www.my-online-store.com/books.asp?id=1190 will change to

http://www.my-online-store.com/books/1190.

The latter being a static URL, it can easily be indexed by the search engine spiders.

2. Use of CGI/Perl scripts – One of the easiest ways to get your dynamic sites indexed by search engines is using CGI/Perl scripts. Path_Info or Script_Name is a variable in a dynamic application that contains the complete URL address (including the query string information). In order to fix this problem, you’ll need to write a script that will pull all the information before the query string and set the rest of the information equal to a variable. You can then use this variable in your URL address.

Example – http://www.my-online-store.com/books.asp?id=1190

When you are using CGI/Perl scripts, the query part of the dynamic URL is assigned a variable.
So, in the above example “?id=1190″ is assigned a variable, say “A”. The dynamuc URL http://www.my-online-store.com/coolpage.asp?id=1190
will change to http://www.my-online-store.com/books/A through CGI/Perl scripts which can easily be indexed by the search engines.

3. Re-configuring your web servers –

(i) Apache Server – Apache has a rewrite module (mod_rewrite) that enables you to turn URLs containing query strings into URLs that search engines can index. This module however, isn’t installed with Apache software by default, so you need to check with your web hosting company for installation.

(ii) ColdFusion – You’ll need to reconfigure ColdFusion on your server so that the “?” in a query string is replaced with a ‘/’ and pass the value to the URL.

4. Creation of a Static Page linked to an array of dynamic Pages –

This approach is very effective, especially if you are the owner of a small online store selling a few products online. Just create a static page linking to all your dynamic pages. Optimize this static page for search engine rankings. Include a link title for all the product categories, place appropriate “alt” tag for the product images along with product description containing highly popular keywords relevant to your business (You can conduct keyword research for your site through http://www.wordtracker.com). Submit this static page along with all the dynamic pages in various search engines, conforming to the search engine submission guidelines.

How Amazon.com, Earth’s Biggest Bookstore, coped with the issue of indexing of dynamic URLs?

A search in Google for internet marketing books, yielded a result that takes you directly to the appropriate dynamic page at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0395683297/103-0475212-8205437.

Since the above URL does not contain any query strings, all search engines can index Amazon.com’s products. Amazon.com uses this method to get its product selections indexed by search engines. This is very important for Amazon, because being an online bookstore, it is very natural for them to adopt dynamic URLs yet it was equally important for them to make their dynamic URLs search engine index friendly.

Conclusion

Even a few years back, most of the major search engines did not index dynamic URLs, thereby often preventing top search engine rankings for the online stores. With Google starting to index dynamic URLs a few months ago, the picture is going to change in the coming days. This is more so because Google’s numero uno position is currently being threatened by Microsoft’s MSN (developing its own search engine) and Yahoo! who recently acquired Overture, the biggest player in the PPC Search Engine industry.

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Powerful SEO Secrets

If you want to rank on top for Google, Yahoo!, and other major search engines, you’ll need more than a basic knowledge of search engine optimization. Those who rank high on natural search results do so because they’ve been able to effectively manage their on-page and off-page optimization factors.

On-page Optimization
What you do on your web pages can have a positive or negative impact on your search results. However, as we’ll discuss later in this article, off-page optimization is even more powerful when it comes to increasing your natural search engine placement.

Some of the most important on-page optimization techniques begin with choosing a key word to optimize your page for. There are a number of free tools available on the Internet that can help you find a keyword that is popular but not overly competitive. Keywords that are highly competitive are often very difficult to place well for.

Once you’ve selected a keyword, you can take advantage of:

Secret #1: Don’t optimize for a single keyword, optimize for a keyword phrase.
When you optimize for a single keyword, more often than not, that word is highly competitive and your chances of coming out on top are minimal. Where you gain a significant advantage is by focusing on a keyword phrase. This actually increases your chances of ranking well and ultimately helps you towards ranking well for the single word you originally chose.

Secret #2: Place your keyword phrase within the first 25 words of text, and the last 25 words of the page. The h1 tag can be used for developing a headline on your page and emphasizing your keyword phrase within the beginning of your page text (search engines love h1 tags). Another suggestion is to use your keyword phrase just after your copyright notice on the bottom of your webpage. This ensures that it is present within the last 25 words of your page.

Secret #3: Place your keyword phrase in your page title and description. Additionally, place the keyword phrase throughout your page – being sure to bold the phrase once, italicize the phrase once, and underline the phrase once. Mention your keyword phrase every paragraph or so. Just make sure that it appears natural. If you stuff the page with your keywords, you’ll potentially turn off browsers who would otherwise find your page valuable.

Off-page Optimization
Now that you’ve learned about on-page optimization, it’s important that you focus your attention on off-page optimization. Of all the techniques that have been developed for SEO, it still comes down to the popularity of your site.

The ranking of your website in a natural search engine result list is directly correlated to the popularity of your website.

So what do I mean by popularity? Popularity is the number and quality of links to your website. Although I’ve simplified the explanation here, you should know that links essentially count as votes. If everyone is “voting” for a particular website then the website becomes popular.

Secret #4: Get other sites to link to you. There are a number of ways to improve link popularity. Although I won’t recommend a specific link building tool, I will say that there have been a number of good products developed that simplify the process. It still takes time and hard work, but over time, increasing the number of sites linking to your website can pay huge dividends.

Secret #5: Make sure that incoming links are of high quality (sites with a high Google page rank). It’s not only important to have other sites link to you, it’s also important to have quality sites link to you.

Secret #6: Anchor text must include your keyword phrase. When other sites link to you, make sure the link includes your keyword phrase. Sites that link to your domain can help with overall page rank and popularity, but websites who link to you using your keyword phrase (in the anchor text) are what get you to the top of search engine result lists.

Secret #7: Give people a reason to link to your website. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways, white papers, free content or tools, etc., but ultimately it comes down to offering something of value. If you do, other websites will give you their “vote”, increasing your link popularity and your search engine results.

Increasing your rank on major search engines isn’t complex. But it does take time and effort. If you want to increase your website ranking, begin by implementing what you’ve learned in this article and stay the course.

Promoting your Affiliate Programs with Articles

If you are not creating articles for your website and your affiliate programs, you should. Why? Even though it may seem like a lot of work, and it may take you time to build — articles add a valuable commodity to your site — content. And my friend, the search engines and people alike are always on the lookout for good content.

If you are creating articles, you are always looking to find ways to get your article out to the masses – and the more exposure your article has the greater the opportunity that people will read your article and want to visit your website. Should you submit your articles manually or should you use an article marketer submission service that will choose for you — where your article goes? Is an article submission service a good option for you when submitting articles? I hope to show you both the pros and cons of this service and let you be the judge.

Pro to Article Submission Service

Article Submission Service can be a great help when your time is limited and you want to get your articles to all the article sites and groups. However, when the service is tiered, based on what you pay and don’t pay – you have to be aware of what you are getting..

All services give you a sampling with a free service – and I did find the free service to be on the, well, expected side. After submitting to the free service of an article submission service I received the following:

1. I received several emails that stated my article had been received by a site and would be looked at. This is usual, and a good sign.
2. I received emails from the yahoo groups, which is a good sign but I didn’t partake because I knew that I would be receiving articles from other authors on a regular basis and did not want to overwhelm my private email address. Thus, be aware, use a yahoo email address and keep your private email address separate.

The article submission to the article sites such as Ezine Articles (Which, by the way, is one of my favorite sites) and Go Articles will require a small outlay of money for each article on a monthly basis. Thus, I would use a submission service if:

1. I had a separate email address to catch the other authors’ articles that I would be receiving from the yahoo groups.

2. I wanted to part with my money to take advantage of the service.

3. Needed more time.

4. I have a desire for a wider exposure of my articles and thus, more traffic to my site.

Cons of Using an Article Admission Service

When looking at anything new, you must determine when it is to your advantage to use a service or to do it yourself. These are some of the issues I would have to overcome:

1. If I do the submission myself, I know that the article or articles have reached it expected destination or destinations – but the exposure my article gets will be limited by the sites that I know.
2. If I’m restricted by General Titles will the article sites kick my article out because of not possibly abiding by the rules.
3. If I do it myself, I can target my article to the specific, intended audience.

For me, I will use the paid submission service when I am low on time and I have the money in hand. However, I will not waste my time on the free service because the return is very limited and from what I have seen offers little benefit to my site.

To conclude, you need to try different methods of getting your articles out to the masses. And the success of these different methods is dependent on your own satisfaction or lack there of, of the results rendered by such services. My advise, experiment and determine for yourself what services will help your business, who knows, that one service may be the punch in the arm your business needs to grow.

To your success.

Understanding the Game of Search Engines.

When I started my e-business, I ask my web-designer friend to make a site which is really brainstorming. He did me a great favor and really made an excellent site. My site’s design is fabulous, it’s graphics are mind blowing and coding is superb. But now what? What I seen in the coming days, I am not earning a single penny because no one is visiting my site.

I think for a while that why all this is happening, then I make a search on Yahoo and see the first site which is coming on the top. It doesn’t have a good design like mine but still he is making good money. Then I came to know that the site’s design is meaningless if site’s ranking on search engines is not good.

When it comes to search engine every ear just not hears it but listens it’s every aspect and try to locate it’s presence in his site. Well why not it be done as it is the place from where all of us get our business.

Every search engine has it’s own criterion of ranking and it’s clear from the fact that when you do a search on Yahoo or Google or any other search engines there results vary. Here is the listing of some of the Top Search Engines and a few noteworthy points about all of them. Know which engines get you more bangs for the buck?

Google

Google has increased in popularity tenfold the past several years. They have gone from beta testing, to becoming the Internet’s largest index of web pages in a very short time. Their spider, affectionately named “Googlebot”, crawls the web and provides updates to Google’s index about once a month.

Google.com began as an academic search engine. Google, by far, has a very good algorithm of ranking pages returned from a result, probably one of the main reasons it has become so popular over the years. Google has several methods which determine page rank in returned searches.

Yahoo

Yahoo! is one of the oldest web directories and portals on the Internet today, and the site went live in August of 1994. Yahoo! is a 100% human edited directory, and provides secondary search results using Google.

Yahoo! is also one of the largest traffic generators around, as far as web directories and search engines go. Unfortunately, however, it is also one of the most difficult to get listed in, unless of course you pay to submit your site. Even if you pay it doesn’t guarantee you will get listed.

Either way, if you suggest a URL, it is “reviewed” by a Yahoo! editor, and if approved will appear in the next index update.

AltaVista

Many who have access to web logs may have seen a spider named ‘scooter’ accessing their pages. Scooter used to be AltaVista’s robot. However, since the Feb 2001 site update, a newer form of Scooter is now crawling the web. Whichever spider AltaVista uses, it is one of the largest search engines on the net today, next to Google.

It will usually take several months for AltaVista to index your entire site, although the past few months scooter hasn’t been deep crawling too well. Unlike Google, AltaVista will only crawl and index 1 link deep, so it takes a good amount of time to index your site depending on how large your site is.

AltaVista gets most of its results from its own index, however they do pull the top 5 results of each search from Overture (formerly Goto).

Inktomi

Inktomi’s popularity grew several years ago as they powered the secondary search database that had driven Yahoo. Since then, Yahoo as switched to using Google as their secondary search and backend database, however Inktomi is just as popular now, as they were several years ago, if not more so.

Their spiders are named “Slurp”, and different versions of Slurp crawls the web many different times throughout the month, as Inktomi powers many sites search results. There isn’t much more to Inktomi then that. Slurp puts heavy weight on Title and description tags, and will rarely deep crawl a site. Slurp usually only spider’s pages that are submitted to its index.

Inktomi provides results to a number of sites. Some of these are America Online, MSN, Hotbot, Looksmart, About, Goto, CNet, Geocities, NBCi, ICQ and many more.

Lycos

Lycos is one of the oldest search engines on the Internet today, next to Altavista and Yahoo. Their spider, named “T-Rex”, crawls the web and provides updates to the Lycos index from time to time. The FAST crawler provides results for Lycos in addition to its own database.

The Lycos crawler does not weigh META tags too heavily, instead it relies on its own ranking algorithm to rank pages returned in results. The URL, META title, text headings, and word frequency are just a few of the methods Lycos uses to rank pages. Lycos does support pages with Frame content. However, any page that isn’t at least 75 words in content is not indexed.

Excite

Excite has been around the web for many years now. Much more of a portal than just simply a search engine, Excite used to be a fairly popular search engine, until companies such as Google seemed to have dominated the search engine market. As of recently, Excite no longer accepts submissions of URL’s, and appears to no longer spider. To get into the Excite search
results, you need to be either listed with Overture or Inktomi.

Looksmart

Getting a listed with Looksmart could mean getting a good amount of traffic to your site. Looksmart’s results appear in many search engines, including AltaVista, MSN, CNN, and many others.

Looksmart has two options to submit your site. If your site is generally non-business related, you can submit your site to Zeal (Looksmart’s sister site), or if you are a business, you can pay a fee to have your site listed. Either method will get you listed in Looksmart and its partner sites if you are approved.

Once you have submitted your site, and it is approved for listing it will take up to about 7 days for your site to be listed on Looksmart and its partner sites.

AOL Search

America Online signed a multiyear pact with Google for Web search results and accompanying ad-sponsored links, ending relationships with pay-for-performance service Overture Services and Inktomi, its algorithmic search provider of nearly three years.

Ok, now you have got a better understanding of search engine’s game and finally you come to know which search engine is best for you and which one is leading in today’s Internet World. In nutshell, the thing which every e-entrepreneur wants is Top Search Engine Ranking. Isn’t it right? So take some time to register with these search engines as soon as possible and watch the traffic grow.

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Copyright 2005 Raamakant S.

SEO – Search Engine Optimization Software

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

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

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

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

13 Steps to Successful Blogging

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.

To learn more about successful blogging subscribe to the Journal Home Newsletter

Importance Of Search Engines And Designing A SEO Website

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

“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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7 Things Every Webmaster Should Know About Links

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.

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

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.

Seasonal Selling On Ebay.

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.

Choosing The Right Keywords

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.

Picking Keywords for SEO – A Different View

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!

How I Got My Site Into Google

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.

What to look for in a search engine optimization specialist

Search engines are the primary way most people find web sites, but web site designers forget to think of this when they create their sites. Often, site designers will make the mistake of building the web site first and then contacting a search engine optimization (SEO) specialist to make that site search-engine friendly. What most site owners do not realize is that a search engine optimization specialist should be brought into the design process early, not after the site has been built. It is disconcerting to find out that you are a pound short and a day late.

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.

Keyword Research Guide — How and Why!

Keyword marketing-the importance..

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

Why to choose keywords?

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

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

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

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

How to choose keywords?

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

They will provide you all related keywords

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where and How to place these Keywords?

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

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

Meta tags:-

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

Title Tags:-

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

Description:

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

Other places where you can place these keywords:

Images: –

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

Name of domain, Sub directory and sub domain:-

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

Example:

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

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

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

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

10 Safety Tips For Buying On eBay

eBay has become a household name for shoppers. A lot the buyers on eBay are not regular internet shoppers but they still shop on eBay. Such is the power of eBay giving simplicity of shopping and top bargains. From time to time, there is some fraud on eBay about fake fashion items, event tickets that do not exist, some expensive electronic items that do not exist.

eBay does its best to intervene and resolve such disputes. As a shopper, you can follow these 10 safety tips to avoid being conned.

1. Check the seller’s feedback. Positive feedback rating of over 95% is good. If there are many recent negative feedbacks, then this is not a good indication. Also, read all the negative feedbacks. Are these negative feedbacks reasonable? What type of response does the seller have for these feedbacks? Does the seller’s defense sound reasonable? Sometimes new members who buy items on eBay are paranoid and they leave a negative feedback in a haste so make sure if the seller has defended himself/ herself in a reasonable manner. If there are too many complaints of the same nature, then it is probably true.

2. The sellers must have some kind of identification or recognition seal like Paypal verified, or Square trade or a Powerseller seal on the auctions. Such sellers are more reliable. This is especially a good check when you buying an expensive item.

3. Ask seller a question before bidding on the item. Responsible sellers reply promptly to questions. Also, if the seller actually has the item, he/ she maybe able to answer a valid question otherwise not.

4. If you are buying something expensive, then get the contact information of the seller at http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQtZvbQQsofindtypeZ9. You have to login to your eBay account and send a request. You can get the seller’s address and phone number. In doing this, your address and phone number will also be emailed to the seller.

5. The items must have pictures unless it is a service that is sold on eBay. If there is no picture, then the items is probably not there. Almost all sellers will put at least one picture of the item. Let’s assume that the item is there but the seller has been lazy in not putting the picture in the auction ad. Would you like to deal with someone who is so careless? It just shows that the item may not be in good condition, maybe defective or broken.

6. Check description of the item. Research other websites for the same item. Some of the shopping websites to research would be shopping.yahoo.com, overture.com and shopping.msn.com. These sites are adequate for researching items and get the description that you need. The eBay description should match item description on other sites.

7. Research prices for the item on sale. If the item on sale is Gucci handbags, then search for this model of handbag on shopping.yahoo.com. If it retails for $800 on Yahoo and seller on eBay is selling a brand new one for $90, then this item may not be authentic! Large wholesaler are able to sell items for around 50% of retail but something like an original Gucci handbag, it is unlikely that a seller would let go for $90 because these items sell like crazy. Just a note on fraud items – a lot of fraud eBay occurs on fashion items. This is very unfortunate and eBay has taken a lot of steps to eliminate fraud.

8. If the seller has not mentioned any shipping and handling terms, then ask before bidding. There are many auction ads, where the seller mentions that shipping and handling will mentioned to the winning bidder. Surprisingly, there are bids on that item! If you start bidding on the item, then it means that you agreed to the terms and condition of the sellers and there is less room for you to dispute later so ask for the clear instruction on shipping and handling.

9. Reliable sellers have clear description on their refund policy. If it is not there, then ask the seller for it. If the seller has no refund policy, then do not bid on the item. If the there is no refund policy in the auction description, then make sure you get the refund policy in an email from the seller. In this way, you have a document of the refund policy.

10. Do a search for the sellers past items on eBay. Check to see if the seller has sold similar items in the past. To search on the past auctions, go to the Advanced Search page. Here click on the items by seller link and type in the sellers ID and check the box for Include Completed listing. It is always good to check this especially if you are considering buying something expensive.

Tips for getting your website listed on yahoo

Treat Yahoo as both a directory AND a search engine. Yahoo offers a number of different search results. Part of their search results come from an actual search engine, and some of their results come from human editors, called surfers.

Every Yahoo directory submission is viewed by a person. (Search engines use spiders and indexing software). Admission into the Yahoo directory is entirely at the discretion of the Yahoo surfer viewing your site. That’s why the free submission lead time can often be 8-10 weeks, without using the Express Submit service.

Unlike search engine submissions that accept multiple pages from the same site, Yahoo surfers prefer to view your home page, and they will navigate your site from there.

With directories, the site owner selects the most appropriate directory categories for his/her site and writes descriptions that concisely and accurately describe the content of the site. Factors that affect directory placement are selecting the right category and writing a good description.

Always differentiate between the Yahoo search engine and the Yahoo directory whenever you speak to a search engine marketer. The strategies for getting listed in search engines are different from the strategies for getting listed in directories.

Fill out the Forms on Yahoo Exactly as Requested

We know this seems obvious, but some sites don’t get listed because the submitters do not follow directions when filling out the forms. When Yahoo asks for a telephone number, give only one telephone number including the area code. When Yahoo asks for a 25-words-or-less description, don’t try any fancy word stacking or keyword tricks. Stick to a concise, accurate description of your site’s content. Yahoo surfers often change your site description after it’s listed in their directory.

Although some fields are optional, try to fill in all of the fields in the form, especially the fields asking your company name, address, and telephone and fax numbers. Yahoo wants to know that you have a legitimate business that will be around in years to come.

Select the Categories (only 3) That You Want to be listed under Very Carefully

To select your categories, type in your selected keywords in a Yahoo query, and study the results. Your site does not belong where you believe your target audience is searching. Your site’s actual content should accurately reflect the category or categories you wish to be listed under.

You will probably be listed under the same categories your competitors are listed under. Study your competitors’ directory listing. See what their descriptions are, and then modify your site’s description to show the Yahoo surfer that you definitely belong in the categories you selected.

If you are a U.S. company, under the category Regional/United States/ in Yahoo, all 50 states are listed. You should include your site in one of the regional categories, if applicable. Don’t be surprised that most of your traffic from Yahoo is local. Many customers need to hear your voice or see your face to feel secure about hiring you or your company for a project.

Category listings are also at the discretion of a Yahoo surfer. You need to spend the time selecting your categories and studying your competitors so that you do not get listed under an “undesirable” category.

Have Unique Content and Point This Information Out in Your Submission

A web site is of no value to the Yahoo directory if the site contains the exact same information as other sites in the same categories. So to add value to the Yahoo directory, and to call attention to the unique aspects of your online business, make sure you have unique content on your site.

You can point out any unique content to the Yahoo surfer via your 25-word description or the extra comments field in the submission form.

Get a Virtual Domain Name

Yahoo tends to recognize virtual domains (http://www.yourcompany.com) over others. Why is this? Yahoo wants to have legitimate organizations and companies in their directory. They do not want a small start-up company that won’t be around next year, thus resulting in a dead link to a URL in the directory. A virtual domain shows that you are serious about your business.

Try to Get Listed in One of Yahoo’s Regional Directories First

At the bottom of Yahoo’s home page are some of Yahoo’s regional directories. If you are in one of the regional areas, you can often get your web site listed much faster in the regional directory than in Yahoo’s main directory.

Commercial web sites must pay an annual fee of $299 (currently) to be listed in the Yahoo directory. Sometimes, a Yahoo surfer might discover a content-rich commercial site without you ever submitting.

“Design for Speed” (Quotation from a Yahoo Surfer)

Yahoo is looking for sites that download very quickly, preferably within 30 seconds on a dial-up modem.

Of course, exceptions do apply; such as if you are an online video game company and use Shockwave on your site. Then it is understandable that your web site might take longer to download.

Lastly, the rule “Content is King” applies to getting listed in Yahoo. If Yahoo editors don’t feel your site looks or sounds like a legitimate business, they don’t have to list your site. So make sure your web site is easy to read, easy to navigate, easy to find (on search engines), shows consistency in design and layout, and is quick to download. Above all, have unique content to add value to the Yahoo directory.

Server Stats – Analyzing Traffic To Your Site

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

Server Logs

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

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

1. What sites are sending you visitors?

2. What search engines are sending you traffic?

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Closing

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

Link Popularity FAQ

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blogheads

For those of you who haven&t yet started a Blog, you won’t understand. You weren&t there man! Just trying one Blog will get you hooked. Sure, you say you’re just experimenting with blogging.

Then soon, you are blogging everyday. You wake up trying to search around to see who has commented on your Blog. Then it gets to be a 3 or 4 blogpost a day habit, and you’re still saying, “I can quit anytime I want”.

Then you decide to try different types of Blog. You have your personal stash Blog, then a joke Blog, then another one on a different topic. Now when you aren&t doing your own Blogs, you getting into other people’s Blogs and commenting more and more.

You’re telling everyone how they should try Blog. Pushing Blog to kids. Google and Yahoo are telling you how much you can make dealing Blog. Then there you are the local Blog dealer.

On every corner of the search engine, selling Blog. Looking at your statistics to see how many people tried your Blog, how long they were blogged in, which blogposts they were doing. Now you are hooked for sure. People walk by you now, your friends, family, and you overhear them calling you a bloghead.

You’re hanging out with other blogheads, sharing Blog, linking your Blog to theirs, trying to hook more people on Blog. The blogposts have got you man. Nothing you can do but keep on blogging.

Even this article you are reading right now, you’re thinking of which of your Blogs you are going to post it on for other Blogheads to read. If you don’t have a Blog for this article, then you can start one all about being addicted to Blogging.

Google or Yahoo will front you the contextual stash to cut your Blog with, so just one more Blog won’t hurt you. Go ahead. Start another Blog.

Then you get so hooked on Blogging you start your own Blog about how to find more Blog. You get all the Blogheads to ping your new Blog search Blog. Oh, yeah man, the pings. The pings are the best, man. You don’t know what it’s like to get pinged by the Blogs, man. It’s out of this world!

Next you start yet another Blog to teach others the best way to Blog. You become a Blog Connoisseur. A Blog Guru. A Blog Consultant. A Blog Expert.

You really know you’re a goner when you start to host Blogs. Your own Blog Party or commune. Yeah, that’s it, Blog Commune, like MySpace, but really my own space. That’s when you’re no longer just the local Blog Dealer, you are supplying the Blog Dealers. A bigshot now.

Hey, man I got this new thing here. An AutoBlog. Man, an AutoBlog is to blogging what the bong was to . . .well, you know. All you gotta do is log in and push a couple of buttons and you get more Blog!

Wow, man, you haven’t tried Blog yet? You really gotta get with the times, man. Blogging is the bomb.