.: How To Make SEO :.

SEO: the Catch; SEO Solution; Overt SEO; SEO, SEO, Over n' Over; Its all SEO

2011-05-03T03:04:00.000+01:00

SEO: Seek Engine Optimization, provides adjustment bearing for Google, Yahoo etc. Overt SEO: SEO based phrases acclimated over and over or SEO phrases alloyed over, beneath and through a certificate abode accent through repetition; sometimes even the a lot of austere seek engine optimizer allows a bit of back-up in adjustment to access the SEO adjustment he needs. Thus, in arrest a accountable like SEO, massive antagonism leads to even the multi-redundant hyperbole appropriate aloft or it's variant. As connected as the biographer rewards the clairvoyant with creativity, appearance and/or abundant information; acquisitive to barter those, as it were, in barter for the reader's accommodation of a little repetition; there may still be adequate advice demography place. Be it anytime SEO little or anytime SEO vague. The bolt is, no amount what position you gain on your webpage or article, if no one understands it, or if anybody stops account bisected way through, everybody loses. So, you try to force augment your back-up in adjustment to accretion position afterwards accident your clairvoyant absolutely in the process.

Anticipate "Family Feud" area the aggressive ancestors is called Dawson. So you conceivably activate with SEO and afresh move bound to added businesslike information. We action a absolutely affordable SEO account for alone $129 per ages and move you up in the seek engine rankings every ages or you don't pay. We even barter chargeless SEO in barter for agency on web sales with assertive businesses. Just alarm to see if you qualify.Jonathan Swift underestimated the adeptness of the British and Irish clairvoyant with his acicular abusive announcement way aback in the 1700's. A Modest Proposal appropriate that poor Irish families advertise their accouchement to affluent Brits as food. The announcement even had recipes that brought new acceptation to the appellation "small fry." While Swift was in fact aggravating to accomplish political fodder out of the bankrupt Irish youth, his biting banter backfired. This happened partially because he so realistically developed his apriorism that the artless eighteenth aeon readers took him absolutely in fact and were absolutely afraid at the proposal. While it has been appropriate that a afterwards bearing MacDonald ability accept paid abutting absorption to Swift's proposal, the avant-garde Swift foods ancestors appropriately had no birth hotlink to Jonathan.Joseph Heller never accurately tells us the aboriginal 21 catches in his acclaimed WWII atypical Bolt -22 but that 22nd one is absolutely a killer. While not cogent us the added 21 catches, he aswell necessarily neglects to put them in order. I accept connected arguable that if we at atomic knew the data and the adjustment of the bearding aboriginal 21 catches, we would be abundant bigger able to in fact accept catch-22. Anyone who has apprehend Heller's composition and who knows annihilation about SEO, however, will anon accept that Heller's contrarian hero, Yosarian, would accept to adulation SEO. Yosarian was sitting in the hospital, above from the soldier in white, not adversity from his advancing 101 amount temperature which placed his action just abbreviate of jaundice and accustomed him to go to the hospital and analysis himself in anytime he wished. That day he was arbitrarily removing all adjectives from his peers' belletrist home, as he was already apathetic of censoring the belletrist in the way he had been instructed. Yosarian was still addled from the account that he had accustomed the day before. He had assertive Doc Deneeka that anyone who connected to advance to fly missions over adversary area afterwards extensive the binding 45 mission ambition was not alone crazy, but was so abashed he should be beatific home for his own safety. Doc Daneeka agreed and instructed him to artlessly appeal to be beatific home because acutely he was crazy and accordingly unfit for combat. Yosarian had anon done so. Afterwards in the day, he arrested the assignment agenda and begin his name assigned afresh for the next morning's mission over adversary terrain. He confronted Doc Daneeka with a beneath than diplomatic, about amaranthine alternation of expletives. The accommodating doctor explained to his accommodating that aloft requesting to be beatific home he had been advised absolutely sane and therefore, had been ordered to acknowledgment to aerial missions - Catch-22. "But Doc," Yosarian common over and over, "they are aggravating to annihilate me." Doc Daneeka placed his arm about Yosarian's shoulder. "I accumulate aggravating to acquaint you son, they are just aggravating to annihilate the enemy," Doc Daneeka consoled. Yosarian arrested himself into the hospital the next morning. He was undeterred. He knew they were aggravating to annihilate him. Otherwise why did they accumulate cutting at him?I accept even a brief analysis of the aboriginal 21 catches in Catch-22, if I could accommodate them in the able order, would go way above answer Catch-22. They ability even go a actual connected way against answer the rules of SEO. If you will avoid for a moment that those aboriginal 21 catches do not abide and attack to put them in adjustment in your mind, you may be able, as I accept I accept done, to accept the aerial aspect of SEO. "So, please, Dr. Google, admit my back-up as a slight bit of able-bodied advised cyber blubbering strategically entered into the aggressive amphitheatre of web rank artlessly for the purpose of attaining aforementioned and accordingly sane. Amuse admit my disability to recite bolt -1 through catch-21 in their able order, as actual blank or Hellerian hindsight. Lastly, amuse drag my webpage to the acme of your admired engine of abounding searches, for I accept fabricated my a lot of aboveboard attack to allay the damaged alertness of my readers by administration one of the a lot of important "catches" I accept anytime caught. As I anticipate we can all agree, the mysteries of the catches, like those surrounding SEO, are absolutely alone accomplished "catch as bolt can."

Google Adsense - Earn Money With Google Adsense

2011-02-10T01:58:00.000Z

Do you wish to accomplish money quick? In this commodity we are traveling to allocution about one of the quickest means you can accomplish money. Authoritative money quick is not alone accessible there are humans accomplishing it accustomed with google adsense.

google adsense delivers argument and angel ads that bout the agreeable on your website. These are actual targeted ads that you can accept the admeasurement and blush of and they appear beyond to your chump as accessible added than an ad itself.

Google Ads crave around no aliment and they advice you put commercial on your website after in actuality accepting to accord with advertisers yourself. If you can archetype and adhesive a baby cipher you can accept targeted commercial on your website in minutes.

Adsense is simple to accompany and it is chargeless to join. Whether you are an internet newbie or a adept you can accumulation bound by agreement google adsense ads on your web pages.

Since Google does all of the plan by award the a lot of assisting ads for your pages you can do what you do best....provide acceptable agreeable and lots of it. The added web pages you actualize the quicker you will be authoritative money. You can apprentice added here:
https://www.google.com/adsense/

Once you accept abutting google adsense you will wish to amalgamate Google seek with AdSense to monetize added of your web pages. You can do this by agreement a Google seek box on your pages. google adsense combines Google's seek technology with
thousands of keyword advertisers to bear targeted text-based ads to seek aftereffect pages. Humans acquisition these ads advantageous and bang on them, and if they do, Google pays you.

You can see an archetype of how this works appropriate actuality on this web page. In actuality we amalgamate Google seek and google adsense on about every website and web pages we create. We accept begin it a actual simple way to accomplish money quick and to accomplish money over and over. It's great.

The internet offers abounding means to accomplish money quick. The nice affair about google adsense is you accept the better seek engine in the apple accomplishing your commercial for you. This truely allows you to accomplish money bound and you can do it over and over with as abounding articles as you want.

You Will Lose A Big Portion of Your AdSense Earnings If You Don't Do This

2011-02-10T01:54:00.001Z

You are alive harder creating acceptable and superior agreeable for your google adsense web site. You anxiously plan a acceptable hotlink architecture action for your google adsense web site. You deliver your online writing through commodity administration channels regularly. You abide your google adsense web website to web directories and you've done basal seek engine enhancement on all of your AdSense pages. You plan acutely harder to get as abundant cartage as accessible to your google adsense web site.

One day, you accept an email from a webmaster who owns a huge commitment annual allegorical you that your website will be featured in his newsletter. You are blessed that anyone brand your google adsense web website and he will advance your web website for free. You alpha accepting huge bulk of barometer cartage from his newsletter. Instead of accepting 2000 hits per day, you are accepting 200,000 hits per day now. This abrupt cartage billow boosts the amount of clicks on your google adsense ads. Your google adsense earning is added by a few folds.

Before you apperceive it, you accept an email from Google adage that your annual is abeyant due to "invalid clicks". You didn't bang on your google adsense ad carefully or accidentally. Everything you did so far does not breach the google adsense agreement and conditions. You could not amount what went amiss and why your google adsense annual is suspended.

Sudden Jump in Google Balance Triggers Red Flag

The abrupt jump in your Google balance has alerted the google adsense aggregation and the aftereffect is the abeyance of your google adsense account. In fact, this happens to a dozen of Internet Marketers. However they administer to get their google adsense annual absolutely reinstate application the appropriate strategy.
If your AdSense annual is abeyant because of the abrupt jump of your google adsense earning, you should break calm and plan the appropriate action afore you allocution to Google. You should be accommodating if ambidextrous with Google. You should be affable if acquaint with them and yield action to accommodate them with all the abstracts they may need. You should not altercate with them why they've abeyant your annual unfairly. After all, your capital purpose is to get your google adsense Annual reinstated.

Jason has accounting General Guideline for AdSense Reinstatement. This is a detail guideline on how to get your google adsense annual reinstated if you accept not abandoned google adsense agreement and conditions. He aswell provides a few examples of accord he was application to get his annual reinstated.

In conclusion, to abstain any disruption to your google adsense business, it may be a acceptable abstraction to active google adsense aggregation about the accessible billow of cartage that your google adsense web website may receive.

Google Adsense Tips

2011-02-03T01:40:00.002Z

One of the easiest means to allure visitors to your blog, even if they are beyond the apple is by application google adsense. This commodity is advised to accord you some solid google adsense tips. There are abounding google adsense secrets you should apperceive about. You alone charge to actualize your blog and abide it to google for approval. If google brand what they see, they will abode a contextual ad that links to articles that are acceptable to address to the humans who are account your blog. When a clairvoyant clicks on that hotlink the advertiser pays google a baby fee and acceptable will breach that fee with you. This advice should prove admired to you.

You can accomplish money with google adsense. The best google adsense tip will be apparent to you. There is absolutely acceptable money that can be fabricated if you apperceive the google adsense secret. You wish to chase all the rules absolutely that are mentioned by the adsense policies. If you play it on the absolute side, you will accomplish added money. You aswell should never change the google adsense HTML code. Don't be one of those humans to ask your accompany and all your ancestors to bang on your google ads. Don't affiance annihilation to users if they bang on the ads either. Never characterization the google ads with argument that says annihilation added than "sponsored links" or "advertisements".

Another acceptable google adsense tip is amuse don't bang on the ads on that are on your page. Google has able for this, and will apperceive if you are reloading your pages added than you should be. An actionable google adsense head apparatus is there to use if you are testing your site. It is attainable from Firefox, IE and added browsers that will attending to see what affectionate of google ads will be served to you. You aswell never wish to put an ad in a pop-up window or in absurdity pages. Not even on abandoned pages. You don't wish to put something on a page just to try to accomplish money on an adventitious click. You will not accomplish abundant money. Write about things in your blog that you feel actual acerb about.

Please don't decay your money on google adsense keyword lists that amount a lot of money. When you accept a abbreviate article, you will acquisition bigger after-effects if the ads are placed aloft the content. When it is a continued article, you accept bigger success if the ad is about in the average of the content. As the clairvoyant is done account advice they will wish to seek for more. This is a actual advantageous google adsense tip. You will accomplish added money if you chase these accomplish that accept been a google adsense secret.

What Is Google Adsense Program?

2011-02-03T01:30:00.002Z

You may not apperceive what google adsense Affairs is but you've apparently heard it before. google adsense affairs is one of the hottest means to accomplish acquiescent assets for humans with all types of websites. The google adsense affairs consists of google adsense for agreeable and google adsense for Search.

google adsense agreeable is an simple way for website buyer to accomplish money by announcement Googles Adsense ads on the agreeable pages of their websites. google adsense will bear ads that are a lot of accompanying to your website content. google adsense for Seek provides Google seek adequacy to your website. The Adsense Ads will be displayed in the seek after-effects pages.

How do You Accomplish Money with google adsense?

As mentioned, Google will bear the Adsense ads that are best bout the agreeable of your web page. Every time a user clicks on a google adsense ad, Google will pay you. Google will allotment a allocation of the accumulation it gets from its advertisers with you. Since Google provides you the ads, you no best accept to anguish about ambidextrous with your advertisers. It is so simple to set up an Adsense Annual and alpha authoritative money with Adsense. Everyone should accord it a try.

How Do You Get Started?

Before you administer for a google adsense account, you should accept your own website ready. If your website is still beneath architecture or it is not ready, your appliance will be rejected. You can resubmit your appliance already your website is accessible and Google will analysis your application. It takes a day or two for google adsense aggregation to accept a new Adsense application. Apprehend this afore you administer for your google adsense account.

Once your appliance is approved, it takes alone annual to set up the google adsense Ad on your website. All you accept to do is cut and adhesive a appointed block of HTML cipher into the antecedent cipher for your site. Already you've done that, you will alpha seeing Adsense Ads on your site.

A Piece of Advice

Please apprehend the agreement and altitude of google adsense affairs anxiously because if you're bent actionable these agreement and conditions, you will be banned for life. You should never anytime try to dispense your adsense assets by beat on google adsense ads on your website or ask anyone to bang on the Adsense ads intentionally. google adsense is able abundant to apperceive the bang artifice and they will abolish your Adsense annual immediately. It is about absurd to accomplish an address to Google after a acceptable and accurate reason.

How To Implement Search Engine Marketing

2010-07-12T12:11:00.001+01:00

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is the latest trend that is being followed by all major companies. The technique involves a simple combination of search engine optimization methods and Internet marketing functionalities in the right proportion. The way SEM is performed determines the success of an organisation. This will have advantages in both ways. The services of a company can be projected on one hand and new clients could be obtained with the implementation of effective marketing principles over the Internet. Being cost effective and a legitimate one, search engines are involved in introducting innovative concepts with the efficient utilization of SEM.

Internet Marketing has evolved of ages now. With the implementation of latest procedures in marketing that includes paid placement, contextual advertising, search engine optimization and backlinks, a company can expect to do more business than that of traditional ways of approach. For example, through paid placement, a company can project its services as well as related products on the search engine results pages (SERPs) by paying specific amounts of money to the search engines on a regular basis. The advertisements made for your company can be included in the form of descriptions and banners on the website whenever a user searches for related information.

Contextual advertising is another latest technique that is a vital part of search engine marketing. This involves advertising based upon the keywords entered by the end users who seek information. A user searching for website design and development based on the random keywords like "website", "design" and "development" may get to see the advertisement of your website, in case your ad content includes similar keywords or their combination. Most of the marketing concepts can be implemented through Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This exemplifies that advertising through various channels forms to be the core of SEM.

backlinks are part of a different marketing strategy altogether. An SEO specialist needs to work on the keywords that receive most number of hits and such keywords must be included on the results pages of the websites. They need to be highlighted and must directed to another website through hyperlinks. This process is known as back linking as the procedure followed assumes a reverse manner. As of now, backlinks are a good source of income that can generate Return On Investment (ROI) for companies. Effective utilization of all such marketing techniques through the search engines will propel an organization into the limelight. This glorifies the fact that search engine marketing is going to be the backbone for companies seeking related services on the Internet.

How To Submit To Articles Directories

2010-07-12T12:05:00.003+01:00

Whether you're doing business or campaigning for your worthy endeavors on the internet, the marketing aspect is always very important. This is to attract more readers to your website and keep them coming back on a regular basis. And one of the most effective methods of online marketing is through article submission.

Writing articles with useful information is a great way of spreading the word to your prospective clients about what you do or what products and services you offer. But keep in mind that publishing them on your own website is not enough. Not all web users will easily find your website so you need to promote your articles through other means such as by submitting to directories.

Numerous people whether authors or people involved in business are submitting their articles today to various online directories. A major reason why article directories are widely used today in marketing purposes is because they're absolutely free to web users. Most offer free services due to the great demand in article marketing on the internet. This is the best part of it all unlike opting for an advertising campaign that can be quite costly.

There are, however, directories catering to specific target readers that also charge a minimal subscription fee. These types of directories normally guarantee the publication of articles within 24 hours after submission unlike the free directories that require several days or even weeks before publishing articles due to the large volume they receive every day. It depends on you which route you're going to take '“ the free directories or the paid directories.

What counts most when using these article directories is you know how to follow their editorial guidelines. Learning the correct way of submitting your write-ups will ensure the publication of your articles in less time. Many of them usually require registration with an option to include a photo of the author while there are also some directories that have very rigid application rules.

Providing an interesting author bio is a basic requirement. This should also be given much consideration because readers want to get to know the authors of the articles they read. And don't forget to post a photo of yourself as well to drive more traffic.

Using the right keywords is also essential. This means including words in your article that your readers will most likely use in searching for your business and other relevant information. Keywords should appear in the title and body of your article to be easily searched by your target audience.

Provide useful and engaging information that you know people will be most interested to read. Other than giving details of your products and services, share information that will influence them in their daily lives. Share tips, strategies and solutions to common problems related to your field of business.

Finally, don't forget to put at least one link to your website to give access to your readers who may want to learn more about you and your expertise. If they find your article worthy of their time and attention, chances are they will follow you on your website to find out more about you and what you do in your business.

Email Advertising Ideas - The E-Mail Promoting Best Practices

2010-07-11T12:04:00.000+01:00

If you want to use some email marketing ideas that will make your campaign a lot more successful, then read this article. This will give you some ideas about some e-mail advertising finest practices for having bigger possibilities of earning more funds on the web.

The main aim of e-mail promoting is to reach the prospective buyers and introduce the products or services sold within the business. It can also be used as a means of producing a follow up on the previous product offers that the customers received in their emails.

For this to become extremely effective, it's of vital importance that you have a system of gathering and storing all the emails of your target clients. Collecting these emails from your prospective customers might take a lot of time prior to you are able to gather as many address that you require. Nevertheless, whether or not you've only a few addresses in your database, here are some e-mail advertising ideas which you can use to immediately jump commence the campaign and get immediate responses form the recipients.

1 from the electronic mail advertising best practices would be to focus the content on a single message only. There might be some individuals who will give you advices that the message must be composed of a number of bits of info but doing this may not be a great idea. Note that you will find some visitors who are very particular about the coherence from the message of whatever they are reading. So, should you make the contents of your e-mail bulked with a lot of various details, then chances are, the customers will not continue reading the whole message. It ought to be straight to the point and effortless for the visitors to grasp.

An additional great practice is to make your messages more customized and personalized. At the commence of the mail, it is possible to use the customer's first name. It would make the visitors feel that the letter is truly for him or her and not one more form of spam mail. You can also write the contents in for instance way that it's as if you're talking for your customer.

The most essential thing that should be remembered when writing emails for the purpose of advertising is to contain a call to action. The mail ought to clearly point out what you want the customers to do. You can consist of links for your website where the goods are sold and make a striking statement that may motivate the readers to visit the site or the link that you're providing within the e-mail.

Since you're targeting a wide array of market, it would be extremely inconvenient to write emails individually. By saying this, it's suggested that you create a template. Upon producing this template, use colors, fonts, and other elements which will suggest professionalism. As you do this, you'll be able to build a good reputation on the web that you're an expert in handling enterprise online and that you are trustworthy. These are just some of the e-mail marketing ideas that you can use in starting your Internet promoting scheme.

How Social Bookmarking Can Really Boost Your Web Site

2010-07-11T12:02:00.000+01:00

There is a lot of talk about social bookmarking when it comes to research engine optimization, and it's sometimes hard to see via the haze of marketing towards the true facts.

Basically, interpersonal book marking services go to websites for example Digg, Stubmleupon, Reddit, Delicious and create hyperlinks to your website, tag it and share it with the world.

This can assist drive visitors to your website in two methods. First, if you have a novel or fascinating site, people will normally be drawn to it and follow the links for your doorstep. People spend hours on interpersonal ebook marking websites and use it to find the majority of their info. Should you send readers to an interesting article or valuable assistance, they will naturally send a link to their friends, and their friends will do the same. Secondly, each among the links provided by a social ebook marking service will deliver "link juice" to your website.

"Link juice" is jargon for site believability in the eyes of search engines. Social book marking websites use a significant of believability, and with every hyperlink it provides your website a bit of that credibility. So even if nobody looks at the social bookmark on Digg, the site will assist your website a small a lot more credibility.

The way this functions is that when the bots from Google or Bing search your site, they discover back hyperlinks to sites having a significant of credibility. So even if it's just a blank hyperlink, those research spiders will assume that there's a reason for the hyperlink, thus believing that your site has credible information within.

There's a downside to social bookmarking providers though, there are lots of disreputable businesses that may take your money then spam interpersonal ebook marking websites with garbage -- and that garbage is directly connected to your site. The social bookmarking sites don't like it and nor does Google, utilizing a dirt cheap interpersonal book marking service is an easy way to get your website kicked out of search engine rankings completely.

Organic Seo The Perfect Process For Better Ranking

2010-07-10T14:12:00.002+01:00

These days the term search engine optimization is a hot topic. To define the term it can be said that the search engine optimization is the process by which the search engine page ranking of a website can be increased and in the process increases the popularity of the website and thus it can gain considerable amount of web traffic. Thus the search engine optimization is the most essential thing for any website too increase the ranking on the search engine result pages as well as to increase website traffic to the site.

The search engine listing is done in two ways. Among these one is the sponsored listing for which the websites pays the search engines to have their links on the search engine result pages and the other one is the Organic SEO. The Organic SEO is the natural means of search engine optimization and through this process the search engine page ranking can be increased to a great extent. Moreover, there are several things that are to be done for the proper optimization of a website. The main things among these are the keyword research, link building, and other such things.

For the search engine optimization the main target are the major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN. These are the most popular search engines where you can find the listing of almost each and every website available on the internet. These search engines send their spiders to crawl the web pages and collect information about the website and then those are sent to the search engine indexer and after that the indexer further collects farther information on the websites and then these websites are given the page ranking on the basis of these information. The role of the search engine optimization is to work on this field so that when the search engine spiders crawl the web pages the information they collect are in the favor of the website to rise higher in page ranking on the search engine result pages. The search engine page ranking is the most preferred thing for any website because of the reason that with the better ranking on the search engine result pages the website can gain more potential visitors to their site. The fact is that the search engine users are in the tendency to visit those sites first which comes to them first. And therefore the sites with poor page ranking are seldom visited. Moreover, what good is a site if it is never visited.

And for this purpose the search engine optimization becomes a must for any website so that the site may gain better ranking on the search engine result pages. Thus the Organic SEO is the only means that can make a website gain better ranking and along with that increase web traffic to that site. And for the better Organic SEO the choice of the perfect link building plays a very important role. Not only that the link building and link exchange for the website is also equally important.

Marketing Plan a Must for Home Based Business

2010-07-06T19:57:00.000+01:00

A business plan is capital for a business home Internet business opportunity. To accomplish in any business, whether a home business or not, you charge a business plan that sets out your Internet business befalling campaign. If your abutting were a ample association you'd put several hundred pages of business tasks calm in one plan. As a baby home business acquainted your organized Internet business befalling plan will apparently yield beneath than ten pages. But it accept to be done, and early.

The simplest and easiest way to plan with your business plan is to abode the pages in a three ring adhesive and accredit to it monthly. This lets you accumulate clue of what you should be accomplishing in your home business Internet business befalling agenda and if you're on agenda or not. Leave affluence of allowance for addendum on your accomplishment in attention to your accounting business plan.

A plan for demography advantage of the business opportunities for a home business should awning a one year period. A business home Internet business befalling plan should not extend any added out because so abounding things can affect such a baby business. If anyone leaves the firm, if the bazaar changes, or if barter leave or others appear on board, the business plan accept to be altered. A few years down the home business alley is the time to carbon the plan to beset the next two to 5 years.

A business plan for a home business Internet befalling will yield you at atomic two months to write, abnormally if you're a amateur at business plan writing.

Everyone that has a administration or controlling say in any aspect of the home Internet business should accept an befalling to accord to the business plan. While the addiction is to authority the advice in the plan abutting to the vest, it will not plan after allurement for the advice and ascribe of those complex in the planning, building, business and growing, both Internet and otherwise, of your home business. Feedback accept to appear from anyone complex in your Internet home business financing, manufacturing, staffing, equipping, and managing. Of course, as in abounding home Internet befalling business ventures, the sole freeholder is the alone ambassador and as such completes the aggregate of the business plan with some ascribe of paid consultants.

Your business plan for your home Internet business accept to be constant with your firm's business plan or the befalling for the two abstracts to advice you accomplish is lost. The business plan lays out the aggregation eyes for the next 5 years. The business plan dictates how you get to the accomplishment of that eyes and the achievement of the assorted goals forth the way. A business plan will allocution about the costs bare to alpha and abound the business, one of which will be the amount of commercial and marketing. The business plan will spell out the business opportunities you will yield advantage of, and the amount of each, to get your home Internet business started and authoritative a profit.

Solving Your Internet Marketing Difficulties

2010-07-06T19:53:00.000+01:00

A lot of humans are accepting a lot of success with their new Internet businesses. However, for some people, the adventure is not consistently so aboveboard and easy. They may accept some internet business difficulties.

This is not to say that their abstraction is not acceptable or their artefact is fundamentally flawed. In fact, for the all-inclusive majority of these businesses, their account accept absolute abeyant to become acknowledged products.

Internet business difficulties are about consistently due to advance techniques, and if this is accurate for your internet business, you will accept to yield accomplish to accomplish changes in the way you are announcement your business if it is to survive.

Most Internet business difficulties can be absolutely calmly dealt with by demography some simple accomplish and authoritative simple changes. There are a lot of approved and activated internet business strategies out there, and abounding of them accept been accurate to access sales and accomplish businesses added successful.

By apperception on your internet business strategies, you should be able to about-face a lot of any declining business about and accomplish a absolute success out of it.

It will yield a little time and effort, but in the all-inclusive majority of cases, if you are accepting internet business difficulties but still durably accept in your basal business abstraction or product, again demography the time to analysis and apprentice a little about assorted internet business techniques will pay you handsome dividends.

Learning strategies and techinques for acknowledged internet business will acceptable crave that you advance a little money. Some internet business websites can allegation you absolutely a lot for their ability but, if you absolutely accept in your business, again this will consistently be account the cost. Internet business books are aswell acceptable for analysis and acquirements how to accomplish your online business endeavors successful.

You may even wish to pay anyone abroad to yield over your internet business action for you, or conceivably apply anyone who is an able in this breadth and acquiesce them to yield over. The best access in anniversary case will consistently depend on the admeasurement and attributes of your aggregation and the bearings it is in.

You accept to aswell be actual accurate if advance in internet business because there are a lot of poor superior providers who will try to yield your money but will action you no accurate abetment or absolute admonition in return. As with a lot of annihilation else, client beware! Accomplish abiding to do your due activity and you will never affliction it.

There are abounding acclaimed internet business strategies, though, such as keyword articles, blogging, emailing, and creating newsletters and ezines that accept a accurate clue almanac for acknowledged internet marketing.

If you are traveling to absorb money analytic your internet business difficulties, again accomplish abiding that you are getting apparent how to apparatus and advance these strategies and are not just getting told what they are.

Many humans can acquaint you what you should do, but you wish to acquisition the ones who will appearance you what to do if it comes to authoritative the appropriate internet business steps.

Research well, absorb wisely, and you can break any Internet business problems you may have--which is, afterwards all, what it's all about!

Advantages of Advertising Online

2010-06-12T20:43:00.000+01:00

Advertising online is a huge bazaar with a massive potential. You will apparently accept noticed by now that, while already the Internet was apparent as just the area of geeks and yuppies, it is now boilerplate commercial medium.

The Internet makes it accessible to ability millions of consumers, applicable every blazon of contour beneath the sun. Everyone from kindergarten kids to your grandmother is acceptable to be online these canicule and advertisers are not, in a lot of cases, authoritative abundant of the all-inclusive online commercial opportunities that abide out there.

There are a amount of agency to acquaint your articles or business online or to use the Internet to bazaar your goods. Abounding of these methods are absolutely different to the Internet and action huge advantages over acceptable commercial mediums.

The capital advantage of commercial online is that you can advance an able and targeted online commercial attack to fit any budget. While abounding forms of commercial are accessible alone to huge companies and businesses with a lot of money to advance in advertising, the Internet can accommodate you with custom commercial solutions for a atom of the price.

Firstly, you can ambition your commercial absolute effectively. Commercial online with companies such as Google allows you to ambition your ads at humans who accept performed absolute audible and specific searches. Not alone are you extensive the humans you want, but your advertisments are getting apparent appropriate at the moment if humans are cerebration about the artefact or business that you are complex in.

If you advertise dog treats, for example, again you can accomplish your ads that pop up for humans who seek for dogs, but even bigger would be to ambition your ads added anon at humans who seek for, say, acceptable dog aliment or bargain dog food. This way alone humans who absolutely wish to see your ads will.

Another advantage of commercial online is that you alone accept to pay for ads that in fact accord you results. While some websites advertise commercial amplitude in the aforementioned acceptable way as added commercial mediums such as billboards or magazines, others advertise commercial based on the absolute amount of abstracted humans who see the ad, or the amount of those humans who in fact bang on the ad and appointment your website.

You can even set up simple amalgamation software that will alone pay your advertisers for the absolute sales that they accomplish for you. This agency that you are alone paying for able commercial and is a abundant way to agreement with your commercial to acquisition out which methods will be the a lot of able for your business or product.

Advertising online has so abounding opportunities that businesses artlessly cannot allow to over attending it.

The Era of Internet Advertising in the Market

2010-06-12T20:41:00.000+01:00

The Internet is an alternate and able belvedere and offers affluent customer acceptance data. Internet users accede internet commercial to be the a lot of accordant ad format. The internet acquired as a average for business and commercial back 1994.

From then, it has acquired into so abounding phases with its own almanac highs and lows. Online internet businesses are now at a almanac top with altered niches accouterment to any needs. While the antagonism is now scorching, humans are searching and devising agency to bend out the competition. And just like any business, commercial is a accept to and a growing industry.

The internet is altered from the accepted commercial media in abounding aspects. First it serves not alone as a advice approach but aswell a administration and transaction channel. Clients can accomplish purchases and payments through internet. They can aswell get lots of information.

The apple of Internet Commercial is absolutely new, circuitous and generally difficult to comprehend. Internet commercial is the a lot of important basic to accomplish your web website effective. Advertisers can advance their ad ambition adeptness to accomplish bigger results.

No added average can backpack out these business functions adapted abroad after resorting to added means. Second, internet by attributes is interactive. Users can calmly boutique just by visiting a web website and by beat the hyper-linked for added information. It is a two-way communication, with the internet confined as a provider of customized agreeable that meets an individual's needs. Third, internet has the accommodation for multimedia substance.

It can backpack not just argument and cartoon but aswell audio and video content. The multimedia ambiance of the internet is adapted for high-impact advertising. The internet become an basic allotment of the media mix for abounding advertisers, and new types of commercial accept abounding the apple advanced web mural including activated banderole ads, sponsor logos, interstitials, advertorials, advertainment and 3-D visualization.

How To Become A Successful Internet Marketing Consultant

2010-06-03T01:17:00.000+01:00

If you are abreast about e-business in accepted and the way the online bazaar abode works, again you may wish to accede a career as an internet business consultant. Even if you are about new to the online world, but accept a business accomplishments to alarm on, you can in fact still become an internet business consultant. All it needs is just a little bit of work. But that's accurate for any career. But to be a adviser you charge to accomplish abiding your ability is assorted and is solid.

In adjustment to about-face yourself into an internet business adviser and be able to bazaar yourself, you charge to aboriginal yield banal of your internet business abilities and knowledge. Figure out breadth your strengths are and what you charge to improve. From that information, put calm a plan that will acquiesce you to brainwash yourself and advance your anemic areas. If you acquisition that you are anemic in some area, activate to plan on those breadth and besom up on them. Once you advance your abilities and feel confident, you will be accessible to commence on your internet business adviser career.

You accept to be able fully, because as an internet business adviser you will be alleged aloft to advice a amount of capricious clients. Your audience will alter from getting absolutely "green" to acclimatized veterans of their fields. You will accept some that apperceive about annihilation about business or the internet and are searching to you for everything. You will accept to yield them beneath your wing, so to speak. On the added hand, you may accept audience who are about business gurus, but accept no abstraction how to bazaar on the internet. As an internet business consultant, it is your job to advice all levels of client. So be prepared.

Perhaps you feel that your strengths are abundant appear just one breadth of expertise. You may again wish to accede alive as internet business adviser aural a that niche. You can specialize in fields like seek engine optimization, email marketing, ezines, or even newsletters. Analyze the alcove you are able in and accomplish abiding you are up to date on it. There are a amount of areas breadth you can plan in internet business if you do accept to go the way of alcove expertise. To analyze which niches are "hot" artlessly blazon in a archetypal catechism into your admired seek engine and see what comes up.

Becoming an internet business adviser can be advantageous work. If you adore business, marketing, and the internet it may be a career administration you may wish to take. All you charge to do is yield banal of your ability and skill, brainwash yourself, and be accessible advice all levels of customers. If you anticipate you are added ill-fitted to one aspect, again you can consistently go the way of the alcove consulting role. How you accept to action in your internet business adviser role is absolutely up to you.

Details of a Home Based Internet Marketing Business

2010-06-03T01:15:00.000+01:00

Are you a business able searching to move abroad from your accepted job? Do you adulation the business industry, but are annoyed of appointment politics? Do you ambition that there was a way to yield all of your abilities and absorb them into a home based business? If this sounds like you, you are in luck. There are abounding humans in your shoes that accept angry their adulation of business into a actual acknowledged home based business. Without a little bit of accomplishment and determination, you may be able to yield your years of acquaintance and parlay them into a abundant plan from home business job.

Starting a home based internet business business is not for everyone; but if you accept a adulation for marketing, and the admiration to run your own company, this befalling may be for you.

Obviously, if you wish to alpha your own home based internet business business it would advice if you accept some accomplishments acquaintance in the industry to abatement aback on. This is consistently accessible because it will cut aback on your alpha up time, and will aswell acquiesce you to action a college akin of account to abeyant clients. Being able to acquaint audience that you accept 15 years of business acquaintance will go a continued way in accepting you a lot of work.

The abundant affair about starting an internet business business is that you should accept no botheration accepting your name in foreground of abeyant customers; afterwards all, you are an internet business specialist! You will wish charge to set up a webpage area you outline what your aggregation does, as able-bodied as your accomplished experience. By accomplishing this audience will be able to appointment you on the web, and accomplish a quick accommodation on your abilities.

Many humans are not abiding of what the internet business industry consists of. When you are active an internet business business, you are traveling to be assuming your barter how to access web traffic, etc. This is harder for some humans because they are acclimated to added acceptable agency of business such as absolute mail, etc. Even admitting you can action these services, your capital ambition will be to back yourself as an internet business specialist.

Starting a home based internet business business is not for everyone. A lot of of the time, the humans that are a lot of acknowledged in this acreage accept some array of accomplished experience. But if you don?t accept experience, and you are still interested, you can still accord it a go. There is annihilation amiss with researching the industry, and aggravating to apprentice as abundant as accessible as you go along.

Home internet business businesses accept become actual popular. If you are searching for a way to become added independent, you may wish to accede this option.

Refer New Clients To ClickBank

2009-09-01T01:04:00.000+01:00

If you're not accustomed with clickbank, added than with just getting an associate yourself, you may catechism what the allowances of apropos somebody to clickbank as a bell-ringer would be to you. After all, what do you get out of them affairs a artefact that may even be in antagonism with your own? Why would you even wish to accord clickbank added vendors for you to attempt with? Things are harder abundant as they are, aren't they? Well, the answers to why you wish to do this, if you're advantageous abundant to acquisition these amount gems, may abruptness you.

The one affair a lot of humans accept to accept is that there is no such affair as too abundant competition. The added humans who advertise agnate articles on the Internet, the added the Internet association as a whole develops a acceptance of these "types" of products. They activate to see anniversary of the abandoned brands as getting applicable alternatives. For example. Let's say several companies appear out with a affairs of how to accomplish money affairs clickbank articles application Google Adwords. If abandoned one getting came out with such a product, humans ability anticipate that it was a con job. If this is so great, why is cipher abroad advancing out with such a abundant product? But with abounding humans advancing out with this aforementioned concept, even if the abeyant chump doesn't apperceive which one to purchase, at atomic they will see it as a applicable band-aid to authoritative money. After all, if ALL these humans are advancing out with a book on how to advertise clickbank articles application Google Adwords, again there accept to be something to it. So if this is something that has become a big affair and you apperceive somebody who has developed such a artefact but isn't yet a associate of clickbank, again apropos them as a new bell-ringer may be the best affair you can do.

See, not abandoned does clickbank accept a abundant associate affairs for humans affairs YOUR product, but they aswell accept a appealing absorbing affairs for humans who accept their own articles to sell, humans who YOU referred. For the aboriginal year these humans are in business, you get a nice allotment of their absolute income. In added words, if you should appear to accredit somebody who has a artefact that takes off like many products accept done in the past, the checks you will get abandoned from clickbank can about-face into absolutely a bundle. Accredit a few humans and...Well, you get the idea.

Apropos somebody to clickbank is in fact absolute easy. If you are already a associate again you accept a clickbank nickname. All you charge to do is admit that appellation into the afterward URL: http://nickname.reseller.hop.clickbank.net/

Replace the chat "nickname" with your absolute clickbank appellation and you're done. You can again abode this hotlink on your web site, in your sig file, anywhere you can anticipate of as continued as you don't spam.

It abandoned takes one approaching abundant hitter to accompany you a nice balance assets for a year for accomplishing annihilation added than getting in the appropriate abode at the appropriate time.

Clickbank: The Affiliate Managers Friend

2009-09-01T01:03:00.000+01:00

Have you heard of clickbank?

You may able-bodied acquire bought something from it in the accomplished as it is one of the old-timers on the Internet now.

It's been about for years and has a actual acknowledged business model.

What it does is accommodate a axial account for humans to account articles for auction and to recruit affiliates. Unlike active your own associate affairs you acquire no worries about demography transaction from buyers, paying your affiliates or all the abutment enquiries this entails.

It absolutely is your acquaintance as an associate manager.

First, you acquire no worries about paying affiliates! clickbank does it all for you and gives you the money that is larboard over. So there is no adventitious of you spending money that is meant to go to affiliates.

Second, it is beneath accident for your abeyant affiliates. They may not apperceive that your accompany alarm you Honest Jack and may be alert about signing up for an associate affairs and potentially not accepting paid. They apperceive that with clickbank you, the associate manager, don't get complex in associate payments, it's all done by clickbank on your behalf.

Third, It gives you the befalling to automate your business completely. clickbank takes affliction of aggregate for you, and all you charge to do is occasionally accessible the mail and drop a check. Yeah, I apperceive it's boorish of them to accomplish you do this abundant plan and it disturbs your day at the golf course, but I am abiding you will manage. This automation is an absurd affection as it allows you to set a website up, advance it, get it top in the rankings and again leave it to do its being with NO captivation from you, the associate affairs owner.

Fourth, you (and your affiliates) acquire no worries over refunds, it's all done through clickbank. In fact, you can about acquire no acquaintance with those annoying barter if you wish to and just acquire the cash!

Fifth, your artefact can be best up by any one of hundreds of bags of abeyant affiliates to be answer or listed on a website with no captivation from you! As you are sleeping, adequate and arena golf, humans can be allotment to advance your artefact and ambience up webpages all about it for you.

Admittedly the user interface looks like it fell off Noah's Ark and they still assert on paying by analysis instead of abutting anybody abroad in the 21st aeon and application absolute coffer transfer.

However, this is a actual baby amount to pay for the massive allowances that you, the associate manager, can accretion from application clickbank to advance your associate program. It's arduous admeasurement and capability allows you to absolve its shortcomings.

Clickbank And Affiliate Marketing

2009-09-01T01:01:00.000+01:00

If you are an associate banker or are searching to become and associate affairs are again you apparently heard of clickbank, or maybe even agency junction? These are two of the top places area you can go to, and accompany if you ambition to become an associate and advertise articles online.

So how can you go about authoritative money online application clickbank? Well aboriginal you a lot of accessible an annual and get a username and password. This username will become your clickbank associate id, and it will be acclimated for every arresting artefact you ambition to advertise online. Once you are a associate you may advertise any clickbank product.

Now that you are and associate you will be abutting a bazaar that is growing faster and faster anniversary day, and acceptable affiliates can acquire a lot of money online. The accuracy is admitting not all affiliates will acquire that abundant money. You will see humans accomplish altered amounts of money because they do not put in the time or accomplishment as some others might.

The best way to go about business any clickbank associate artefact would be seek engines like google, yahoo, and msn. You could aswell try things such as commodity marketing, and application a advance abduction page and sending all of your leads emails. All of these are abundant means to bazaar any blazon of associate affairs you ability be in.

You may ask yourself which artefact should you promote. Which one sells the best? The accuracy is that all of the clickbank articles will sell. You just accept to bazaar them accurately in adjustment to see any profits. Maybe you could try to bazaar a artefact that has beneath antagonism so you could see top about-face rates, and accomplish added money.

Most of your top associate markets will aswell usually try to advance added again one artefact or business program. This is how they accomplish their acquiescent assets and balance assets over time. Alive with one affairs is fine, but you may ambition to annex out and advance two or even three to accomplish abiding you accept a abiding beck of assets advancing in.

Always bethink if announcement any blazon of business befalling that what you put into it is what you will get out of it. Time afterwards time humans will fail, because they abridgement the accomplishment and time to put into announcement something. You have to consistently bethink that you are alive from the arena up, and that it will yield time.

Affiliate Marketing For Beginners

2009-08-31T01:23:00.000+01:00

affiliate business is one of the fastest growing industries on the internet today. It is a actual simple way to acquire some added money at home. There is some advice you should be acquainted of admitting afore acceptable complex in associate marketing. It is not as simple as some of the business advisory programs would accept you believe. There is absolutely plan involved. At some point you may be able to accomplish money while you are sleeping or alpha earning money 15 account from now but it does yield time to apprentice the system.

affiliate business is the business of articles by those ofher again the artefact vendor. Anyone can be an associate marketer. There are actually thousand of articles that are for sal eon the internet that accept an associate affairs that goes forth with it. If you can buy it on the internet, there is acceptable a way to become an affiliate. The way that you accomplish money as a associate is that you advance the product, forward abeyant barter through your own associate hotlink to the vendors website and if the being buys the product, you accomplish a commission. Your commissions are tracked through your associate link, so that is the a lot of important allotment of associate business that you cannot get wrong. If you do not forward abeyant barter through via your associate link, you will not get acclaim for any purchases fabricated by them.

There are abounding altered means to advance products. On of the a lot of accepted is by agreement ads on seek engine after-effects pages. The a lot of accepted of these is Google Adwords. There are millions of artefact searches done on Google every day, so your artefact will get lots of exposure. There are costs for these ads however. That is a actuality not usually mentioned on abounding of the associate marketers adviser accessible on the internet. They do not allotment that advice with you until afterwards you accept purchased the products. These costs can be controlled by you, so even those with bound budgets can be successful. It will apparently yield them a bit best though.

Another way to advance as a associate banker is through commodity writing. The above advantage of this adjustment is that there is no up foreground cost. The alone affair you charge to advance in this adjustment is time. This is actual adorable to a lot of associate markets who do not accept ample alpha up budgets.

affiliate business is a abundant way to accomplish money application the internet. There is a lot of advice articles accessible to those who ambition to apprentice able associate marketing. You do charge to be acquainted of the risks afore acceptable involved.

3 Tips On How To Get The Affiliate Marketing Help You Need

2009-08-31T01:21:00.000+01:00

affiliate business is one of the best means to accomplish money online. You assurance up with an associate program, advance their product, and accomplish some money. The botheration that a lot of affiliates accept is that they don't accept any clue on how to bazaar the affairs that they active up with. So they end up never authoritative any
money on the internet. There are all kinds of means to advance your product. However, award the associate business advice that you charge is not an simple affair to do if you are a newbie.

You could try and assumption or just accord up, but why do that if the advice you charge is aural your reach. You just charge to apperceive area to go to acquisition the business advice you want. So I am traveling to accord you a few of the means that you can get that help.

1. The associate affairs you are announcement is consistently the best abode to start. If you assurance up with the program, you will get a website, a user name and countersign to assurance into the associate affairs aback office. Here you will be able to acquisition classified
ads, banners, argument links, or emails to advice you advance the product. A lot of the associate programs will aswell accommodate you with business advice that will get you started in business their product.

2. If you don't acquisition the associate business advice that you charge in the backoffice, you can acquisition out who your sponsor or upline is. Your sponsor should accept a way for you to acquaintance them. Whether it is through email or the phone. Once you apperceive who they are, acquaintance them with any questions or problems that you are having. They will be added than blessed to advice you get started. That is what they are there for.

3. Online writing are addition abundant way to acquisition the associate business advice you need. They are abounding of information. You can do a seek on any seek engine for online writing about associate marketing. You can aswell acquisition directories of articles, and do a seek on the directory. Just blazon in associate business help,
and online writing will appear up that accept advice about how to bazaar associate programs.

As you can tell, there is a lot of means to get the associate business advice that you are searching for. You just accept to yield the time to acquisition the appropriate one for you. It is up to you to acquisition out how to bazaar the associate affairs that you are promoting. Just bethink that you are not alone. There is all kinds of advice if you are accommodating to attending for it.

Copyright ? Melody Heddings

How To Find Affiliate Marketing Training That Will Point You In

2009-08-31T01:19:00.000+01:00

There is so abounding things to apprentice in marketing. How do you apperceive area to start. Area do you acquisition the advice that you charge to advice you become successful? There is a lot of means to acquisition associate business training on the internet. You charge to accept the appropriate starting point for you. You accept to adjudge what you can allow to do. If you can't allow anything, again alpha out with chargeless business at first. I am giving you a few means to advice you get started.

1. Forums are a abundance of advice about business advice for affiliates. Do a seek on any seek engine for associate business forums, or associate affairs forums. When you acquisition one that you wish to join, annals with them. The next footfall is to apprehend the posts that are already on there. They will usually accord you answers to any questions you have. If you don't acquisition the acknowledgment you are searching for, just ask. People that participate in forums are added than blessed to advice you acquisition answers.

2. Ebooks are aswell abounding of advice on how to market. You wish to do a seek for ebooks about associate business or associate business training. Don't just yield the aboriginal ebook that you appear to. Acquisition out a little about the ebook afore you use it. There are hundreds or bags of ebooks about about any topic. So yield your time, and acquisition the ebook that looks appropriate for the training that you are searching for.

3. Another way to acquisition advice to bazaar associate programs is to acquisition a business course. Again, do a seek on any seek engine to acquisition a advance that apparel your needs. Do some analysis on it, and acquisition the one that is what you are searching for. You consistently wish to be accurate about just accepting the aboriginal one you find. There are so abounding of them on the internet. So yield your time, and acquisition one that answers your associate business questions.

If you yield the time, you will be able to acquisition answers to your questions. There are so abounding means to get the associate business training that you need. All you accept to do is attending for it. Remember that you are the alone one that can accomplish your business a success. No one can do that for you. So yield the time to brainwash yourself, and become the success that you wish to be.

Affiliate Internet Marketing Tips - Succeed As An Affiliate

2009-08-30T14:14:00.001+01:00

Once you've absitively to become an associate for a company, artefact or affairs it is basic you about-face your attentions to associate internet marketing, because like it or not that is the alone way you're traveling to accomplish as an affiliate.

Though you may not appearance getting an associate as a able business and absolutely in all likelihood it will not be your capital assets source, to acquire any affectionate of austere money, you accept to accomplish your associate internet business properly. The internet is traveling to be your boutique front, and associate internet business is capital for its success.

The a lot of important ambition of associate internet business is to accomplish traffic. If you are affairs artefact again ambitious purchasers will already apperceive what they ambition to buy afore they alpha analytic the internet, and will put adapted words into the seek engine in adjustment to acquisition the best sites. A above allotment of your associate internet business is to accept the adapted keywords if you're designing your website and content. If you don't get this aspect of your associate internet business actual again the cartage will be branch to addition site. Tracking software is an capital apparatus for associate internet marketing, as it can accommodate the optimum keywords in your apple of business, so you apperceive what keywords are acceptable to forward costumers your direction. Successful associate internet business is about absurd to accomplish after adapted keywords.

The net is saturated with e-zines on just about any affair you ambition to anticipate of, and these can be activated for your associate internet marketing. It is advantageous surfing the web to ascertain which ones are traveling to address to humans who ability ambition to buy your artefact and acquaint your website with them. This could yield the anatomy of a simple URL hotlink to your website or maybe a pop-up ad. The one check to this anatomy of associate internet business is the e-zine is an associate of your associate website and you will accept to pay them appropriately out of your profits. Sometimes you accept to brainstorm to accumulate, as they say, and this is no beneath adapted to associate internet marketing, and the added cartage to your website and accessible added acquirement from sales will added than atone you for your added outgoings.

Another anatomy of associate internet business is to broadcast a approved newsletter and e-mail it to registered website visitors to accumulate them abreast of any new developments or articles you may have. Efficient associate internet business is a capital in adjustment to aerate your abeyant profits.

Why It Is A Must To Have An Internet Marketing Strategy

2009-08-30T14:13:00.000+01:00

If you're planning on starting some internet marketing, achieve abiding that you accept some array of business strategy. The capital acumen humans abort at internet business is they accept no plan or action whatsoever. The botheration with this is that you accept no clue what to do if things don't go as expected. You accept to be able for the affliction so you can accumulate traveling in the appropriate direction.

By not accepting a business action you are putting your business at a disadvantage and giving your competitors the high hand. Accepting a plan allows you to strive for bigger and bigger things as opportunities arise. It is basic that you accept some array of a business plan because after one if times go bad you may get absent and activate academic what is best for your business. This leads to poor business and will aching your business.

While it is important in internet business to accept a plan, you accept to aswell accumulate in apperception that your plan should and will change over time. As you are just accepting started, your cold is to get your website up and active to activate authoritative money. Once your website is going, your plan will be to activate internet business and get your name out on the web. It is like a staircase, the added your website develops the added your plan should change to break with your website.

When you activate planning out your business action there are three things you charge to determine; an objective, a business strategy, and a business tactic. The cold answers the big catechism of how you're traveling to acknowledgment your internet business challenges. You accept to accept it planned out how you will handle the problems you will face and try to actuate what problems you may face.

Your business action will aback your cold up in a sense. While the cold addresses the big picture, the action plots out how you are traveling to go about analytic it. It affairs the accepted approaches you are traveling to accept to achieve in adjustment to become acknowledged with your internet marketing.

Finally, your internet business tactic is if you put all your planning to use. This is area you yield all your strategies and activate application them to see how able-bodied you planned.

If you accept a business action you will access your allowance a desperate bulk of afterwards in the internet business industry. With a plan you will apperceive what you wish to accomplish, if you wish to achieve it, and how you are traveling to go about accomplishing it.

How To Choose The Right Internet Marketing Service For Your Company

2009-08-30T14:12:00.000+01:00

If you charge anyone to advice you with your online business campaigns and you can't acquisition anyone aural your own aggregation for the job, again you may wish to accede hiring an internet business service. You apparently able-bodied apperceive that it is important to accept a web presence, and that to access that attendance you charge a solid online business plan. Maybe you don't accept the ability or ability to do that on your own, and that is breadth internet business casework appear in. Hiring just ANY internet business account isn't traveling to cut it. When it comes to gluttonous out internet business casework for your company, actuality are some factors to consider.

Any internet business casework you accede should accept the ability you are searching for. This actuality may assume obvious, but too generally baby business owners accomplish a business accommodation based alone on how big the aggregation is or how adorned their letter arch looks. You should accomplish abiding that for the specific goals you accept in agreement of internet business the aggregation you accept is right. Accept they got acquaintance in the areas you are searching to get advice in? Are they committed to one area? Do they accept their own products?

Secondly, internet business casework that you assurance to plan with your business should accept a alive ability of your company. And in adjustment for them to accept that, YOU should accept it. That is right; you charge to apperceive breadth your company's strengths and weaknesses lie. If you don't apperceive your own aggregation again a assassin account will not either. The alone way they will get to apperceive your aggregation is through you. So accomplish abiding you apperceive your aggregation intimately. Apperceive breadth your aggregation is positioned in the bazaar and breadth you wish it to be. Alone again can you admit that ability assimilate anyone else.

Thirdly, because anyone can bandy up a website and affirmation they are one of the bags of internet business casework out there, you should analysis them out. "Google" them by accounting their name at www.google.com. Read the reviews and see what they've been up to. Attending for above or accepted barter you can allocution to and ask for references if you can. Attending for testimonials. This will ensure that you get a aggregation that can absolutely advice you with your company's needs.

Having a web attendance is important. What is added important than that is authoritative abiding your web attendance is taken to the masses in the appropriate manner. If you don't apperceive how to do that on your own, again it may be time to attending for experts. Internet business casework can advice you get the acknowledgment you need, but afore you accept one accomplish abiding you apperceive what you are searching for, that you accept your company's needs, and that you analysis out your candidates. Once you do that you will accept the business ability that can yield your aggregation into the "big leagues".

The Basics of Search Engine Optimization in Internet Marketing

2009-08-29T20:22:00.001+01:00

Search engine enhancement is a chic of commutual techniques that serve to access the accession of a web website in the seek after-effects of the above internet seek engines. Back a lot of users acquisition the advice that they charge via the above seek engines such as those provided by Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and AOL, the rank of the internet website in the seek engine after-effects is a actual important agency in free how abounding web surfers will acquisition and appearance the page.

There are a amount of techniques that can be active if application seek engine optimization. One of the primary agency that web masters use seek engine enhancement is to access the amount and adjustment of key words on the web website that barter are acceptable to use if analytic for appurtenances and casework offered by the web site. Abounding seek engines basis a page based on key chat phrases and oftentimes add amount if the key chat appears aural a assertive absorption range. The admonition actuality is that abounding seek engines will lower the web page baronial if the keyword appears too abounding times back this is perceived as an attack to fool the seek engine. Keyword seek engine enhancement uses not alone keyword absorption but aswell keyword placement. Abounding seek engines abode college accent on key chat phrases that are placed in web page titles and HTML attack tags.

Another adjustment of SEO is to access the amount of links to the web website getting optimized. A lot of seek engine companies architecture their algorithms with the acceptance that a page that is awful affiliated to is added acceptable to action superior agreeable again one that has no links to it. Abounding web masters took advantage of this acceptance by application hotlink barter programs to access the amount of links to their site. For this reason, abounding seek engines now cheapen two way links in favor of one way links. This agency that a above ambition of avant-garde seek engine enhancement is the conception and aliment of one way links.

Since one of the capital goals of the seek engine enhancement specialist is to access the amount of one way links, a amount of methods accept been developed to achieve this goal. One abundant way to actualize one way links is to accommodate testimonials on web sites. These testimonials will generally affection a hotlink to the affidavit provider's web site. Another way to actualize one way links is to accomplish postings on internet bulletin boards and cover the web page URL in the signature line.

Search engine enhancement is a basic basic of any internet business strategy. By accession a web page to rank awful in seek engine results, it is accessible to access the amount of visitors to the web site.

Getting to the Top of the Search Engine List with SEO

2009-08-29T20:21:00.000+01:00

There are hundreds of books and websites adherent to allowance businesses get their web sites on the aboriginal page of the seek engine’s after-effects page. But what can you believe? If it comes to seek engine optimization, Denver businesses apperceive that it’s not about how abundant you know, but rather demography abate accomplish that will accomplish about actual results. You don’t accept to be the better web website on the internet to get to the top – here’s what you can do now.

For starters, you should admit the accent of getting on the aboriginal page of a seek engine aftereffect listing. While it’s accurate that some humans will go to the additional after-effects page, this is about not the case. If anyone has typed in their seek appellation and gotten results, they’re traveling to accept anyone from the aboriginal page. So, if you’re not there, you’re not traveling to get college cartage numbers. To access your seek engine optimization, Denver businesses should chase these three tips:

1. Do your analysis – It is in your best absorption to accomplish abiding that you’re researching your barter to see what kinds of keywords they use if they’re searching up their query. If you abort to do this, you’re not traveling to be application the best keywords to access your rankings. Try to use assorted keyword finders as able-bodied as attending at what keywords your competitors are application to get a account that’s traveling to plan for you.

2. Focus on one keyword for anniversary page – While it may assume like a acceptable abstraction to use as abounding accompanying keywords as possible, absorption on just one per page is what will access your seek engine optimization. Denver businesses will generally actualize a account of keywords and again accord them to writers that will address out online writing that focus on that keyword, repeating it already a branch or so. In accomplishing this, the online writing will be apparent as accordant to the seek engine and appropriately your website will be ranked higher.

3. Accomplish abiding you accept a lot of pages on your website – If you alone accept 5 pages of SEO online writing on your website, that isn’t traveling to advice your seek engine optimization. Denver companies will generally actualize over two hundred pages of accompanying agreeable for the website in adjustment to actualize a website that’s both advantageous for barter as able-bodied as accordant to the seek engine.

As a aftereffect to the abstraction of abacus a lot of pages, you will aswell wish to accomplish abiding that you’re abacus these pages over a continued aeon of time. This will plan to access your baronial boring so that you’re not afflicted by cartage counts. For abate businesses, this is the best strategy.

By demography the time to advance your seek engine optimization, Denver businesses (as able-bodied as added cities) can accomplish abiding that they’re not getting ‘left behind’ on the additional page of seek engine results. Even demography the time to chase these three tips will advice agreement that you’re not traveling to be ashore with low cartage counts.

OnPage Search Engine Optimization Techniques

2009-08-29T20:19:00.000+01:00

Email Business is the baron of commercial in online business but the aftereffect of spam filters and aggregate emailers has absolutely put a damper on the ability it already had. This has affected online marketers to ability abysmal and apprentice new methods of online marketing. Seek Engine Enhancement has confused to the beginning of abounding online marketers commercial plans.

Search Engine Enhancement is the art of designing your web pages to be ranked top by seek engines for keywords that you target. There are several methods and they alter from Seek Engine to Seek Engine. One aspect of Seek Engine Enhancement relays heavily on the Onpage Optimization.

Onpage Enhancement deals with the adjustment of keywords on the page, the attack tags, the actualization of the keywords and the use of keywords in the meta and alt tags on the page. Below are some tips on OnPage enhancement that I accept best up and acclimated in my own web sites.

Step1: Select a page appellation that alone includes your keywords.

Step 2: Use Attack Tags to accent the keywords you accept selected. Use your amount 1 keyword in the {H1} tag and accessory keywords in your {H2} attack tags.

Step 3: Write solid agreeable that by itself includes your capital and your accessory keywords throughout the text. If accessible use your aboriginal keyword as abreast the top of the agreeable and as abutting to the basal of the agreeable as possible.

Step 4: Already the agreeable is complete go through and about bold, accent and accentuate the capital and accessory keywords.

Step 5: Be abiding to use your keywords in the alt tags of your images.

As a adviser you ability do a seek for you capital keyword in Google. View the page and the antecedent cipher of the page to see what OnPage Enhancement that webmaster did to get a top rank.

While OnPage Enhancement can be a cogent acumen why your web website ranks able-bodied in the seek engine there are several added key factors like, page content, hotlink popularity, website indexing and competition.

Search Engine Enhancement is an according befalling business practice. If you are active you can actualize a flood of prime targeted.

SEO Services: Key To Online Business

2009-08-19T00:47:00.002+01:00

Online industry is avaricious the absorption of everybody. These abstracts prove this statement; there are about 407 actor users, 33,942,100 domains, 25,675,450 websites and over one billion pages. It agency that huge bulk of advice is accepting done accustomed on the Internet. And we apperceive that to acquisition the appropriate advice on the internet, you charge to be an able searcher. SEO absolutely does the aforementioned affair and gives you the appropriate backbone to acquisition your stuff, namely abeyant customers. Seek engine enhancement (SEO) as a subset of seek engine business seeks to advance the amount and above of visitors to a web website from accustomed seek results.

Now SEO industry is absolutely communicable the absorption of anybody on the web. Added and added humans are acquirements about SEO and creating companies which action Seek Placement services. 85% of all website cartage originates from the seek engines, with the majority advancing from a baddest few. If your aggregation has an online attendance but doesn\'t accept a top baronial on the above seek engines for your targeted phrases again you\'re accident money to your antagonism every individual day.

Besides that, your web website is an basal allotment of your business plan. It may be the aboriginal appearance your visitors accept of your business. You accordingly charge to amend and advance it consistently so your visitors will wish to revisit and accumulate accomplishing business with you. Now, growing amount of companies are acumen that their sites charge to be advised in accordance with the basal SEO guidelines declared by Google and added seek engine. Online bazaar is growing volcanically and if you are not acquainted about the abeyant of SEO services, again you are absolutely missing some of the important being in present bazaar scenario.

The casework provided by SEO are on page optimization, one way hotlink building, commodity submissions, agenda submission, agreeable writing, and columnist release. From these casework you can apprehend top seek engine rankings. seo casework mainly apply on college website traffic, added afterimage over competitors, greater cast recognition, lower cost/new customer, added sales and conversions, achievement feedback, and lower advance costs.

seo casework are amount able from added business casework in the continued run. They are complete and able-bodied in their capability and are actual abundant able in accepting you the after-effects you accept set. Unlike added acceptable types of advertisement, SEO can get you fast results. SEO baronial has added advantage than emails, banners, pay-per-click ads which are apparent abnormally on the ancillary or in a box.

But SEO involves abounding aspects of website architecture and content, it requires committed research, abstruse expertise, and above advice skills. It\'s no best acceptable to specify a account of keywords in your website\'s Meta tags. Abounding factors affect avant-garde seek engine relevance, and it is analytical to attending at aggregate the seek engines do: from website archetype to book allotment and website navigation.

SEO - How Engine Spiders Work

2009-07-30T14:27:00.000+01:00

A spin-Engine is in fact only a server based on the software application, which is shorter and the certificates on the search engine databases. They are as good as the robot. These applications were the spiders, because they Craw Web in search of Council, in search of the database engine.

In the approach to try and spin the engine the network of links to re-purchase and provide tips for your website. All efforts of the engine (like Google, Excite, Alta Vista, Lycos, etc.) has its own faith, as the spin information. This prototype is quiet in a special algorithm that helps you, your website stands in his Baron. Particularly troublesome universities additional efforts engines is that they continually learn more about the requirements for this algorithm as a web master additional universities ever, as the URL of the site positions. Apart from the engines to accept change in the way they think rank accept the advice and the ability to meet the needs of their database. The rank of the search engine on your site in the consent of his pleasant, and may also be included in the compounds, which also can be absorbed and in Abu hits thing that you get.

In one approach motor can rotate in one of several things, like your website. Some spiders artlessly to confirm whether the page after the index. Some basic principles of spinning the content of the page. Still others can undertake to analyze hyperlinks you are on a Web page and the assets also has the pages on your site. Spin May All dates in your pages or May, he several times.

One recent development is to be hoped your active collaboration of the computing machine 50 to 70 new characters regularly. This is because the beginning of the Alta Vista blandishment content. This absorbent SEO techniques to follow. The change in the rules relating to the modification of spiders.

Appearing Natural

2008-05-10T09:01:00.001+01:00

A recent theme in SEO is finding ways to appear natural. Search engines do not want the most optimized sites at the top of the search results. They want the best pages and best sites.

There are only so many things search engines can look at to determine the quality of a website. You can emulate many of them, but as search algorithms advance, it will continue to get more difficult. Inevitably, influencing people directly (instead of going after the algorithms) is going to have a higher ROI for many webmasters.

How do you create a natural linkage profile? Create something that lots of people link to without you needing to ask them. Build a real brand that will get people’s attention.

How do you write optimized content? Make the page title clear and then write content remarkable enough that people will want to reference it.

Common SEO Abuse Techniques

2008-05-09T08:57:00.000+01:00

There is no such thing as a perfectly optimized page. Search engines do not want to return the most optimized page, but the page that best satisfies the searcher’s goals.

If you have a page title and H1 header that are exactly the same, and all of your internal links and all of your inbound links from other sites pointing to that page use that same text, then that looks suspicious (like attempted ranking manipulation). As a result, the search engines may de-weight that or filter that out of the search results.

How do you minimize your risks and make your site more stable? It’s best to mix things up a bit and create something that markets itself. Or, try looking at things like a search engine engineer would.

There is a concept called poison words, where if you have things like link exchange, add URL, or link partners on a page, there stands a good chance a search engines may place less weight on that page or its outbound links. In the past, some common poison words were things like forum and guestbook. The more likely the content is to be of low quality or related to spam, the more likely search engines want to de-weight it.

Search engines may want to penalize the use of “spammy” sites using an H1 header, so instead people use an H2 header for the highest level header tag on the spammy sites. Maybe they look to de-weight site-wide links to the home page near the end of the page code using the exact same link text as the home page’s page title, so instead you link to the home page from earlier in the page code and/or use slightly different anchor text than your page title and most of your link profile.

Keep in mind that some of the search relevancy algorithms are genetic algorithms that train themselves to test the relevancy of new result sets, but humans still program them. Google wants to have a bias toward informational resources. Yahoo! will be more biased toward commerce. These biases can affect optimization, as well.

In addition, some guys like DaveN mention lots of subtle tips like the ones I just discussed. If you think like a search engineer, those techniques that are common in SEO and not so common on regular websites are the most likely to be de-weighted or penalized. Remember that optimizing content is about matching quality signs, but if you match too many too closely, it could send a negative signal.

When Algorithm Changes Occur

2008-05-09T08:54:00.000+01:00

Your rankings will improve. They will also get worse. Many people rush off to change things right away when the algorithms change. Sometimes the search engines roll in new algorithms aggressively, and then later roll them back. They cannot fight off new forms of spam and determine how aggressive to be with new algorithms unless they sometimes go too far with them.

If you are unsure of what just happened, then you may not want to start changing things until you figure it out. Sometimes when algorithms are rolled back or made less aggressive, many sites still do not rank well because their webmasters changed things that were helping them. Nobody is owed a good rank, and just because a ranking temporarily changes does not mean that a site has been penalized. It is far more likely that the ranking criteria shifted and the site may not match the new ranking criteria as well as it matched the old ranking criteria.

One of the greatest SEO techniques is knowing when to do nothing at all. I had one client with whom I shared profit, but for whom I did not do much work after the first few months. Why? After I built his site up, he had a strong market position. I could have kept building many links, but it would not help him reach much more of the market. It would have added nothing but cost and risk. If you are too aggressive, it adds to the risk profile without adding much on the reward side.

Tim Mayer, a well-known Yahoo! search engineer, once mentioned that it did not make sense to bring a knife to a gun fight (when referring to how to compete for terms like Viagra). The opposite also holds true -- if you are using a shotgun, and the competing sites are using slingshots, then you stand a greater chance of being penalized.

All SEO techniques are just a balance of risk versus reward, and while you want to rank at or near the top of the search results, you probably do not want to use techniques that are exceptionally aggressive as compared to the other top-ranking sites if you intend to build a site for long-term profits.

Link Building

2008-05-09T08:49:00.001+01:00

In the area of link building, there are many important factors to remember. After all, link building is the single most important part of achieving a high-ranking website in modern search engines. As such, there are many things that can significantly impact the growth and spread of links to your site:

• Make sure your site has something that other webmasters in your niche would be interested in linking to.

• Create content that people will be willing to link to, even if it is not directly easy to monetize. These linkworthy pages will lift the authority and rankings of all pages on your site.

• Create something that legitimate webmasters interested in your topic would be interested in linking to.

• When possible, try to get your keywords in many of the links pointing to your pages.

• Register with, participate in, or trade links with topical hubs and related sites. Be in the discussion or at least be near the discussion.

• Look for places from which you can get high-quality free links (like local libraries or chambers of commerce).

• If you have some good internal content, try to get direct links to your inner pages.

• Produce articles and get them syndicated to more authoritative sites.

• Start an interesting and unique blog and write about your topics, products, news, and other sites in your community.

• Comment on other sites with useful relevant and valuable comments.

• Participate in forums to learn about what your potential consumers think is important. What questions do they frequently have? How do you solve those problems?

• Issue press releases with links to your site.

• Leave glowing testimonials for people and products you really like. Oftentimes when the product owner or person posts the testimonials, they will include a link back to your site.

• Sponsor charities, blogs, or websites related to your site.

• Consider renting links if you are in an extremely competitive industry. Adult, gaming, credit, and pharmacy categories will likely require link rentals and/or building topical link networks.

• Mix your link text up. Adding words like buy or store to the keywords in your some of your link text can make it look like more natural linkage data and help you rank well for many targeted secondary phrases.

• Survey your vertical and related verticals. What ideas/tools/articles have become industry standard tools or well-cited information? What ideas are missing from the current market space that could also fill that niche?

• If you have a large site, make sure you create legitimate reasons for people to want to reference more than just your home page.

• If you are looking to hire an SEO, you may want to look at http://www.honestseo.com or feel free to ask me to recommend you to someone.

• Brett Tabke (owner of WebmasterWorld) wrote a quick guide worth looking at before building your site: http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/2010.htm

Registering With Directories

2008-05-08T08:46:00.001+01:00

Register your site with the major directories and second-tier general directories. Try to register with about a half-dozen to a dozen of the better general directories if you are targeting Google. If you are targeting the other engines first and can wait on Google, you may want to register with about twenty to fifty general directories.

Register with at least a couple local or niche-specific directories. Niche-specific directories are findable via search engines and some are listed at http://www.isedb.com, but you should check to ensure they provide static links before spending money registering your sites, although directories that rank well may deliver quality traffic even if they do not provide direct links.

Search for things like “<my keywords> + <add URL>” to find other niche directories.

Oftentimes I do not mind spending hundreds of dollars getting links from different sites (or directories) across many different IP ranges. Many of the second-tier directories charge a one-time fee for listing, and some of them allow you to add your sites free if you become an editor.

In my directory of directories, I have 50-100 general directories listed in the general directory categories. Most top ranking sites in mildly competitive fields do not have text links from fifty different sites pointing to them, so if you can afford it, doing this offers a huge advantage to you for your Yahoo! and MSN rankings, but you need to choose directories carefully when considering how TrustRank (explained in the Google section of this e-book) may effect Google.

If you are in more competitive fields and rent some powerful links, these listings in various directories can help stabilize your rankings when search engine algorithms shift.

Some directories I highly recommend are Yahoo!, DMOZ, Business.com, JoeAnt, Best of the Web, and Gimpsy.

Site Optimization

2008-05-08T08:42:00.001+01:00

Your home page is just the starting point for what will probably be a very multi-layered and multifaceted website. As such, it is important to look at every page your site contains to ensure a cohesive, streamlined design that works well with search engines as well as customers. Keep the following in mind:

• Use text-based navigation.

• If you use graphic navigation, use descriptive alt text for your image links, and link to your primary pages from every page of your site using footer text links.

• Use descriptive/keyword-rich breadcrumb navigation to help search engines understand the structure of your site. e.g., home page link(use keywords in it) > level 1 > level 2 > page I am on

• Use a site map to help search engines spider through your site.

• Whenever possible, use descriptive text when linking between pages of your site.

• Link to other resources that improve your user’s experience. If you reference research and trusted sources within your content, readers will think of your content as information, rather than simply being sales-oriented.

• Deep link to related articles and content from within the active content section of your page copy.

• If you want your site to convert, assume many site visitors will ignore the global navigation. Actively guide people toward conversion from within the active content area of your website. This website, http://www.AndyHagans.com, does an excellent job of this.

• Use CSS to improve the look and feel of your pages. Put it in an external file.

Home Page Optimization

2008-05-07T08:41:00.000+01:00

In addition to page optimization for search engines, it is also important to optimize your site's home page for customers in order to make sure it functions efficiently.

• Make sure your home page builds credibility and directs consumers to the most important parts of your site.

• Target your most competitive keyword phrase with the home page or with a page that is directly linked to from the home page.

• Link to the major theme pages from your home page.

• Link to your home page from every page of your site. Include your site name and/or the home page’s primary keyword phrase in the text links pointing to it.

• If you think your site is being filtered out of the search results for being too focused on a word or phrase, you may want to make the link to your home page just say something like “home”.

Page Optimization

2008-05-07T08:35:00.001+01:00

Page optimization is the process of making sure that your website functions in the most effective way possible in relation to search engines. The following are steps you can take to optimize your page:

• Use your keywords in your page title. Place the most important keyword phrase close to the beginning of the page title. Do not put your site title on every page of your site unless you are really trying to brand that name. In that scenario, it still is usually best to place the site name at the end of the page titles.

• Shorter site titles are usually better than really long ones.

• Sometimes I overlap related keyword phrases in the page title. Overlapping keyword phrases in the page title can help you pick up multiple search phrases. For example, professional search engine marketing services helps me obtain good rankings for (1) search engine marketing, (2) professional search engine marketing, (3) search engine marketing services, and (4) professional search engine marketing services.

• Meta tags are not extremely important, but they can help some. The meta description should be a sentence to a paragraph describing the page contents. The meta description tag can be seen in some search results, so you want to write it for human eyes and for it be compelling.
• The meta keywords tag is probably not worth the time to make, but if you do make one, it should contain your primary keyword and its common misspellings and synonyms. Each keyword phrase in the keywords tag should be comma separated.

• Use a single, descriptive H1 header on your page containing the keyword phrases similar to those you targeted in the page title. This helps reinforce the page title.

• Use descriptive subheaders (H2 or H3) before every paragraph or every few paragraphs. This improves usability and helps define what the page is about to search engines without making the page look like it was written for a search engine.

• Use bulleted lists and bolding to break up content and make it easier to read.

• Write your content for human consumption. If you write exclusively for search engines, the pages will read poorly and nobody will want to look at them.

Keyword Selection

2008-05-07T08:33:00.002+01:00

Keywords are what help your site get recognized by Internet search engines, and as a result, help would-be customers find your Internet presence. There are many strategies that can be employed to ensure the likelihood of your website coming up in keyword searches:

• Use a keyword tool to help you find the most targeted keywords for your site. The tool at http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword/ is free and cross-references just about every useful keyword research tool on the market.

• Pick themes or keyword baskets around which you can optimize the various sections of your site.

• Targeting keyword phrases is a much better idea than trying to target individual words. Keyword phrases tend to be easier to rank well for AND they typically convert far better than individual words.

• Target different keyword phrases on each page.

• Target no more than one or two primary and two or three secondary keyword phrases per page.

• If you generate hundreds (or even thousands) of pages of content, make sure they read well and have unique content. Over time, if people cite your content, your page will start to rank for many different terms as long as it is unique and targeted around a theme.

Domain Registration & Hosting

2008-05-06T08:30:00.000+01:00

Once you have selected a domain name, you must make sure that it is available, and then register it. After your domain name has been registered, you must find a reliable host for your website.

• Register your domain with an ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) accredited registrar. I use GoDaddy.

• Register as a .com if possible, if you have a global market. If you cannot get a .com, but a great .net or .org is still available, it might be worth it to register one of those instead of registering a longer (and less memorable) .com domain.

• If you are targeting a specific country or language, register a domain name in that country’s top-level domain designation (e.g., buy a co.uk website for a U.K.-targeted site). Also buy the .com version of your domain name and point it at your country-specific location.

• Oftentimes certain directories and search engines will either be biased toward local sites will or only let local sites in the index. “Local” may mean ending with a local domain and/or being hosted on a server in that country.

• Host your site with a reliable host. I recommend DreamHost or Pair.com.

• For dynamic sites, make sure your host supports the technology you will be using (such as ASP or PHP) before spending money.

Picking a Domain Name

2008-05-06T08:28:00.000+01:00

Finding the right domain name can be a tricky business, and indeed, can mean the difference between success and failure in the online marketplace. As such, it is important to consider the following before choosing a domain name:

• FOR NEW SITES: Depending on your branding angle, pick a domain name that is either highly brandable (meaning that it can be easily and positively associated with your product or service) or has your primary keywords in it. Use a short and memorable domain name. It is fine if it does not have your keywords in it if it is memorable. For serious, long-term websites, a memorable domain name will be one of the key ingredients to success.

• If you are going to be working in competitive fields, or if you will have large sites, you may want to use a different domain for each different language you are targeting.

Examples of domain names I own: BlackHatSEO.com, SEOBook.com, FattyWeightLoss.com, and Threadwatch.org

Picking a Product

2008-05-06T08:16:00.001+01:00

You may read this title and think that you have already accomplished this step, and that your product (or your vision for your product) is already refined, wrapped, and ready for purchase. However, there are many key questions that should be considered before bringing your wares or service to customers:

• Are you interested in the product you are trying to sell? If not, why not choose a different product?
The Internet makes marketing anything a possibility. You are far more likely to succeed if you are interested in what you are trying to sell. Also, it is far easier to sell people what they want than to get them to want your product. Create something the market wants.

• Is the marketplace for your product oversaturated?
Examples: Posters, credit cards, prescription drugs, hosting, generic site design, and ink refills are all oversaturated markets. Breaking into these markets can be exceptionally difficult, so think carefully about what would make your product different and needed.

• Is the product something people would want to order over the web?

• Is there something you can do to make yourself different than everyone else on the market? (Please note: “cheaper” usually is not a legitimate branding/business model for most websites in a hyper-competitive market.)
Example: No other e-book covering SEO was supported by a blog that keeps up with the SEO industry every day (at least, not when I first wrote this one).

Another example: In 2002, I created a SEO “worst practices” directory. To this day, nobody else has made a site like it. It earned me thousands in the first year with a marketing budget well under $100.
In the end, ask yourself -- Would people want to link to your site without you asking them to? If not, what creative or original ideas can you add to your site to make people want to link to it?

Use the Image Viewer Interface

2008-03-30T10:19:00.002+01:00

When you do a normal Google search and then click a search result, you're sent to a web page. That's not how Google Image Search works. Instead, you're sent to an image viewer that gives you more information about the image and takes some actions on the image, as this task shows.

1. Click a Search Result

When you see an image that you want more information about or that you want to use, click the image thumbnail on the search results page.

2. Get Information About the Image

At the top of the page that appears, you find information about the image. You see a thumbnail of the image, the size of the image in pixels and kilobytes, and the URL of the web page on which the image is found. There also might be copyright information about the image. (For more information about images and copyright, see About Images and Copyright Law.

3. View the Image on Its Original Page

The bottom half of the page shows the image on the page on which it was found by Google. If you want more information about the image, it's a good idea to read through the page.

4. See the Full-Size Image

Click the See full-size image link located at the top of the image page to launch the image in its original size in a browser window.

5. Save the Image to Disk

To save the image to your computer's hard disk, right-click the image on its source web page or in the full-size browser window. From the context menu that appears, select Save Picture As. Then select the folder to which you want to save the picture and click Save to save it.

Browse Through Image Search Results

2007-01-16T07:36:00.002Z

When you do a search on Google Image Search, the search results are not the same as they are when you do a normal Google search. This task shows you how to browse through the results.

1. Go to Google Image Search
Get to the Google Image Search by going to http://images.google.com or by starting at the Google home page (www.google.com) and clicking the Images link just above the search box.

2. Type Your Search Terms
Google Image Search works like the normal Google search site, so type your search term or terms and press Enter or click Search Images.

3. Browse the Results
The search results page looks different from the normal Google results. You see thumbnails of pictures that match your search. Beneath each picture is information about the image, including the filename; the resolution of the image in pixels; the size of the image in kilobytes; and the site on which the image is found.

4. Sort Images by Size
After you've done your search, you can choose to show only those images of a certain sizesmall, medium, or large. From the Images Showing drop-down list box, select Large Images, Medium Images, or Small Images to specify which size images to display. Note that the image size in this context refers not to the size of the image in kilobytes, but to its resolution size.

5. Search Within Your Results
If you get too many search results, you can fine-tune your search by searching within your results. Scroll to the bottom of the results screen, and click the Search within results link located underneath the search box. A new page appears. Type your new search term (don't retype your original term), and you search within the original results.

6. Browse to the Next Page
As you can with any Google search results page, you can browse to the next page of results by clicking the Next button, located in the navigation area at the very bottom of the results page. Go to a specific page of results by clicking the page number you want to view (click the 1 to return to the first page of results), or click the Back button to go backward through multiple pages of results.

About Finding Images with Image Search

2007-01-04T02:48:00.001Z

Finding pictures with Google Image Search is much like finding anything on Google. As you can see in the nearby figure, the search interface is the same bare-bones search you've come to know and love for basic Google.

You perform a basic search for images in the same way you do a basic search on Google. Type your search terms (including any advanced search operators), and Google does its searching magic, combing through hundreds of millions of images to find one that matches that for which you're looking.

But some significant differences exist between using Google Image Search and using Google, and they have to do with the nature of images themselves.

In a normal Google search, Google looks through text it has indexed from hundreds of millions of web pages. Using a complicated series of rules, it decides which pages best match your search terms.

With images, though, things are different. An image is not made up of text; it contains no words. As smart a company as Google is, its search engine cannot examine a picture and know what it's a picture of. To Google, a picture of a zeppelin is no different than a painting by the Renaissance artist Caravaggio or a photograph of Hawaii. Basically, to Google, all three of these images are just bunches of bits.

So how can Google know what those pictures are if it can't decipher them? By using detective work that even Sherlock Holmes would envy. For a start, it looks at the image's filename. If the filename is Caravaggio.jpg, for example, there's a good chance that the image contained in the file is either a portrait of Caravaggio or a painting by Caravaggio.

Google also looks at the text near the image on a web page as well as at the text on the entire web page. Very frequently, web pages include a caption directly above, beneath, or next to an image. Google can associate that caption information with the image. In addition, other text on the web page itself provides more information about the image, and Google extracts that information as well. As an example, look at the nearby figure. The page is a biography of the painter Caravaggio and includes images of his paintings, with the names of the images and more information next to each painting.

So keep in mind when you're doing your Google Image Search that you're actually searching for information Google can find about each image. As you'll see in Perform an Advanced Image Search, this knowledge can help you better narrow your search.

About Power Searching Strategies

2007-01-02T08:20:00.001Z

Knowing how to do a search, how to do an advanced search, and how to use search operators goes a long way toward effective Google searching. But even knowing all that won't go all the way.

You need to combine all that technical information you acquired in the first tasks in this chapter with power searching strategiestechniques for crafting searches that give you results as close to possible to that for which you're searching.

Everyone has his own strategies for better searching, and so it's always a good idea to ask others for their ideas. But here are a few hints that should help you with your Google searches:

* Be specific The Web is an enormous place, containing literally billions of pages. Almost any search you do brings back far too much information. So make sure your search is as specific as possible. If you're looking for a history of the making of the album Blonde on Blonde by Bob Dylan, don't just search for "Blonde on Blonde". Try history "Blonde on Blonde" and you'll get better results.
* Be brief More is not always better when it comes to searching. Be as precise as possible with the terms you search for, and you'll get the best possible results. A short, precise search is much more effective than a rambling, imprecise one. So the search term history of castrati is better than history of castrati who were special boy child singers starting in 1600.
* Vary the order of search terms When you do a search, Google looks not only at the terms themselves, but at the order in which you type them. Google applies more weight to the first terms than it does to later terms in the search string. So use more important terms first. However, it's also worth trying to do a search that uses the same search terms, but with the order varied; rearranging your terms sometimes returns exactly the results you want.

About Google Search Operators

2006-12-29T07:06:00.001Z

Google enables you to search using search operators, special words and symbols that make it easy to get search results that match as closely as possible the information for which you're looking. You can combine search operators with search terms to form a query, like this:

• AND
You don't need to use this operator because Google adds it by default to searches in which you use multiple terms. It returns results that contain all the terms in the search. So a search for cow collagen (with the implied operator ANDcow AND collagen) returns only those pages in which both cow and collagen appear.

• OR
When you use this operator, Google returns pages on which any of the words are found. So a search for cow OR collagen returns pages in which the word cow appears and pages on which the word collagen appears. An OR search returns many more results than an AND search.

• +
The plus sign is called the inclusion operator and serves an interesting purposeit tells Google to use stop words in a search that it normally ignores. If you wanted to make sure that Google included the word to in a search (Google typically ignores this word when searching), put it in the search as + to. As with the inclusion operator, the plus sign must go next to the word (or next to the quotes surrounding a search phrase) you want to include; there can be no spaces between them.

• *
The asterisk is called a wildcard. For those who are familiar with searches on a computer, Google uses the asterisk in a search similarly to a computer wildcard search. The asterisk must be used in a quoted phrase, like this: "I * New York". When you use this character, Google returns pages that have any words in place of the * on them. A search for "I * New York" would return pages with I Love New York, I Hate New York, and so on.

• ~
The tilde is called the fuzzy operator or synonym operator. When you use this operator, Google searches for pages that contain the specified term as well as synonyms for the term. For example, a search for ~generous would return pages on which the word generous appears, as well those pages that contain synonyms of generous, such as munificent and charitable.

Perform an Advanced Google Search

2006-12-26T22:55:00.001Z

If you're doing a search that returns too many results and you want to zoom in on your search results as quickly as possible, the best way to do it is with an advanced search, as you'll learn to do in this task. An advanced search provides many more controls over what results are returned. For example, you can limit the search results to a specific language (instead of changing the options in the Preferences dialog box, as explained in Perform a Basic Google Search, which affects all searches, you can limit just the current search to a specific language), specify words you do not want returned in the search results, and so on.

* Go to the Advanced Search Page
From Google's main search page, click the Advanced Search link to the right of the main search text box at the top of the page. You are sent to the Google Advanced Search page.

* Type Search Terms
The top part of the page, highlighted in blue, enables you to type search terms and to combine them in unique ways. Keep in mind that you can combine several of these options. For example, you can search for pages that have the exact phrase rhubarb patch but that do not have the word Barber on them. Here are your choices:
• The with all of the words option means that Google returns results in which pages contain all your search terms. If a page is missing just one of the terms, it won't be included in the search results.
• The with the exact phrase option means that Google returns results in which pages contain the exact phraseit's the same as putting quotation marks around the words in your search phrase.
• The with at least one of the words option means that Google returns pages that contain any of your search terms. This is the default Google search method.
• The without the words option is meant to be used in combination with one of the previous search options as a way to narrow a search. When you use this option, Google excludes any pages that contain the search terms you type on this line.

* Choose Language, File Format, and Date
The next set of options on the Advanced Search page allows you to narrow your search even further:
• The Language option enables you to narrow the results returned to pages that are primarily written in a single language. Click the drop-down box to make your choice of language. There are dozens of languages from which you can choose. The default search language is any language.
• The File Format option enables you to search for files, rather than web pages. So if you know that a particular piece of information is in a specific file format, use the File Format option to make it easier to find the file. You can search for files in half a dozen formats: Adobe Acrobat (.pdf), Adobe Postscript (.ps), Microsoft Word (.doc), Microsoft Excel (.xls), Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt), and Rich Text Format (.rtf). You can also tell Google to have your results exclude the selected file formats by choosing Don't from the drop-down list just to the right of File Format. (When you find a .pdf file, for example, Google gives you the option of viewing the content in HTML rather than as a .pdf file.)
• The Date option enables you to specify web pages that have been updated in a specific time period: in the past three months, the past six months, or the past year. You can also leave this option set to the Google default of anytime. Make your choice from the drop-down list.

* Choose Domain, Usage Rights, and SafeSearch
The next set of choices on the Advanced Search page allow you to narrow your search in these ways:
• The Domain option enables you to search through only a specific domain or domains, such as http://www.cnn.com/. To search multiple domains, separate the URLs by commas. You can also exclude domains from your search by selecting Don't from the drop-down box to the right of Domain. (A domain is a main location such as http://www.weather.com/ or http://www.cmp.com/.)
• The Usage Rights option enables you to search through pages or material that is boundor not boundby specific usage rights (that is, by the way in which the information can be used). The default is not filtered by license, which means that Google searches for any material. From the drop-down list, you can make a wide range of choices, from free to use or share, up to free to use, share or modify, even commercially.
• The SafeSearch option enables you to filter searches so they do not contain sexually explicit or inappropriate material.

* Use Page-Specific Search Options
The Page-Specific Search section of the Advanced Search page enables you to do two types of searches:
• Similar enables you to find pages similar to a page you've already found. For example, let's say you've found a page about the Hindenburg disaster, you want to find other pages about the disaster, and you've found that the site www.otr.com/hindenburg.html gave you a great deal of information about the topic. Type that page's URL here and click the related Search button to get similar pages. This option functions the same as if you clicked the Similar pages link on a search results page.
• Links enables you to find pages that link to a specific page. For example, you could type the URL www.otr.com/hindenburg.html and click the related Search button to see all the pages that link to the specified URL. This is a very useful tool if you run a website and you notice a sudden surge in traffic; you can find out where that traffic came from by typing the URL for your home page in the Links box.

* Do Topic-Specific Searches
The final section of the Advanced Search page enables you to search through topic-specific pages (such as pages related to Microsoft or Apple Macintosh) or through scholarly pages. When you click any of the topic-specific searches, you are sent to a new Google page (Google determines which page has the most relevant information). Type your search term on that page, and you'll do a topic-specific search.

Refine Your Search

2006-12-25T08:44:00.003Z

For many purposes, a straightforward search as shown in the previous task finds you the information for which you're looking. But there are also many occasions in which a simple search isn't good enough. In that case, you need to refine your search, as you learn to do in this task.

1. Use Multiple Search Terms
The single best way to narrow your results so you find exactly what you want is to use multiple search terms. For example, if you're looking for information about the contemporary classical music composer John Adams, using John Adams as your search terms does not work very wellyou mainly get pages relating to the U.S. president John Adams. If you instead type John Adams Opera, you get the results you want.

2. Use Quotation Marks
When you use multiple search terms, Google does not look at them as a phrase. Instead, it thinks you are looking for pages that contain each of the search terms individually. If you typed the terms Rhubarb Patch, Google would return pages that contained the word rhubarb as well as pages that contained the word patch. You would get far more results than you wanted. If you type "rhubarb patch" in quotation marks, you would instead get only those pages that contained the phrase rhubarb patch.

3. Combine Quotation Marks and Search Terms
Suppose that you were looking for a book written in the early 1950s about the Brooklyn Dodgers, titled The Rhubarb Patch. The best way to find web pages about this book would be to combine the phrase "Rhubarb Patch" and the term Dodgers. (Google ignores capitalization, so it doesn't matter if you use uppercase characters or lowercase characters in your searches.)

4. Search Within a Search
Often the best way to narrow your search is to search within the results you've received from a previous search. To do that, start by performing a basic search. At the bottom of the search results page, beneath the results navigation area and the search text box located there, click the Search within results link. A new, blank search form appears. Type your additional search term or terms the way you normally would in Google and click the Search within results button or press Enter. Google uses the new search terms to narrow your search by searching only through the first set of search

Browse Through Search Results

2006-12-23T23:42:00.001Z

After you've typed your search term into the Google search box and received your search results, it's time to get to the good stuffgoing through the actual results, the links to web pages that hopefully discuss the topic in which you're interested, as you'll learn how to do in this task.

1. Scroll Through the Results
Use the scrollbar on the right side of the page to scroll through the results. Read the description of each page as you scroll.

2. Visit a Page
When you find a page whose title or description interests you, click its link. You are sent to the actual page on the Web.

3. Return to Google
When you're done viewing a web page, click your browser's Back button as many times as you need to get back to your Google results page. As a shortcut, you can click the down arrow next to the Back button to see the most recent pages you've visited. Select the Google Search page to return to your results.
If you elected to open the search results in a new window, you must juggle the windows (that is, switch back to the results window, whether or not you close the viewing window).

4. View Similar Pages
A good way to zero in on search results is to find a page that is relevant to your search, and then find pages most similar to that page. So when you find a page with useful information, click the Similar pages link next to it; you should get a list of pages that will help narrow down your search. In the example, I clicked the Similar pages link next to the JOHN LENNON DREAMSITE: HOMEPAGE search result and was shown links to several more pages that related to my search term.

5. Go to More Search Results
At the bottom of the search results page is the navigation area for your search results. Click Next to get to the next page of results. Click Back to get to the previous page. You can also jump ahead several pages in the results (or go to a specific results page you might remember) by clicking a page number. If you've looked through many pages of search results, you can return to the first page of the results by clicking 1.

About Interpreting Google Results

2006-12-22T08:44:00.001Z

A Google search results page is a masterpiece of packing a great deal of information into a compact amount of space. But at first glance, it can be difficult to understand all that information and what it all means. Taking a moment or two to examine a typical page helps you get more out of Google.

On the typical search results page shown here, a search was done for john lennon. At the very top of the page is the total number of results Google found, the number of results on the current page, and the amount of time it took to do the search.

Just beneath that information are links for News results. These links all lead to recent news stories about the search term, john lennon. In the example, there are two recent news stories, one from The Sunday Herald and one from the BBC News. Click any link to go to the news story, or click the main link heading, News results for john lennon, to go to a full Google News page of search results. (For more information about using Google News, see Get the News with Google News.

On the right side of the page is a list of sponsored links. These links have all been paid for, and are essentially advertising. But don't ignore them because of that; they often contain services, information, or items for which you're looking. In some instances, a sponsored link appears at the very top of the search results, if an advertiser has paid enough money for that positioning.

Directly below the News results are the heart of the pagethe Google search results. Each result contains a great deal of information:

* The title of the page, which is also the link to the page.

* A short description of the page, just underneath the title.

* The actual URL of the page, underneath the description.

* The size of the page, in kilobytes, to the right of the URL.

* The date the page was last updated, to the right of the URL. (This information is not always available and included.)

* A link to a cached version of the page, to the right of the date. The cached version of the page is a version of the page stored on Google's servers. This link can be useful if the page itself is not currently available, or if it has been moved or changed. In these circumstances, you can click the Cached link to see the version of the page that Google indexed.

* A Similar pages link that displays a list of pages similar to the one listed; this link is located to the right of the Cached link. For example, if you did a search on John Lennon, and you came to a page that was from a biographical website with his biography, a page "similar" to that one would be the page of another biographical website.

* A Remove result link you can click if the result is off-target and you no longer want to see it on the results page.

Perform a Basic Google Search

2006-12-21T05:47:00.001Z

Here's where it all beginsdoing a basic Google search. Master this simple task, and you'll go a long way towards mastering Google.

1. Go to Google
To do anything, you need to head to the mother shiphttp://www.google.com/. Google works well with any browser, so it doesn't matter which one you use.

2. Set Your Preferences
If you're going to be a Google regular (and if you're reading this book, it means you are), you should set your preferences for how you want Google to perform searches. Click the Preferences link to the right of the main Google search box, and the Google Preferences page appears.

3. Choose the Language for Google Messages
From the Interface Language drop-down box, choose the language in which you want Google to display tips and messages from Google. (The language you choose affects messages such as the notice at the top of the page that tells you how many results you have and how long it took to get those results.) The choice you make here won't affect the language of the search results; it only affects the messages you get from Google.

4. Choose the Languages for Search Results
In the Search Language section, choose the languages whose pages you want to search. If you want to search all pages, regardless of the language in which they are written, choose the Search for pages written in any language (Recommended) option. You can limit your search to pages in only certain languages by choosing the Search only for pages written in these language(s) option and then enabling the check boxes next to those languages to which you want your search limited.

5. Specify SafeSearch Filter Option
In the SafeSearch Filtering section, choose what level of SafeSearch to use. SafeSearch blocks web pages that contain explicit sexual content. You can choose one of the following levels:

• Strict filtering filters explicit text and explicit images.

• Moderate filtering filters only explicit images (this is Google's default).

• No filtering does not filter search results.

6. Specify Results Per Page
From the Number of Results drop-down box, choose how many search results to display per page. If you display 10 results at a time (the default), your search results are returned the quickest. But if you use a high resolution on your monitor, showing only 10 results per page means wasted screen space, and it takes longer to move from page to page. Experiment to find the best number of results per page based on how you use Google.

Finally, decide whether you want the search results returned in the same window in which you do a search or in a new window. Check the box next to Open search results in a new browser window if you want the results to open in a new window. Opening your search results in a new window leaves your search page intact, but requires you to juggle windows; opening your search results in the same window requires less juggling, but means that you have to keep clicking the Back button to get to your search results after you visit a page.

After you've made all your choices on the Preferences window, click the Save Preferences button. You are sent back to Google's main page.

7. Do a Search
To do a search, simply type your search term or terms into the search box and press Enter or click the Search button.

A page of search results is delivered to you. Browse through the results, and click the title of the web page you want to visit. (For more details about search results, see About Interpreting Google Results. For more about browsing through search results, see Browse Through Search Results.)

8. Use I'm Feeling Lucky
Google does a very good job of taking search results and determining the most relevant pages. If you find yourself trusting Google's search results, click the I'm Feeling Lucky button after you type in your search term. Instead of showing you a page of search results, you are sent directly to the page Google thinks is most relevant to your search terms.

If the page Google's I'm Feeling Lucky feature opened for you isn't what you had hoped for, or if you want to see other results for your search term, return to the main Google search screen by clicking your browser's Back button. The Google search box retains the search term you typed; click the Search button to launch a traditional search.

A Quick Tour of Google

2006-12-20T06:54:00.001Z

Google is far more than a search siteit has grown to be a sizable collection of services and tools, and the collection is getting larger all the time. No longer is Google a single search site; instead, it's a conglomeration of multiple sites. And no longer can you even call it Web-based because Google now includes software that you download and run on your PC.

This book often refers to tools and services. Although there is a lot of gray area in the definitions of these two terms, generally a service is a website run by Google. So, for example, the bargain-finding site Froogle (http://www.froogle.com/) is a service because it's a Google-run website; you have to visit it on the Web to use it. Google's image-management software Picasa (http://www.picasa.com/), on the other hand, is software that you download to your PC, and so it considered a tool.

So where are the gray areas? Google Earth is an example of something you could consider both a tool and a service: You have to download it and run it on your PC, but you also have to be connected to the Internet to use it because it gets all its information from Google online. The same holds true for the Google Toolbar, which you download and use on your PC, but also use to search Google.

This book covers all of the major tools and servicesor at least those that were available during the writing of the book. Google introduces new tools and services all the timeand changes or updates its existing onesso what you see when you head to Google might be slightly different from what you read in this book.

Because of that, before reading the rest of the book, it's a good idea to take a quick tour of Google so you can find the newest tools and services on your own.

The nearby figure shows Google's familiar main page. To do a search, type your search terms in the search box. But look beyond the familiar search box. Across the top-right side of the page is a series of links. The links show that I've already signed into Google because the links include Personalized Home, Search History,My Account, and Sign Out. If I hadn't been logged in, only two links would be there: Sign In and Personalized Home. (And when I clicked the Personalized Home link, I'd first have to sign in before I could get to my Personalized Home page.)

Now look at the links just above the search box. These links lead to several of Google's main services and tools. These links might change over time, but at the time this book was written, they linked to Google Image Search (Images); Google Groups (Groups); Google News (News); Froogle (Froogle); Google Local, which used to be called Google Maps (Local); and Google Desktop (Desktop). There's also a more link, which is covered in some more detail. In addition to these links, to the right of the search box are links to Advanced Search (for doing an advanced search), Preferences (which enables you to change your Google preferences), and Language Tools (which enables you to search through pages written in specific languages, and also includes language-translation tools).

Google prides itself on its barebones interface, so it's unlikely that you'll see many more links than what you see here on the front page. But this minimalist interface leads to a conundrum: As you'll see in this book, there are many more Google tools and services than there are links on Google's front page. In fact, this book doesn't cover all the tools and services that Google has because there are too many. So how do you find out about a tool or service, or even discover which ones exist?

That's where the more link comes in. Click it, and you'll see the More, more, more page with the current, comprehensive list of all Google's tools and services. So to get to any of these available features, head to the More, more, more page. For a description of the main tools and services here, see this book's Appendix.

A few links of note are on the page. The web search features link is a great place to go if you want to use Google's many specialized searches, such as for package tracking, stock quotes, music, and more. And the Labs link is the place to go if you want to see what new features Google is cooking up in its labs. New Google tools and services start here. Some experiments don't see the light of day, while others go on to fame and glory.

Google and Your Privacy

2006-12-18T19:15:00.001Z

If people fear one thing about Google, it's that Google might invade their privacy in some way. That's a natural fear. As Google creates more and more services, it can gather an increasing amount of information about you. And there are also worries that Google tracks all of your searches, and it could then easily create a personal profile of you and sell the results to the highest bidder.

If you want the whole story of Google's privacy policy, head to the Google Privacy Center at www.google.com/privacy.html. It spells out in a good deal of detail what information Google finds out about you and what it does with that information.

But here, in a nutshell, is the scoop: When you create a Google account, you need to enter basic informationyour email address and password. Google doesn't share that information with any other website.

When someone visits a Google site or does a search using Google, Google servers record information about that visit, including the IP address of the visitor, the URLs, and the date and time of the request.

Google doesn't use that information to build a profile of you or track the searches you do; this information stays on Google's servers. By itself, that information doesn't identify you because Google, by itself, can't match an IP address to an individual. Law enforcement officials, however, can subpoena that information, and they can use it to identify you and the searches you do. They can subpoena your ISP and find out the subscriber name of the person with the IP address at a given time. So based on Google logs and information provided by your ISP, law enforcement officials can identify you and what you do on Google. Google complies with subpoenas.

Google also uses cookies, which are small bits of data placed on your computer that Google uses to recognize you when you log in. Cookies can store your personal preferences and other information. For example, Google uses a cookie to recognize that you have a Google account, so you don't have to log in every time to use some Google services.

In addition, Google shares what it calls "aggregated non-personal information" with other companies. This aggregated information is information that Google records but that isn't tied to an individual. So, for example, it might collect information about what pages are most popular among Google visitors. It aggregates information from many people's Web-surfing activities to get this information. But it doesn't track any single individual's use.

Sign Up and Manage Your Google Account

2006-12-17T16:18:00.001Z

Many of the Google tools or services that are websites, such as Gmail, require that you sign up for a Google account. After you have set up an account, you won't have to set it up again. You can use your single Google account as the centerpiece for all of Google's services.

To sign up, head to http://www.google.com/ and click Sign In. On the right side of the page that appears, click the Create an account now link. The page shown in the nearby figure appears.

Fill in an email address, enter a password and retype it, choose your location, type what you see as the weird-looking text in the Word Verification area, read the Terms of Service, and then click I accept. Create my account. That's all it takes; you're signed up and ready to go. When you need to use a Google service from now on, type your email address and password when prompted.

After you have an account, click the My Account link if you want to change your personal information, such as your password and name. From your account page, you also see a list of services for which you've signed up, and you can look for other services that you might want to try.

How to Download and Install Google Tools

2006-12-16T00:10:00.001Z

Many Google tools live on the Web and don't require you to install any special software. For example, Gmail, Froogle, and Blogger are all websites; to use them, you only need to point your browser to the right page.

But other tools are software programs that live on your PC, and they require that you download and install them before you can use them. (The Appendix, "Google Tools and Services," lists all the Google tools available to you.) All are installed in the same basic way, as outlined in the following steps. The Google Toolbar is used as an example of how to install software. (To see other downloadable tools, go to http://www.google.com/, click the More link at the top of the page, and then click the Google Downloads link on the left side of the page.)

• Go to the web page that hosts the software. When you get there, you see a link for downloading the software. The nearby figure shows the download page for the Google Toolbar, at http://toolbar.google.com/.

To download the Google Toolbar, click the Download Google Toolbar button. Pretty simple, huh?

• When you're prompted to save the file to disk, save it to a location. Remember where it's located.

• Double-click the file you downloaded. This action begins the installation process.

• Follow the installation instructions. These instructions vary greatly depending on the tool you're installing. Google is very good at giving instructions, so just follow what you find onscreen. But for all installations, you are asked to read a Terms and Conditions statement that outlines how you're allowed to use the software, as you can see in the nearby figure. It's written in a language that only lawyers could love. Read it, click Agree & Continue, and then follow the instructions onscreen.

Follow the instructions, read the Terms and Conditions, click Agree & Continue, and you are ready to go.

• At the end, click Finish. Restart your computer if you're told to do so. If you have to restart your computer, save all your open files and close all your open programs before you restart.

• Begin using the program. The nearby figure shows the Google Toolbar, installed.

You're locked and loadedtime to start using the Google Toolbar.

Why Use Google Tools ?

2006-12-15T05:19:00.001Z

Google, as mentioned previously, is more than a search engine. It provides a whole complex of sites and services that this book refers to as Google tools. These tools include things such as Gmail web service, Google Local (previously called Google Maps) search service, and Google Desktop for searching your computer.

Google is such a great search site, but why bother using Google tools? These tools are in many ways as remarkable as the Google search engine itself. Some of these tools are specialized versions of the search engine. For example, Froogle is the Google service for finding online bargains, and Google News is the service that delivers the latest news.

Other tools are extensions of Google. The Google Desktop extends Google's power to your PC, for example. And the Google Toolbar enables you to search Google no matter where you are on the Web.

Still other tools are great services for the Internet, such as Blogger, which enables you to create your own blogs; Gmail, its email service; or Google Talk, which enables you to chat with friends.

So if you're a Google user and haven't used any of its tools, this book will be your guide. And even if you have used its tools, you'll learn inside tips and secrets you didn't know before.

How Google Works

2006-12-14T05:14:00.001Z

Before you can understand how Google works, you probably should have a basic idea of how the Web works. When you visit a website, your browser is actually contacting a web server, a computer whose job is to deliver web pages. So when you click a link, your browser contacts the server and says, "Send me this page." The server takes the request and then sends the page to the browser, which displays it on your computer.

Key Term
Server A computer whose job is to perform a specialized task and deliver information. For example, a web server serves up websites, while an email server sends or receives email.

Okay, now that you have that basic background down, let's see how Google works.

In some very basic ways, Google works just like other search engines. Its basic operations are exactly the same. Like all search engines, Google is composed of three parts:

• A spider, also called a crawler This spider "crawls" the Web and finds content on web pages.

• An indexer This software takes all the information the spider gives it and creates a giant index that can be searched.

• A query engine This is what takes your search request, sends it to the indexer, and reports the results to you.

Key Term
Search engine A site that allows you to search the Web.

The Spider
The spider part of the Google search engine is an automated piece of software, also called a robot, that requests many thousands of pages from hundreds of websites simultaneously. When it finds links on pages, it follows those, and requests those as well.

The main Google spider is the GoogleBot, and it essentially crawls the Web once a month. Obviously, many sites change more than once a month, and so Google also has a crawler named FreshBot that crawls pages constantly.

The Indexer
The spiders send information about all the pages they find to the indexer part of the search engine. The indexer then does a pretty amazing jobit creates an index of every word on every page sent to it by the Google spider. Not only does it index every word and every URL, it also keeps a record of where every word is on every page.

Multiple copies of this index are kept on various Google servers. A single server wouldn't be able to keep up with all the search requests that are done.

The Query Engine
The only part of Google that you see is the query engine, and you only see part of that. It's the public face of Googlethat inviting search box at the top of Google pages.

When you type a search term, a Google web server sends your request to the indexer, which is housed on multiple indexing servers. The index servers look through the index and match what they find with your request. The index server then sends that information to document servers, which retrieve the correct information and format it so your browser can understand it. That formatted information is then sent to your browser.

And it all happens in a fraction of a second.

Google's Special Sauce
All this search engine logic is nothing new or revolutionary. This technology has been around for years, long before Google was a glimmer in its founders' eyes.

So why is Google so good at what it does?

Google uses better algorithms than any other search engine, and constantly refines them. Algorithms are sets of rules for performing a particular task. In Google's case, its algorithms are responsible for taking your search request and deciding which results to show you.

Key Term
Algorithm A set of rules for performing a task. In Google's case, algorithms are what determines which pages it says match your search requests.

Google's algorithms aren't particularly easy for mere mortals to understand, they're changing all the time, and they're not made public. Google uses more than 100 factors in its algorithms. For every search you do, it considers all of those factors and then calculates a score for every possible matching page. The page with the highest score is the first search result. The page with the second-highest score is the second search result, and so on.

Some of the metrics are fairly obviousthe search term needs to appear on a page, for example. Google's algorithms also factor in the number of times the term appears on a page, whether the term appears on a prominent part of a page, whether it appears in the title of a page, and many other factors.

None of this is particularly revolutionary, either. Many search engines do the same thing.

Google's real brilliance is in harnessing the collective intelligence of the Web to figure out what was truly relevant, instead of merely relying on these kinds of rules. Google also gives a great deal of weight to the number and kinds of pages that link to a web page. For example, Google figures that if a web page has many sites linking to it, the odds are very good that the page is an important one. And if important sites are linking to that page, it's even more important.

So Google calculates a page rank for each page, and that page rank becomes a very important part of the calculation as well. For example, you do a search, and Google finds your search term five times on a page to which hardly any pages link, but three times on a page (such as on the New York Times website) that has many sites linking to it. The more important page (the New York Times page) appears higher on the search results list, even though the search term appears on it less frequently.

Why Use Google ?

2006-12-13T07:21:00.001Z

Let's start off with the most basic question: Why bother to use Google? After all, there are other search sites out there.

It's true that there are other search sites, but none are as fast or effective as Google. Google doesn't necessarily scan more of the Web and index more websites than any other search engine. That's not really what's important. What it does better than any other site is deliver more accurate results. At times, the results seem so uncanny that you almost feel as if Google is reading your mind. (You'll learn more details about why Google is so accurate in the next section, "How Google Works.")

Google does something else exceptionally wellpresenting its search results and enabling you to quickly go to the page you want. Its search results pages load fastthey're not weighted down with unnecessary graphics and adsand they're easy to scan at a glance. Before the days of Google, this wasn't how search sites displayed their results. They were heavy with graphic-rich ads, they were slow to load, and you often had to wade through a great deal of advertising and unnecessary material until you got what you wanted.

With Google, your results are front and center.

There are reasons beyond accuracy and presentation to use Google as well. Google is constantly coming up with new tools to integrate searching and other Web services into your life. Google Desktop, for example, can search your hard disk in the same way that Google searches the Web, and you can even see both sets of results at the same timewhat's on your PC as well as what's on the Web. And there are plenty of other examples like this.

Start Here

2006-12-13T07:20:00.001Z

Was the Internet searchable before there was Google?

Sometimes it seems as if it wasn't. True, there were other search sites, such as www.altavista.com, www.askjeeves.com, and www.yahoo.com. But anyone who used those sites remembers that, although they made it easy to search for something, they made it very difficult to actually find anything.

Then Google came along, and suddenly the world changed. It applied its "special sauce" to searching, and the rest is history. Put simply, no search site on the planet comes near to Google in the speed and accuracy of its searches.

But if you think searching is all that Google is about, you're missing a lot. Google offers loads of services in addition to searching, such as maps, email, personalized home pages, free blogging, image-editing software…the list is long and getting longer every day.

This book will help you get the most out of using Google and all of its tools. Whether you want to blog, send and receive mail, take a virtual trip around the world, find a long-lost high school sweetheart, get a great deal online, or a lot more, you've come to the right place.

A Final Word…

2006-12-13T07:16:00.000Z

It is important to remember that effective search engine optimization is not about “tricking” the search engines into ranking your site favorably. Rather, SEO is a research process designed todeliver relevant information to the people seeking that information. The better you are able to optimize your page content to suit the needs of your target visitors, the greater success you willhave in not only attracting visitors to your site, but making sure that they are happy with what they find once they get there.

Measuring Success

2006-12-12T03:54:00.000Z

So, how do you assess the fruits of your labor when it comes to SEO? One of the primary waysto gauge performance is to treat the SEO process as an experiment with measurable before-and-after results.

Before you begin optimizing your pages, note the rank of the pages you are optimizing for your target terms in given search engines. If you know the rank of a given page before you begin SEO, you can then use that rank as a baseline to compare against your post-SEO rankings once the search engines have re-indexed your pages. Similarly, you can also measure your pre-optimization and post-optimization site statistics to see if there is a noticeable improvement. Other key indicators you can track include email inquiries, sales orders, incoming calls, newsletter subscriptions, membership applications or anything else that would be the logical result of increased public exposure.

SEO Barriers

2006-12-11T06:14:00.001Z

Just as there are steps you can take to improve your site’s search engine performance, there are also things that can hurt your chances at optimal rankings—below are some of the major culprits…

Avoid Frames
Sites utilizing frames typically separate the content of the page from the frameset, making it virtually impossible for search engines to find, let alone index and produce, the content of the framed pages in their results. If you have framed pages that you want to optimize for search engines, your best bet is to convert them to standard non-framed pages so that search engines can see what they have to offer for content display them properly.

Dynamic URLs
Dynamic URLs (e.g. containing “?” or “ID=”) have traditionally been difficult for many search engines to crawl and index properly, although they are getting better at it. To play it safe, monitor your dynamically generated pages to assess whether or not the major search enginesare finding them and, if necessary, create non-dynamic, search engine-friendly, versions of those pages on your site (e.g. yourorganization.com/about/default.asp).

Images vs. Text
Web developers will often utilize images to display text for page headings and navigation elements to enhance the design and/or control the layout of site pages, as opposed to utilizing HTML “true text” (in general, if you can highlight the text with your mouse, you will know it is true text). While there is nothing inherently wrong with this practice from a web development standpoint, it is important to know that search engines are not able to view text that is presented as images. Therefore, if words that you want search engines to find are embedded in site graphics, you should consider transitioning those images to actual text. Minimally, you’ll want to use ALT text to indicate the words that are displayed in site graphics not only so that search engines can read them, but also as a usability enhancement for visitors who may not beable to view the images.

Multimedia
Flash animation and video may look cool to site visitors, but search engines cannot read or index the content embedded within multimedia objects. That is not to say that you shouldn’t use multimedia where appropriate, but be aware that it is not search engine-friendly. InsertingFlash components as individual page elements (amongst HTML) to achieve the effects you seek is a much better option than building entire pages in Flash if you want search engines tofind the pages.

Linking Structure & Strategy: Let the Spiders Crawl

2006-12-08T05:54:00.001Z

One of the primary ways that search engines find site pages is by following the links from your home page to other inside site pages (this process is also known as “spidering” or “crawling”). In order to allow search engines to effectively crawl your site and locate your inside pages, it isimportant to ensure that your menu structure does not present search engines with any barriers that interfere with their ability to follow internal links. Complicated JavaScript or other dynamic menu features can sometimes get in the way of effective crawling. As far as search engines are concerned, when it comes to finding links to your site pages, the simpler the better.

One tool that you can use to “see what the search engines see” is to use a search engine spider simulator, such as the one linked to below. If you cannot see all of the links to your site pages after performing a simulated crawl, then you will need to take a look at your code to assess what may be getting in the way of effective search engine crawling.

Search Engine Spider Simulator:
www.searchengineworld.com/misc/tools.htm (NOTE: select “Sim Spider” from the Tools list)

A great way to build a search engine-friendly road map for search engine spiders to follow and index site pages is to create Site Map with simple text links to all of the pages on your site. A Site Map also has the added usability benefit of providing visitors with an overall snapshot of all site pages.

Link Popularity: The Importance of Inbound Links
Another way that search engines find your site pages is by following links to your site from other external sites (provided that those sites themselves are listed in a given engine). Having such links to your site not only provides search engines with additional opportunity to find your pages, but also provides increased visibility for your site by putting it in front of visitors on another site.

Many top search engines, such as Google, will factor in the number of sites linking to yours in determining its results for a particular search query. This is known as “link popularity”. One way to think about link popularity is that each external link to your site counts as a “vote” for your site. So, the more links you have pointing at you the better, right? Well, not necessarily. Because search engines also know how to count the link popularity of the sites linking to yours,a single link from a popular site will weigh more heavily than many links from obscure unpopular sites. When it comes to getting links, quality over quantity is the way to go.

All things being equal, of two sites with content of comparable relevance and structure, the sitewith higher link popularity will get more prominent placement in search engine results.

Who’s Linking At You?
If you want to research pages that currently link to your site, Google supports a neat little trickthat lets you do just that. If you go to google.com and type in your URL proceeded by “link:” (without the quotes – e.g. link:www.your-url.com) the results will give you a list of all pages listed within google that link to your site. You can also use this method to research sites that linking to organizations similar to yours – a site that links to organizations like yours, or even adirect competitor, may be a good lead to follow-up with in requesting a link of your own.

We Have the Terms, Now What Do We Do With Them?

2006-12-07T05:13:00.001Z

Once you have selected the search terms you want to target, the next step is to integrate the terms into your site pages to make them relevant.

Selecting Pages for Optimization
Initially, the pages that you select for optimization should be those that offer the most focusedcontent relating to the terms you want to target – you may already have such pages on your site, or you may need to develop them from scratch. You can optimize as many pages as youlike, but each page should focus on no more than one or two of your target terms.

Inserting Target Terms Throughout Page Copy
The phrase “content is king” is often cited when it comes to web sites, and this holds true for search engines as well. While there are a number of variables search engines use to producethe results they deliver, the visible text content of your pages is a primary factor that search engines utilize to find, index and deliver your pages to prospective site visitors.

Once you have identified the terms you want to target, you’ll need to incorporate the terms intothe copy of your site pages so that when an engine arrives at your page it can identify the pageas being relevant for the search terms you are targeting and produce it among the results it displays. In other words, for a search engine to justify producing your page in search results fora given term, it needs to have evidence that your page is truly relevant for the term in question – having the term within the text content of your pages provides such evidence.

Make sure that your target search term appears at least once in your introductory paragraph and page header so that search engines—and visitors—can immediately recognize the term inthe content above all your other page copy and give context to the content of your page.

Most importantly, try to integrate search terms into your page copy in a natural fashion so that the terms make sense in context and complement the overall message of the page content. Donot indiscriminately load your page copy with terms that do not make sense in context, as doing so will leave a negative impression on visitors once they arrive at your page, and could be considered Spam.

An excellent resource for SEO copywriting is offered by Jill Whalen of HighRankings.com. See: www.highrankings.com/seo-writing.htm

Make Use of Head Tags
Search engines tend to weigh words placed within page head tags (h1, h2, h3, etc.) more heavily than they do general text. Whenever possible, include your target terms within the headtags, especially the h1 tag at the top of your page, to ensure that your pages get maximum search engine exposure. You can use a CSS stylesheet to format your head tags so they are consistent with your site design.

The Page Title Tag
The title tag in the HTML head of your site pages is a critical, yet often overlooked, location to insert your target terms. Search engines weigh the title of your pages quite heavily in determining relevance, so you’ll want to make sure that each page on your site that you want to show up in search engine results has a unique title incorporating the targeted term for that page.

About Meta Tags
Once thought to be the gateway to top search engine rankings, meta tags are no longer weighed very heavily by search engines, if at all. This is primarily due to the abuse of meta tags by unethical marketers. However, this does not mean that you should ignore meta tags altogether, just be aware that they are only a small part of the SEO puzzle.

The two tags you’ll want to pay attention to in optimizing your pages are the description meta tag and the keywords meta tag. Keep your description tag succinct and to the point (under 200characters) – some search engines, such as msn, will utilize this tag to display a description ofyour page along with a link in their results, so it should provide a general overview of the page topic. With keyword tags, limit your key words to 25 terms or less (separated by commas) and make sure that you don’t repeat the same term more than 3-4 times, as doing so could be misinterpreted as an attempt to deceive the search engines and get you banned altogether.

Keyword Density: How Much is Too Much?
Now that you have an overview of some of the ways to integrate your target search terms intosite copy, you may be wondering how many times you actually need to repeat your key termsto get results. Opinions on this matter vary, but in general, you want to have your key terms appear anywhere between 2-10 times per every 100 words of text – this ratio is known as “keyword density”. The following link provides a neat little tool you can use to measure your keyword density on a given page for a given term: www.keyworddensity.com.

As a general rule, try to integrate your key terms as often as you can without breaking up the natural flow of your copy. Good copywriting is an essential component to SEO, and at the end of the day, your page content needs to appeal to people (as well as search engines).

Identifying Target Search Terms

2006-12-06T04:59:00.001Z

The first step to any SEO campaign is to identify the search terms (also referred to as key terms, or key words) for which you want your site pages to be found in search engines – these are the words that a prospective visitor might type into a search engine to find relevant web sites. For example, if your organization’s mission has to do with environmental protection, are your target visitors most likely to search for “acid rain”, “save the forests”, “toxic waste”, “greenhouse effect”, or all of the above? Do you want to reach visitors who are local, regional or national in scope? These are considerations that need careful attention as you begin the SEO process. After all, it’s no use having a good search engine ranking for terms no one’s looking for.

Your target terms should be at least two words in length and, of course, be relevant to the content of your site pages. Your own intuition and team brainstorming are good places to start with key term selection. However, there are tools designed to assist you in validating your choices and researching search term possibilities you may never have never even considered.WordTracker and Overture offer two of the most popular such tools:

• WordTracker (www.wordtracker.com) is the industry standard tool used for search termselection research. Although there is a fee for using the full version of WordTracker, they also offer limited trial where you can test out the system.

• Overture (www.overture.com) also offers a "Term Suggestion Tool" that can be utilizedfor researching target search terms when you sign up for a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) account with them.

By strategically selecting terms that are popular enough to bring you visibility with target audiences, yet not so general/competitive that a prominent ranking will be difficult, you can ensure that your SEO efforts are built on a stable foundation from the start.

Best SEO Practices

2006-12-05T01:32:00.001Z

No matter what the size of your organization, if you are mounting an SEO campaign, you should consider implementing some best practices.

The matrix below presents the most significant best SEO practices and indicates whether you should consider implementing the practice if you are a:

• A: Small business
• B: Entrepreneurial web-based business
• C: Large enterprise

Obviously, different businesses will have differing priorities, and which aspects of SEO are most important to you will vary. But the matrix in Table gives you a starting place to evaluate what steps you may wish to undertake.

Table Best SEO Practices Matrix for Different Size Organizations
Best SEO Practice	A	B	C
Review traffic to your site using web server logs and third-party	X	X	X
software
Understand the content and queries that draw your traffic	X	X	X
Establish base-line metrics for site traffic, and criteria for success			X
Regularly monitor site traffic			X
Create content specifically for SEO purposes		X
Work to improve PageRank	X	X	X
Submit to search engines, manually or with a submission tool	X	X	X
List your site in taxonomies		X
List your site in wiki articles		X
Request inbound links	X	X
Post comments and pings containing links		X
Use syndication for SEO purposes		X	X
Create a bot-friendly site	X	X	X
Review your site in a text-only web browser		X	X
Add meta information to your site	X	X	X
Use text rather than graphics when possible	X	X	X
Add descriptive alt attributes to your images	X	X	X
Create an easily navigable site	X	X	X
Keep pages between 100 and 250 words	X	X	X
Keep keywords dense without stuffing		X
Add keywords to and tags		X
Add moderate outbound linking	X	X
Make sure to include cross links			X
Assemble toolkit of free SEO analysis tools	X	X	X
Deploy web analytics platform (Google Analytics or WebTrends)			X
Avoid dubious SEO practices	X	X	X
Create a clear and brief campaign plan	X	X
Use AdWords in Conjunction with Core SEO	X	X	X

Best Practices: SEO That Works

2006-12-03T17:14:00.001Z

SEO in the broadest sense works when you carefully consider and plan your campaign.

This means having a good understanding of:

• Your offering
• Your unique selling proposition
• Your competition
• The resources that can be used for your campaign
• Best SEO practices

This section will help you achieve clarity on these points, and provide a best practices SEO checklist.

Create an Elevator Pitch
A good way to begin planning your SEO campaign is to create an elevator pitch.

An elevator pitch is a one-or-two sentence "story" that makes your offering and target audience crystal clear. So named for something one could deliver between stops on an elevator, one of the most important aspects of the elevator pitch is its succinctness.

A good elevator pitch is dramatic, tells your story, and can be used for sales purposes. Most important, if your elevator pitch is right, you should be able to use it to understand the most important keywords to use from an SEO perspective.

Know Your Competition
Learn from your competition. Compile a provisional list of keywords and phrases you want to target with SEO. Then Google, Google, Google these keywords like crazy.

Examine the results of these searches carefully. On the one hand, the search results from your targeted keywords should be related to your offering. If there's no connectionif the sites you come up with belong to completely different realmsthen something is wrong and you should reexamine your SEO campaign premises.

On the other hand, your site and pages need to be at least as good as the competition's offerings. Otherwise, SEO or no SEO, you won't pull ahead of the competition in natural listings.

What can you learn from the competition? How can you improve upon it?

Use AdWords as an SEO Tool
As core SEO becomes simply one of the tools used to advertise destinations on the Web, it makes sense to supplement pure SEO with targeted CPCCost per Clickprograms, such as that provided by Google AdWords.

AdWords should be used as an auxiliary to SEO programs, not as the primary focus of an SEO campaign. Attention should be paid to distinguishing within AdWords between content and search ads.

As an auxiliary SEO tool, the best approach with AdWords is oblique: don't target your primary SEO keywords (you can rely on SEO for this) as much as conceptually related topics that might draw visitors who might otherwise overlook your site. For example, a relationship and dating site might use AdWords to target people interested in Meg Ryan movies such as Sleepless in Seattle.

Work with Consultants
SEO consultancies have become big businesses, and many of them are reputable outfits that will help you put implement the practices outlined in this article.

But beware: this is also an arena that tempts shady operators. Review SEO success claims with some degree of skepticism, and make sure to verify claims whenever possible. Remember, if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Avoiding SEO Pitfalls

2006-12-02T19:59:00.001Z

Googleand other major search enginesurge you to avoid overly aggressive SEO practices when you build your site. Google has actually taken the trouble to spell out SEO practices it regards as naughty (the list can be found at http://www.google.com/webmasters). You should pay attention to this list as if it speaks the mind of every major search engine, not just Google. Google's position that building sites that get highly ranked is simply a matter of providing useful content isn't totally off-the-wall, although it assumes a world where everything always works.

According to Google, good search-engine-citizen web sites do not:

Employ hidden text or links
For example, users cannot read white text on a white background (and will never even know it is there). But the search engine will still parse this text. This rule comes down to making sure that the search engine sees the same thing that users view.

Cloak pages
Also called stealth, this is a technique that involves serving different pages to the search engine than to the user.

Use redirects in a deceptive way
It's easy to redirect the user's browser to another page. If this is done for deceptive purposesfor example, to make a user think they are on a page associated with a well-known brand when in fact they are on a web spammer's pageit's frowned upon.

Attempt to improve your PageRank with dubious schemes

Linking to web spammers or bad neighborhoods on the Web may actually hurt your own PageRank (or search ranking), even if doing so provides inbound links to your site.

Bad neighborhoods are primarily link farms or link exchangessites that exist solely for the purpose of boosting a site's inbound links without other content. Web spammers are sites that disguise themselves with pseudo descriptions and fake keywordsthe descriptions and keywords do not truly represent what the site contains.

Practice keyword loading
This is the practice, beloved by SEO "experts," of adding irrelevant words to pages (the page can then be served as the search result based on a query for the irrelevant words that actually don't have anything to do with the page content). Proper keyword usage highlights your legitimate content but does keyword load.

Create multiple similar pages
Google frowns on the creation of pages, domains, and subdomains that duplicate contentalthough obviously there are places to legitimately duplicate content.

Present "doorway" pages
Pages created just for search engines are sometimes called doorway pages. (The term doorway page covers a variety of techniques that are used to substitute one page for anothereither by redirection or actual substitution of pages on the web serverwhen the first page is optimized for specific keyword searches, and the page to which the user is actually sent has little or nothing to do with that search.)

Pages that lack content
Google frowns pages that lack original content, such as a page that exists simply to present affiliate links.

Create domains with the intention of confusing users
Likely you've landed on a site with a domain name that's confusing because it's sharing the same name with a different domain suffix (for example, http://www.php.org, which combines a redirection with the deception, rather than the legitimate PHP language site, http://www.php.net), or because of a slight spelling variation (http://www.yahho.com rather than http://www.yahoo.com, http://www.goggle.com instead of http://www.google.com).

SEO Analysis Tools

2006-12-01T21:13:00.001Z

You'll find a wide range of SEO analysis tools available to help you optimize your web pages and sites. From the viewpoint of your pocketbook, there are two kinds of SEO analysis tool:

• Free tools: these free tools generally tackle a single piece of the SEO puzzle, such as generating good keywords, understanding how Google operates on specific sites and keywords, checking who links to your sites, and displaying rankings in multiple search engines at once

• Commercial SEO analysis software that must be licensed for a fee.

Free Tools
There are a myriad of free SEO tools available, and even many sites that list these free tools (the compendium sites are generally supported by advertising, and must therefore practice good SEO themselves to be successful!).

Some good sites that list (and provide links) to free SEO analysis tools http://www.trugroovez.com/free-seo-tools.htm, http://www.webuildpages.com/tools/, and http://www.seocompany.ca/tool/11-link-popularity-tools.html.

Some of the most useful (and free!) single-purpose SEO tools are:

• NickeBot: a keyword discovery tool that helps pinpoint the right keywords for optimization, http://www.nichebot.com/.

• The SERPS Tool: the SERPS (or Search Engine Positioning) tool helps you discover your ranking across Google and other major search engine in one fell swoop, http://www.seo-guy.com/seo-tools/se-pos.php.

• Meta Tag Analyzer: checks meta information for errors and relevance to page content, http://www.seo-guy.com/seo-tools/se-pos.php.

These tools can definitely be time savers, particularly if you have a large amount of content you need to optimize. The price is certainly right!

Individual tools also can serve as a reality check: by running your pages through one of these tools you can get a pretty good feeling for how well you have optimized a page. However, you should bear in mind that there is nothing that one of these tools can do for you that cannot also be done by hand given the knowledge you have learned from this article.

Individually, SEO analysis tools available on the Web can help you with your SEO tasks. However, to get the most from these tools you need to understand underlying SEO concepts, as explained in this article, before you use these tools.

Over time, as you progress with SEO, you will probably accumulate your own favorite SEO analysis toolkit.

Commercial SEO Analysis Software
Commercially-licensed SEO analysis software is unlikely to prove worth its cost unless you are in the business of performing SEO for numerous web sites and a great deal of content, or for a major enterprise. If the advertising for this kind of software claims too much, beware!

Essentially, the closer a commercial SEO product comes to true enterprise web analytic capability, like that provided by Google Analytics or WebTrends, the more likely it is to provide valuebut only to larger enterprises. So it's fairly rare for software labeled specifically for SEO purposes to be worth the licensing feeyou can either do the job yourself manually, or a free tool is available.

If your need for SEO analysis falls into the enterprise category, I'd suggest you start with Google Analytics, http://www.google.com/analytics/, or WebTrends, http://www.webtrends.com/, even those these products are not specifically aimed at SEO.

If you do want to look into licensed SEO software, some of the better known commercial SEO analysis products are:

• Keyword Elite (keyword analysis) and SEO Elite (automated SEO analysis) available under commercial license from Top Software, http://www.topsoftwaredownloads.co.uk/SEO.htm.

• Clicktracks: a variety of commercial analytic packages that show how visitors react to your site, and provides SEO analysis for those sites, http://www.clicktracks.com/.

• SEO Administrator: a suite of SEO analysis tools, http://www.seoadministrator.com/.

Inbound, Outbound, and Cross Links

2006-11-30T23:21:00.001Z

The links on your site constitute a very important part of how Google and other search engines will examine, analyze, and rank your pages. Links can be categorized into inbound links, outbound links, and cross links:

• Inbound links point to a page on your web site from an external site somewhere else on the Web

• Outbound links point from a page on your site to an external site somewhere else on the Web

• Cross links point between the pages on your site

Broken Links

Broken links are links that do not work, either because they have been miscoded or because the pages they point to don't exist (perhaps it has been moved).

It's quite important to a search engine that none of the links on your site are broken. It shouldn't be that big a problem to go through your site and check to make sure each link works manually. Doing this will also give you a chance to review your site systematically, and understand the navigation flow from the viewpoint of a bot.

Even though you've checked your links manually, you should also use an automated link-checking tool. Quite a few are available. A good choice is the simple (and free) link checker provided by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at http://validator.w3.org/checklink. All you need to do is enter the domain you want checked and watch the results as the links in your site are crawled.

Inbound Links

You want as many inbound links as possible, provided these links are not from link farms or link exchanges. With this caveat about inbound linking from "naughty neighborhoods" understood, you cannot have too many inbound links. The more popular (and the higher the ranking) of the sites providing the inbound links to your site, the better.

Inbound links are considered a shorthand way of determining the value of your web site, because other sites have decided your site has content worth linking to. An inbound link from a site that is itself highly valued is worth more than an inbound link from a low-value site, for obvious reasons.

Outbound Links

The "everything in moderation" slogan is really apt when it comes to outbound links. You could also say that the "outbound link giveth and the outbound link taketh." Here's why: you want some respectable outbound links to establish the credibility of your site and pages, and to provide a useful service for visitors. After all, part of the point of the Web is that it is a mechanism for linking information, and it is truly useless to pretend that all good information is on your site. So on-topic outbound links are themselves valuable content.

However, every time your site provides an outbound link, there is a probability that visitors to your site will use it to surf off your site. As a matter of statistics, this probability diminishes the popularity of your site, and Google will subtract points from your ranking if you have too many outbound links. In particular, pages that are essentially lists of outbound links are severely penalized.

If you follow the word-per-page guideline I make in "Words and Keyword Density"a little less than 250 words per pageyou'll get best results if you try to provide at least two or three outbound links on every page and no more than ten or fifteen per page

Cross Links

Cross linkslinks within your siteare important to visitors as a way to find useful, related content. For example, if you have a page explaining the concept of class inheritance in an object-oriented programming language, a cross link to an explanation of the related concept of the class interface might help some visitors. From a navigability viewpoint, the idea is that is should be easy to move through all information that is topically related.

From an SEO perspective, your site should provide as many cross links as possible (without stretching the relevance of the links to the breaking point). There's no downside to providing reasonable cross links, and several reasons for providing them. For example, effective cross-linking keeps visitors on your site longer (as opposed to heading off-site because they can't find what they need on your site).

One reason for cross linking is that ideally you want to have dispersal through your site. You may have established metrics in which one page that gets 100,000 visitors is doing well. In this case, 100 pages that each get 10,000 visitors should be considered a really great success story. The aim of effective cross-linking is to disperse traffic throughout the pages of relevant content on your site.

Words and Keyword Density

2006-11-29T22:53:00.001Z

By now, you probably understand that the most important thing you can do on the SEO front involves the words on your pages.

There are three issues you need to consider when placing keywords on a page:

• How many words should be on a page?

• Which words belong on what page?

• Where should these be placed on the page?

Page Size

Ideally, pages should be between 100 and 250 words. Shorter than 100 words, and Google and other search engines will tend to discount the page as a lightweight. In addition, you want to include as many keywords as you can without throwing the content off-kilter. With less than 100 words, any significant inclusion of keywords is going to look like keyword stuffingand get "points" taken off your pages.

Pages that are longer than 250 words are not terrible, but do tend to diminish trafficboth actual, and measured as a per page statistic. From the viewpoint of advertising, lengthy pages waste content; 250 words is about as many as will fit on a single monitor screen, so your visitors will have to scroll down to finish reading the rest of the page if you publish longer pages. You might as well provide navigation to additional pages for the content beyond the 250 wordsand gain the benefit of having extra pages to host advertising.

Choosing Keywords

Beyond the mechanics of crafting sites and pages that are search engine friendly lies another issue: what search queries does your site answer? You need to understand this to find the keywords to emphasize in your site constructiona very important part of search engine optimization.

There's no magic bullet for coming up with the right keywords to place in a page. A good starting place is the "elevator pitch" story, and related keywords, that you'll need to develop as part of an SEO campaign.

It's likely that you'll want to vary keywords used in a page depending on the page content, rather than trying to stuff a one-size-fits-all approach across all the pages on your site.

If the answer is X, for example, what is the question? This is the right way to consider keyword choice. X is your web site or web page. What did someone type into Google to get there?

As you come up with keywords and phrases, try them out. Search Google based on the keywords and phrases. Ask yourself if the results returned by Google are where you would like to see your site. If not, tweak, modify, wait for Google to re-index your site (this won't take too long once you've been initially indexed), and try your search again.

Ultimately, the best way to measure success is relative. It's easy to see how changes impact your search result ranking: just keep searching (as often as once a day) for a standard set of half a dozen keywords or phrases that you've decided to target. If you are moving up in the search rankings, then you are doing the right thing. If you ranking doesn't improve, then reverse the changes. If you get search results to where you want them (usually within the top thirty or even top ten results returned), then start optimizing for additional keywords.

You should also realize that the success that is possible for a given keyword search depends upon the keyword. It's highly unlikely that you will be able to position a site into the top ten results for, say, "Google" or "Microsoft"but trivial to get to the top for keywords phrases with no results (such as "nigritude ultramarine" or "loquine glupe" two phrases that became the fodder for SEO contests).

The trade-off here is that it is a great deal harder to do well with keywords that are valuableso you need to find a sweet spot: keywords where you stand a chance, but that also will drive significant site-related traffic.

Keyword Placement

The text on your web page should include the most important keywords you have developed in as unforced a way as possible. Try to string keywords together to make coherent sentences.

Not all text on a page is equal in importance. First of all, order does count: keywords higher up in a given page get more recognition from search engines than the same keywords further down a page.

Roughly speaking, besides the body of the page itself and in meta information, you should try to place your keywords in the following elementspresented roughly in order of descending importance:

• Title: putting relevant keywords in the HTML title tag for your page is probably the most important single thing you can do in terms of SEO

• Headers: keyword placement within HTML header styles, particularly headers towards the top of a page, is extremely important

• Links: use your keywords as much as possible in the text that is enclosed by ... hyperlink tags on your site in outbound and cross bound link. Ask webmasters who provide inbound linking to your site to use your keywords whenever possible

• Images: include your keywords in the alt attribute of your HTML image tags

• Text in bold: if there is any reasonable excuse for doing so, include your keywords within HTML bold ... tags

Site and Page Design

2006-11-29T22:50:00.002Z

Keyword density means the ratio of keywords that you are trying to target for SEO purposes to the other text on your pages. Getting keyword density rightenough so that your SEO goals are achieved, not so much that the search engines are "offended"is a key goal of core SEO practice. Search engines do look for keywords, but they take away points for excessive and inappropriate keyword "stuffing."

Even from the point of view of your site visitors, you want a nice density of keywords in your pagesbut you don't want so many keywords that the content of your pages is diminished from the viewpoint of visitors.

Site Design Principles

Here are some design and information architecture guidelines you should apply to your site to optimize it for search engines:

Use text wherever possible

For most sites, the fancy graphics do not matter. If you are looking for search engine placement, it is the words that count. Always use text instead of or in addition to images to display important names, content, and links.

Navigability

Pages within your site should be structured with a clear hierarchy. Several alternative site navigation mechanisms should be supplied, including at least one that is text-only. The major parts of your site should be easy to access using a site map. If your site map has more than about 100 links, you should divide the site map into separate pages.

Provide static text links

Every page in your site should be accessible using a static text link.

Meta Information Tactics

2006-11-29T03:14:00.001Z

In the early days of SEO, intelligent use of meta information was a crucial element of SEO. But since anyone can add any meta keyword and description information they'd like to a site or page, the feature has been widely abusedand search engines discount meta data in favor of automated page content analysis using PageRank and other variables.

That said, the price of adding meta informationit's freeis right, so you should add it to each page as a matter of standard SEO practice. Try to provide targeted

meta keyword lists and descriptions (for example, the samples I provided just above are way too general to be helpful as SEO).

Meta keywords should be limited to a dozen or so terms. Don't load up the proverbial kitchen sink. Think hard about the keywords that you'd like to lead to your site when visitors search.

One kind of page that really does need a meta description and keyword listeven todayis the page that primarily consists of images. Recall that I've suggested that as a matter of SEO you avoid such pages. But if you can't help yourself, or have bowed to unspeakable pressure applied by your web designer, you should know that Google and other search engines won't have a clue what is on your pageunless you describe it for the search engine using meta information.

For the keywords that are really significant to your site, you should include both single and plural forms, as well as any variants. For example, a site about photography might well want to include both "photograph" and "photography" as meta tags.

Meta Includes

An include file is code referenced, and opened when it is referenced, in another file. It's easy to use includes on the Web in many file formats, including .shtml (like HTML but with server-side includes) and .php.

As a matter of site architecture, meta information should be put in include files referenced by each web page. You can have multiple meta includes, with each include referenced by pages in a different portion of your site.

The advantage of doing this is that it is easy to modify meta information across a site (or across portions of a site with related content).

Meta Information

2006-11-29T03:08:00.002Z

Meta informationsometimes called meta tags for shortis a mechanism you can use to provide information about a web page.

The term derives from the Greek word "meta," which means "behind" or "hidden". "Meta" refers to the aspect of something that is not immediately visible, perhaps because it is in the background, but which is there nonetheless and has an impact.

The most common meta tags provide a description and keywords for telling a search engine what your web site and pages are all about. Each meta tag begins with a name attribute that indicates what the meta tag represents.

The meta tag

<meta name="description"/>

means that this tag will provide descriptive information.

The meta tag

<meta name="keywords"/>

means that the tag will provide keywords.

The description and keywords go within a content attribute in the meta tag. For example, here's a meta description tag (often simply called the meta description):

<meta name="description" content="Quality information, articles about a variety oftopics ranging from Photoshop, programming to business, and investing."/>

Keywords are provided in a comma-delimited list. For example:

<meta name="keywords" content="Photoshop, Wi-Fi, wireless networking, programming, C#, business, investing, writing, digital photography, eBay, pregnancy,information"/>

Working with the Bot

2006-11-29T03:05:00.001Z

To state the obvious, before your site can be indexed by a search engine, it has to be found by the search engine. Search engines find web sites and web pages using software that follows links to crawl the web. This kind of software is variously called a crawler, a spider, a search bot, or simply a bot (bot is a diminutive for "robot").

To be found quickly by search engine bot, it helps to have inbound links to your site. More important, the links within your site should work properly. If a bot encounters a broken link, it cannot reachor indexthe page pointed to by the broken link.

Images

Pictures don't mean anything to a search bot. The only information a bot can gather about pictures come from the alt attribute used within a picture's tag, and from text surrounding the picture. Therefore, always take care to provide description information via the tag's alt attribute along with your images, and to provide at least one text-only (e.g., outside of an image map) link to all pages on your site.

Links

Certain kinds of links to pages (and sites) simply cannot be traversed by a search engine bot. The most significant issue is that a bot cannot login to your site. (This is probably a very good thing, or we'd all be in big trouble!)

So if a site or page requires a user name and a password for access, then it probably will not be included in a search index.

Don't be fooled by seamless page navigation using such techniques as cookies or session identifiers. If an initial login was required, then these pages can probably not be accessed by a bot.

Complex URLs that involve a script can also confuse the bot (although only the most complex dynamic URLs are absolutely non-navigable). You can generally recognize this kind of URL because a ? is included following the script name. Pages reached with this kind of URL are dynamic, meaning that the content of the page varies depending upon the values of the parameters passed to the page generating the script (the name of the script, often code written in PHP, comes before the ? in the URL).

You can try this example by comparing the two URLs to see for yourself the difference a changed parameter makes!

Dynamic pages opened using scripts that are passed values are too useful to avoid. Most search engine bots can traverse dynamic URLs provided they are not too complicated. But you should be aware of dynamic URLs as a potential issue with some search engine bots, and try to keep these URLs as simpleusing as few parametersas possible.

File Formats

Most search engines, and search engine bots, are capable of parsing and indexing many different kinds of file formats. For example, Google indexes file types including: pdf, asp, jsp, html, shtml, xml, cfm, php, doc, xls, ppt, rtf, wks, lwp, wri, and swf.

However, simple is often better. To get the best search engine placement, you are well advised to keep your web pages, as they are actually opened in a browser, to straight HTML.

Google puts the "simple is best" idea this way: "If fancy features such as JavaScript, cookies, session IDs, frames, DHTML, or Flash keep you from seeing all of your site in a text browser, then search engine spiders may have trouble crawling your site." The only way to know for sure whether a bot will be unable to crawl your site is to check your site using an all-text browser.

Viewing Your Site with an All-Text Browser

Improvement implies a feedback loop: you can't know how well you are doing without a mechanism for examining your current status. The feedback mechanism that helps you improve your site from an SEO perspective is to view your site as the bot sees it. This means viewing the site using a text-only browser. A text-only browser, just like the search engine bot, will ignore images and graphics, and only process the text on a page.

The best-known text-only web browser is Lynx. You can find more information about Lynx at http://lynx.isc.org/. Generally, the process of installing Lynx involves downloading source code and compiling it.

The Lynx site also provides links to a variety of pre-compiled Lynx builds you can download.

Don't want to get into compiled source code, or figuring out which idiosyncratic Lynx build to download? There is a simple Lynx Viewer available on the Web at http://www.delorie.com/web/lynxview.html. You'll need to follow directions carefully to use it. Essentially, these instructions involve adding a file to your web site to prove you own the site. The host of the Lynx Viewer is offering a free service, and doesn't want to be deluged, but it is not hard to comply

Using Lynx Viewer, it's easy to see the text that the search bot sees when you are not distracted by the "eye candy" of the full image version.

Submitting Feeds

2006-11-27T23:39:00.001Z

The next step is to submit your syndication feed to syndication aggregators and search engines. The RSS Compendium provides a great list of sites for submitting syndication feeds for inclusion at http://allrss.com/rsssubmission.html. The RSS Specifications site also has an extensive list of sites that maintain syndication feed databases at http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-submission.htm.

It's a good idea to continue to submit your feeds as you add content items. If you are publishing multiple feeds, however, this can become an unpleasant chore, so you may want to use a tool that automates the process. RSS Submit is one such programit's available for download at http://www.dummysoftware.com/rsssubmit.html in an evaluation version or (with free updates) for $35.

The updates to RSS Submit add new syndication indexes as they come online, and make sure the submission pages for older feeds stay accurate.

Telling the World about Your Feed

2006-11-27T23:32:00.001Z

Once you have your syndication feed, the key to getting some bang out of it is to get it distributed. As with a web site, in the long run, this requires constant addition of fresh content. You probably should not try to distribute a syndication feed until you have a minimum of a dozen entry items, and can reasonably expect to add at least an item a week.

You can (and should) mark your web site with a graphic that is linked to your syndication feed. To create the graphic, you can create a button using FeedForAll's free RSS Graphics Tool, http://www.feedforall.com/public/rss-graphic-tool.htm, or you can grab a pre-made button from RSS Specifications, http://www.rssspecifications.com/rss-graphics.htm.

You also need to add code into the head section of your HTML pages to let syndication viewers and aggregators automatically know about your feed. For example, if you include this code in a page, someone visiting your site using a web browser that is capable of displaying syndication (such as Firefox) is automatically offered a subscription to the feed.

The general form of the code to be added is:


<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="http://www.yourdomain.com/rss.xml>

Obviously, you need to specify the actual location of your own feed when you add this code to the head section of your HTML page. For example, I maintain a syndication feed for the Googleplex Blog at http://www.braintique.com/research/mt/index.xml. The link code on my page looks like this:


<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
...
<title>The Googleplex Blog</title>
...
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS"
href="http://www.braintique.com/research/mt/index.xml" />
...
</head>
...

Creating Feeds

2006-11-27T23:31:00.000Z

If you maintain a blog, it's likely that you are already publishing a syndication feed (even though you may not be aware of it). Check your blog templates to see if there is a template for an index.xml, index.rdf, or atom.xml file. If so, have a look at the root directory for your blog. Voila! You'll probably find a syndication feed. You may want to tweak the template tags to make sure that you are syndicating the content you want, and only the content you want.

If you don't have a blog feed, or want to publish content other than the entries of your blog, it's easy to construct an XML syndication feed by hand using a text editor. There are also a great many tools available to help you construct your own feeds. Some tools use a Wizard interface, so you don't need to know anything about coding in XML to create a syndication feed.

You'll find links to these tools and to syndication resources in general on the RSS Compendium, online at http://allrss.com/, and on O'Reilly's Xml.com site, http://www.xml.com/pub/rg/RSS_Software. General information about syndication is available in Shelly Power's Digital Digest What Are Syndication Feeds?

Using Syndication

2006-11-27T23:30:00.001Z

As you may know, syndication is a simple XML-based mechanism for publishing content. Syndication feeds come in two predominant flavors: RSS and Atom. From the viewpoint of publicizing your web site, you don't need to worry about the differences between them. (If you'd like to learn more about how to use syndication feeds, check out O'Reilly's What Are Syndication Feeds PDF, available at http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/syndicationfeeds/cover.html.)

You syndicate content by encoding it within an RSS or Atom feed. This feed canand usually doesinclude links to the site originating the content.

Subscribers can view syndication feeds in all different kinds of software, including web browsers, email clients, standalone programs, and on HTML web pages. There's no mechanism built into syndication to pay for subscriptions, but once you are subscribed, your feed display is automatically updated when a new item is added to the feed. It's up to the syndication viewing software to decide how to render feeds, but software that can display web pages often shows the underlying pages that the feed links to.

There's some controversy about how publishers can best use syndication feeds, since it's not obvious how to make money from them. (Google has introduced a program allowing publishers to insert contextual ads within syndication feeds, but this is a controversial step.)

However, syndication feeds work well as a device for driving traffic to a site because:

• Feed content is under the control of the publisher

• Most feeds contain items that are thematically linked (and can be related to a site)

• Feed items provide content along with links back to more content on a publisher's site

• It's easy to distribute a syndication feed

In other words, many savvy web publishers use syndication feeds as a kind of teaser for their real web content. In addition, syndication aggregation engines drive traffic to a site, and increase a site's PageRank (by sending the site inbound links from the aggregator).

Making the Link Request

2006-11-26T18:33:00.001Z

The very best way to get someone to link to you is to link to them! If your readers find their content useful, their readers will likely find yours useful as well. And because many sites pay attention to the sites that link to them, you may often get a reciprocal link without any further action. However, if that doesn't work, you may want to contact them by email.

You should be aware that a blatant request for a link is likely to be perceived as spam. Such a request is likely less effective than an email that lets the site owner know about your site, and why you think that your content might be of interest to his or her readers.

Finding email addresses

The first step in writing an email requesting an inbound link is to find the email address for the webmaster you want to contact. This can take quite a bit of poking around, but it is amazing how often you can uncover the right email address with a bit of persistence if you just look at all the pages on a web site.

If a web site has a contact form but no explicit email address, you can often find an address by viewing the HTML source code for the contact form's page and looking for a submission address. Another place to look for email addresses is within a syndication feed. If the site provides an RSS or Atom feed, the creator's email address is often included as part of the feed.

As you may know, you can use the Whois service of Internet domain registrars to find contact information for site owners, although with multiple domain registrars this information is more fragmentary than it used to be. In addition, some sites intentionally do not publish information about the real domain owners when they register domains, for example, by putting the domain in the name of the web host.

A good first stop if you want to try using a Whois service to get email contact information is Network Solutions (http://www.networksolutions.com), the "classic" Internet domain name registrar. Next, try Whois.net, http://www.whois.net/, which has one of the largest databases for Whois information.

If these two sources fail, do not give up. Go to Internic, http://www.internic.net/whois.html. The Internic service will not give you contact information, but it probably will tell you the specific domain registrar who registered a given site, and the address of the domain registrar's Whois server. You can then go to the Whois server maintained by the appropriate registrar, and usually find email contact information there.

If this sounds time consuming, well, it is. To justify the time, any sites that you contact should indeed be related to your site.

Emails should not spam

Generally, you should not send email that reads like spam. Don't send mass emailings to request links (it will probably get intercepted and marked for deletion by anti-spam filters, anyhow). Personalize each email with each recipient's name, something about their site, and information about why they should link with you.

It's OK to offer a reciprocal link in exchange for your inbound link. But the better approach is already to have a link to any site you approach. You can set aside a resource page for this purpose. Why bother with trying to get an inbound link from a site that isn't worth linking to? If it is worth linking to, then go ahead and do it on your own without requiring payback. You'll be surprised at how often the other party decides to reciprocate.

Comments, Trackbacks, and Discussion Threads

The easiest way to get inbound links is for you to post them, using a mechanism such as a blog comment, a blog trackback ping, or a discussion thread. These links do not have the permanence or credibility of a link from a stable site, but can draw considerable short-term traffic if posted on a popular site.

There's nothing wrong with adding a link to a comment on a blog, or in a discussion thread, or using a trackback mechanism, provided you have a valid hook for hanging your URL. In other words, it's OK to enter a discussion if you really have something to say, and it's also OK to link back to relevant material on your sitebut don't come completely from left field. It will undermine the credibility that you are trying to build. You should also be aware that many popular blogs use the "nofollow" tag on any links inserted into comments. This tag tells search engines to disregard those links. This means that they will help humans to find your site, but will not actually help with search engine optimization.

Keeping Content Fresh

Search engines look for fresh content, and for content that is regularly freshened. Observation indicates that bots visit sites with new content daily more often than content that is not updatedand vice versa.

The moral here is that you will need to find a mechanism that works for you to keep your content fresh. As I mentioned earlier, if constantly adding pages sounds like too much work, then you might want to consider prominently featuring a blog on your site.

Getting Links

2006-11-26T18:29:00.001Z

Sometimes it seems like all of life has the same themes as high school: what's important is being popular. A significant measure of popularity on the Web is how many inbound linkslinks from other sites to your siteyou have.
Inbound links are an important component of Google's PageRank systemwhich is a way to order the sites returned from a search.

Obtaining inbound links is not rocket science, but it is labor intensive and does require some thought. The best way to get another site to link to your site is to ask for it, as obvious as that may seem.

Link farmssites that exist for the sole purpose of providing inbound links to better a page's search rankingwill not help your site become more popular, and are even likely to damage your standing with Google and other search engines if they are noticed.

It makes sense for sites to link to your site when they have similar or related content. This is a reasonable thing for a webmaster in charge of the other site to do because it adds value for his or her site's visitors. (If your site is not adding value, you might want to rethink its premise.)

The Best Inbound Links

The bestmeaning most likely to drive trafficinbound links come from:

• Sites that publish content that is complementary and related to the content on your site.

• Hub sites that are a central repository, discussion area, and community site for a particular interest group. For example, a mention on SlashDot (http://www.slashdot.org) can drive huge amounts of traffic to sites related to technologyso much so that the phenomenon of a sudden up-tick in traffic due to inbound links has become known as the "Slashdot Effect".

Finding Sites to Make a Link Request

To find sites that are appropriate for an inbound link request, you should:

• Consider the sites you find useful, entertaining, and informative.

• Use the Web's taxonomic directories to find sites in your category and in related categories

• Use specialized searching syntax to find the universe of sites that search engines such as Google regard as "related" to yours. For example, the search related: www.digitalfieldguide.com produces a list of sites that Google thinks are similar to www.digitalfieldguide.com.

Getting Yahoo! Directory Listings

2006-11-25T18:45:00.001Z

The Yahoo! Directory, a somewhat lesser known part of Yahoo!, works in pretty much the same way as the ODP, except that it is privately maintained Sites added to the Yahoo! Directory tend to end up in the Yahoo! index, as well as other important search indices, often with high ranking in response to searches related to the Yahoo! Directory category for the site.

To suggest your site for inclusion in the Yahoo! Directory, open the Yahoo! Directory's home page, http://dir.yahoo.com/.

You can also find the Yahoo Directory by opening the main Yahoo! home page, selecting Directory as your search category, and searching for a term. The search results you will be presented with are from the Yahoo! Directory (not the Yahoo! Web index), and the display will show where in the taxonomy you are, so you can browse through related categories.

Wikis

Wikisand particularly the Wikipedia, found at http://www.wikipedia.org/are community-based knowledge systems. The Wikipedia, and other select wikis, turn out to be excellent grist for the SEO link placement mill. Anyone can add content to a wiki, and the content tends to be authoritative. A link to your site strategically placed in a Wikipedia article may generate considerable traffic, and is likely to boost your sites standings with Google and other search engines.

The note of caution here is that placements should be relevant. Irrelevant spam links that don't have anything to do with a topic in a wiki are likely to be deleted by the community quickly. In addition, SEO has grown up from the early days, and practitioners realize that what goes around comes around, and that spam is evil. In other words, craft wiki text and links with care and make it valuable content for the wikiand, in doing so, better serve your SEO goals.

Getting Open Directory Project (ODP) Listings

2006-11-25T18:44:00.001Z

The Open Directory Project (ODP), http://dmoz.org, is the most important taxonomic directory on the Web. Formally hosted and administered by the Netscape division of AOL, the ODP is run along the lines of an open source project with the belief that "humans do it better."

The ODP believes that web-automated search is ineffective, and getting worse, and that the small contingent of paid editors at commercial web search engine companies cannot keep up with the staggering rate of change on the Webdecaying stagnant sites, link rot, new sites, sites intended as search spam, and so on.

The ODP is run and maintained by a vast army of volunteer editors. These editors follow internal checks and balances to keep the integrity of the directory. Seehttp://dmoz.org/guidelines/ for more information about the ODP review process and guidelines for site inclusion.

You, too, can become an ODP editor in an area of your interest and expertise. See http://dmoz.org/help/become.html for more information about becoming an ODP editor. This is a partially facetious suggestion, but one of the most effective ways to use SEO to promote your sites is to follow the patterns and practices of the ODP to get your sites included. You'll find an FAQ about how to add your site at http://www.dmoz.org/add.html (this FAQ is also available via a link from the ODP home page).

The ODP taxonomy (categorization system) and the sites included in the categories are freely available as data for use by anyone who wants to run their own search engine as long as the terms of the ODP's free-use license is complied with.

Google, and most of the major search engines, do use information derived from the ODP, but each major search engine uses it in their own way. With Google in particular, information from the ODP is used to form the Google Directory,http://directory.google.com.

Most significant, inclusion within an ODP category means that your site is very likely to be included within the Google Web index (as well as the Google Directory, and in other major web indices) as a high-ranking result for searches within that category.

So it's worth submitting your site to the ODP, if only because it's the best way to get indexed by search engines, including Googleand, to a significant extent, to manage how your site is categorized.

Submission Tools

2006-11-25T18:43:00.001Z

You may also want to use an automated site submission tool that submits your site to multiple search engines in one fell swoop.

It's quite likely that your web host provides a utility with this functionality that you can use to submit the URLs for your hosted domains to a group of search engines. It's in your web host's interests to help you generate traffic, and most are pleased to provide this service.

Before using a site submission tool, you should prepare a short list of keywords and a one or two sentence summary of your site. Alternatively, you can use the keywords and description used as meta information for your site for search engine submissions.

If you Google a phrase like "Search Engine Submit" you'll find many free services that submit to a group of search sites for you. Typically, these free submission sites try to up-sell or cross-sell you on a product or service, but since you don't have to buy anything, why not take advantage of the free service? The two best-known examples of this kind of site are Submit Express, http://www.submitexpress.com, which will submit your URL to 40 sites for free (just be sure you pass on the various offers you'll find on the site) and NetMechanic, http://www.netmechanic.com, which is another search engine submission site along the same lines.

Search Engines

2006-11-25T18:42:00.001Z

If your page (or site) has inbound links from sites in a search index, then Google (or any other broad search engine) will most likely find you pretty quickly. However, it's peculiar but true: different search engines index different portions of the Web. Also, at any given time, it is impossible for any search engine index to include the entire Web!

To avoid being left out, it makes sense to manually add your URLs to search engines. (In early times there might be more of a delay before your sites were found, and it really made sense to make sure you were listed!)

To manually add your URL to Google, go to http://www.google.com/addurl/. You can get listed at Yahoo! at http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request.

Getting listed is, of course, only the beginning of the battle. One of the key goals of core SEO is to get both highly ranked and listed in reference to some specific search terms. Achieving this goal requires taking affirmative control of the information that the search index may use to make ranking decisionsand that it will use to understand the quality of your pages.

Getting Technical: PageRank and Random Surfers

2006-11-24T20:45:00.002Z

The PageRank formula can be thought of as a model of user behavior of "random surfers." Such a random surfer visits a random web page, keeps clicking links randomly, never clicking the back button, and eventually gets bored enough to visit a new random page by typing in the web address into the browser. The probability that the random surfer visits a particular page is its PageRank. The probability at each page that the random surfer will get bored and request a new random page is called the damping factor¸ represented by d in the formula.

Put this way, the PageRank for a specific web page can clearly be calculated by going through all the inbound links to a page, calculating the PageRanks of all these pages, backing up to calculate the inbound links in turn to the new set of pages, and so on, all the way back until there are no more inbound links. A little more technically, a web page's PageRank can be calculated by iterating recursively through all of its inbound linked pages. This is the fundamental method behind Google's search engine, although in the real world (as you likely know if you've read this far in this sidebar) there are usually non-recursive techniques that calculate results more quickly than the corresponding recursive algorithm.

The original formula for PageRank with further explanation is contained in the Brin and Page page at Stanford University (http://wwwdb.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html). Here it is (PR stands for PageRank; A stands for a random page, identified as Page A; T1. . .Tn signifies all the pages that link to Page A; C(A) represents the number of Page A's outbound links):

PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(T1)/C(T1) + ... + d(PR(Tn)/C(Tn)

PageRanks form a probability distribution over web pages, so the sum of all web pages' PageRanks is one.

The formula for PageRank has, of course, evolved since this formulationand, as I've mentioned, now involves more than 100 variablesand its exact nature is part of Google's proprietary technology. It's still the case that the best insight for SEO purposes into how Google works come from this early academic formulation.

Using PageRank

2006-11-24T20:43:00.001Z

Google uses the PageRank algorithm to order the results returned by specific search queries. As such, understanding PageRank is crucial to core SEO efforts to improve natural search results.

Depending on who you ask, PageRank is named after its inventor, Lawrence Page, Google's co-founderor because it is a mechanism for ranking pages.

When a user enters a query, also called a search, into Google, the results are returned in the order of their PageRank.

Originally fairly simple in concept, PageRank now reportedly processes more than 100 variables. Since the exact nature of this "secret sauce" is, well, secret, the best thing you can do from an SEO perspective is more or less stick to the original concept.

The underlying idea behind PageRank is an old one that has been used by librarians in the pre-Web past to provide an objective method of scoring the relative importance of scholarly documents. The more citations other documents make to a particular document, the more "important" the document is, the higher its rank in the system, and the more likely it is to be retrieved first.

Let me break it down for you:

Each web page is assigned a number depending upon the number of other pages that link to the page.

The crucial element that makes PageRank work is the nature of the Web itself, which depends almost solely on the use of hyperlinking between pages and sites. In the system that makes Google's PageRank algorithm work, links are a web popularity contest: Webmaster A thinks Webmaster B's site has good information (or is cool, or looks good, or is funny), so Webmaster A may decide to add a link to Webmaster B's site. In turn, Webmaster B might return the favor.

Links from Web site A to Web site B are called outbound (from A) and inbound links (to B)

The more inbound links a page has (references from other sites), the more likely it is to have a higher PageRank. However, not all inbound links are of equal weight when it comes to how they contribute to PageRanknor should they be. A web page gets a higher PageRank if another significant source (by significant source I mean a source that also receives a lot of inbound links, and thus has a higher PageRank) links to it than if a trivial site without traffic provides the inbound link.

The more sophisticated version of the PageRank algorithm currently used by Google involves more than simply crunching the number of links to a page and the PageRank of each page that provides an inbound link. While Google's exact method of calculating PageRank is shrouded in proprietary mystery, PageRank does try to exclude links from so-called link farms, pages that contain only links, and mutual linking (which are individual two-way links put up for the sole purpose of boosting PageRanks).

From the viewpoint of SEO, it's easy to understand some of the implications of PageRank. If you want your site to have a high PageRank, then you need to get as many high-ranked sites as possible to link to you. Paradoxically, outbound links reduce the PageRank of the linking site because they reduce overall traffic on the linking site (users are more likely to leave the original site if they have several links they can click).

However, useful outbound links draw traffic to the linking site and encourage other sites to return the favor because they respect the quality of the links the original site provides. So for SEO there's a delicate balancing act with outbound linking: some quality outbound links add merit to a site, but too many outbound links decrease desirability. Trial and error is probably the only way to get this one right.

Web Site Metrics and Measuring Traffic

2006-11-23T21:01:00.001Z

An important component of SEO is getting a handle on web site metrics and measuring traffic. This is not as easy as it sounds, because a great many competing terms are used, and data is not always reliable.

From an SEO perspective, you need to establish a plan for measuring traffic so that you can find out objectively which SEO measures have succeeded.

How much traffic do you aspire to? Another important question, because SEO approaches will differ depending on whether you want to generate tons of general broad traffic, or if you are targeting a narrow (but significant) niche.

A good (and reasonably objective) source of information and metrics about general and high-trafficked sites is Alexa.

Alexa

On the Alexa site, you can click the Traffic rankings tab to see an ordered list of the top 500 Sites updated daily. The Movers and Shakers list is also interesting. It is a snapshot of the "right here and now" on the Web, and is useful for aligning your SEO efforts with Web-wide trends in real time.

It is worth spending time learning about popularity on the Web if you want to build successful sites. Alexa provides the tools you can use to see for yourself what is trafficked, and what is gaining or losing among top-ranked sites.

You can also use Alexa to see traffic statistics for sites that are not in the top 500. For almost any site that has been around a while, Alexa will give you an idea of traffic statistics, and whether it is gaining or losing traffic.

Alexa lets you enter descriptive information about your web site, which others can see if they check your site traffic using Alexa. You can also make sure that Alexa provides a snapshot of your home page along with its statistics. Since this service is free, it is certainly worth entering a site description and monitoring your Alexagarnered statistics.

Alexa works by collating results from users throughout the Web who have installed the special Alexa Toolbar. (If you'd like, you can install the Alexa Toolbar and help with popularity statistics.) There's some question about the statistical validity of Alexa for less-trafficked sites because of this method of gathering dataAlexa's results are probably skewed towards users who are already web savvy and heavy users.

Most likely, Alexa's results are not very meaningful for sites that are ranked below 100,000 in popularity (very roughly, with fewer than 10,000 visitors per week).

Measuring Traffic

The metrics of web site traffic is a huge topic just by itself, and goes way beyond Alexa. There are a number of books just about web metricsif you are interested in this topic, you might want to check out Jim Sterne's Web Metrics: Proven Methods for Measuring Web Site Success (http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0471450502.html), which is comprehensive and excellent, if a little dated. You can also take a look at the "Tracking and Logging" thread on WebMasterWorld, http://www.webmasterworld.com.

There is also, of course, quite a bit of software designed simply to help webmasters gather and understand the metrics of their sites. Also, your web server's logs contain a great deal of traffic information that can help provide you with useful metrics.

Measuring traffic is a very important topic: to optimize your site you need to have baseline information, as well as feedback, so you can understand whether changes improve site trafficand to also see which elements in your site draw traffic.

Content That Draws Traffic

2006-11-23T20:58:00.001Z

There's a great deal of variation in goodsuccessfulcontent web sites. The purpose of these sites varies from humor to practical to editorial opinions and beyond. It's hard to generalize. But successful content sites typically do tend to fall into at least one (maybe more than one) of the following categories:

• The site is humorous, and makes visitors laugh. While humor is a matter of personal taste, and varies tremendously depending on demographics of the target, humorous features can draw a great deal of traffic to a site. One downside is that humor tends to get stale quickly. An example of a humorous site that is popular is Googlefight, http://www.googlefight.com, a site that compares the Google rankings of two terms such as "God" and "Satan."

• The site provides a useful free service. Web services that are free (and desirable) can draw astounding levels of traffic. A good example is TinyURL, http://tinyurl.com, which provides a practical and very useful (but simple) service: it allows you to convert long, unwieldy URLsfor example, those you often see from Amazon.com when you select an inventory itemto short, convenient URLs that are easy to use in HTML code (and easy to enter in a browser). TinyURL gets hundreds of millions of hits per month, and is able to convert some of this traffic for other
• The site is an online magazine, newspaper, or blog. Newsworthy content or interesting opinion pieces can draw considerable traffic. But the fact that anyone can put up a blog means that you'll have to go to considerable lengths to distinguish your content.

Enabling Community on a Site

You might not want to program an application that enables community functionality from the ground up, but your web host may provide this software for free, versions may be available from the open source community that are also free, or you may be able to inexpensively outsource applications that facilitate community.

You can build community on a site include by providing:

• Message boards

• Chat rooms

• Calendars with information about events in a specific field

• Instant messaging applications

• Reader reviews

• Blog comments, pings, and trackbacks

• The site provides practical information. Many people turn to the Web as their first line of approach for finding information: about technology, relationships, travel destinations, health, and much more. Adding useful articles is often one of the first steps taken by SEO consultancies to beef up traffic to a destination site. Obviously, the more closely related the articles are to the kinds of traffic you want to target, the better this will work from an SEO perspective.

• The site services a community, and provides communication tools for that community. The Web is largely about community, and involving community in your site serves several SEO purposes. Not only will your community help keep your content fresh, it's also self-selecting: if you enable your community with care it can help to tell you which topics are of interest, and what content areas will draw traffic.

Driving Traffic to a Site

2006-11-23T20:57:00.000Z

The first goal of SEO is to draw traffic to a site. But traffic is drawn to sites that are good. So let's take a look at two perspectives on what kind of content draws traffic.

First, a web site worth practicing SEO upon should be a worthy beneficiary: a site with content that at least theoretically has the ability to draw traffic.

Second, one SEO techniquein the absence of this worthy contentis to create it from scratch. So bear in mind that creating content to draw traffic is one of the most effectiveand simplestSEO techniques. As such, it's worth having a look at content that draws traffic.

What SEO Can (and Cannot) Do

2006-11-22T22:01:00.001Z

SEO can drive more traffic to your web site. If you plan carefully, you can impact the kind of traffic driven to your site. This means that you need to consider SEO as part of your general market research and business plan. Sure, most businesses want traffic. But not just any traffic. Just as the goal of a brick-and-mortar business is to have qualified customersones with money in their pocket who are ready to buy when they walk in the door, an online business ideally wants qualified traffic.

Qualified traffic is not just any traffic. It is made up of people who are genuinely interested in your offering, who are ready to buy it, and have the means to buy it. This implies that to successfully create an SEO campaign you need to plan: this means understanding your ideal prospect, their habits and who they are, and creating a step-by-step scheme to "lure" this prospect to your site where he or she can be converted to a customer.

In addition, SEO cannot spin gold from straw, or make a purse out of a sow's ear. Garbage sitesor sites that exist as scamswill not draw huge amounts of traffic. Or if they do, these sites won't draw traffic for long. Google and other search engines will pull the plug as soon as they see what is going on.

As time goes by, SEO needs to be regarded as an adjunct to the first law of the web: good content draws heavy traffic. There is no substitute for content people really want to find.

While best practices SEO should always be observed, there needs to be a sense of proportion in how SEO is used. It may not make sense to create a "Potemkin Village" using SEO to draw traffic to a site if the fundamental site doesn't yield high returns. In other words, SEO that is costly to implement is becoming regarded as one more aspect of advertising campaign managementand subject to the same discipline of cost-benefit analysis applied to all other well-managed advertising campaigns.

The SEO Advantage

2006-11-22T22:00:00.001Z

If you understand SEO, you have an edge. It pays to nurture this understandingwhether you are coding your web pages yourself, working with in-house developers, or outsourcing your web design and implementation.

True, some web sites do just fine without consciously considering SEO. But by consciously developing a plan that incorporates SEO into your web sites and web pages, your web properties will outrank others that do not.

Just as success begets success in the brick and mortar world, online traffic begets traffic. (What you plan to do with the traffic, and how you plan to monetize it, are other issues.)

One way to look at this is that sites that use core SEO have an incremental higher ranking in search results. These sites don't make gauche mistakes that cost them "points" in search engine ranking. They use tried-and-true SEO techniques to gain "points" for each web page.

Page by page, these increments give you an edge.
This edge is your SEO advantage.

Natural and Paid Listings

2006-11-22T21:59:00.001Z

Natural search result listings are listings that appear as search results without the payment of a special fee to the search engine provider. The goal of core SEO is to appear high in natural listings.

Paid listings take several forms. Some search engines (but not Google) accept pay for play search fees. Some consumer advocates frown upon these niche search engines because the appearance of a natural search result that is actually a paid listing can be confusing.

Googleand other first tier search enginestake the high road. If you purchase an advertisement keyed to search terms using Google AdWords, when your ad appears in response to a search query, it will be separate from the natural listings and clearly marked as sponsored.

As previously mentioned, the goal of core SEO is to obtain high natural listings. As the world of search has grown, however, the SEO discipline has also expanded. There's no longer any stigma associated with paid listings, particularly when using a program like AdWords that appropriately labels content. If paid listings help drive the traffic that you need in a cost effective fashion, they should be considered a valuable part of your extended SEO campaign management. You can find more information about effectively using the AdWords program in my book, Google Advertising Tools (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/buildinggoogle/index.html), from O'Reilly.

Understanding Search Engines

2006-11-22T21:58:00.001Z

Search engines, such as Google, are highly complex implementations of software technology that have evolved into mega-businesses, and certainly Google is a colossus when it comes to providing access to the information you can find on the Internet.
Effective SEO requires a basic understanding of how the pieces of search engine technology fit together.

A search engine, such as Google, implements four basic mechanisms:

• Discovery, meaning finding web sites. This is accomplished using software that travels down web links, which is sometimes called a bot, webbot, or robot.

• Storage of links, page summaries, and related information. Google calls the systems used for this purpose its index servers.

• Ranking, used to order stored pages by how important they are. Google uses a complex mechanism called PageRank to accomplish this task.

• Ranking, used to order stored pages by how important they are. Google uses a complex mechanism called PageRank to accomplish this task.

Discovery, Storage, Ranking, and Return (DSRR) are all important to SEO. In particular, you'll need to have a basic grasp of Discovery and Ranking in order to be effective with SEO implementationso these mechanisms are explained in greater detail later in this article (see "Using PageRank").

SEO at its Core

2006-11-21T23:14:00.000Z

The core practices of good SEO are fairly simple:

• Understand how your pages are viewed by search engine software
’Take common sense steps to make sure your pages are optimized from the viewpoint of these search engines Fortunately, this essentially means practicing good design, which makes your sites easy to use for human visitors as well.

• Avoid certain over-aggressive SEO practices, which can get your sites blacklisted by the search engines

From a broader viewpoint, good SEO involves creating an effective business campaign: understanding your sales proposition and benefits, creating a strategy for drawing and converting prospects, and being better at what you do than your competition.

SEO's Evolution

2006-11-21T23:13:00.001Z

Originally fairly narrowly conceived as a set of techniques for rising to the top of search engine listings, search engine optimization, or SEO, has conceptually expanded to include all possible ways of promoting web traffic.

Learning how to construct web sites and pages to improveand not harmthe search engine placement of those web sites and web pages has become a key component in the evolution of SEO. This central goal of SEO is sometimes called core SEO (as opposed to broader, non-core, web traffic campaigns, which may include paid advertisements).

Search engine placement means where a web page appears in an ordered list of search query resultsit's obviously better for pages to appear higher up and toward the beginning of the list returned by the search engine in response to a user's query.

Not all queries are created equal, so part of effective SEO is to understand which queries matter to a specific web site. It's relatively easy to be the first search result returned for a query that nobody else cares about.

Clearly, driving traffic to a web site can make the difference between commercial success and failure. So SEO experts have come to look at search engine placement as only one of their toolsand to look at the broader context of web technologies and business mechanisms that help to create and drive traffic.

Search Engine Optimization

2006-11-21T23:12:00.001Z

SEO short for Search Engine Optimizationis the art, craft, and science of driving web traffic to web sites.

Web traffic is food, drink, and oxygenin short, life itselfto any web-based business.

Some web sites depend on broad, general traffic. These businesses need hundreds of thousands or millions of hits per day to prosper and thrive. Other web businesses are looking for high-quality, targeting traffic. This traffic is essentially like a prequalified sales prospect: already interested and able to buy your product.

This PDF has the tools and information you need to draw more traffic to your site, and build your bottom line. You'll learn how to effectively use PageRank and Google itselfeffective use of SEO means understanding how Google works: how to boost placement in Google search results, how not to offend Google, and how best to use paid Google programs. You'll also learn how to best organize your web pages and web sites, apply SEO analysis tools, establish effective SEO best practices, and much more.

When you approach SEO, take some time to understand the characteristics of the traffic that you need to drive your business. Then go out and use the techniques explained in this Blog to grab some trafficand bring life to your business.