Sunday, July 30, 2006

The Secret To Getting Indexed In Yahoo

The Secret To Getting Indexed In Yahoo was written by Halstatt Pires and he writes "Getting indexed in Yahoo has become very difficult in the last few months. The indexing robot, Yahoo!Slurp, has become erratic. For some sites, the robot will view all pages, but only add a few to the Yahoo database. For other sites, sub-domain listings actually start disappearing! So, what's the secret to getting indexed?

Pleasing Yahoo!Slurp

The secret to getting indexed in Yahoo involves constant updates to your site. The updates, however, have to be done on both the site and through Real Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds. Here's how you go about getting indexed.

The first step is to start a blog for your site. You can build a blog on your site or use a free service. I prefer blogger.com because it is easy to use, but you can use whatever you like. Once you have your blog up, you should make entries that correspond and link to content on your site. For example, I will post this article on my blog, Moshing Search Engines, and link it to the article page on MarketingTitan.com.

To supercharge the impact of the blog, you should also link to a site map on your site. If you don't have a site map, make one in HTML. The Yahoo robot will definitely follow it and index the pages. Don't rely on the xml site map strategy Google is promoting.

Once you have the blog up with content posted, you must turn the blog into a real simple syndication feed. Again, you can use your own system. I prefer to use a free service because I really don't have the time to waste on such things.

Feedburner.com seems to work find and is simple to use. Opening an account with Feedburner is so easy, I am not even going to explain it. At the end of the process, feedburner will kick out the link for your RSS feed. Here's where the magic begins.

If you have a yahoo email account, you need to access you're My Yahoo page. If you don't have an account, get one! Once you are on the My Yahoo page, do the following:

1. Click the "add content" link in the upper left hand under the search box.

2. When the new page opens, click the "Add RSS by URL" link on the right of the "Find Content" search box in the upper section of the page.

3. Enter the exact link provided by Feedburner and click "add." Do NOT add the url for your blog.

4. Click the "My Yahoo" tab at the top of the page and refresh the page.

At this point, you should see your feed at the bottom of the page. If you don't, be patient. Yahoo is sometimes slow, so just try it again in an hour or so. When the feed is added, you should see the name of your blog and the title of each post under it. Yahoo can take up to a day to add new posts, so don't panic if they don't show up immediately.

Once you've completed the above, Yahoo will follow the links in the blog and index the pages on your site. If one of the links goes to a site map, you are in business. As an added bonus, Google will do the same thing. Let's look at an example.

We are currently building NomadJournalTrips.com, which has been up for about a month. Roughly 10 to 20 pages are being added each day. Nomad Rick's Ramblings is the blog for the site and the feed is included on four "My Yahoo" pages for various email accounts. Yahoo has indexed 95 pages and is about four days behind the page additions. Google has indexed 151 pages and is adding to the index every day. The blog and RSS feed are solely responsible for getting these pages indexed this quickly.

Depending on the size of your site, the process can take a few days or a couple of weeks. Every time you add new content, slap it into your blog with links. In no time, you will be taming Yahoo!Slurp.

Halstatt Pires is with http://www.marketingtitan.com - an Internet marketing and advertising company in San Diego, California.


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Posted by Jack Dukun at 9:45 PM | | Comments

Internet Directory Submission Tips

Internet Directory Submission Tips was written by Shelley Murphy and she writes "Internet Directories and their Importance

There are two very pertinent reason why we submit to directories, first, to get more targeted traffic to your site and secondly, to build link popularity in hopes of a better page rank. Acquiring links from other websites may obtain the same results, providing they are qualified links meaning the website you want to exchange links with pertains to your business.

One should not exchange links with a "sock" manufacturer, when your online business is "tool and die" they are called "free for all links".

However, there are some significant differences between the two link sources, Directories have only one purpose in life and that is to provide links to other sites. Directories are an established source of authority in regard to various subject matters. Being listed in directories serves as a level of measure as to the site's worth..

It is much easier and faster to be listed in directories than to start a reciprocal link building campaign. Since getting listed in directories is of great consequence to a website owner, it is an essential subject matter that warrants full coverage.

Submitting to Quality Directories

Submitting your website to quality Directories is perhaps one of the best ways to acquire valuable inbound links. Directories, DMOZ and Yahoo hold significant weight. Google draws its directory results from DMOZ and Yahoo draws its directory results from its own Yahoo Directory.

Keep in mind that Directories have human editors they gather all the listings in that directory, getting listed in key directories means that it is seen by many people, therefore you are more apt to get your website's links recognized by the crawler based search engines.

There a multitude of web directories presently out there on the web. They range from general directories that include categories for almost everything, to specific directories that contain categories to match specific area/s of interest for example Search Engine Optimization. Get your web site listed in as many directories as possible as this will help not only help in getting better search engine rankings, but assist in heading up your competition and as we all know, pending on the nature of your business, only so many websites can be in the top 10.

Getting your links listed can vary from directory to directory. Some may charge a fee which guarantees you that your link will in fact be added, those who do not charge fees, it can take some time and of course there are no certain guarantees in this case.

The best and most effective way of increasing your search engine rankings is working to improve your web site's link popularity. This can be achieved by getting as many inbound, one-way links as you can from quality sites such as directories. Other ways to get these links are having great content on your site and requesting a link to your site from other web sites.

Increasing link popularity is a time-consuming and sometimes frustrating process but is definitely worth the time and effort when you see a dramatic increase in traffic. Before submitting to any directory take some in preparing your submission in making sure, probably somewhere between 20 and 25 words insuring you have placed 2-3 of your keywords in describing your website, also another helpful hint is to place your keywords in your title tag.

If you are a SEO Company offering search engine optimization for other companies, you may want to write something along these lines, "Achieve higher search engine rankings and attract more targeted visitors. We can help you build a link campaign for higher search engine rankings". Rather than using inappropriate marketing ploys, which search engines frown upon, something like "World's greatest online SEO Company offering the lowest prices for Search Engine Optimization, we can make you number one in just weeks".

What to look for

Here are some of the most important criteria's to take into consideration when submitting to directories:

Are your listings going to be posted on Static pages

Are you going to gain any Page Rank benefit

Are you able to add descriptive title to your link

Are you able to specify your own keywords

Are you able to submit multiple links under one listing

Is the directory listed in DMOZ or Yahoo

Are there more than 50 links on a category page

Can you enhance your listing by purchasing category sponsorship

If you are looking for additional traffic, does the target directory's

Alexa rank justify the submission costs

A Helpful List of Internet Directories to Get You Started

We have complied a detailed chart outlining the Internet directories with their Google Page rank, Google backlinks and finally by their Alexa rank to help you gauge the mount of visitor traffic you can expect from these directories. We are planning to maintain the list of directories and provide timely updates of the Google Page rank, Google backlinks and their Alexa rank.

Our own website is listed in many of these directories, the cost can ran range from Free to a few hundred dollars. We suggest you start from the top of this directory list and decide how much you can afford to spend. If you have a small budget you may want to skip over the Yahoo directory submission as it is nearly $300 per year. You are probably better off spending money on 10 smaller directory submissions.

Shelley Murphy brings with her over 10 years of direct,e-marketing and Search Engine Optimization strategies Internet based businesses. Holding two BA's in English and Journalism Communications her writing skills have been a great asset for both onsite writing and monthly newsletters publication and has become an established writer for several SEO e-zines.


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Posted by Jack Dukun at 9:08 PM | | Comments

Getting Listed in the ODP, Google Directory

Getting Listed in the ODP, Google Directory was written by Bradley James and he writes "First of all, the Google directory is really just the open directory project (ODP: url here) with a few adjustments. While listings on DMOZ.org are arranged within their category according to simple alphabetic order, listings in the Google Directory are based upon PageRank [link]. Thus, sites with higher PageRanks will show up higher on the list of sites under any given category. You can see the PageRank of a site pictorially by looking at the little green bar off to the left of each listing. The other major difference is that the Google Directory updates its listings only once every few months. Therefore, a website that is accepted into the ODP today may have to wait 3 months or more before it is listed in the Google Directory. If you go to DMOZ.org, you can see all the latest listings because each category page is updated immediately after a new site is added.

Now, on to the real topic at hand: getting listed. Obviously, in order to get listed in the Google Directory you must get listed on DMOZ first. As many webmasters can attest, this can be much more difficult than you might think. Simply submitting your site under the appropriate category, however, may indeed do the trick. The ODP editors are technically supposed to consider your site for inclusion into the directory within a few weeks of submission. In reality, however, many ODP editors (now keep in mind, they are all volunteers), don't even log into their accounts that often. And when they do, they may simply not feel like reviewing all the newly submitted sites. If they do review all the new sites, they may very well decide to turn yours down for one reason or another..

Assuming you've built a high quality, non-spam website, however, they really don't have much of a reason to turn it down - unless, of course, it was submitted to the wrong category. The main point here is that you can't really depend upon the submission process. It may work for you, and it may not. If you've tried it, and it hasn't resulted in your website being listed, you may want to try an alternative approach.

It's no secret that just about anyone can become an ODP editor. Yet, most people who take the time to apply get turned down. Going through the process is worth it, however, since editors get to add whichever sites they wish to the categories they preside over. Simply becoming an editor in order to submit your website is usually highly frowned upon, and if you proceed to neglect your category, it really isn't fair to ODP. However, if you are willing to do the job of editing a category in exchange for adding your website (provided, of course, that you have a website worthy of adding to the ODP), then one can think of it as a business deal: you get your site listed, and they get another free editor to help maintain the directory.

Okay, so you want to help out the ODP, and you just happen to have a good website you want to get listed. Good, then you are ready to apply for an editing position. When applying to become an editor for the ODP, we highly recommend that you apply for a very small category - preferably a category with 15 or fewer sites, and no subcategories. Now here's the thing: you do not have to apply for the category you want your website listed in - in fact, you don't even have to apply for a category that is of the same topic as your website.

For instance, if you have a website that sells flowers, you could submit an application to some obscure social science category. Then again, you may be able to find an obscure category that is somewhat related to your website topic - in this case, for instance, a small category under botany. The point is it doesn't really matter what your initial category is. Once you've put in a few days time fixing up that category, you can then apply to become editor of a larger category - perhaps even the category you want to your website listed under.

Even if another person edits your target category, you can still get your site listed. You can submit your website to one of your own categories, then send the site over to your target category. Sites sent from one category to another by editors are usually looked at sooner than ones submitted by the general public. You can also apply to be Greenbuster of your target category, which is a position below full editor. This allows you to suggest websites to a category and edit websites submitted by others. One important thing you cannot do as Greenbuster is directly add websites to the public DMOZ category. This isn't usually a big obstacle, however, since editors regularly look at - and accept - sites suggested by Greenbusters.

Just a few more suggestions and you're ready to go. When applying to become an editor of any category (even if you are already an editor), don't forget to provide three website suggestions instead of just two. Also, be honest about your website affiliations, and your interest in the category. Even if your main goal is to get your website listed, you can still apply for a category that interests you. If you are willing to give some of your time to ODP, the reward can be a healthy increase in PageRank and status for your website.

Bradley James is the Chief Editor at Google Advisor. The website provides free information for webmasters relating to the Google search engine, PageRank issues, AdWords and AdSense strategies, and more.


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Posted by Jack Dukun at 9:01 PM | | Comments

How Google Indexes Content From Your Web Directory

In a fluke, I was able to notice something about the way Google indexes content from web directories. Excluding your template, the most important line of code is the first title you add to your main body.

Search through Google and see for yourself!

Try searching for "something" in "yourcity","province/state" and look for a web business directory that you recognize. Once you find a directory, take a good look at the description of that particular listing (not the title). It may be a good idea to write it down. Once complete, click on the "cache" of that page within Google to highlight the content and view the web directory page.

9 out of 10 times the description of your website listing within Google is partly taken from the first line of code you have within your main body of content (excluding your header, footer, & sidebar). You will notice that this only applies for a web directory. Any personal or business related website gets indexed differently. If you take a look at the Google directory, we find the same thing: Take a look here: http://www.google.com/dirhp?hl=en

Browse to any sub-category and look at the first line of text. You will find that the title within the main body of content before anything else, is within an H1 tag.

H1 tags & H2 tags are nothing new to the development community but, there may still be many directories online that can increase their search engine rankings by changing a few things.

Here's an example we see very often online; (I am also guilty of this)

You have just developed an impressive web directory and you are very proud of your creation. In the process of organizing your massive directory you were faced with a problem on how to allow people to browse your website and how to let search engines browse through your categories with ease. So with that in mind, you create the "alphabetical solution".

THE ALPHABETICAL SOLUTION IS THIS:

Search Categories By Alphabetical Order:
A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K,L,M,N,O,P,Q,R,S,T,U,V,W,X,Y,Z

The problem with this alphabetical solution (I am also guilty as charged) is that we tend to add this development solution to the top of our page so that our visitors and possibly search engines can find these extra categories easily.


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Posted by Jack Dukun at 8:00 PM | | Comments

Rock Your Rank With a Dynamite Text Link - Yahoo Directory Explodes Rankings

Rock Your Rank With a Dynamite Text Link - Yahoo Directory Explodes Rankings was written by Mike Banks and he writes "Last week a client called me excitedly exclaiming that their Google PageRank had jumped a notch and their targeted keyword term now ranked #23 (up from #45) for their competitive search phrase. I asked the client if he'd been notified by Yahoo that his site was now included in the index after we had submitted it three weeks ago. "Yes," he said, "but why are you changing the subject?"

"I'm not changing the subject. Inclusion in Yahoo Directory is the most likely reason for the jump in both your search position and your PageRank. Remember when you doubted the value of inclusion in the Yahoo Directory and I pushed for submission anyway? Now you know why I insisted."

That seemingly expensive Yahoo Directory listing has one little known benefit to your website. It is the most important and valuable text link you could ever purchase. That one link from one source will do your ranking more good than any other single link (except possibly the Open Directory)..

Many webmasters look at potential traffic referred from the Yahoo Directory as the determining factor for submissions, when that is not the best reason for inclusion - It's the link value that matters above all else in this case.

I've had several SEO clients see a leap in ranking for targeted search terms a week or so after that Yahoo Directory link goes live for them. Many clients have argued with me about the value of that Yahoo Directory text link. But at $299, the yearly fee is cheaper than many of those commercial text link ads sites and does far more for your ranking in search engines OTHER than Yahoo.

Why? It's purely the value of that link. Search engines know that only sites of a certain quality level will submit and get accepted into Yahoo Directory. They know that serious businesses will pay that yearly fee, while marginal or hobby sites will not pay that $299 every year. Surely there is some level of value assigned in search algorithms to inclusion in the Yahoo Directory.

It's a little known technique for gains in ranking which is based purely on empirical observation over time. But the result of inclusion in the Yahoo Directory is the same for every client, every time - their PageRank ratchets up and targeted search terms suddenly take a big jump just a week or two after inclusion. The same is true of inclusion in the free Open Directory Project at http://DMOZ.org .

I've seen client sites jump from positions on page three at MSN search to top 5 positions on page one of the MSN SERP's following inclusion in the Yahoo Directory. Now we are submitting this same client to the Open Directory for the 5th time in as many months hoping for elusive editors to add the site, leading to another jump in search position and PageRank if and when they get around to adding the site to the DMOZ database.

You do know that Google uses that Open Directory listing in their own directory, don't you? It's worth submitting and resubmitting until they finally include your site. It really is worth the trouble to keep trying, no matter how long they ignore your submissions.

One caveat always applies to Directory submissions! They must be done with great care applied to keyword phrases used in the site description. That single line of text you submit in the "Site Description" text box on the submission page will strongly affect your keyword phrase ranking in OTHER search engines for a very long time.

Take care in crafting a keyword rich and effective description for your site. I always request that clients either have me submit for them or use text I've written for them in that description. If you do it badly, it will be re-written by an editor who cares more for categorization than keyword rankings. Be Careful!

Before you run off begging for reciprocal links from slick webmasters or purchasing text links of dubious value from text link outfits, submit to Yahoo Directory and pay the $299 (or $24.92 monthly) for the most undervalued text link available. Then swallow your pride and re-submit to the Open Directory until they finally include your site.

Rock your rank with dynamite text links! Yahoo Directory and the Open Directory Project.

Copyright © August 23, 2005

Mike Banks Valentine operates http://Publish101.com Free Web Content Distribution for Article Marketers and Provides content aggregation, press release optimization and custom web content for Search Engine Positioning http://www.seoptimism.com/SEO_Contact.htm
RSS: http://RealitySEO.com/atom.xml


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Posted by Jack Dukun at 7:48 PM | | Comments

Saturday, July 29, 2006

Link Building Services

Link Building Services was written by SUNNY KATHURIA and he writes "In today scenario when we talk about Search Engine Optimization, we also talk about one of the most important aspect of SEO, which is Link Building. But there are different types, aspects and limitations of Link Building, which would be discussed now under

1.Types of Link Building: I would be explaining this factor in a more understandable manner with giving some examples with Site1, Site2 and Site3.

a)One Way Linking: One Way Linking is a type of Link Building where a site links to another site without getting a link back

Example: Site1 links to Site2 One of the best ways of generating One Way Links is Directory Submissions

You can submit your site in different free directories like Dmoz, Yahoo Directory (Paid Also) and many others..

Limitations of One-Way Linking
One of the most desired limitations of One-Way linking is time Consuming process and the confirmation of getting listed in Directories is not fixed

b)Two Way Linking: Mostly known as Reciprocal Linking, this is one of the most effective and fast method of creating quality incoming links towards your site. Two Way Linking is process of exchanging links between 2 sites of similar theme. (As per latest Google Semantic Indexing)

Example: Site1 Links to Site2 and in return Site2 Links back to Site1 The best method to create Reciprocal Links is to contact theme based sites, which you can think can be involved in your Linking Parameters and ask them for a Link Exchange with your site

There are no limitations in this type of Linking as this is one of the most effective and fastest methods of creating incoming traffic to your site.

c)Three Way Linking: This can also be termed as a better way of obtaining One-Way Links to your site, as in this process there is One-Way and Reciprocal Linking Involved

Example: Site1 Links to Site2, But in place Site2 Links Site1 on Site3

Aspects to be Looked Before While creating Links

1.The partner's site Page Rank of the page where he has placed your link

2.Whether the page where your link has been placed is indexed in Search Engines or not

3.One most important factor is the theme of the site. Eg: If you have a site related to Web Design you can exchange links with site related to shoes or gifts, you should link with sites related to Web only

For More information on Link Building Services Contact Sunny Kathuria at skathuria@gmail.com or sunny_indian@touchtelindia.net

SUNNY KATHURIA
Link Building Freelancer

India
skathuria@gmail.com
sunny_indian@touchtelindia.net


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Posted by Jack Dukun at 10:05 PM | | Comments

Agressive Linking Strategies Help To Get Your Site Noticed

Agressive Linking Strategies Help To Get Your Site Noticed was written by Jason Morris and he writes "A good link building strategy has become an essential part of search engine marketing and positioning. It has been the topic of many web conferences around the world for quite some time now.

At the recent webmaster world search conference, Bruce Clay suggested what he called aggressive linking campaigns, be instigated following a few basic guidelines. He suggested that many uneducated link builders do foolish linking into multiple domain networks, which are all hosted either on the same server, or simply buy links from a series of sites hosted within a single C block of IP addresses. Bruce advised gaining links from a wide range of IP addresses that are hosted in different places, and that this would replicate natural links that will be gained over a period of time. This guideline was given as IP address - Different is Good.

With aggressive linking it is also advisable to vary the page rank quality of those sites you want to link to you. Again making things appear natural to the search engines. Be careful to not only link to sites with a high page rank of 8 or 9. You should also seek links from a good range of sites with both high and low page rank values. This is especially the case for new sites..

Some search engine optimisers recommend looking at your link campaign from a purely scientific view. Basically you need to find out what the visitors to your site are searching for, and then find out which phrases convert to sales and then target your link text towards these visitors. Once you have determined your highest value phrases, you then apply those phrases in the anchor text you request from your link partners. Using this method allows you to request links based on the highest Return Of Investment (ROI), as well as appearing natural to the search engine spiders.

By applying the aggressive strategies above, you will attain a linking campaign that is both relevant and highly targeted to your main search phrases.

Jason
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Jason Morris is co-author, search engine optimization and marketing consultant of Business Phone Systems Direct. An established communications company, offering advice and implementation of high quality business phone systems.
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Posted by Jack Dukun at 10:03 PM | | Comments

Linking Strategies to Skyrocket to the Top of Google

Linking Strategies to Skyrocket to the Top of Google was written by Greg Furey and he writes "If you don't know already, one of the key success factors to getting loads of free Google traffic to your website is increasing page rank. So just how do you increase your page rank? Well, it's all in the linking.

To be honest I never could quite figure this Google thing out, how it ranks good sites from bad sites. One day it all clicked for me and its so simple when you look at it from Google's point of view. Google keeps its customers by providing relevant sites to your search queries. How does it choose the best sites for what you are looking for? Well, first of all it needs to be relevant (key words) and secondly it needs to be useful and of high quality. One way Google knows to measure quality is by the amount of links referring to your site. It stands to reason a site referred to by 100 websites may be more useful than a site referred by just a few right?

So how can we increase our sites chances of shooting up the search engine rankings with incoming links?
The quality of the links you receive is very important. Choose websites that firstly are related and preferably with a higher page rank than your site. The higher the quality link the higher page rank you will receive. In other words getting a link from Amazon.com is going to be worth more than a link on your daughters home page..

Basically there are 3 types of links, Outbound links which are easily added to your site, Reciprocal links where site A links to site B and site B links back to site A, and finally inbound links. These inbound links are the most important of all.

Let me describe how to get links in order of their importance.

How to get incoming links
1. Write articles like this one. Choose a topic you know and write up a short 500 word articles with a link back to your website and post it to article directories. Not only are these one-way links but other websites will pick it up and post one way links on their websites. Google gives you a big tick for each one way link!

2. Viral marketing. Ask other website owners directly if they would like to post your article either on their website or include it as part of their newsletter. If it's a good article chances are readers will in turn pass this on to other readers providing advertising for both you and the other Webmaster. Like a virus, it spreads to more and more readers who may post the article, providing more one-way links.

3. Post to forums related to your area and include a link in your signature file. It is critical to join in the discussion and not blatantly advertise, as this can look unprofessional and self-gratifying. Add value to the discussion and simply provide a link in your signature. Visit some forums and see who you would link to in the discussion and try and copy what they did right.

How to get reciprocal links
Ask Webmasters directly. These are a little easier to ask for as its clear you are providing them also with a link. Best to first link to their website, then personalize the contact commenting about something on their website specifically. I have found personally calling them if you have the contact phone number the best method. My friend David Newton at www.simplysolo.com has found this an invaluable way to gain in excess of 1,000 inbound links for his site. Simplified it should go like this:

a. Find a relevant site as a potential link partner. Tip - Try entering this into google "your keyword or phrase" + "add url". This will then list the most popular sites that will allow you to link back to them.

b. Firstly create a link to their website

c. Contact them directly showing them your link to them with url of their site and something you liked about their site, something unique. Compliments can only help here.

d. Schedule to follow them up in one months time and try again if necessary. Best to keep a spreadsheet

Of course not all sites will link to you and it's a bit of a numbers game but you can get results. Its better to personalize your contact than mass e-mailing a general group of websites.

Don't forget to always be polite and keep up a schedule where you will aim to get say ten or twenty links out there per week. You will then have quite a collection after a few months and traffic should start flowing to your site.

Greg Furey is the owner of The Affiliate Program Centre - Resources and helpful tools for businesses and website owners to increase sale through affiliate marketing. http://www.affiliateprogramcentre.com


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Posted by Jack Dukun at 9:27 PM | | Comments

Types of Links

Types of Links was written by Rakesh Ojha and he writes "Internal Linking - An introduction

The web as they call it is a mesh of links. The wired world is now being counted for what it is. A Network. The more your pages are wired or integrated into the overall web linking architecture, the better it is from search engine ranking point of view. Google specially thrives on crawling on links. Its pagerank is a measure of this.

We will, in this article, measure the importance of good internal linking architecture on googles pagerank .

When setting up the linking architecture of your site keep in mind that links are of two kinds:
-Internal links
-External links

Internal links are the constituent elements of the way your web site is organized. They are the bridges by which one page of your site connects to the other & more importantly outlines, which page of your site will connect to which other page/s..

External links on the other hand are the community tools by which the online community votes for you by linking to you. The more popular you get is a function of more incoming links into your website. This in turn is interpreted by search engines as a measure of your online value creation.

In essence, if your pages are orphaned (no one links to them) or lying isolated within your web site thats not good news from a pagerank point of view. To enjoy a good pagerank for the pages it is imperative to have proper linking amongst various pages within the website as well as having good quality external links coming into the page.

A factor to be cognizant of while linking is that one should focus on quality links & not always quantity. Consider that, there is a huge difference from a link, to your page from another page with a good pagerank than a page from a low pagerank

Internal Linking: A Primer
Proper internal linking ensures that the web pages are accessible to search engines & that they are indexed properly.(This is not to discount the navigational ease of the end user) A good internal linking structure should be intuitive as well as functionality driven. That will benefit everyone.

Internal linking on the other level decides the pagerank flow within the website. The pages that are linking to that page get a pagerank benefit from that page. Then it stands to reason that if the maximum number of pages linking are internal pages they will retain the maximum pagerank emanating from that page. This will boost their ratings as well.

Hence one rule of thumb says that have as many incoming links to your web page as possible(this will boost the PR of that page) from outside resources or may be good PR pages of your site. Try & pass on the benefit of that page to the other pages of your site by proper interlinking. Inward looking as it might sound, this makes lot of good online marketing sense.

External linking
External linking on the other hand is more difficult to control & hence more valued by search engines. This is what really builds up the PR of the webpage. Good quality (High PR) incoming links are craved by the online promotion experts all over .

Linking Attribute
It is always preferable to have a text link rather then a Graphic/Image link, because in a text link you can use Keywords as the text on which hyperlink is given(anchor text). In effect you can make your anchor tag keyword rich. Anchor tags' text is a very important criterion in search engine ranking matrix.

Search engines look at not only how many people are linking to you, how important they themselves are but also what they are saying while linking to you. In fact search engines like google have gone a step ahead. They not only look at the anchor tag but also the text surrounding it. Essentially they are trying to establish the relevance of that link to your pages content.

If anchor tag is so important & more often that not, one cannot control what the world says while linking to you then it is very useful to have internal links speak the language of keywords. This means that it is a good practice to use keywords as the internal linking text.

However if you are using Graphics/Image linking then you should not do it using image map because many of the search engine does not follow image map. To overcome this problem make use of the ALT attribute. ALT attribute give the information about the image and where it is going to provide the link.

Another important aspect of the internal linking of your site is the sitemap. A sitemap is a page that contains links to every page on the site. There should be a link to the sitemap on every page, or at least on the homepage. A sitemap helps you to have an overview of your site linking architecture as well as it helps SE crawl the entire web site.

Internal linking architecture
There are three forms that can be assumed while planning the sites internal linking pattern.

Hierarchal
In this kind of Internal linking all the pages of the website are connected to the home page and home page is individually connected to all the pages of the website, but there is no linking between the pages of the website.

Looping
In this kind of Internal linking the home page is connected to the primary page and the primary page is connected to the secondary page and this process goes on till the last page and the last page is connected to the home page in this way a loop is formed.

Extensive inter linking
In this kind of Internal linking each page is connected to each other in the website.

What kind of internal linking is preferable in a certain case, is dependent on the objectives you are trying to achieve in terms of Pagerank optimisation, user navigation ease & site theme.One tip to bear in mind is that internal linking should reinforce the theme. One should not crosslink between the pages on the site which are unrelated by themes. This will dilute the theme intensity & affect the page rankings on SERPs.

Redundant Internal links:
Two category of internal links that should be guarded against are: broken links & dead links.

Broken links
Broken links are the links that are in the website and when they are clicked they don't open a webpage rather they show some error.

Dead links
Dead links are the links that are in the website and when they are clicked they don't open a webpage and they don't even show some error.

To summarize pagerank of a site apart from other factors, can be guided by the way information is organised within a site & the way it is presented. Careful planning with setting up the information flow will go a long way in helping optimise the pagerank of the site.

Rakesh Ojha is a successful Internet marketer utilizing both pay-per-click marketing and search engine optimization to increase website traffic. To learn more, visit http://sem.mosaic-service.com


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Posted by Jack Dukun at 9:22 PM | | Comments

Thursday, July 27, 2006

Importance of Keywords in Links to Your Website

Importance of Keywords in Links to Your Website was written by Christoph Puetz and he writes "Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a very complex process. It is a long-term process that will usually never produce results that you can see in days or weeks. By now you probably heard about the importance of getting other websites to link to yours so that you can get a higher ranking in search engines. You listed your websites in some directories and also received a few other links to your website.

But stop right here. How is being linked to your homepage? Are people just using a plain http://www.yourdomain.com for the link? Or is the link embedded in your business name? If so you are eventually loosing valuable points in your search engine ranking. To receive full 'points' from a search engine for a link to your website, the link should be embedded in specific keywords.

Keywords? What keywords? How are people searching for things related to your website? Almost nobody searches for your business by business name when doing a search in search engines. People are search for something specific and the search engine will eventually show a link to your page if it relates the search term to your website. If it does not associate a keyword with your website it will not display the link to your site and you are missing out on visitors..

You need to create a keyword strategy to optimize your website AND the associates links for search engines. Keywords need to be found on your website. Make sure there is enough text with the important keywords. Talk to friends, family, and customers to find out what search terms they would use and how that relates to your business and the website. This can be helpful information in your research.

Now when you go to exchange links with other websites use those keywords. Let the other sites link you with these keywords and the link embedded into those keywords. This will be an important piece to your search engine success. A good example of how this is done can be seen in the Author Resource information of this article.

About the Author
Christoph Puetz is a successful entrepreneur and international book author. Examples of his search engine optimization work can be found at Pregnancy Announcements, Free Smilies and at Vitamin B.


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Posted by Jack Dukun at 9:13 PM | | Comments

Answers Count - Matching Keyword and Phrase Density

Answers Count - Matching Keyword and Phrase Density was written by Don Osborne and he writes "What's more important to your business success - the question or the answer? Certainly, you want your questions to reflect what you are trying to find out. Obviously, your questions should be easily understood. Most definitely, you're hoping for some positive responses. But, what you really need to do is count repetitive keywords and phrases found in your respondents answers.

If you agree with the philosophy about how people tend to buy from the perspective of avoiding pain and moving towards pleasure, you know how important it is to your market research, product development and sales strategy to ask good questions and listen very closely to the answers.

Open-ended answers are made up of the words respondents have chosen to tell you how they feel about something. You need to analyze the answers to open-ended questions for repetitive keywords and phrases that match those of your current or future products and services. The greater the density of the keyword and phrase matches the higher the probability of building your opt-in list or making a sale..

The key to your business success is combining everybody's answers and counting the density of repetitive keywords and phrases to help you craft your products and services into search engine friendly content pages you can use to build your opt-in list, make a sale, generate pay-per-click revenue or leverage affiliate income opportunities.

"Learn & Do" Action Steps:

1. Design your questions for open-ended response.

2. Count the number of repetitive keywords and phrases.

3. Build your page content around keywords and phrase density.

4. Set up your lead in ads to match your keywords and phrase density.

5. Create links to non-competitive offerings with matching keywords and phrases.

Don Osborne is the Author/Publisher of THE PROFIT PUZZLE, an ideal business tool for anyone thinking about, planning, starting, running or growing a small or home-based business: http://www.ProfitPuzzle.com


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Posted by Jack Dukun at 8:57 PM | | Comments

Are Your Keywords Making Money for You?

Are Your Keywords Making Money for You? this article was written by Michael Murdock and he writes "I built my website, it's perfect. My chosen subject of the website is Computer Support Services. Of course this is an example, but moving along, what should my keywords be?

Keywords are what people type into a search engine to find something on the internet. These words are what drive user requests.

Words to live by I like to call them. Why? Because on the internet your website will live and die by the words you use, or the words I use when you hire me to optimize your site..

How many words should I use?
What should they say?
How many phrases should there be?
What's a phrase?

First off, let's cover what a keyword is. A keyword is a word or collection of words used to describe your website. For those doing their own website design these words are applied in what is called a meta tag such as the following:

meta name="keywords" content="these words, would describe, your site"

keywords should say something about your website. They should also directly reflect the content of your site. They should not be random words that have nothing to do with your site, or you. If they are, you can expect that your page ranking will fall rather than rise. Of course, you will still have to submit or resubmit your website to keep your page in the eyes of the various search engines.

The number of words and phrases should be no more than 21-22, or a combination of the two. I have seen sites that had over 780 keywords, but no content to support them. Even if there was content there to support that large number of words, it's fruitless to have that many words. Most search engines will ignore anything over the 22 words limit.

A phrase is defined as more than one word. "Real Estate Sales" is a phrase. "Real, Estate, Sales" is a collection of keywords. Both of these if used in a search would render completely different results.

Short, to the point, and using some of the keywords that describe your service or product. Here it's Auto Repair Service, it's New, and it's Terrific.

Description - The second most important item on the page. Make this relevant to the content (typing) that you have on your webpage:

Bob's New Terrific Auto Repair Service is the most experienced auto repair shop on the coast. Servicing All types of autos from 9am - 5pm 7 days a week. We offer early bird service on Fridays and Free Car Washes to all customers who pay by cash.

KEYWORDS -
Select about 22 words/phrases that descibe your product or service, and separate them with a comma. This line would look like: auto, automobile, service, terrific, new, free car wash, pay with cash.

How do I find these keywords? Use the following tools:

http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

This tool known as the Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool is one of the most widely used methods of finding out what subjects people are searching for. What products they are searching for, what services they search for.

Enter your words like this: star wars or use something like business plan sample and when you click the button, you will be presented with a listing of how many times that word or words was searched for in the past month. Picking the higher ranked ones will be good for your site.

How does keyword selection help sales? It helps in the sense that by selecting the correct keywords, your site will be more visible, found more often in searches, and as a result of more visitors, eventually you will get more sales. Please make sure that the BUY IT NOW message on your website is clear. If not, all the optimization in the world will not help your sales increase.

Michael Murdock - former Macintosh Systems Engineer for PIXAR now owns/runs DocMurdock - A website optimization & Internet Marketing company. Helping websites move higher on the right search engines, and helping clients products move out the door and into the hands of the ideal clients.


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Posted by Jack Dukun at 8:55 PM | | Comments

Finding Targeted Keyword Phrases Your Competitors Miss

Finding Targeted Keyword Phrases Your Competitors Miss was written by Daria Goetsch and he writes "Finding Targeted Keyword Phrases Your Competitors Miss

Finding keyword phrases your competition is missing is easier than it seems. Combinations of two and three word phrases are often overlooked by your competitors when vying for the top competitive terms. This missed opportunity may be a benefit to you to overcome your competition in the search engine rankings.

Think Like A Searcher - Study Your Target Audience
Really look at the audience you want to bring to your website. Are there terms you might not ordinarily use or your competitors use that would work for a small portion of visitors? Remember that single words tend to be more competitive. Find two and three word phrases that would work for a searcher looking for your website topic. If your visitors usually search on "vertical widgets", look at "horizontal widgets" as well. Dig deep to find terms that might not be obvious to you. Of course using a keyword phrase that no one searches on might give you lots of search results, this is why you should focus your terms on the actual topic of your website content. Have another person compile a list of keyword phrases used to find your website or product. You'd be surprised at the number of variations two minds can come up with instead of one. Think like a searcher - not a website owner.

View Your Competitor's Source Code And Content For Keyword Phrases
Viewing your competitor's source code is very easy and a good way to see what keyword phrases (if any) they are using. Using your browser, view the source code of the page. The title and meta tags should contain the same keywords or variations of keyword phrases if the competitor's website is optimized. Look over the web page content as well as for keyword phrases worked into the text, image alt text, headings and hyperlinks of the pages. If their pages are not optimized you may gain an even bigger edge on the competition by optimizing your web pages.

Using Keyword Tools To Find Variations Of Keyword Phrases
The Overture Suggestion Tool will provide keyword variations: http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

Clicking on the suggestion tool link will bring up a window, you can search for terms and variations of terms. Begin with your list and see how many variations come up with the results. You might be surprised at the popularity of some of the search variations you see. Be sure to add you new keyword phrases to your list.

WordTracker is a keyword tool as well, you can purchase a yearly subscription or even a one day subscription. Learn more about it here: http://www.wordtracker.com/

Search On Keyword Phrases In The Search Engines
Using your expanded list of keyword phrases, search for those terms in the search engine databases. Note the number of search engine results. The more results, typically the more competitive the term. See the differences in number of search results for plural versions as opposed to singular versions of your keywords in each engine. Note the descriptions that the search engine results bring up - are there any keyword phrases there that might apply to your website? Don't forget the ads Google displays in their search results. Study the ads that come up with your search terms as well. While you are searching on your keyword phrases, check your competitor's ranking, along with the new keyword phrase variations you come up with through the Overture Keyword and WordTracker tools.

Add Keywords Reflecting Your Local Cities And State
You can also target local areas by listing them in your title/meta tags and text of your web pages. List only the cities and state you reside in and/or provide services to. You never know who will be looking for a local contact producer of "blue widgets" in your city or state. Some people prefer to work with a local company. Adding in those type of specifics, even on your contact page with your local information, can pull in traffic your local competitors are missing.

Check Your Site Statistics
Last but certainly not least, check your search engine stats program or raw server logs to see what terms your visitors are using to find your website. There may be combinations of words your visitors are using you have not thought of or that may not be in the content of your pages.

Incorporate Keyword Phrases Into Content Of Your Web Pages
Once you have your list of varied keyword phrases, work them into your web page. Incorporating these terms into your web pages should "make sense", in other words, they should read well and not sound "spammy". Most of all, they should realistically be part of the content of the page, not placed there only because you need them in the content. Have another person read your copy to see if it sounds reasonable to them.

Keyword Variations Make A Difference
Don't miss out on the keywords your competitors might miss. Those extra keywords could translate into profits and increased viewing of your website by visitors who might otherwise not find you.

Daria Goetsch is the founder and Search Engine Marketing Consultant for Search Innovation Marketing, a Search Engine Marketing company serving small businesses. She has specialized in Search Engine Optimization since 1998, including three years as the Search Engine Specialist for O'Reilly Media, Inc., a technical book publishing company.

Copyright © 2002-2005 Search Innovation Marketing. http://www.searchinnovation.com All Rights Reserved.

Permission to reprint this article is granted if the article is reproduced in its entirety, without editing, including the bio information. Please include a hyperlink to http://www.searchinnovation.com when using this article in newsletters or online.


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Posted by Jack Dukun at 8:36 PM | | Comments

Ten Steps To A Well Optimized Website

Ten Steps To A Well Optimized Website - Step 1: Keyword Selection was written by Dave Davies and he writes "This is part one of ten in this search engine positioning series. In part one we will outline how to choose the keyword phrases most likely to produce a high ROI for your search engine positioning efforts. Over this ten part series we will go through ten essential elements and steps to optimizing a site. Some steps take a few hours, some may take months depending on the competition, but in the end and if done correctly you will have a well optimized site that will place well and hold it's positioning.

Of course all website's fluctuate up and down however well optimized sites will spend more time on the upper end of the rankings than poorly optimized or spammy sites which may see high rankings but which will lose those rankings over time..

The Ten Steps We Will Go Through Are:
Keyword Selection
Content
Site Structure
Optimization
Internal Linking
Human Testing
Submissions
Link Building
Monitoring
The Extras

Step One - Keyword Selection
Arguably, keyword selection is the single most important stage in the entire optimization process. If you do not choose the correct keyword phrases you will not maximize your ROI on this campaign. I mention ROI and use it as a reminder that keyword selection is not necessarily about looking for the most searched phrases. A profitable optimization is one which produces the greatest return on investment for the time and money that are available to put towards it.

Bigger Is Not Always Better
If you are a web designer in Seattle who has just started your own business, you could make "web design" the targeted keyword phrase for your site as it certainly has the highest number of searches with 707,962 in September 2004 according to the "Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool". If you have thousands of dollars and many months to dedicated just to attaining those rankings it could be done however, would that be the best use of your time? Alternatively you could target "seattle web site design" with 5,070 searches in September. A Google link check shows the number of links for the top three competitors for the Seattle search had 132, 21, and 47 respectively whereas for "web design" the top three had 18,700, 5,420, and 1,310 incoming links each.

With a good site you would get more work than you could handle with 5,070 searches on Overture alone if you were ranking well on the major search engines. This would clearly provide the highest return on investment for the small business owner who most certainly does not have the time and money available to target "web design" and who wouldn't have the manpower to take advantage of the rankings even if they were attained.

This is an extreme example however it clearly illustrates that sometimes the phrase with the highest number of searches is not necessarily the best target for your business.

Phrases That Sell
Another consideration you will want to make when choosing your keyword phrases is whether or not they are "buy phrases". Phrases with a high number of searches that are not "buy phrases" will tend to bring a lot of traffic, however the conversion ratio will be far lower. Should you choose to target "buy phrases" you may not get the same number of visitors however your ratio of visitors to sales will be much higher.

In this example let's assume you are the marketing director for a well-known accounting company. There will be many choices you can make for your targeted keyword phrase. The top searched phrases in September 2004 that were accounting-related are:

"accounting" with 156,095 searches
"accounting software" with 54,621 searches
"accounting job" with 32,015 searches
"accounting services" with 19,260 searches
"accounting firm" with 13,089 searches

Many might go with their gut instinct and attempt to target "accounting". The problem with this phrase (other than the competition for it) is that the people doing that search are not necessarily even looking for an accounting firm. They may be accounting students, small business owners not interested in hiring an accountant but just looking for tax information, etc. "Accounting software" and "accounting job" are irrelevant, which leaves us with "accounting services" and "accounting firm" as the two main options.

From this point an evaluation of competition should be performed and the pros and cons of making each the primary target should be weighed based on the amount of work it will take to attain the phrase vs. how many searches there are for that phrase.

Often promotions that target multiple "buy phrases" will end up far more successful that those targeting phrases based solely on the number of searches due to the increased conversions and generally decreased competition.

Tools To Use
Armed now with knowledge on how to recognize and choose between different phrases there remains only one question, how do you know which phrases are even searched? Fortunately there are a couple great resources out there to help you find out how many searches are performed for specific phrases. They Are:

The Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool
A decent tool for researching keyword phrases. It indicates which phrases had the highest numbers of searches on Overture during the previous month. The biggest weakness it has, as far as applying it to the natural search engines, is that Overture counts singular and plural as the same and also corrects misspelling so the totals are all lumped together in this tool whereas on the natural engines they are considered differently.

WordTracker
WordTracker is very similar to Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool except that this tool differentiates between plural and singular searches, does not correct spelling (i.e. it gives the number of searches for misspellings rather than correcting them and giving a total for correct and misspelled words) and gives the results in predicted numbers of searches over all the engines per day rather than just one engine over a month.

They have a great free trial that doesn't give you as many results but which can be very useful.

When using these tools I recommend beginning with the Overture Search term Suggestion Tool and once you've narrowed down your choices, switch to WordTracker to insure that you're getting the right information in regards to tense (singular vs. plural) and also that the numbers match. Sometimes you will find that the numbers are completely different from each tool. In this event you will have to use your best judgment.

Don't forget to check misspellings when using WordTracker!

Tips & Tricks
There are no real "tricks" to uncovering the keywords you should target however there are a few tips. A few pointers that will help you maximize your keyword selection:

Think like a layman. Just because you know your industry terms doesn't mean that everyone does. Don't just think of the words you use to describe your products/services, think of the words you would use if you knew nothing about it other than the fact that you needed it. You may want to recruit a friend and have them run some searches for you.

Think like an expert. On the other side of the coin, there may be phrases used specifically in your industry that people "in the know" would use to search for your products and/or services. Be sure to look into these phrases. You just may find some hidden gems that no one else has thought to target.

Don't target too many phrases. Some SEOs and webmasters target dozens and sometimes even hundreds of phrases. The end result, they often miss the ones they most wanted to attain. Keeping yourself and your keyword list focused will keep your site focused. If your site is focused you'll rank higher for the phrases that will produce the highest return on investment.

Testing
Test your phrases. If there is any debate about whether a search phrase is worth targeting it's often a good idea to test the conversions through pay-per-click engines. Set up an account with a PPC engine and bid on the phrases that you would like to target.

You have to remember that the PPC engines do not provide for the same amount of traffic as the natural engines. Test the initial phrases, test alternative phrases, and see which produce the best results. Something else to keep in mind is that PPC are not natural engines. If your ROI is not as high on more costly phrases that doesn't mean they won't produce the higher return on the natural engines where a top ranking does not cost money per click.

In the end you will have confirmed a solid list of keyword phrases and if the PPC campaign is providing a good return on investment you might as well keep it running and enjoy the "bonus" traffic that it provides.

Next Week
Next week in part two of our "Ten Steps To an Optimized Website" series we will be covering content. This will cover everything from the optimization of existing content to the creation of new content for your website.

About The Author
Dave Davies is the owner of Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning (http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/). He has been optimizing and ranking websites for over three years and has a solid history of success. Dave is available to answer any questions that you may have about your website and how to get it into the top positions on the major search engines.
info@beanstalk-inc.com


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Posted by Jack Dukun at 8:35 PM | | Comments

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

How To Start An Internet Business - Meta Tags

How To Start An Internet Business - Meta Tags and Keyword Density was written by Halstatt Pires and he writes "Okay, you have a domain name, layout and content. Now we get to a step that will go a long way to determining how the site will rank. Yes, we are going to focus on two infamous topics, meta tags and keyword density.

Meta Tags
Meta tags are html code blocks that "tell" a search engine what is on a particular site page. Meta tags are not visible on the pages of your site, but search engine robots focus on them. Three different meta tags should appear on each page of your site.

The meta title essentially acts as the title of the page. When you do a search on Google, the meta title is the first underlined text in each listing. The content of the meta title should include the keywords you want to push with the most important being listed first. Each word should be included no more than 2 times and the total word count should not exceed 13 words..

The meta description tag allows for an expansion of the meta title. Use short sentences to emphasize the who, what, why and where of your business. Make absolute sure that every keyword in your title also appears in your description.

One of the aggravating things about search engines is how they use meta descriptions. Most pick only certain sections of your description. When your link appears in the search results, the description may make little if any sense. Unfortunately, there isn't much you can do about it.

Historically, meta keywords were a very important factor in the ranking process. How times have changed. Google doesn't even look at them, while MSN and Yahoo give them marginal value. You should still use them, if for no other reason then forcing you to focus on your keyword phrases when creating content.

Keyword Density
Keyword density simply refers to how often keywords appear in a page as a percentage of the total text. A few years back, it was common practice to cram and hide keywords all over a page. You probably remember seeing pages with thousands of keywords listed at the very bottom. This no longer works and is considered spamming by search engines.

Much like the meaning of life, the best keyword density percentage is a hotly debated topic. Theories and opinions ranged from 1.5 to as high as 20 percent. We recently ran a test with a page that only had a keyword phrase on it, thus representing a 100% keyword density. The only search engine that reacted was Yahoo, which listed it at number 1 for 25 days before dropping it. Notwithstanding this test, the simple fact is that nobody really knows the optimal density, except for programmers at the search engines. Rumor has it that they are permanently locked away in the Himalayas, so there isn't much hope of getting any information from them.

Our experience is keyword density really doesn't matter if you have flowing text on the page. The point of your site is to sell, so write copy that accomplishes that goal. Once you have completed the copy, modify it to make sure the important keywords appear at least once in the first paragraph. Do not force the keywords into sentences; just make sure they appear at least once. We have clients with number 1 rankings on Google, Yahoo and MSN that have keyword densities ranging from .5 to 18.5 percent. Yes, these rankings are on keywords with lots of competition and traffic.

In Closing
In my opinion, meta tags and keyword density are mystified far too much. They are important factors, but the content on your pages is far more so. Be judicious with your content, pursue a targeted linking campaign and the rankings will follow.

Halstatt Pires is with http://www.marketingtitan.com - an Internet marketing and advertising company in San Diego, California comprised of a search engine optimization specialist providing meta tag optimization services and Internet marketing consultant providing internet marketing solutions through integrated design and programming services.


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Posted by Jack Dukun at 11:27 PM | | Comments

Keyword Optimization How To Achieve It

Keyword Optimization - How To Achieve It was written by Elizabeth McGee and she writes "The most important thing you can do for your business and your website is develop relevant keywords that are not too competitive yet generate targeted traffic to your website.

It's called keyword optimization. Why is it important?

Because Keywords and keyword phrases do a couple of things for you:

- With the right keywords, you will attract the viewers most interested in the items or services on your site.

- You will rank higher in the search engines for your chosen keywords, saving you thousands of dollars in advertising..

It all starts, however, with the best keywords that pertain to your product or services.

When selecting keywords you should select 1 perhaps 2 of the most relevant keywords for each page of your site. I suggest using no more than two keywords per page, preferably one.

Why?

Because search engines strive to deliver the most relevant pages for the search term entered. The more focused your page is for the search term, the more relevant the search engines will find your page. The more keywords you use, the less focused your page becomes.

How do you find keywords that your target audience will use?

- Think like your readers. Take yourself outside your site for a minute and think about how you would find the products or services you are selling.

- Use Overture's Keyword Selector Tool http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ Type in your most basic keyword and it will show you the variations of the search term and also the count of how many times that term was entered in the search engine.

- Think of phrases as opposed to one single word. If you sell clay pots, think of keywords such as painted clay pots, or clay flower pots, large clay pots, buy clay pots. Use descriptive words when brainstorming phrases.

- Ask your relatives, kids and friends what they would type in to find your products. You would be amazed at the great ideas that can be generated. For example, I asked a teenager once what he would type in to find shoes online and he said 'nice kicks'. As of this writing, Overture's keyword selector tool showed a count of 12130. Hmmm, never would have thought of it on my own.

- Use a thesaurus or Webster's dictionary to find similar words to your chosen keywords. Consider all forms of the word. For example, for the term supply there is supply, supplies, supplier, supplying. Thinking of all forms of the word help a great deal in brainstorming keyword ideas.

- If you have a website already, place a search engine on your site. This would be a search engine that you put on your site that searches only your site such as http://www.freefind.com/. This will help you collect data on what keywords users are using. Once you've collected a good list of search terms you can use this to help you determine the best keywords.

Along this same line, you can also use your website server logs to gather information on the keywords used to find your site.

Once you've made a list of the best keywords and keyword phrases, you will need to determine which ones are the best.

Your challenge is to find keywords that have a high usage count but appear on the least amount of competing web pages.

Wordtracker.com is an excellent tool for helping you achieve this. Wordtracker's 'Keyword Effectiveness Index' (KEI) will provide you with the number of times a keyword is used along with the number of competing web pages. The higher the KEI, the more popular your keywords are, and the less competition. This means a better chance for you in getting to the top of the search engines.

Finding the best keywords and keyword phrases is an important part of your marketing mix. Find the correct keywords and build your content around them.

Elizabeth McGee strives to help webmasters and business owners find trusted marketing tools while also offering tips, stragegies and information for online marketing. Sign up for her FREE newsletter by visiting her site at: http://www.pro-marketing-online.com


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Posted by Jack Dukun at 11:26 PM | | Comments

Importance of Keywords in Anchor Text or Title Text

Importance of Keywords in Anchor Text or Title Text was written by Purva Mewa and she writes "Keywords are indisputably, the single most important element of an anchor text.

First of all, for those who are still learning the ropes let us define an anchor text. Anchor Text is also called Title Text. It is a clickable statement or text on a webpage, which takes you to another page or website.It is a link to another site or page.

The question is what should be considered an ideal anchor text? Since it is an invitation, it should be able to draw attention. It should ideally be self explanatory also. By looking at Anchor Text, one should be be able to figure out where one is going to land. Anchor texts within the site (i.e. links which take you from one page of the site to another) also should be chosen carefully..

Make sure your Anchor text has your main keywords as part of text. It needn't sound like a bunch of keywords put together. And, according expert optimizers, one should keep changing one's anchor text once in two-three weeks. Especially Google looks for such change and development. Your anchor text on other sites with your main keyword will help you move up that much faster. Anchor text thus is a very important element of SEO.

The author is Purva Mewar, webmaster of Work at Home Based Business websites, http://www.yesearnfromhome.com and http://www.work-at-home-earn-extra-income.com


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Posted by Jack Dukun at 11:13 PM | | Comments

Find Best Keywords For Your Site

Find Best Keywords For Your Site was written by Alvin Poh and he writes "Keyword optimisation is probably the most important thing that you want to concentrate on with regards to search engine optimisation (SEO). Unfortunately, not many people know this, or do enough to optimise their sites' keywords. Before I knew the importance of keyword optimisation, I used to pluck any keywords that seemed relevant to my site, insert them into my title tag and meta tags, then submitted my site to the search engines. And then wondered why I didn't really get much traffic.

Well, now I've learnt something: make sure you don't rush, and you have to do your due research to find out what exactly are the keywords that are best for your site.

To do this, take a good look at the first page of your website, and really try to get a feel of what that page is about. Is the theme clear and defined? Or are there too many conflicting topics on that single page?

Your readers and the search engines prefer a single themed page that focuses on one particular topic, so try to keep to a subject. Split your page up into multiple pages if you find it to be too long or too complex..

Once you've done that, try to find the keywords of your page. These are the words or phrases that can best describe your content. Put yourself in your readers' shoes: what kind of words or phrases would they use if they wanted to find a page like yours through a search engine? Make a list of these keywords and keyphrases, and don't worry about making it as long as you want, you can scratch off all the excess keywords later.

Your goal is to try to find the one or two keywords that are best for your site, and optimise your site for them. Also try to remove those highly competitive, single-word keywords such as "books", "dvds", "mp3", "toys", "computers". You don't want these keywords, because it is so hard to get a good ranking with them. Hundreds of thousands of other websites are targeting these highly popular keywords, and it is simply not worth your effort.

Remember, it is always better to rank 5th for a less popular search term than to be ranked 500th for a highly popular search term! Choose keywords or keyphrases that still have searches done for them, but are not that competitive.

To have an estimate on the popularity of a search term, use a free service such as Overture's keyword suggestion tool to get a rough guide on the number of searches done. Run your list through the free keyword suggestion tool and Overture will be able to tell you how many times a particular term was searched for during the last month. This keyword suggestion tool is great to get a general idea of where your keywords stand.

You may also want to consider WordTracker, which is a paid service, but gives you a much clearer picture on which keywords are better to optimise for. WordTrack does offer a trial option, so you can make use of that to try out their service, or search for good keywords if you just have a small, one-time website project.

Once you have an idea of the popularity of the keywords and keyphrases in your list, consider scratching off the less commonly used terms. You might also discover some new terms with those tools as well, and you can add them to your list.

And that's it! You should now have a list of good, medium-popularity keywords and keyphrases. Make sure you repeat this process for each of your pages, and have a slighlty different list for every page that you have.

Alvin Poh has been specialising in web development, content distribution, advertising and marketing strategies since 1995. His goal is to provide practical information based upon his years of experience to help webmasters, website designers, and self-employed people achieve their goals in today's competitive Internet. At his site, you can learn how to make money online


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Posted by Jack Dukun at 11:11 PM | | Comments

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

10 Ways to Tackle Keyword Research and Selection

10 Ways to Tackle Keyword Research and Selection was written by Michael Murray and he writes "You need to be extremely careful with keyword research so that you don't miss excellent opportunities or aim so broadly that you target phrases that will never rank well. Here are 10 strategies to guide you along the way:

1. Know your potential customers.
We can't tell you how many businesses we've met who simply pick keywords out of thin air. They don't talk to customers or hot prospects in order to determine what might be a useful set of keywords.

2. Start with core words.
A core set of keywords - even if too broad - can stimulate creative thinking.

3. Look at the industry.
Examine industry trade group web sites and related newsletters to find potential keywords..

4. Study competitors.
Some companies make a bigger deal of competitors' keywords than they should, but it's still a useful strategy. Invariably, a competitor will be using a strong keyword or phrase you don't want to miss. Often, however, they load their web sites with single keywords that aren't appropriate. If internet users are seeking cookware, their search terms shouldn't be laundry-based words. Yet we came across that very example. Be careful which words you use.

5. Be specific - add other words to your primary phrases.
If you sell metal, try metal stamping or metal stampers. Or, how about metal stamping companies? Words like services, companies, products, accessories, and many others can really pay off. Ok, everyone wants to rank #1 for terms like "toys" and "sports." It would take more time and budget than you may have to land such terms (through META updates, content adjustments and links).

6. Visit Wordtracker.
It's a great tool even if it only collects a sampling of actual searches (more than 300 million). You'll get a good sense of how frequently someone may search. Here is their URL: http://www.wordtracker.com

7. Use your intuition.
Don't hesitate to try some ideas; Wordtracker and other sources can confirm whether you have a search term people might or might not use.

8. Limit your selection.
Come up with a list of words - 10, 20, 30, maybe 50 or more. But don't get so many that you can't manage them all.

9. Tie keywords to site planning.
Pick keywords you can work with over time. Make sure you don't plan to drop a page from the web site or change it so often that your target keywords may be knocked off or irrelevant every 30 days.

10. Study your log files.
Web analytics is a great tool if you want to see how your visitors are searching. Study the results and you will come up with a revised set of keywords.

Michael Murray is vice president of Fathom SEO, a Cleveland, Ohio-based search engine marketing (SEM) firm. A member of Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), he also authored the white paper, "Search Engine Marketing: Get in the Game."
michael@fathomseo.com


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Posted by Jack Dukun at 8:14 PM | | Comments

10 Quick Ways To Kick-Start Your Profit Pulling Keywords

10 Quick Ways To Kick-Start Your Profit Pulling Keywords was written by Titus Hoskins and writes "First, you must realize that targeting the right keywords or phrases is the 'key' to making any kind of profit from your site. Choosing the 'right' keywords (the exact keyword or phrase surfers type into the search engines to find your site or product) can make or break your online venture.

How do you find these profitable keywords?
One simple way to do this is to just type your 'keyword' into the different search engines - then take note of the number of paid adverts listed for your keyword. If there are no paid adverts -- chances are high that your keyword is not a paying keyword.

Perhaps, a more exact way is to use Wordtracker or Overture.com, they will give you the numbers of searches made last month for that keyword, along with a whole list of variations on that keyword or phrase. Overture will also give you a list of who's bidding on the keyword and how much they're willing to pay for traffic to that keyword..

Getting a high ranking (at least on the first or second page) for a paying 'keyword' in one of the top search engines like Google, Msn, or Yahoo can set up a nice revenue stream on your site. It can mean a lot to your site's bottom line.

So try these 10 quick ways to 'kick-start' your keywords:
1. PPC - Pay per click, this is the ultimate kick-start method but you must know what you're doing! Paying for traffic or hits to your targeted keywords is probably the best and fastest way to kick-start your keywords. Use Google adwords or programs like overture.com to bid on clicks to your keywords or keyword phrases.

In PayPerClick marketing, many marketers target 'every' keyword for the product they are selling, including misspelled words and phrases. They may then narrow down their list to only the 'keywords' with a high conversion rate, how many hits it takes to get a sale. One sale in 10 clicks and you could be on easy street. One sale in 1000 clicks and you're probably on your way to the poorer side of town!

In other words, you could lose a ton of money if you're not careful or prudent. Do some serious research before you jump into this arena. Recommended reading would probably start with Google Cash by Chris Carpenter.

2. Anchor text it to death! Especially if you're targeting Google traffic, you must have your keyword or phrase placed in a many on-site and off-site 'anchor text links' that you can possibly get.

Anchor text in an url link is as follows: This is your anchor text!

Off-page factors are very important to Google which ranks sites from PR0 to PR10; the number of 'anchor text' links with your particular keyword coming from high PR sites is extremely important -- the more high PR links you have, the higher the ranking for your keyword or site will be.

Some savvy marketers have found that it might be more cost effective to buy 'keyword links' on high PR Sites for your targeted keywords rather than shelling out money over and over again for the PPC campaigns. One time or yearly purchase of certain high profit pulling keyword links that place your site or selling page at #1 on SERPs (search engine results pages). A #1 spot on Google for a high paying keyword that can keep paying for years is worth its weight in gold. Notice the large number of 'moans and groans' whenever a major shift in Google's rankings occurs i.e. as in the Florida update.

If you're targeting Yahoo, make sure you repeat your keyword often, and at the top of your web copy page. Place it in your 'alt text' in your website's images. But be careful, don't keyword spam by repeating it hundreds of times on your web page.

3. Plug it into your existing site. Professional marketers, plug in their keywords into their existing sites by placing links on all or numerous pages on their sites. Some use a resource table at the bottom of each page, then when a new resource (keyword) comes along, they just update and plug in this new link. Do a little homework, and check out how some major SEO sites have this column of resources (keywords) listed on all their pages -- thus, providing a large number of internal links to their keywords -- directing or tunneling PR towards their most profitable keywords.

4. Place your anchor text link in your blogs. If you're a prudent marketer you will have already turned some of your site's normal offerings into blogs and rss feeds. Example, if you have an existing ezine or newsletter, place an online version into a blog. If you regularly do company updates, news releases -- place these into a blog and rss feed.

5. Likewise, you can start a series of blogs on your keyword or subject matter. It has meant an overall increase in traffic and rankings to my sites and perhaps more importantly the 'spider activity' has gone from almost nil to a daily infestation. Regularly 'ping' your posts by using sites like my.yahoo.com, this will get your keywords spidered and indexed more quickly.

6. Place your anchor text links on marketing forums or on forums related to your keyword's subject. Forums are a great way to kick-start any keywords that you are targeting. The traffic is great and most of these forums are spidered daily.

7. Place your anchor text keywords on a high profile site. If you can get your keyword links on some 'major players', sites which have over a million links or more, do it! I have noticed my site is spidered more frequently and by different robots after getting my links on sites like buzzle.com and addme.com, it probably won't hurt your Google PR ranking either!

8. Place your anchor text keywords on high profile blogs. Again, don't keyword spam but try and build strategic relationships with top bloggers in your 'keyword' subject area. Then the mutual exchanging of links will fall into the natural scheme of things.

9. Write articles around your keyword topic, and submit them to ezine directories like ezinearticles.com and goarticles.com. Many marketers suggest you NOT use your keyword in the Title or Body of your article! Place it instead in the anchor text link in your resource box. Reasoning behind this, your article may be picked up by some major sites with High PR rankings or ratings -- if you have the same article on your site -- you will lose traffic to these major competitors. So you have to be a bit sneaky and carefully funnel traffic to your keyword from the search engines.

10. Start a viral 'keyword product'. Many professional marketers also place their keywords into a 'viral' product of some kind: a free brandable ebook, free reports, mini-courses, or tutorials that can be used and passed around freely.

So next time, don't just place a keyword on your site and wait for something to happen, instead, take a more pro-active role by trying these 10 methods of kick-starting your keywords and you will immediately see results. They do work and the proof is just waiting your next move...

To learn more about Google Adsense, Adwords and PayPerClick Marketing: Google Cash File

Copyright © 2005 Titus Hoskins of http://www.bizwaremagic.com
This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.


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Posted by Jack Dukun at 8:11 PM | | Comments

10 Basic Rules for Where to Place Your Keywords

10 Basic Rules for Where to Place Your Keywords was written by Craige Stacey and he writes "First of all, Google and most other search engines do NOT look at the META keyword tag. Many people say not to bother with it, but I use the META keyword tag and I place my keyword phrases in it. Here's why. I use this tag to help me remember what keyword phrases I am optimizing the page for. You'll find this to be a big help later when you have a lot of pages and have forgotten what keyword phrases you were trying to optimize the page for in the first place.

For the META description tag, keep your most important keyword phrase near the beginning of the sentence and make this tag a full sentence.

Do NOT use bold or italic keyword phrases in the first sentence on the page, but DO use your most important keyword phrase in the first sentence, but not the first word.

By all means, use your keyword phrases in your headings, (H1, H2 and H3)..

Start putting keyword phrases in bold in the second paragraph.

Put your keywords or keyword phrases in italics a few times AFTER the first usage of the keyword. Never let the first usage of your keyword phrases be in Italics.

Use keywords in ALT tags.

It's very important to get other sites to use your most important keyword phase for your page in any inbound links. Of course, you are not in control of how other sites link to you, but work hard to get them to use your keyword phrase. Most sites will link to your home page, so give them the most important keyword phrase you are optimizing your home page for.

When you are linking from any page back to your home page, use your most important keyword phrase in the link. When your home page is linking to any other page, use the keyword phrase in that link that the other page is being optimized for.

Don't plan on getting much (if any) help by putting keywords or keyword phrases in your left Nav panel. Google likes keywords in full sentences. Putting the sentence in a paragraph is even better. By the way, a sentence according to Google is three or more words starting with a capital letter and ending with a period or other punctuation. Stop words such as:

"I," "a," "the," and "of" do NOT count as one of your three words.

Follow these rules and your Web site will make a big jump in its relevancy for your keyword phrases. Following these rules will NOT boost your PageRank.

To be #1 or even in the top 10 on the search engines your relevance for a given keyword phrase is much more important than your PageRank.

For example, you could have a PageRank of 10 and still not show up in the top 100 sites when someone is searching for "peanut butter sandwiches" unless of course, your page is optimized for (and has a high relevance for) the phrase "peanut butter sandwiches."

One final point: Use your keyword phrase in an H1, H2 or H3 headline followed by a keyword-rich paragraph and then repeat this with another H1, H2 or H3 headline and another keyword-rich paragraph. And of course repeat this again.

Use this format in addition following the 10 rules above and you will have a page with a high relevance for your keyword phrases.

Don't try to optimize a page for more that two or three keyword phrases and always optimize for keyword phrases and NOT keywords. After all, the keyword is included within the keyword phrase. Most people don't search for just one word any more anyway.

I have seen pages rank #1 with keyword densities form 1% to 20%, but I usually try to have a keyword phrase density of between 2% to 6%. Sometimes I go up to 10%."

Craige Stacey has been studying search engines optimization as a hobby and has achieved some very good search engine positions in the past for membership website software.


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Posted by Jack Dukun at 7:50 PM | | Comments

How To Select The Right Keywords

How To Select The Right Keywords was written by Valiss and writes "Keyword Selection

The most important component of search engine optimization is keyword selection. Search engines use key words and phrases to find and rank websites. The crawler or spider-based search engines, so called because they sift through websites and add them to their databases, sort through millions of websites by following an algorithm, or set of rules.

The algorithms for the various search engines are not exactly the same (which is why a search of the same keyword brings different results). However, they follow very similar processes. Most of the search engines rank websites based on where and how often a particular keyword is used on the website. They will rank a website higher if, for example, the keyword is used in the title, placed near the top of the page, and if it is used often..

Choosing the right keyword or phrase and placing it properly is an art that is refined through practice and trial-and-error. In the e-market, time is money and competition is fierce. Your business cannot afford to languish while you get up to speed on the latest SEO technology. The use of a good e-marketing professional makes good economic sense.

Keyword Expertise Now

Valiss has the SEO expertise you need now. We know how to get the best results in the shortest amount of time. With Valiss, the keyword selection process is quick and efficient. Your search engine utilization is maximized to bring more visitors to your site who are interested in what you have to say or sell.


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Posted by Jack Dukun at 7:48 PM | | Comments

Monday, July 24, 2006

Keyword Popularity Check

Keyword Popularity Check was written by Rakesh Ojha and he writes "Before using keywords for your site, it is always better to check for the popularity of these sub theme keywords. Some or all of the tools mentioned in the keywords tools section could be utilized to measure the popularity of these keywords.

Based on the popularity count of these tools we should come up with a descending order listing of our most unused but good key phrase. These are our good target keywords. As the competition increases on the keywords, deeper optimization then just building keyword specific pages will have to be done.

Variations on sub- theme words:

This is the word- play to get into the mind of the user.

Now our set of 25 to 30 keywords will be expanded to include singular-plural word combinations, juxtaposing the same words in a different combination, using synonyms, building on the list of words using Thesaurus & a good dictionary..

The ideal set of keywords/ key phrases is to come up with around 70-100 possible ways of looking for that web site on the search engines (our keyphrases)

Research on these variations of the sub theme keywords for actually combing up with the combinations that are relatively un optimized for yet popular. At the end of this exercise we will have the ranked list of keywords, which we can start optimizing for.

General observations & other nuggets:

When using google to check for the competing pages through the SERP house the keyphrase in quotes. This will do the exact phrase searching for the phrase that we are optimizing for. Now to have a real feel of the actual competition on this phrase use the adword tool.

Typically offline competition for the business & online competition are not equivalent. The client needs to be driven out of this mindset. Online the competition for us depends on the key-phrases that we choose rather then the industry or the competition chosen keywords.

Another useful tip is to watch out for the ranking of the subpages on the SERPS page.

A higher occurenec of a sub- page suggests a lesser competitive key- phrase.

Keep excel sheets handy to work out on your key words

Here is a benchmark: If the site is fairly well optimized, and has a focused theme, then the combined total number of visitors from secondary variations of the main keyword phrase, should be higher than the number of visitors from your main phrase by itself.

Another yardstick can be that 20% of your search traffic reach you through your primary theme words. Another 20% through the sub theme words & their combos & the remaining 60% is fractional. A true pyramid.

Keep the keyword density on your pages in between 5-20% while optimizing. The latest talking optimization based on keywords is that almost none of the things mentioned above might apply as it is. You create text based on the end user perspective & optimize for 5-6 keywords per page. Check your referrer stats & fine tune optimization.

Free Keyword Tools:
The first tool that can be used is Overture.

One trick is to check the keywords on all the Overture tools, US, UK, DE, FR and even JP. You would be surprised at the ideas you can come up with on the other O Tools that do not appear on the US one. Also, the de-pluralizing and match-drive-alphabetization some times does not appear on the other tools. Second tool of course is the word tracker.

Use Google adwords to check on the competition for the chosen phrases using the CPC barometer. Higher the CPC more the competition.

Another tool is at:
http://espotting.com/popups/keywordgenbox.asp

Yet another tool is Alta Vista “PRISMA”

One can use Refine search option of Teoma to arrive at more generic/Primary keywords. Another way of doing that could be through the DMOZ subcategory study.

Refining of key words can be done using the Server side data or the referrs log.

7Search.com's Keyword Suggestion Tool
http://conversion.7search.com/scripts/advertisertools/keywordsuggestion.aspx

More tools in here:
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Web_Design_and_Development/Authoring/Online_Tools/Keywords/

Once the keywords have been finalized lets look at the places where we can utilize them.

Rakesh Ojha is a successful Internet marketer utilizing both pay-per-click marketing and search engine optimization to increase website traffic. To learn more, visit http://sem.mosaic-service.com


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Posted by Jack Dukun at 9:02 PM | | Comments

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