: Best SEO Practices - 4 Informative SEO Facts

SEO is a huge component most successful webmasters focus on to ensure quality & targeted traffic to their websites, as well as making sure it remains consistent. It is important to realize, although a large amount of traffic to a website can be pleasing, there could be a negative spin attached to that total. Performing the best SEO practices to ensure more targeted visitors to your web pages is essential. Discover 4 informative facts designed to guarantee the desired targeted traffic you are looking for effortlessly.
1. Traffic - search engine optimization was developed to increase traffic generated by a website. Sites are built to be viewed by people surfing the internet and search engines are crucial in helping webmasters achieve this goal, so their power should be taken very seriously. It is a key building block to a successful presence on the internet.
Side note: 90% of all internet users utilize Google, MSN, & Yahoo and other companies to help them in their online activities. Google is the primary company used and they generate 70% of all search-related online activity.
2. Target Audience - performing targeted searches is one of the most effective online marketing strategies. It is not like other internet marketing techniques, which can fall short of targeting the right audience. They divide the market and funnel the right people to a specified product, service, story or any other specific content. People look for topics they have interest in and this is the power demonstrated by connecting markets together making it important to anybody who wants to make a mark online.
3. Behavior - they are no different than people, they prefer sites that contain quality information about the topic specific to what individuals are looking for. The top sites usually appear on the first page because they are popular among the people as well as the search engines. Being first on a page is a greater accomplishment to shoot for.
4. Cost Effectiveness - it does take more than enough knowledge to really use the full potential it can give anyone looking to expand their internet presence. It is a full-time job and has a very long learning curve and because of this, most people choose outsourcing it to the experts. Hiring a company or consultant can be risky because pricing and quality of service should be carefully determined before agreeing to any deal.
By keeping all this in mind should help you focus on what is important to your internet business survival. You are looking for traffic, but it must be targeted traffic to ensure the people visiting your web pages are interested in your content and what you are offering. Whether you decide to pay outside consultants to service your needs, perform free well-known gradual tactics yourself, or purchase some very effective and low cost software currently on the market, it is a crucial staple to your success online. Review the 4 facts above and start performing the best SEO practices to guarantee the results you have been hoping for.

: SE Tactics - How To Avoid Alienating The Major Search Engines

Each of the major search engines Google, Yahoo and MSN have quality webmaster guidelines in place to prevent the unfair manipulation of search engine rankings by unscrupulous website owners. These webmaster guidelines change frequently to 'weed' out any new deceptive practices and those websites found engaging in these illicit practices are consequently dropped from the search engine rankings of the major search engine they have offended.
Being banned or dropped from the search engine rankings can have dire effects on your website traffic, online sales generation and site popularity. Especially if your website is classified as a 'bad neighborhood' site, you can then kiss your reciprocal linking campaign goodbye, as existing and prospective link partners will not want to be associated with your site for fear of their own rankings dropping.
If you wish to avoid alienating the major search engines then do not engage in the following SE tactics:-
1. 'Cloaking' or sneaky redirects - displaying different content to the search engines than shown to your normal website visitors including hidden text and hidden links. Often this is achieved by delivering content based on the IP address of the user requesting the page, when a user is identified as a search engine spider a side-server script delivers a different version of the web page to deceive the search engine into giving the website a higher ranking.
2. 'Doorway' pages created specifically for the search engines that are aimed at spamming the index of a search engine by inserting results for specific keyword phrases to send the search engine spider to a different page. With doorway pages a user doesn't arrive at the page they were looking for. Similarly avoid 'cookie cutter' approaches that direct users to affiliate advertising with little or no original content.
3. Don't create pages that install viruses, Trojans or badware. 'Badware' is spyware, malware or deceptive adware that tracks a user's movements on the internet and reports this information back to unscrupulous marketing groups who then bombard the user with targeted advertising. This type of spyware is often unknowingly downloaded when playing online games or is attached to software or information downloads from a site. They are often difficult to identify and remove from a user's PC and can affect the PC's functionality.
4. Avoid using software that sends automatic programming queries to the search engines to submit pages or check rankings such as 'Webposition Gold'. This type of software consumes valuable computing resources of the search engines and you will be penalized for using it.
5. Don't load web pages with irrelevant words.
6. Don't link to 'bad neighborhood' sites who have:-
• Free for all links pages• Link farms - automated linking schemes with lots of unrelated links• Known web spammers or the site has been dropped or banned by the search engines.
7. Avoid 'broken links' or '404 errors', your site will be penalized for them.
8. Don't display pages with minimal content that is of little value to your site visitors.
9. Do not duplicate content unnecessarily.
10. Do not use pop-ups, pop-unders or exit consoles.
11. Do not use pages that rely significantly on links to content created for another website.
12. Do not use 'cross linking' to artificially inflate a site's popularity. For example, the owner of multiple sites cross linking all of his sites together, if all sites are hosted on the same servers the search engines will pick this up and the sites will be penalized.
13. Do not misuse a competitors name or brand names in site content.
14. Sites with numerous, unnecessary virtual host names will be penalized.
15. Do not use techniques that artificially increase the number of links to your web pages ie. Link farms.
16. Display web pages with deceptive, fraudulent content or pages that provide users with irrelevant page content.
17. Using content, domain titles, meta tags and descriptions that violate any laws, regulations, infringe on copyrights & trademarks, trade secrets or intellectual property rights of an individual or entity. Specifically in terms of publicity, privacy, product design, torts, breach of contract, injury, damage, consumer fraud, false, misleading, slanderous or threatening content.
For more information on search engine guidelines see my SEO ebook the 'Insider Secrets of Rank 1 Websites' by Rosemary Donald for just $29.95 AU. Rank1 Website Marketing, promoting positive SEO tactics on the Internet.
Rosemary Donald is an SEO Consultant with Rank1 Website Marketing (http://www.rank1websitemarketing.com) and author of the SEO ebook 'Insider Secrets of Rank1 Websites' available for $29.95 AU. Rosemary is a regular contributor to online article sites on the topics of SEO, website marketing, ecommerce, search engine marketing and small business development.
Rosemary is also a successful online trader and owner of http://www.sabujewellery.com a top ranking on site on Google, Yahoo and MSN with experience in online marketing, export sales, importing, growing customer bases, ecommerce customer service, online sales generation and Rank 1 search engine

: How To Make Your Website Visible To The Search Engines

Making money with your own website requires an important necessity: traffic. You need it. Not just any low quality traffic that you buy from online advertisement businesses, but high quality visitors interested or ready to buy from you. Search engine traffic can offer you this, simply because visitors who find your site have searched for what you are selling. In order to ensure that you do not miss out on this valuable source of traffic, your website must be highly visible to the search engines.
Search engines are extremely vital to many Internet businesses that depend on traffic from them to earn money. You can take advantage of what search engines can offer you by ensuring that your website is visible to the engines. These search engine companies use software known as spiders or search bots. These programs crawl the web and simply record websites that will be indexed into the search engines. There are several easy steps that you can take to avoid common mistakes and problems that will make you invisible to the search bots.
Did you know that search engines ignore images, graphics and videos? It's true, they are only able to sort through text. So, if your website contains large amounts of pictures and animation with a small amount of text visible, you might as well just unplug your computer from the Internet because the search engines won't find you anyway. Keep in mind too that text imbedded in image files can't be read either. If your not sure if the text in your website is readable, you can look at the source code of your site. If you don't see the text in the HTML code, then guess what? Search bots won't see it either. Text is key. The more text your site has the better off it is. So resist the urge to "pimp your site" with all of those fancy graphics and animation and stick to basic text with fewer graphics. Besides, a website heavy with graphics and animation can be very annoying to visitors.
The most important text that you should have in your website is your keywords. You must analyze what keywords are relevant to your site and predict which one's people will type in the boxes of the search engines to find you. Keyword analysis is beyond the scope of this article but is something that you should research thoroughly. The most important thing you should know about keywords is where to place them in your website. Your title should contain your best keywords. Search engines base what keywords are the most important for a site by determining it's relevance. The more relevant it is, the higher the rank it is given and the more likely it is to be displayed when someone searches for it. Therefore, it makes sense to put good keywords in the title since it usually describes what a website is all about. The description of your site should also contain your top keywords. As a general rule, the closer a keyword is to the top of the page, the better chance it has to rank well with the search engines. However, you shouldn't ignore putting keywords in the middle or bottom of the page. Search engines also look at how frequent the keywords appear throughout the webpage before determining their relevance. Do not over use keywords. You could be penalized by the search engines if a keyword is repeated several hundred times within a page. Be moderate but consistent when placing your keywords.
Finally, don't waste your money on companies that claim to give your site a top ranking in the big search engines or the ones that will submit your site to thousands of engines saving you time. No one can guarantee you a top listing. Ranking well is determined by factors outside of any companies reach. In reality, you only have to submit your website to a few of the many search engines. A majority of searches done on the Internet come from Google, Yahoo and MSN alone. These are the only search engines you really need to pay attention to.
You don't have to shell out loads of cash on low quality traffic that just doesn't convert to profits. Search engines can produce much better quality traffic for you. Being highly visible to the search engines is critical to ranking well with them. The better you rank, the more likely it is that people will find your website, and that of course means making more legitimate money online. If you create a highly visible website that the search engines love, then you will benefit from a constant flow of interested visitors. Good luck to you and your success!

: Small Business SEO Tips and Tricks

Before getting into tips and tricks, here is some background information about SEO for small business owners.
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is a strategy in web development or design that usually includes post-design promotional activity intended to enhance recognition of a site by search engines. The goal is having your small business website appear on or close to page one in Google, Yahoo, MSN, and the other major search engines. The result, especially being listed #1 on page one, may mean more traffic driven to your website with the ultimate goal of visitors converted to buying customers.
SEO may also mean a person, or Search Engine Optimizer, who is a direct employee or outside contractor with the responsibility of adjusting your small business website programming code, site content, and promotional activities to achieve page one with search engines. Like any profession, the performance level may vary widely from one to another.
Brick and mortar small business owners often launch a new website and expect the site to take over as the front line of marketing their product or service. This can be a mistake. Others just want to enhance their image by showing sophistication with a www domain that presents more content than will fit on a business card or brochure.
The first group wants traffic driven to their site, yet few small business owners truly understand Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, so some fall victim to persons offering SEO services for a fee. For the second group, just being online with a website that never changes meets their expectations, and they realize success depends on direct customer contact and marketing. A third group is similar to this last group, except they expect that just having a website will magically bring instant fortunes.
If you didn't guess by now, there are no tricks to search engine optimization. Tips for SEO success should be based on proven techniques with long term positive results. Tricks that try to manipulate results by deceptive means, may succeed short term but will eventually fail.
Search engine algorithms for establishing ranking like Google's PageRank are secret. The best one can do is guess how and why they change by tracking each quarterly update. Most watchers of PageRank, or PR for short, are trying to unravel what Google finds important and then manipulate their strategy to improve their ranking in search results. That could be a mistake. If adjusting strategy means manipulating what some think is important, too often they resort to deceptive means with short term gains.
I've written many times that deceptive practices will backfire. You will be punished. If you track PR, or follow the advice of SEO gurus, then you've heard the cliche "Content is King". My position continues to be that the secret to search engine optimization is designing sites for visitors first, and then adding original quality content often to get noticed by people, and search engines.
"Content is King" needs to be changed to "Original Quality Content is King". Traffic is meaningless if visitors don't stick around long enough to be converted to paying customers. I believe that the tweaking of algorithms in 2007 and the downward shift in overall PR for so many sites is more than a temporary adjustment. Furthermore, I do not believe that Google is punishing website owners who provide original quality content. Instead, I believe that millions of websites set up and tweaked just to trick search engines are being caught and punished, and the PR scale in 2007 has shifted downward for quality site owners to fill in that void and redefine the PageRank range.
Small business website owners need to understand best practice SEO strategies. Here's some search engine optimization advice that I published on my website in 2007. First is the main course from my menu to feed search engines that used an analogy comparing search engines to restaurants. Following that list are practices to avoid from that same article on my site.
Positive Search Engine Optimization practices to consider:
1. Keywords in the Page Title2. Keywords in the H Tags3. The Age of Your WWW Domain4. The Size of Your Website5. Backlinks (inbound links to your pages)6. Keywords in Text Links7. High Quality, Original Content
Negative or deceptive SEO practices you should avoid:
1. Do not have affiliate only advertising pages. You need original content.2. Do not have over optimized pages. It won't help SEO and may confuse your visitors.3. Do not have link schemes, inbound or outbound. Deceptive practices will backfire.4. Do not have identical content hosted on two separate domains (mirror sites).5. Do not have plagiarized content. It is illegal, and search engines can tell.6. Do not have foul language as in cursing, or content that is hateful or racist.
In conclusion, continue to evaluate your small business website strategy for SEO. Take advantage of the best practices and avoid the negative or deceptive methods, and you can succeed. The majority of small business entrepreneurs service a local market, so the ranking of your pages compared to the world could mean that very high PageRank is impossible. By following the tips given here, you may have enough to edge out your local competition, and that's probably all that matters.

: Search Engine History - Web Search Before Google

Did Google always dominate the web search market? In the second of three posts on the history of the Search Engines, I look at the pioneers of the early search market, including the very first web crawler, WWW Wanderer. Did you know that Disney used to be one of the biggest players in the business? Or that Altavista was more technically advanced, in many ways, in 1998 than Google is now? Read on!
The pioneering Web Search Engines
Really, the point at which modern search engines first begin to appear is after the development and popularisation of the MOSAIC browser in 1993. In 1994, Internet Magazine was launched, together with a review of the top 100 websites billed as the 'most extensive' list ever to appear in a magazine. A 28.8Kbps modem was priced at $399 and brought the internet within the reach of the masses (albeit slowly)!
At this point and for the next 4-5 years, it was just about possible to produce printed and web-based directories of the best sites and for this to be useful information for consumers. However, the rapid growth in the number of www sites (from 130 in 1993 to over 600,000 in 1996) began to make this endeavour seem as futile as producing a printed yellow pages of all the businesses, media and libraries in the world!
Whilst WAIS was not a lasting success, it did highlight the value of being able to search - and click through to - the full text of documents on multiple internet hosts. The nascent internet magazines and web directories further highlighted the challenge of being able to keep up with an internet which was growing faster than the ability of any human being to catalogue it.
In June 1993, Matthew Gray at MIT developed the PERL-based web crawler, WWW Wanderer. Initially, this was simply devised as a tool to measure the growth of the world wide web by "collecting sites". Later, however, Gray (who now works for Google) used the crawled results to build an index called "Wandex" and added a search front-end. In this way, Gray developed the world's first web search engine and the first autonomous web crawler (an essential feature of all modern search engines).
Whilst Wanderer was the first to send a robot to crawl web sites, it did not index the full text of documents (as had WAIS). The first search engine to combine these two essential ingredients was WebCrawler, developed in 1994 by Brian Pinkerton at the University of Washington. WebCrawler was the search engine on which many of us early pioneers first scoured the web and will be remembered with affection for its (at the time) attractive graphical interface and the incredible speed with which it returned results. 1994 also saw the launch of Infoseek and Lycos.
However, the scale of growth of the web was beginning to put indexing beyond the reach of the average University IT department. The next big step required capital investment. Enter, stage right, the (then huge) Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and it's super-fast Alpha 8400 TurboLaser processor. DEC was an early adopter of web technologies and the first Fortune 500 Company to establish a web site. Its search engine, AltaVista, was launched in 1995.
Founded in 1957, DEC had during the 1970s and 1980s led the mini-computer market. In fact, most of the machines on which the earliest ARPANET hosts ran were DEC-PDP-10s and PDP-11s. However, by the early 1990s, DEC was a business in trouble. In 1977, their then CEO, Ken Olsen, famously said that "there is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home". Whilst somewhat taken out of context at the time, this quote was in part symptomatic of DEC's slow response to the emergence of personal computing and the client-server revolution of the 1980s.
By the time Altavista was being developed, the company was besieged on all sides by HP, Compaq, Dell, SUN and IBM and was losing money like it was going out of fashion. Louis Monier and his research team at DEC were "discovered" internally as the ultimate PR coup; the entire web captured - and searchable - on a single computer. What better way to showcase the company as an innovator and demonstrate the lightning fast speed and 64-bit storage of their new baby?
During 1995, Monier unleashed a thousand web crawlers onto the young web (at that time an unprecedented achievement). By December (site launch) Altavista had indexed more than 16 million documents comprising several billion words. In essence, Altavista was the first commercial-strength, web-based search engine system. AltaVista enjoyed nearly 300,000 visits on its first day alone and, within nine months, was serving 19 million requests a day.
Altavista was, indeed, well ahead of it's time technically. The search engine pioneered many technologies that Google and others later took years to catch up with. The site carried natural search queries, Boolean operators, automatic translation services (babelfish) and image, video and audio search. It was also lightning fast (at least in the beginning) and (unlike other engines) coped well with indexing legacy internet resources (and particularly the then still popular UseNet newsgroups).
After Altavista, Magellan and Excite (all launched in 1995), a multitude of other search engine companies made their debut, including Inktomi & Ask Jeeves (1996) and Northern Light & Snap (1997). Google itself launched in 1998.
Of these early engines, each enjoyed its own enthusiastic following and a share of the then nascent search market. Each also had its own relative strengths and weaknesses. Northern Light, for example, organized its search results in specific folders labeled by subject (something arguably still to be bettered today) and acquired a small - but enthusiastic following as a result. Snap pioneered search results ranked, in part, by what people clicked on (something Yahoo! and Google are only toying with now!)
In January 1999 (at the beginning of the dotcom boom), the biggest sites (in terms of market share) were Yahoo!, Excite, Altavista and Disney, with 88% of all search engine referrals. Market share was not closely related to the number of pages indexed (where Northern Light, Altavista and a then relatively unknown Google led the pack):
Search Engine Share of search referrals (Dec 99)
Yahoo! - 55.81%Excite Properties (Excite, Magellan & WebCrawler) - 11.81%Altavista - 11.18%Disney Search Properties (Infoseek & Go Network) - 8.91%Lycos - 5.05%Go To (now Overture) - 2.76%Snap / NBCi - 1.58%MSN - 1.25%Northern Light <1% (but most pages indexed)Google <1%
What these statistics do not convey is the underlying position of the relevant search engines and who was powered by whom. From 1996 to 1998, Altavista powered the Yahoo! search solution and - as such - was the clear market leader. However, by 1999 Inktomi was powering Yahoo! along with Hotbot, MSN, Snap and more.
Inktomi Corporation was founded by Berkeley professor Eric Brewer and graduate student Paul Gauthier, based on the search engine they developed at university. Unlike Alatavista, Inktomi used a distributed computing model (rather than running everything on a single machine). This, arguably, made the solution more scalable and thus easier to sell to internet service providers with an eye to the future.
Despite losing Yahoo! to Inktomi, Altavista thrived as a standalone search solution, growing its market share during the rest of 1999 to over 17%. One might well ask why Altavista is not the name on everyone's lips today (instead of Google). After all, they were well capitalised and had a winning model. Alternatively, they might wonder why Disney didn't work its magic on search (with those deep pockets to fund brand awareness and a decent market share). Why couldn't Northern Light capitalise on such a huge search index and what happened to Inktomi's leading position in 1999?
The answer is, in fact, remarkably simple. It was, as is often the case in business, a combination of flawed strategic thinking, poor timing and bad luck. We will explore how Google trounced them all in the next and final installment of our history; how Google came to dominate (accessible from my blog).

: Top 10 Best SEO Tools

We know that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is very important for any web site to achieve success. But, big SEO companies are taking coup bucks for it. So, why pay so much when you can do it yourself within no time with the right SEO tools? Well, below is a list of top 10 SEO tools that will surely help you to SEO your site like a pro and without spending a lot of dollars:
1. ResellerGo
This is a great SEO tool that allows you to submit your site to over 2,000 directories within no time. You can try this great SEO tool free of charge by joining and selecting the "Free Plan." It also offers upgraded plans with added benefits.
2. We Build Web Pages
With the help of this SEO tool, you can compare your site against the top 10 sites listed in Google for any particular keyword. All you have to do is enter your keyword and it will start comparing 9 different metrics for the top 10 rankings.
3. Zippy
This SEO tool queries all the major engines and returns results for META search in a format most suitable for webmasters.
4. URL Trends
This tool allows you to check any of the information about all of the selected URLs; whether it is the Page Rank of that site or any other thing they monitor.
5. NUAH
It is another great SEO tool. It crawls through your entire site; see how many pages you have, their respective Page Ranks, keywords and descriptions. It also offers a sitemap generator for both Google and Yahoo.
6. Widexl
This tool offers the following free SEO tools:
• Link Popularity• Search Engine Saturation• Meta Tag Analyzer • Password Generator • Geo Tracker
7. iWebTool
iWebTool has a lot of SEO tools including back links and Page Rank predictor, Google Banned Checker, Link Popularity, Keyword Suggestion etc.
8. Ezer
This tool allows you to check your Page Rank across all the data centers.
9. Link Harvester
This tool is probably the most advanced link analysis tool available in the market. It can:
• Find every single site that is linking to you within no time• Reports the total number of pages of your web site that are indexed• Reports the total number of links pointing to any specific page• Reports the total number of inbound links, home page links, and deep link ratio• And a lot more.
10. HitTail
This SEO tool exposes the least utilized, most promising keywords hidden in the Long Tail of your natural search results within no time. It presents these terms to you as suggestions that when acted on can boost the natural search results of your site.

: Submit Site to Yandex and Baidu

In China, Google enoys only a 27% market share; very much second fiddle to ~¦" (Baidu) with 55%. Similarly, in Russia, Google is in third place, with /=45:A (Yandex) the clear leader. More than 50% of growth in internet users from 2007-2010 is likely to come from these huge countries. Isn't it time to consider a listing on their biggest search engines? This short article looks at what is required to get your site crawled.
The Growth of the Internet in China & Russia
Russia is one of the world's fastest growing economies - and the most heavily populated country in Europe. Internet penetration in Russia currently stands at just 19.5% (compared to 69.9% in the United States). In China, penetration is just 10.9% (in a population more than four times the size of the US). The penetration levels in Western Europe and North America appear to have stabilised and look unlikely to grow significantly in the future. The majority of new world-wide internet users will come from India & China. The bulk of new European users will hail from Russia. A wave of change is sweeping over the net as we speak and, within 18 months, China will overtake the US as the biggest internet community online.
Are Google near the height of their powers?
The poses an interesting question; are Google in fact at their zenith? Most commentators put Google's current, underlying market share (in advanced western economies) at approximately 75%. However, what will be their global market share in five years time? Even if they grow their presence slightly in Russia and China, their overall world share will fall, simply from the law of averages. It would be most unwise, right now, to discount the growing importance of these new competitors!
Getting listed on Yandex
Yandex do not accept site submissions from sites hosted outside Russia. This does not mean, however, that domain names have to end in .ru (Russia) or .ua (Ukraine). In fact, any site with an IP address in a Russian speaking country or with pages in Russian will eventually be indexed by the search engine. Try comparing a search for "Intel" with a search for "Amazon". You will note that Intel, who have a part of their site in Russian, fair better in the results than Amazon. Have a look at this page from Ice Graphics which, unlike Amazon, manages to achieve (just) a top 10 result for the search phrase "books" on Yandex (despite being a English Language site, hosted in the US). This is due to the presence of Russian language text on the page (even text not properly tagged as Russian in HTML or Meta-Language tags).
So, the first rule to learn for Yandex is have some text in Russian for your Russian customers. Generally, it will be best to enclose any Russian language text with the correct W3C mark-up. For example, the following Russian phrase (roughly equivalent to "the early bird catches the worm") would be coded as follows:
0==OO ?B0H:0 G5@2O:0 ;>28B.The second rule to learn is that your page will be more quickly indexed by Yandex if it is linked to by sites that are hosted in Russia. For example, Ice Graphics are linked from computerra.ru, ebdb.ru and more. Personally, I recommend clients seek listings on 5-6 quality Russia-based, bi-lingual directories. Visit my blog for some examples.Getting Listed On BaiduThe first point to realise is that Baidu, unlike Google, merge their organic results with paid results from their paid listings service. As such, the quickest way to achieve a top ranking on Baidu is to participate in their paid service. As there is not (yet) an English-language Baidu Ads Interface, the best way to achieve this is to use an agent.To rank well organically, you must first realise that the Chinese search audience is very sino-centric. Your target landing page must be fully in Chinese and presented in the Chinese style. This, inevitably, means using the services of a Chinese translator (and quite possibly a web designer too). Note that, whilst traditional Chinese is used in Hong Kong and Taiwan, Simplified Chinese will be sufficient to serve all markets. The entire web page should be encoded using a Simplified Chinese language declaration in the meta-data of the page:Between the tags:

You may find some guidance on the web suggesting the use of "zh-Hant", which is the correct mark-up for Simplified Chinese. However, I would stick with zh-CN for now as it is supported by a wider range of web applications. When ready, you can submit your site to Baidu from the following page:
Baidu URL Submission Page - http://www.baidu.com/search/url_submit.html Note that Baidu do not guarantee your site will be crawled and your site should comply with their listing guidelines.
Once listed on Baidu, you can improve your position by sourcing high-quality inbound links from Chinese directories. Many of the best directories (to target) are those based in Taiwan and Hong Kong (where internet penetration has been higher for longer). Again, there are some suggestions on my blog. Good luck with the campaign and give me a shout if you need some help.
Conclusions
Remember, time and tide waits for no man and the early bird catches the worm so get cracking on Yandex and Baidu before your competitors do!

: Dreaming About Ranking High with Search Engine Optimization

Have you been dreaming about ranking high on the search engines for your important keywords? Do dreams come true?
Well... yes, they do, and so can yours.
It all depends on just how important it is to you and if you are willing to put forth a little effort. It's not black magic, nor is it beyond your abilities. The only thing holding you back is the desire, and that first step.
If you don't know a lot about Search Engine Optimization, then start learning today. It's not as hard as you assume although it does require some work on your part. You don't have to think of it as demanding work. Think about it as fun and of all the benefits you will obtain.
There are basic techniques about how to rank high in the search engines that you should learn. Then you can include some advance techniques that will push your rankings even higher.
You can learn quite a bit just by searching online. Be careful though. You want to be confident that your sources are reliable. Some other techniques may be harder to come by. These other techniques can be found in some in-depth articles and e-Books.
If you genuinely want great Search Engine Optimization, then look at it like an activity you enjoy. Once you see the results you will be amazed. This will kick in your desire to continue with your endeavors.
So start learning today. As with most things Search Engine Optimization will become easier as you learn it.
Don't just dream about it. Make it your reality starting right now.

: How To Get High Rankings On Google And Yahoo Search Engines

Do you ever wander how some sites get top rankings in the main search engines and others do not? Well of course you do. The reason being is that these sites adhere to a system that the search engines love and in return give these websites higher and better rankings in their listings. There are 7 key ingredients that if implemented properly will produce the desired results for you and your website marketing. They are:
Step 1: Advantages of a keyword rich domain name
Does your domain name affect your search engine ranking? In my experience, the domain name has an enormous impact. However, this is certainly important if you are creating a new site and attacking a competitive market. However many of you will already have sites up and running that do not contain a keyword rich domain name so do not worry as it is more than possible to rank highly without a keyword rich domain name. One variable that modern search engines consider when determining which of the thousands - or millions - of results should be presented in the top slots is definitely the domain name of the site. The main advantages of having keywords in your domain name are that you can legitimately include them in contact details and links to other sections of your site and the title of your site. What someone may consider a good domain name and what in reality is in most instances 2 different things. Now I will give you an example of this:
Mr. Smith is creating a site that is going to sell vacuum cleaners. His business name might be Smiths machines and logically he may have that specific domain. However it would be more advantages to have a domain name containing the term vacuum cleaners. For example vacuumcleaners4u or vacuumcleanersstore depending on what is available.
Finally I would like to add please take into consideration where you host your site. If you have a site selling predominantly to the UK or US market you should make sure that the site is hosted in that country. So if a have a site hosted in the US but you are targeting the UK it is not in your interests to have it this way as the search engines will perceive it as a US site.
Step 2: Importance of the Title & Meta Description Tags
Every page title and Meta description on your site is enormously important, from the point of view of both the search engines and your readers. Always use your top keywords in each one of your web pages - it signals to the search engines as well as your readers what that page are about. Firstly in the title tags of your page you should use your top 2 or 3 keywords or phrases. If you are unsure what a title tag is, it is clearly visible at the top of the browser window. The title tags are incredibly important. As I said before it signals to the search engines what the page is about. In my opinion the title tags should not exceed 75-80 characters.
Secondly the Meta description tag tends to get overlooked far too much. It's one of those SEO things that usually get left to the last minute. Like the title tag a descriptive Meta tag signals to the search engines and your readers what that page is about. When someone does a search on Google they'll scan through the page titles and descriptions. Search engines, especially Google, will display the description you wrote in the Meta description if the search term being used can be found exactly in the Meta description you wrote. If you do not do this Google will crawl your site and just take the first bit of content it finds and place it there. By thinking out the outlay and terminology you use in the Meta description tag you can boost your rankings. With regards to length I would not exceed 200 characters.
And thirdly the Meta keywords. Personally I do not believe that search engines give this area the credence it once did. In the past people would just cram this area with as many keywords that they could find related to their site but this just does not work anymore. However, this area should still not be avoided. My recommendation would be to place your keywords in this area but do not exceed 250 characters in length.
Step 3: Keyword Density, Content & Blogs
In simple words, keyword density is the ratio of the word that is being searched for against the total number of words appearing on a given web page. If your keyword occurs only 2-3 times in a page of 500 or more words, obviously it has a lower keyword density than a keyword that would occur 8-10 times in a page of similar length.
As far as search engines are concerned, if a particular keyword has a higher density on a particular web page, then the chances of that page obtaining a much better search engine ranking increases almost exponentially. Not all search engines compute or evaluate keyword density in the same way and most have their own proprietary algorithm for calculating the average density of a keyword.
The placement of keywords, in any number of locations on the page, has different results in the various search engines as well. Hence, you should try to write sentences that use your important keywords and key phrases. My recommendation if we are looking at percentages would be no more than 3% of the wording should be the same. However in our testing this area really is not definitive as we have seen sites rank for a specific key term that only appears once on the page also sites that have a keyword far too many times on the page. What has worked for us is to keep it very much within reason and you will not go far wrong.
Secondly, Content. Content is absolutely crucial to the success of ranking and search on all search engines but especially Google. The higher quality and relevancy of the content not only will increase your rankings but also gives you a far better chance of ranking highly for what we call the "long tail search". You may have all your main keywords and terms figured out but ultimately we have no idea what phrase someone will actually search under using these keywords. It could be for example if they are searching for "health insurance" they may well just type in "health insurance" or they may type in "health insurance in the uk for a family". If your content contains these words or phrases that are identical or related you have a much better chance of ranking highly and thus getting more qualified traffic to your site. I would say that on a new site that content should start off at no more than 10 - 20 pages and grow slowly. Google will take note of a site that appears with hundreds of pages out of nowhere and initially view at as "unnatural" so grow your content slowly and make it unique and original.
Thirdly we need to look at "blogs". This is a massively overlooked area by most people marketing on the net. The two main places you can go to set up with a blog are either at blogger or Wordpress. Personally I would recommend Wordpress. Here you can create a blog that has so much Flexibility. The choice of alternative plugins that can be placed on a wordpress blog is amazing and all designed to be SEO friendly. Also it can hosted on your own server so it becomes integrated with your own site. Search engines love blogs because of new original content being added on a regular basis. This area really is a whole topic on its own but I highly recommend that you research this and utilize it.
Step 4: Headings
The heading tags will make your headline bolder so it will stand out and will be recognized as important by the search engines. When writing your headings, include your main keywords in the headings. Be as specific as possible to increase your chances of being listed in a reasonable spot in the search engines. For Example. You have a site selling Plasma TV's. You want to explain to your reader about different brands of Plasma TV's so in the heading you could put PLASMAS TV BRANDS. This will be in bold and larger font size this signaling its importance.
Suggestions:
• Use keywords that relate to the page content in your heading tags• Have your keywords occur early in the tags• Use multiple H2 and H3 tags where appropriate
Step 5: Filenames
One of the simplest methods to improve your search engine optimization is to look at the way you name your files. Google give lots of importance to file names. You should think what are you going to put in your web page and then give it a relevant file name. How important is your filename? When you do a search in the search engines, most of them will highlight keyword(s) in your filename or your directory path. In other words Google is signaling the importance of filenames by highlighting it. For example if you have a site that sells electrical goods called electricalappliances the page that promotes washing machines should read in the file name electricalappliances.com/washingmachines.htm This is telling the search engine exactly what that file contains. This area is missed so many times but is a simple thing to do and helps your rankings. So please take this into serious consideration.
Step 6: Anchor text
Very simply Anchor text is the text (title) that appears within your hyperlink. Anchor text tells the search engines about the content of your web pages - what the page is about and how others perceive it. In essence, the anchor text is about the relevancy of your webpage based on a keyword. Therefore your anchor text should always be completely relevant to the landing page (destination page) and should contain your keyword or keyword phrase. For example. On a site www.electricalappliances.com the link that takes you to the washing machine page should read "washing machines". Also on the plasma TV site the link that would take you too SONY plasma TV's should have the anchor text SONY PLASMA TV.
Step 7: Quality incoming links
Inbound links are links from other web sites that point to your web site. The number and the quality of inbound links has become one of the most important ranking factors in Google, Yahoo and MSN Search. It's a simple principle: if Site a links to Site B then it is seen by the search engines as a recommendation; that Site A is 'recommending' Site B. The text that is used to link to your website is also very important (especially to Google). Try to include your keywords or phrases into the text that is linking to your site.
Now comes the most important part. Google ranks all pages on the internet by a system of page rank, commonly called PR. This ranges from 0 - 10. An incoming link from a page with higher PR counts several times more than a link from a lesser PR page. So the more links you have from higher PR pages the better is the chance of ranking highly in Google and other search engines. You build links gradually over a period of time. This is more prevalent with a new site rather than an aged site. This is because Google prefers to see steady natural growth. Of course how quickly you can rank because of this is really down to the market and competition you are up against.
Finally SEO is crucial to the success of any business online. The great thing about the internet is that it really is a level playing field. So there is nothing stopping you from ranking highly for a given keyword or phrase against even the biggest of companies.

: How to Submit Your Site Map to Google, Yahoo! and MSN

XML Sitemaps are an easy way for webmasters to tell search engines about pages on their site that may be crawled by their robots.
A typical XML Sitemap file lists each URL, together with information about when it was last updated, how often it normally changes, and how important it is, relative to other pages in the site). This helps search engines to more intelligently crawl your site.
In November 2006, Google, Yahoo! and MSN joined forces to support a new industry standard for sitemaps: Sitemaps 0.90. As long as webmasters follow the protocol, they can ensure their sites are fully and consistently indexed across all the major search engines (a real step forward). This article is important for all those with missing or poorly ranked pages.
The official site for the joint venture is at sitemaps.org and contains a lot of info about the new standard and it's syntax. What the site singularly fails to do is explain correctly how to submit your sitemap to the big three! The format suggested on the site of:
http://search-engine-url/ping?sitemap=your sitemap_url
does not currently work at any of the three sites! Until it does, this short article provides instructions for how to (a) create your sitemap and (b) how to submit to each of the three main search engines...
Creating your Sitemap
Some hosting providers (for example 1and1) provide utilities via their web control panel, to create your sitemap, so you should always check with your provider first. If this service is not available, then make a visit to xml-sitemaps.com and enter your site URL into the generator box. Copy-and-paste the resulting sitemap into notepad, then save-and-upload to your site with the file name: sitemap.xml
If you want to validate the XML prior to uploading to the search engines (useful if you have made any manual amendments), look at the XML validator (at the same site) where you can put in the URL of your sitemap and check it against the standard.
Submit sitemap to MSN
MSN have yet to implement a formal interface for Sitemap submission (as at July 2007). To monitor the situation, please visit (from time to time) the MSN Official Livesearch Blog (where where future announcements are likely to be found).
Whilst MSN have yet to implement a front door, there is a recognised back door for submitting your sitemap to the MSN Search index; namely moreover.com! You should use the following syntax directly in your browser URL box:
http://api.moreover.com/ping?u=http://yourdomain.com/yoursitemap.xml
Since February 2005, moreover.com have been the official provider of RSS feeds to the myMSN portal (see press release) and reliable evidence suggests that submission to Moreover will result in MSN spidering your pages within 2-3 weeks.
Note that, whilst MSN still do not support direct submission, they do suggest on their blog that you add a reference to your Sitemap into your robots.txt file (something now supported by sitemaps.org). For example:
User-agent: *Sitemap: http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xmlDisallow: /cgi-bin/
This would tell MSN (and all other engines) to crawl your sitemap file but not to crawl your cgi-bin directory. For more info on how to implement a robots.txt file (in the root of your site webserver) please visit: http://www.robotstxt.org
Submit sitemap to Google
Google originally developed the XML schema for sitemaps and have developed a dedicated portal for webmasters, from where you can submit your sitemap:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/
First, you need to tell Google all the sites you own, then verfiy that you indeed own them. The verifiaction is achieved by adding a metatag between the head tags on your site homepage. The syntax for the tag is as follows:
There are full instructions on how to do this on the Google site.
Submit sitemap to Yahoo
Yahoo follows a similar approach to Google. Again, there is a dedicated sevice for webmasters (Yahoo! Site Explorer) and a procedure for verifying your ownsership of the site. First go to:
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/
Add a site, then click on the verification button. You can then download a verfication key html file - which you will need to upload to the root directory of your webserver. Then you can return to Site Explorer and tell Yahoo to start authentication. This will take up to 24 hours. At the same time you can also add your sitemap by clicking on the manage button and then adding the sitemap as a feed.
Submit sitemap to Ask
Ask follows a simpler approach to the other three. To submit you sitemap, you simply enter a ping URL, followed by the full URL of where your sitemap is located:
http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http%3A//www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml
After clicking return, you will get a reassuring message from Ask that they have received your submission. Very neat!

: The Need for a High Placement Result in Affiliate Marketing (SEO)

Contrary to what the name suggests, search engine optimization is about optimizing your web pages for the most relevant search result's in the search engines. If you understand this you will be miles ahead of the rest. Just try to keep in mind what it is the searcher will be looking for when surfing the net.
Keyword research is the greatest means of finding out what people are searching for. Once this is accomplished, you are armed with information that can be put to good use in creating web pages full of relevant content, this is all supplied by your keyword research. High result placement is imperative to receive targeted traffic to your website.
Why do we need to have our website in the top ten result' s of a surfers search on the engines? Knowing that 80% of surfers only peruse the first page of any result' s thrown up by the search engines means we have to have a high placement in the search result' s for our particular keyword or phrase. If you think of those annoying TV adverts and compare your marketing to them, that is the same effect you are after. You want to be in their face every time they type in that keyword or phrase.
Search engine optimization is used to get a high placement result, it is after all sensible to think that the best supplier is the one with high placement result in the searchers point of view. This occurs because, not only do you need to optimize your web pages but having other websites linking to yours, will also give great weight to your expert status on what ever subject or product you are promoting. This linking will happen naturally because of your high result placement. In other words success breeds success.
Considering the millions of searches made everyday and that four out five people use search engines, it is only common sense that you require a high placement result. Referring back to a previous statement you need to be " in their face " at every opportunity.
The high placement result' s can be achieved by pay per click advertising but a more longer lasting method of this, is done with the organic listings, and with other free advertising can be more beneficial to the web master who has limited funds for such endeavours. The result' s of this type of advertising can maintain better result' s than the big national companies throwing money at their pay per click advertising campaigns.
If you are interested in finding further information on the organic result method and how to get the free listings for your website, no matter what niche you are targeting, then you definitely want to check out the website below.
Affiliate marketing is the method of seeking targeted website traffic for any product you wish to promote.

: Optimize Your Web Pages for Highest Adsense Returns

Web page optimization for AdSense is not as easy as you may think, just picking the highest paying keyword in the hope of getting a truck load of click through' s on that particular keyword will not suffice.
Meta Keywords:
You will have to take into consideration meta keywords, whilst having little bearing they do have an influence on the relevancy of the ads going to be placed on your web page. Try to make it as easy as possible for the web crawlers to understand what your web page is about.
Meta description:
Attracting traffic from the search engines is down to your meta description. This is shown after the title text in the SERPs (search engine results page) and has a direct influence on the CTR to your website. Obviously you will have to write a description that will attract the right audience.
Title Tag:
Keywords appearing in the title tag can have a great influence on the relevancy of the ads being placed on your web page. Depending on your optimization approach you can either go with high paying keywords to place in the title tag, or if it is traffic you are after go for lower paying keywords to attract a greater amount of visitors. Remember the title tag is usually visible in the title text of the SERPs and has a direct influence on the CTR to your website.
Headings:
Highlighting your web page content with H1, H2 and H3 headings is of great importance. The sub heading of a web page gives credence to the content on your web page. This has a direct bearing on the displaying ads for your web page.
Keywords in Content:
Using keywords in your content also influences what type of ads will be displayed on your web page. The thing to remember here is don' t mislead the ad bots with too many keywords. Try to keep an even keel in regards to keywords in your content. Humans after all have to make sense of it as well.
You will have to take into consideration many factors to be able to optimize your web pages for highest AdSense return. This will include your meta keywords, meta description, title tags, headings and of course web page content. This may sound a daunting task but help in this and many other aspects of web page optimization are further discussed at the web site below.

: 8 Best SEO Tips To Boost Your Home Business Ideas and Make Money Now

What is SEO?
SEO refers to the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines via natural or organic search results. Whether your website gets very little or massive amount of traffic depends a great deal on how much effort you have put in to optimize your website for SEO. In this article, I will describe some SEO on-page optimization factors in which you can very quickly make on your site to improve your search engine ranking. This will give you a boost to your home business ideas you promote in your website and start to make money now.
Keywords Meta Tag
It would do you good if you keep your keywords and phrases not exceedingly long, perhaps not more than a dozen. A mistake some marketers make is putting popular keywords here but why would people want to do that. Would you put a popular keyword like diet if you are promoting home business ideas? The tip here is to use keywords that are actually found in your website content. In reality, a lot of search engines ignore keywords meta tag and some marketers remove this tag completely and focus just on the content page. But there is really no harm putting them, as there are many search engines which still index this tag. You also do not know when search engines change their strategies.
Write Unique Content
You've heard of the saying "Content is King". If you consistently write good content and update it regularly, chances are, you will have more people visiting your site and looking at your interesting home business ideas. If you own a blog, always write not only unique content but update it regularly too. It is no different from the brick and mortar world. If you have a small store in which you do not have many things to sell, people are not going to patronize it, let alone buy from you. Just remember if you were the one looking at a website. If you've found one with good content, with keywords evenly spread out, a catchy title, you would probably be interested to read further. If you think about it, and apply this easy concept, making money now is really within your reach.
Using Keywords In The Headline
Document title is what users see at the top of the browser. It is very important to put most of your main keywords in here. It would also help to remove any prepositions like "and" and substitute them with a "" key. I would also go as far as to say, besides the content of the document such as your article, the title is the second most important factor which determines your SEO ranking.
Using Keyword Phrases
Don't focus on single keyword but rather keyword phrases. There are five million pages on the web that contain the word "cat", so a search for just that term produces meaningless results. If your page is actually about cat care, then that's the keyword phrase you want to have on your home business ideas page. Similarly, make money and make money now produce very different results too.
Make Use of alt image tags
Include an image tag on every image or graphic and put your relevant keywords there. An example would be "weight loss picture graphic" or "safe weight loss image" using both words of graphic or image so that search engines do not view them as spam.
Add header tags (h1 and h2)
Add one header tag (h1) and place our most important keyword there. The header tag should be as far towards the top of your home business ideas homepage. When Google reads a webpage, it views the text from the top left hand side of the page to the bottom right hand side of the page. So, it's best to place your (h1) header tag on the top left hand or top/middle portion of your page. You can think of an (h1) header tag as a title for whatever content you have on your page. Similarly put your secondary keywords in h2 header.
Page Optimization Is A Skill
When a user enters terms into a search engine, the engine starts to scan the web looking for those words. If the engine finds the words on a page, it will count how many times the words appear and also determine whether the words appear in conjunction or on their own. If the words are grouped together, it's more likely that the page is a good result. So, how can you associate your page with certain keywords? It's simple really. Put them on your page. Put the keywords in the title element, the headings, the file name, and the text of the home business ideas homepage.
Keywords In Domain Name
A website with keywords in the domain name often ranked higher. So if you have not chosen your domain name, you have a great opportunity now to take advantage of this well known secret.
SEO is the process of optimizing a website as to obtain a high rank in search engine results pages. Search engine positioning and increased traffic essentially comes down to 3 basic elements. Keyword and keyword phrase selection, search engine friendly SEO, and good off-page SEO which includes your backlink management and strategy. Additionally, writing and posting articles, press releases and even videos can substantially help SEO placement and ultimately making money now for your home business ideas.

: Search Engine Optimization

Content Optimization is the reorganization of your web sites' content in the best possible way to make it more attractive to search engines like Google, yahoo, msn etc. This usually involves:
Textual Content Improvement
Search engines "read" your website but what are they looking for? Because the textual content of most websites is not written with search engines in mind your placement within the search results may not be accurate to the services you are providing. It is important to research the best possible search terms that should appear throughout your web sites' content. The traffic volumes you can generate for each search term will depend on the level of competition and the overall rating of your pages. It is vital to be able to identify the most effective search terms and then incorporate them correctly within the content, meta and alt tags of your website.
Meta and Alt Tags
The meta tags for each relevant page need to be inserted to ensure that vital information is presented to the search engines and that the information presented is likely to secure the most relevant visitors for your website. The most important meta tags are "title" and "description".
Alt tags on all non-textual content such as videos, images and flash are critical since without this information, search engines will ignore them. Both Meta and Alt tags play an important role in developing a search engine friendly website and help establish a more targeted online presence.
Website Structure
The architecture of a website is very important to its success. Typical mistakes made in the design of websites are poor navigation systems, undue reliance on graphics and Flash, unfriendly forms, use of frames and generally poor content ordering.
Link Building
Link Building is low cost, very effective at bringing traffic in and it can dramatically effect your search engine ranking. Persuading other web sites to link to your own could be one of the cleverest pieces of marketing you do.
Links from third party sites are one of the key measurements the search engines use to determine your web sites' popularity. The more quality sites that link to you the better.
There are three main factors that determine the strength of your links campaign.
Number of incoming links
Online presence is generally improved by the recognition that your website is considered useful by other peoples websites. This recognition is usually indicated by a link from that other website towards your own site - a mark of recommendation that your site is worth visiting.
Relevance of pages containing the incoming links
Incoming links from other sites are of special value if the information or activity is relevant to your site. If your site is that of a veterinary practice then little benefit is to be secured with a link from, for example, a property agency. A link from The Veterinary Society on the other hand would be of great value.
Popularity of the pages containing the incoming links
Search engines each have their own mechanisms to determine the importance of a web page. For example, Google measures it in Page Rank (PR). PR depends on many factors and one of great importance is how highly sites linking to yours are recognized in your sector of expertise. Sites which themselves have a strong online presence are prized above those sites which no one gives any recognition towards - websites which are recognized as sites of authority in your sector are the sites which are most valued for their incoming links.
Therefore a number of different link building programs may be used that aim to increase and improve your search engine presence through increasing the number and quality of your incoming links. These include services such as Article Publishing, Press Release Services, and Social Networking and Reciprocal Link building.
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: Content is King!

One of the greatest myths in web marketing is that all you need to do is slap up a website showcasing your products and submit it to the search engines... and instantly you'll have hordes of customers flipping out their wallets to buy from you.
This simply cannot happen! Have you ever looked at the number of results available when you type in a search? The person that simply puts up a site and submits it is the one that is listed in the 300,000+ range. How many times have you looked past the first one or two pages of the results? For most of us that's the top twenty results. If you're listed at 300,000 then you're on the 30,000th page of the results. It's insane to think you're going to get traffic from this.
You must optimize your website! There are a number of ways to do this, but the one way several SEO's seam to forget to mention is content. Keyword focused content is king. When you search on the internet you're either looking for a product or you're looking for information. Even if you're looking for a product you're still going to want some information on that product. So, why wouldn't content be king?
There are other ways to get your traffic, but getting the most results from that traffic is the objective. The more information you give your visitors, the more likely they are to trust you and buy your product... or opportunity.
If you want the most bang for your buck then give your visitors what they came for. What they came for more likely than not is information. Personally I've never bought anything from a one page advertisement and the odds are I never will.
I've been working online since 2003 mainly doing paid surveys for extra income. I started building http://www.hbbinfo.com in December of '07 as a way to take my home based business to the next level. Come visit me... The only thing you'll find on my site is Real, Simple, Information. I do my best to cut the hype out of the equation.

: Keyword Rich Content is What Hungry Search Engines Look For

Search engines like content that is rich in keywords. Although, there is no denial to the fact that graphics and images give your site a cool and pleasing looks, its not what the search engines are interested in. Such a site cannot attract a search engine or surprisingly even a searcher for that matter. But content has that attractive power. Search engines are not all that different from people.
When faced with an array of choices, they want to know which sites are the best and the best sites are the ones that give the most accurate and relevant information.
What you should know when you want to use your website as prey to the search engine spiders:
Good Content Can Assist the
-Search engines to place your website high for the specific keywords and phrases which are included in your content. It can be content in the articles that you submit to article submission directories with keyword url links or those that are there in your articles present on your site or even the content on the web pages itself
-The users to your website, and they in turn recommend your site to others
-Keyword optimized content will help other sites to link to your site, and this improves your link popularity and give your website more visibility chance to the search engine spiders.
Is it easy to get good content? It is indeed easy, by writing with optimized keywords and phrases that your prospective visitors actually use on a search query. It is not difficult as it sounds. Anyone can learn to write for search engine spiders and it takes a little planning as well as some good investigation. Given hereunder are some steps that will help you writing like a pro just like that.
Identify the keywords and phrases you want to target-you need to know which are the keywords and key phrases relevant to your website, product that you are promoting or service thereof and there are many keyword tools that can help you (some for free and some for little cost) and you can research on Internet for the same.
One more way to find keywords is by seeing server log of your website that will tell the phrases searchers are typing to come to your site.
You have to sprinkle your chosen keywords and phrases throughout your web pages and other content and even in ad texts. For instance one of the keywords you want to target is Craig Garcia. You will want to weave this phrase throughout your copy without making it sound artificial or unreadable. Insert them where they naturally fit, without compromising with the flow of the entire content.
Review your headings, content as well as hyperlinks. Use your keywords in heading, subtitles, page titles, bold face and hyperlinks, because these stand out well for the search engine spiders.
Including all articles that had keyword-optimized content is very effective to attract website traffic. The mathematics involved is simple each keyword optimized article that you post on your site add more keywords that the search engines are looking for and your chances to be picked up by the crawlers is brighter. You may also post your articles on article submission directories and spread the word about your site, get some back links and even some inexpensive publicity.
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: How To Make Money Online Using SEO

By far the best method to earn money online is through search engine optimisation (SEO). Using this technique correctly allows your site to get indexed highly in the search engines, Your target is to get a page 1 position on each of the popular search engines. If you can get your website to the number 1 spot of Google for a highly searched keyword or phrase then you can see your potential earnings explode... and here's why...
Free Traffic...
Get a high listing in the search engines for a highly searched keyword can get you thousands of free visitors. If one visitor out of every 100 buys a product you can expect to earn good money if your site attracts thousands of visitors a day.
Using SEO is how to earn the big bucks.
To achieve the success you want, your site should contain good web content. Content is king on the Internet and you will want plenty of interesting and informative unique content. When a visitor sees your site you want the content to keep them interested so they click through to your sponsors selling page.
Your job is to warm up the visitor while your affiliate products sales page does the selling.
There are 3 main types of content you can use on your site.
· Informational Content - This should be used to pre-sell your product or service
· Product Reviews - Compare products on your site and write honest reviews
· Articles that show people how to do something.
Optimizing your content and using the correct keyword research will help get your website content listed in the search engines and helps attract those free visitors who will be wanting to spend their money on your products or services.

: Advanced SEO Secrets - Learn How To Use The Magic Of Quality Links To Explode Your Traffic

In the ever changing area of internet marketing traffic is the lifeblood of your business. Without traffic you are very unlikely to succeed. With the increase of the amount of websites on the internet this is becoming a very challenging area.
Also with the constant changes in search engine algorithms it is becoming increasingly more difficult to obtain good search engine rankings. There are mainly two parts to a good search engine ranking. The first is to do keyword research and optimize your website for the keywords that you are targeting by including it in the title and one to three times in the body with related content.
Search engines these days are using latent semantic indexing. So it is very important to have content based on a theme using related words to your targeted keywords. You can also use a silo structure on your website as people have reported that they have achieved good results using this.
Now the most challenging part is actually getting quality one way links to your website. This is what makes up about 90 percent of your ranking. Finding quality one way links can be a full time job especially in a very competitive niche market where you may need tens of thousands of links to get a good ranking.
There are certain things that you can do to acquire one way links. Submit your website to quality directories, submit articles to article directories, post on high traffic forums with a link to your website in your signature and do frequent press releases about your website.
Link building is very important to acquire good search engine rankings and you may want to consider outsourcing this function if it takes up too much of your time.
Are you really interested in driving massive traffic to your website?

: Keywords and Improving Search Text for Optimized Web Pages

Search engines now represent a major method of Internet access for many users. These search engines allow users to enter words or phrases (known as key words), and then yield a list of websites relevant to those key words. With the huge growth in size and complexity of the Internet, the power and convenience that search engines offer have quickly grown to become one of the best ways to browse the Web.
Because of this, many webmasters have realized the importance of formatting their web pages properly, in accordance with how search engines work. Getting more visitors (known collectively as traffic) is every webmaster's goal, since the success of a given website is usually proportional to the size of the audience that it reaches. The means and methods of making a given site or page more accessible and attractive to search engines is now known as search engine optimization, or SEO. Here we discuss some of the basic concepts, which are keyword selection and search text improvement.
Since search engines operate mainly around keywords, webmasters must have a firm grasp of how they work. Search engine optimization bases itself on a set of target keywords, for which it is desired that the website appear on search listings. For instance, a computer dealer might want to get listed higher up for the keywords "online computer sales".
The previous example actually is also an example of a not-so-good keyword choice. The rule of thumb is to choose relevant keywords that are as specific as possible to your website. Relevance of course refers to how related your target keywords are to the actual content of your webpage. Think about it: if your website is optimized for keywords that are totally unrelated to your content, the visitors you receive might turn out to be not interested in your website, after all!
Specific keywords, on the other hand, are desirable because of the huge amount of competition for more general keywords. There are millions upon millions of websites on the Internet, and the more general keywords would be relevant to a larger portion of these websites. By choosing more specific keywords, you would be able to narrow down the competition and be better able to optimize your website effectively.
After creating a list of good keywords, it is time to actually improve search text, or that is, the text within your web pages. The important thing to remember here is to actually use your target keywords within your body text. Edit your existing text, if necessary, to incorporate as many of your keywords as you can, up to a certain extent.
Keyword density refers to the frequency of occurrence of a particular keyword, and a good figure to shoot for would be 8 - 10%. Any higher than this and there is a chance that the page would be marked simply as spam by search engines. And besides, at that point the sheer repetition of keywords has a good chance of making the body text sound unnatural!

: To SEO Or Not To SEO?

Understanding SEO of necessity requires a solid understanding of its purposes. SEO can be very difficult to do properly so it is a good idea to learn about what it is in an effort to make an informed decision about implementing it.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. The goal of the practice is to place your website at the top of Google's or Yahoo's search results for search terms that relate to your website. SEO is part of a larger idea of bringing visitors to your website, or generating traffic.
The reason SEO is such a hot topic is because it has the potential to bring new visitors to your website for free, where other methods require money or a continuous effort. SEO is not the only way to bring in visitors.
Other Common Ways of Generating Traffic
1. Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, and MSN AdCenter - These are the text ads on most websites. You pay per click made on your ad.
2. Write an article - Many sites try to get traffic to their sites by writing articles for other sites and submitting them to other sites. This article is actually an experiment to test how well article submission works.
3. Trade Links - Write some webmasters from other websites and ask if you can trade website links. This works best if you are in the same niche as the site you are contacting. Incidentally, this also helps your ranking on the search engines.
4. Advertise Offline - If you are a brick and mortar type business, put your web address on all your documents. Business cards, invoices, stationary, sign, etc.
5. Etc., etc., etc.
Is SEO for You?
Is SEO for you? You'll have to answer that yourself. There are several other ways of generating traffic if you wish. Most of the other ways listed above are easier to implement than many SEO techniques simply because they have a much lower learning curve. The website you manage may not even be relevant to the public, but used for internal use at your company. If this is the case, just make sure your website is user friendly and continue on your way.
Final Thoughts
SEO is a great tool if done correctly. Coming up on the first page of search results will give a definite boost to your site's traffic level, and your visitors will come in continuously for a long time so long as your website is relevant. Most other options require a continuous effort to maintain.
I should also note that SEO, or any of these methods listed above, will guarantee that you sell more product or whatever the goal of your website may be. This is the other side of the on-line marketing scene called "funneling". A whole school of thought goes into the idea of content and navigability and promotion internal to your website. Combine all of the ideas outlined in this article, including the user funneling idea along with a pertinent website topic, and you have yourself a money making machine. If you are looking for additional articles like this, my website Glowspin.com is dedicated to generating web traffic and posting the results of my efforts for all to see.

: SEO for Beginners - How to Get Started

Search Engine Optimization is a natural organic way to drive traffic to your site and direct your website onto the first page of the top search engines. It's a method that has been used for years before paid advertising became popular. When people are searching for something, they are more attentive to the natural results than the paid advertising on the far right which is why SEO is essential. So, here's the rundown on SEO and all you need to know to reach to the top of the search engines.
About 70% to 80% of website traffic usually comes from search engines. It is highly important to rank high on the search engines because most people don't look beyond the first two pages and if your website is not seen there, then you are probably only receiving 25% to 35% of fair traffic and sales. What helps to bring in more traffic is having content that is relevant and important. What brings in relevance is your choice of keywords. What brings in importance is the amount of quality links to your site. Search engines use spiders to analyze your site, and they look for keywords which tell them where to place your site on the search results. So keywords are the first step you need to consider when using SEO. Try and figure out what keywords your customers are looking for at search engines. When searching for keywords, look for words that are not single. Single words are too broad and competitive. Keyword phrases are more targeted and that's what you want. Wordtracker is a great keyword tool and a good place to start.
Next, use these keywords frequently on your website and on your html code (html meta tags) because the more often you used these keywords, the more relevant your site would be to the search engines, and the more likely your site will come up with those keywords in the search results. So if your page contains 200 words, 2 or 3 of those words should be keywords totaling 2% to 3% density. You should consider using your keywords in links and in headings of your page.
Links to your site again tells search engines how important your site is. If they see that your website is important enough that several sites link to you, than it must be important enough for your site to rank high on the search engines. Obtaining links, backlinks or inbound links to your site is the #1 importance for ranking. So the more links you have, the higher the ranking. Make sure the links you use for your website are also important and high ranking. They should have at least a "4" Google page rank. (1 to 10 scale)
To generate links, you need a strategy. Start by adding your site to DMOZ and Yahoo Directories. Write articles. Article marketing is a great way to obtain backlinks to your site and create more traffic. Submit to local and industry directories. Look for link partners and link exchange with them. You can ask customers or suppliers to link with you. Look for relevant, high ranking sites to link with you by emailing them or calling them. You can also use an SEO program or software that looks for high ranking sites and emails the owners at once. It can save a great amount of time and energy.
Here's another tip. Submit your website to Google as soon as you register a domain name. Don't wait because you haven't built your site, thought of what content to write, or don't have a business or marketing plan together yet. Submit it right away and I am going to tell you two reasons why:
First, it takes a long time to get indexed on the search engines. It takes months to get indexed, and even more months to get high rankings. So don't expect to rank high in the first couple of months of submitting your site. Second, whenever Google notice a new website, it keeps the equitable ranking of that site for a certain amount of time, so it can analyze and determine whether your site is genuine, plausible and is long term. It does this to filter out all the SPAM sites. So, Google "sandboxes" your website. You're establishing site history, by submitting your site early. By the time you have all your content together and developed, Google will have no reason to see you as SPAM.
To succeed with SEO, utilize these techniques and overtime you will receive a high ranking site in the top search engines with consistent traffic. Remember SEO is still alive on the internet.

: Easy Search Engine Optimization In a Snap!

Recently while researching easy search engine optimization (SEO) strategies for use on my websites, I came across a blog that would change my SEO strategies forever.
If you have ever wondered what it would be like to get your website to the first page on search engines such as Google, or Yahoo, you are definitely in the same boat I was. I tried for months to get my pages on that first page. I like many others decided to do a pay per click (PPC) campaign. I made some money as was expected, but it was nothing to write home about. As time went on my profit versus payout for the ads was very disappointing to say the least. I bought into a few internet marketing scams just to find out that finding spots for all those back links was a horrible waste of time. Sounds familiar, huh?
That's when I found the blog. It was nothing spectacular, except that it laid out exactly what I needed to be successful in my SEO strategies. It simply listed the top three products available for any SEO campaign, and told how the guy writing the blog was successful in using them. He gives the websites for each, and tells how they were useful in his campaign strategies. I was blown away after reading the very short, but very sweet blog that he had written.
So do the techniques work? I decided to try them for myself. To my amazement all three products worked wonders on my SEO campaigns. That blog to me is worth it's weight in gold, and I will never go back to those expensive PPC ads again. I say thank you to the author of the blog, and I wish great success to all of you out there looking to up your search engine ranking!

: Stay on Top of Google

We check our position in Google and other search engines regularly because:
Search engines change their algorithms for ranking from time to time without any warning.
New websites are always entering the field.
Existing websites are often changing the content of their websites.
We are often changing the content of our website.
We have set up some links to Google that we can just click for different searches, like this one: "search?q=web+designers+australia&num=10" The "num=10" can be changed to any number up to "num=100" to specify the number of results per page.
On locating our web page in the Google results, we click the "Cached" link in Google's description of our web page. It will say "This is Google's cache of [our web page] as retrieved on [date]". That date may be 2 days ago to 2 weeks ago, so we will not expect our position on Google to reflect any changes to that web page made since that date.
The Google cache shows the three words of our search usefully highlighted in the text of the page. This shows us how many times each word occurs. Another link takes us to the "cached text" only (without images).
We can now copy the text and paste into a word or text document, then do a word count. At time of writing, there were 1364 words on the home page including those in drop down menus (as we use CSS navigation not javasript or Flash). Now we are able to calculate the proportion of the search words to the total words on the page. In our word document, a search and replace of each search word with the same word told us the number of time that word occurred. To exclude part words, e.g. "web" in "websites" we searched for "web " (with a space). The results at time of writing were "web" = 4.8%, "designers" = 0.4% and "Australia" = 0.9% of total words.
This is good news as recommended keyword density is under 5% (or 8% depending who you ask). Too high density of keywords is considered to be spam.
The "&num=100" in the search can be used to page through a lot of search results quickly, e.g. 10 such pages = 1000 results. If your website is not in the first thousand web pages listed by Google for your keywords then you have a lot of work to do.
There are many utilities available for purchase and download that will perform the actions af the last three paragraphs.
If our position in Google has changed what do we do?
Words in the Title tag should all appear in the text on the web page. We sometimes forget the title tag when we change text on the page.
The frequency of some key words on the web page may need to be changed.
The proximity of the keywords to each other may need to be changed. e.g. "Web designers who live in Australia" is not as good for the search used as "Web designers, Australia".
The amount of text on the page may need to be changed to emphasize the importance of the page and change the density of the keywords.
To increase the importance of some key words on the page, we may need to turn them into hyperlinks to other pages.
Text in heading tags may need revision, or additional heading tags used.
We may need to add more inside pages linking to this page.
It may be time for us to publish another article on the internet, with a link back to our website.
There is always a time lag between making changes to the website and seeing results in the search engines. We find the Google cache is at least two days old for some web pages, more for other pages. Don't expect changes in your position to happen overnight and don't forget that other websites are working to improve their positions at the same time as you. This is an exercise in patience. It may take many attempts before you get satisfaction.
However, it's thrilling to see the position in Google improve with each tweeking of the web page content. The irony is that when you get a good position in Google, you spend more time handling the resultant business and less time watching your position.
You don't need to be paranoid, but you know that other websites are "out to get" your position, so be vigilant.

: Tips to Improve Search Engine Traffic and Designing Search Engine Friendly Web Site

Look around on the internet and you will come across several websites that have tips on how you can improve your search engine traffic. But before I get on to the tips, let me work first to clear a few misconceptions about search engine traffic.
If you think that the moment you submit your website to a leading search engine, you will have traffic, then you are wrong.
Also if you think that if you follow an SEO program for one month and then stop it, you will have traffic, then you are wrong again.
Search engines are a peculiar kind of software that works in strange ways. You need to understand it carefully and then work towards creating a steady flow of traffic to your website.
SEO in mind
If you are planning to use search engine optimization, then you must plan it right from the moment that you are designing the website. A lot of people use the latest technology like CGI, frames, java, Ajax, perl etc without properly structuring it.
The result is that the search engines get confused and your listing goes haywire. The trick is to create a website with these in mind. You can use the above mentioned technology. But use them in such a way that it creates minimum impact on search engine spiders. Once you have the website ready, run a maintenance check on it. This is also one of the overlooked aspects of a website. You need to remove any errors on the website to avoid visitor disasters.
Understanding and accepting waiting periods
Every one has a certain waiting period associated with it. During this waiting period the search engine looks to gauge the trust worthiness of your site. The only way to speed up this procedure is by following legitimate SEO practices and sticking to it. You might have to wait for years in some cases while in other ones, your website might be listed in a few months.

: SEO - Ways To Profit

There are a number of strategies which are widely used by entrepreneurs in the online business for generating traffic to their websites and in turn earn huge money. One such popular strategy is the Search Engine Optimization which is actually known as SEO. Search Engine Optimization helps in improving the ranking of your website especially in the search results page. Given below are a few important steps that may help in earning more money through SEO.
The important aspect that is required by any Search Engine is a key word. So proper researching of key words is the most important thing for SEO. Try to locate the apt and popular keywords that online users usually use to locate a particular product or service. This task can be made easy by making use of options like the key word search tool or the key word suggestion tool.
The next thing that can be of real help to make more money through SEO is making the content available on your website rich in popular keywords.
Link building also can do miracles in SEO profits. Link building is nothing but building links with other websites that have similar keywords as yours. This also helps in increasing the traffic to your website.
Last but not least, create a proper website map. This also adds up to the SEO profit factor. Ensure that your web pages get linked properly to the previous and next pages of the site.
Hope this concepts helps you!
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: The Business Case for Search Engine Optimisation

The web is still growing at a phenomenal rate. The Computer Industry Almanac projects that the Worldwide Internet Population will grow from 1.08 billion in 2005 to 1.8 billion in 2010.
According to the Central Intelligence Agency's World Factbook 2007, over half (37.8 million) of the UK population are already Internet users.
Thus, businesses who have chosen to build an on-line presence can take advantage of reaching new customers through the web. However, the web is getting more and more crowded.
Netcraft.com reported in their October 2007 Web Server Survey that they had counted 142,805,398 sites; an increase of 7.6 million sites in 30 days.
The bad news is that this growth creates a new problem of increased on-line competition for many businesses.
To remain competitive and retain and grow market share, businesses are becoming more aggressive in their web marketing strategies. They understand that it is no longer sufficient to own a website and hope it attracts visitors with little to no promotion of it. They are ensuring their site retains a high position and prominence in search engine rankings by employing a range of promotional tools, like Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), to attract visitors.
Businesses who fail to keep up will lose valuable custom to their competitors. Early signs of this include:
• A drastic fall in web visitor numbers
• A decrease in sales generated on-line
• A fall in search engine rankings
For businesses to maintain a competitive advantage on-line, it is essential that they invest in on-line promotional activity. The aims of online activity should mirror traditional offline marketing aims. I.E.
• Remain competitive and retain market share
• Increase targeted prospect numbers
• Attract new customers
• Deliver return on investment
This can be done in-house. There are no special tools required to promote a website, but it does take time and effort. In addition there is so much nonsense spoken about SEO that it is hard to avoid wasting time on optimisation and promotion campaigns that achieve no worthwhile result. This is why, unless you have someone who really enjoys web marketing, it is best to outsource this work to professional optimisation companies who know from experience what works and what doesn't.
For more information on SEO talk to Brown Bear Media.

Top 11 Paying and Most Searched Keywords on Google and Yahoo

If you have a website, write articles, or want to profit through an affiliate program than this is gold to you! These keywords are the actual top 11 on the internet. Use them and you are on your way to increased traffic, profits and results. Here they are and a little about each to help you on your way.
1) Paris Hilton. Whether we like it or not Paris and her wild lifestyle are here to stay as she is now considered one of the biggest stars. She is sought after by almost every fashion designer and her keywords will do well with any fashion or clothing content.
2) Google. Well, this one is obvious as Google is the largest search engine (regardless what Yahoo says). Being that Google is a search engine it can be used in any content, but works best with relation to websites, search engines, computers and software.
3) Yahoo. The second largest search engine and distant second on Pay per Click campaigns - very, very distant at that. The same will work for Yahoo. Stick with computer related material and you will do well.
4) Ebay. The worlds largest marketplace and auction. Ebay, for the most part is a wholesale marketplace. It is ruled by feedback and can give you a good idea as to the real value of a car (check Ebay motors). On Ebay anything goes including people selling tattoo advertising on themselves. In other words, anything can be linked to Ebay in one way or another. Yes, there is even porn on Ebay.
5)Eminem. Yes, the real slim shady is back. According to R and B and rap he never left as he is the number one rapper currently. If you need content on current music or teen and young adult topics Eminem is sure to bring you visitors.
6) Britney Spears. She was the hottest pinup for teens and preteens, but now she is probably pregnant again. I wonder why Kevin Federline didn't make the list - is it that he isn't a good singer? Britney is great for adolescent or music related content.
7) mapquest. Want to know where something is or how to get there. Being that we are getting closer to summer people are plotting out there vacations. Or, maybe, due to increasing gas prices thanks to George Bush, maybe they are figuring that its too far and will cost too much in gas. I bet if Hillary Clinton were President these gas prices wouldn't be any higher than $1.60 per gallon. These high gas prices have to do with the Bush family and their ties to big oil and energy. See, Mapquest can be linked to just about any content you want if you just try a little.
8) Tsunami. Even though the big one is over. Relief efforts are still in effect and so are the relief efforts for Katrina. Hint - these people still need lots of help. Tsunami is probably a big keyword due to the recent specials on TV about the next possible tsunami that might hit America. People are concerned and interested over these large scale natural disasters. When is the next earthquake going to hit California, will atsunami hit New York, and what will this hurricane season bring?
9) Girls. Yes, of course. There are millions of perverts and closet perverts out there that are a little over-fascinated with girls. As Donald Trump once said, "sex sells." Yes it does and nothing sells better than women or girls. They can sell anything including the worst items in infomercials and complete scams. A beautiful girl just needs to show a little cleavage and TV ratings soar. Just think what girls can do for your content.
10) American Idol. This is the top rated TV show and its in its 5th or 6th season. It has launched one star - Kelly Clarkson and a bunch of duds. Randy, Paula and simon have now become household names along with Ryan Seacrest. Any content you can tie into the current cast will do well. The previous casts should be avoided as they will soon go back to karaoke and such at local bars.
11) Skin care and skin treatment. This has always been a big one with women. It has been rumored that women will go without food before they will go without makeup and such. Just ask any department store how important skin care and skin treatment products are to their bottem line. Watch Shop NBC - almost every product on there has something to do with skin care and skin treatment for women. There are a wide variety of topics you can easily talk about here from the latest in laser therapy at dermatology offices and at home TCA skin peels for treating acne and wrinkles. Acne is and always will be a big topic as will wrinkles and their respective treatments. For more info on at home TCA skin peels please see the link below.
There you have it the top 11 keywords on the internet from Paris Hilton to skin care and skin treatment to Google and American Idol. All with tips on how to use them to make your content have more impact and drive more traffic.
David Maillie is an alumni of Cornell University and specializes in biochemical synthesis for public, private, and governmental interests and manufactures various skin peels and other for doctors offices and medispas. He can be reached at M.D. Wholesale