The quality, as well as the amount of your inbound links is vital criteria utilized by search engines to rank your pages. Inbound links are links placed on other sites to direct traffic back to your own site, and there are numerous ways to obtain inbound links. One way to obtain inbound links is to exchange links with other similar websites. Contributing to forums and blogs is another way to get inbound links, and you can also request that visitors to your website link to your site. Submitting your website for reviews and offering free web hosting space in exchange for links is another opportunity to get inbound links.
Outbound links are also important, and while some people worry about adding external links to their websites, if done properly, outbound links can offer a boost on the search engine results page. When placing outbound links, only place links that will send visitors to reputable, authoritative sites. Be choosy when placing outbound links, and be positive that none of the links you place are broken.
Inbound, as well as outbound links should be a part of your linking campaign. It doesn't make sense to have one without the other. Both of these are somewhat of a life- line that can either make or break your site on the SERP. It would be worthwhile to try and get as many inbound links as you can, not only on a variety of websites, but also on numerous different networks.
The SERP, or search engine results page, is a complete listing of the web pages returned by search engines in response to a keyword query. The results on the SERP generally include such details as a list of web pages with their titles, a link to that particular webpage, and also a brief description showing where the keywords have matched content within the webpage. The search engines construct the SERP once and it is then saved for future inquiries. Search engines do crawl the web periodically to account for new pages, and then the SERP is rebuilt.
Recently, the SERP has begun to offer users of the search engines new and improved features that include suggestions for alternate keywords, images, definitions, local matches and even files on the users very own computer.
Without the aid of inbound and outbound links, your website will not have favorable results on the search engine results page. It is a known fact that only 7% of all websites are even visible to the search engines. This means that 93% of the websites in existence are not optimized correctly, and are losing out on the SERP. Utilize those inbound and outbound links, and be a part of the 7%.
Links exchange
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
How Much Can I Sell My Text Link?
Have you been building websites for sometimes and would like to start earning some revenue from it? Why not start selling text link ads from your website? I am sure there are some webmasters who are interested at placing a text link on your site, especially if they have the same content or theme as yours. However, how much should you charge for your placement? Be careful here, setting over priced text link can gain you no customer; setting under priced text link might earn you less. Nowadays, seo has been quite popular and most webmasters can read tones of information from other sites about how to buy quality links with suitable price. Over priced link might earn you only short terms of revenue; good priced link can give you long term revenue.
How to choose a good price then? Basically, the price of a text link depends on the link popularity, pagerank, pageviews and content of your site.
How much link popularity does your site have?
Having high link popularity can certainly boost your link value a lot higher, even you have low pagerank or traffic. It is the most foreseen factor for webmasters, or I should say experienced webmasters when seeking link partners. If your link popularity has exceeded over 100K, you can reasonably set your monthly price around $50 per month, minimum. Something over 300K can certainly earn you $100 per month. Do check your link popularity.
How many pagerank does your site have?
Second comes to pagerank. Even though people know that pagerank isn't as important as it was believed back ago, still people tend to look for high pagerank site for link placement. Having PR4 can put you a reasonable pricing, whereas having less than that might lower your price down below $15 per month unless you have high traffic. Bear in mind that don't just rely on your pagerank to sell the link. Do check your pagerank.
How much traffic does your site have?
Remember that when we are telling others about how much traffic our site has, we are talking about unique visitors and pageviews. Don't mess out the number of hits with unique visitors. An unique visitor can generate lots of hits and pageviews. If your site has popular content with busy traffic everyday, you can also sell out links very easily. Relevancy can't be anymore important in search engine optimization, especially Google. Any experienced seo guys should know putting link at relevant webpage can boost his site value enormously. So, don't neglect this factor!
In conclusion, earning revenue by selling text links can be profitable, especially if you have gained some loyal partners in long terms. To fully get the advantage of text link placement, it is required to place a link for more than three or four months, thus if your site is a good one, should have no problem for them to stay with you. You can also check your link price with this tool, which uses a formula to derive a suitable pricing for you.
CY Tang is a search engine profession, helping websites to get ranked higher with better search engine visibility. Visit his seo blog for any seo tips and advice.
How to choose a good price then? Basically, the price of a text link depends on the link popularity, pagerank, pageviews and content of your site.
How much link popularity does your site have?
Having high link popularity can certainly boost your link value a lot higher, even you have low pagerank or traffic. It is the most foreseen factor for webmasters, or I should say experienced webmasters when seeking link partners. If your link popularity has exceeded over 100K, you can reasonably set your monthly price around $50 per month, minimum. Something over 300K can certainly earn you $100 per month. Do check your link popularity.
How many pagerank does your site have?
Second comes to pagerank. Even though people know that pagerank isn't as important as it was believed back ago, still people tend to look for high pagerank site for link placement. Having PR4 can put you a reasonable pricing, whereas having less than that might lower your price down below $15 per month unless you have high traffic. Bear in mind that don't just rely on your pagerank to sell the link. Do check your pagerank.
How much traffic does your site have?
Remember that when we are telling others about how much traffic our site has, we are talking about unique visitors and pageviews. Don't mess out the number of hits with unique visitors. An unique visitor can generate lots of hits and pageviews. If your site has popular content with busy traffic everyday, you can also sell out links very easily. Relevancy can't be anymore important in search engine optimization, especially Google. Any experienced seo guys should know putting link at relevant webpage can boost his site value enormously. So, don't neglect this factor!
In conclusion, earning revenue by selling text links can be profitable, especially if you have gained some loyal partners in long terms. To fully get the advantage of text link placement, it is required to place a link for more than three or four months, thus if your site is a good one, should have no problem for them to stay with you. You can also check your link price with this tool, which uses a formula to derive a suitable pricing for you.
CY Tang is a search engine profession, helping websites to get ranked higher with better search engine visibility. Visit his seo blog for any seo tips and advice.
Saturday, May 27, 2006
All Myths About Reciprocal Linking
I've been reading a lot of nonsense on various SEO forums about reciprocal linking being dead. People screaming and crying because their sites no longer rank well after Google's big Jagger update. I thought it would be timely for me to write an article about what REALLY happened, and what you can do about it.
First of all, reciprocal links aren't dead, not by a long shot. It would be foolish of any search engine to ignore links from one authority site to another just because that other site points back to it. That, in fact, reinforces the value of both sites!
What really happened is that Google got smarter about reciprocal links. They are harder on link farms now, and bogus "directories" of links. So the people who are crying foul probably had most or all of their links coming from these kinds of shady sources.
From my own experience with my many sites, however, it seems clear that reciprocal links have been devalued by Google. All that means is that they don't count quite as much as they used to, but they are still very valuable.
If you follow the philosophy of optimizing for keywords that are not super competitive, though, then you will find that your sites are not affected much, since most of your "competition" isn't really competing for the keywords you are targeting anyway.
Remember Reciprocal Links Have Always Been A Short-Term Solution Besides, reciprocal links should ALWAYS be looked on as a short-term boost to get a site going. You want to get those reciprocal links so that you can get ranked for some less competitive keywords. Once you're getting some traffic, if you're offering high quality content to your visitors, you'll get more links into your site naturally.
Jas Virk is the owner of http://www.toponlineresources.com/ where you can find lot of information on Internet marketing
First of all, reciprocal links aren't dead, not by a long shot. It would be foolish of any search engine to ignore links from one authority site to another just because that other site points back to it. That, in fact, reinforces the value of both sites!
What really happened is that Google got smarter about reciprocal links. They are harder on link farms now, and bogus "directories" of links. So the people who are crying foul probably had most or all of their links coming from these kinds of shady sources.
From my own experience with my many sites, however, it seems clear that reciprocal links have been devalued by Google. All that means is that they don't count quite as much as they used to, but they are still very valuable.
If you follow the philosophy of optimizing for keywords that are not super competitive, though, then you will find that your sites are not affected much, since most of your "competition" isn't really competing for the keywords you are targeting anyway.
Remember Reciprocal Links Have Always Been A Short-Term Solution Besides, reciprocal links should ALWAYS be looked on as a short-term boost to get a site going. You want to get those reciprocal links so that you can get ranked for some less competitive keywords. Once you're getting some traffic, if you're offering high quality content to your visitors, you'll get more links into your site naturally.
Jas Virk is the owner of http://www.toponlineresources.com/ where you can find lot of information on Internet marketing
Friday, May 26, 2006
Website Marketing Strategies - Reciprocal Links
Although it's very old, another good website marketing strategy is building reciprocal links for your site. Let's say that you've managed to build a site where you have great content, great tools or both. All you need now is people to find out about it.
Increasing your link popularity with reciprocal links will help your site to go up in the search engines. Although this kind of links are not so powerful anymore they can still give you some results. Besides the search engine rankings you will also receive direct traffic from the site you are linked with.
The link exchange process is not a hard one but it has it's secrets and tricks. There are many factors and things to avoid that have to be taken in consideration. You have to know how to convince a webmaster to trade links with you, what sites to avoid and what sites to link with.
The first thing that you need to know is what is a reciprocal link. A reciprocal link is some kind of agreement between two webmasters. Both of them place on their site a link that points to the other one's website. This is some kind of win-win situation because both websites benefit form this linking, receiving direct traffic and increasing link popularity.
This website marketing strategy also involves a little trust. You can make links exchange with many sites but you don't have the time to frequently monitor them. So you'll just have to trust that the other webmaster will keep your link on his site. This situation could become really frustrating when you see that you still keep a link for a website but you're not receiving one back.
Don't think about this website marketing strategy as a quick scheme to get tons of traffic. I can ensure you that is not like that. There are many sites that have thousands of banners on them, but only half of them really work. Try to link your site with related and confident websites. This way you will also avoid linking to any bad neighborhoods.
In conclusion, even if the reciprocal links are an old website marketing strategy comparing to the new and powerful one way links they still can bring you some results. Just try to make your links exchanges as safe as possible.
Article Source: http://www.kokkada.com
For great website marketing strategies just visit our site. We are now offering the best website marketing strategy available today.
Increasing your link popularity with reciprocal links will help your site to go up in the search engines. Although this kind of links are not so powerful anymore they can still give you some results. Besides the search engine rankings you will also receive direct traffic from the site you are linked with.
The link exchange process is not a hard one but it has it's secrets and tricks. There are many factors and things to avoid that have to be taken in consideration. You have to know how to convince a webmaster to trade links with you, what sites to avoid and what sites to link with.
The first thing that you need to know is what is a reciprocal link. A reciprocal link is some kind of agreement between two webmasters. Both of them place on their site a link that points to the other one's website. This is some kind of win-win situation because both websites benefit form this linking, receiving direct traffic and increasing link popularity.
This website marketing strategy also involves a little trust. You can make links exchange with many sites but you don't have the time to frequently monitor them. So you'll just have to trust that the other webmaster will keep your link on his site. This situation could become really frustrating when you see that you still keep a link for a website but you're not receiving one back.
Don't think about this website marketing strategy as a quick scheme to get tons of traffic. I can ensure you that is not like that. There are many sites that have thousands of banners on them, but only half of them really work. Try to link your site with related and confident websites. This way you will also avoid linking to any bad neighborhoods.
In conclusion, even if the reciprocal links are an old website marketing strategy comparing to the new and powerful one way links they still can bring you some results. Just try to make your links exchanges as safe as possible.
Article Source: http://www.kokkada.com
For great website marketing strategies just visit our site. We are now offering the best website marketing strategy available today.
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Link Acquisition – A Beginners Guide
In-bound links are a major part of Search Engine Optimisation and acquiring themcan be a cumbersome task. Link addresses, email addresses, anchor text anddescriptions get misplaced, code gets miss-written and link managers becomestressed. I am still yet to find a piece of software which delivers the results that Idesire from a link building program. Despite this link building is a major aspect of asuccessful Internet Marketing Campaign.
In designing a link building campaign there are many attributes that need to betaken into account. The following needs to be decided: the form of inbound linksdesired, linking anchor text and description, theme of sites (if any) accepted and thedesired link acquisition method. Lets start by discussing the form of in-bound linksavailable.
There are many forms of in-bound links: reciprocal links, one way links and thegrowing trend of triangular links. Reciprocal links are links which are traded with themost ferocity by Search Engine Optimisation Professionals as they are the easiest toattain. One way links are the most sought after links but the hardest links toachieve. Triangular links are the middle child, they are better than reciprocal linksbut, as there is an outbound link involved, they are not as good as one way links. Agood internet marketing strategy will include all of the above type of links as they alloffer benefits to a sites search engine position and overall success.
Anchor text and description generation is one of the most important aspects of asuccessful link campaign. A well structured, key word rich, anchor text anddescription can result in greater key word emphasis to search engines and higherclick through ratios. When building anchor text and description take into account theresearch results of Pay Per Click advertising. Advertisements which have the firstletter of every word capitalized receive the greatest click through ratio – implementthis in your anchor text and description. In-bound links are not only good for greatersearch engine position but also for traffic! I have seen sites that get 25% of theirtraffic from in-bound links!
When acquiring links for a site you need to decide whether you will only accept linksfrom sites of a relevant theme, pages of a relevant theme or sites and pages of anytheme. For example if your site is a travel related site, will you only accept linksfrom other travel related websites/webpages or from any website/webpage. Thisdecision has a major influence on success as it can drastically affect your linkacquisition campaign. Most Search Engine Optimisation Professionals believe thatyou should only accept links from relevant themed websites.
The most important part of link building is the adaption of a successful link buildingstrategy. There are many link building strategies currently being used: link baiting,reciprocal link email blasts, directory submission, link to us page optimisation, paidtext link advertising, the list goes on and on. A good internet marketing campaignwill involve a combination of the most successful link building techniques for yourwebsites and your industry.
While Link acquisition is a major part of Search Engine Optimisation and it can be acumbersome task. Ensure that you don’t expend all your energy in acquiring linkswhen well written, informative content will result in natural link acquisition
Article Source: http://www.kokkada.com
Written By Shaun Stenning Managing Director of Integrated Marketing Solutions Australia - Internet Marketing Australia
In designing a link building campaign there are many attributes that need to betaken into account. The following needs to be decided: the form of inbound linksdesired, linking anchor text and description, theme of sites (if any) accepted and thedesired link acquisition method. Lets start by discussing the form of in-bound linksavailable.
There are many forms of in-bound links: reciprocal links, one way links and thegrowing trend of triangular links. Reciprocal links are links which are traded with themost ferocity by Search Engine Optimisation Professionals as they are the easiest toattain. One way links are the most sought after links but the hardest links toachieve. Triangular links are the middle child, they are better than reciprocal linksbut, as there is an outbound link involved, they are not as good as one way links. Agood internet marketing strategy will include all of the above type of links as they alloffer benefits to a sites search engine position and overall success.
Anchor text and description generation is one of the most important aspects of asuccessful link campaign. A well structured, key word rich, anchor text anddescription can result in greater key word emphasis to search engines and higherclick through ratios. When building anchor text and description take into account theresearch results of Pay Per Click advertising. Advertisements which have the firstletter of every word capitalized receive the greatest click through ratio – implementthis in your anchor text and description. In-bound links are not only good for greatersearch engine position but also for traffic! I have seen sites that get 25% of theirtraffic from in-bound links!
When acquiring links for a site you need to decide whether you will only accept linksfrom sites of a relevant theme, pages of a relevant theme or sites and pages of anytheme. For example if your site is a travel related site, will you only accept linksfrom other travel related websites/webpages or from any website/webpage. Thisdecision has a major influence on success as it can drastically affect your linkacquisition campaign. Most Search Engine Optimisation Professionals believe thatyou should only accept links from relevant themed websites.
The most important part of link building is the adaption of a successful link buildingstrategy. There are many link building strategies currently being used: link baiting,reciprocal link email blasts, directory submission, link to us page optimisation, paidtext link advertising, the list goes on and on. A good internet marketing campaignwill involve a combination of the most successful link building techniques for yourwebsites and your industry.
While Link acquisition is a major part of Search Engine Optimisation and it can be acumbersome task. Ensure that you don’t expend all your energy in acquiring linkswhen well written, informative content will result in natural link acquisition
Article Source: http://www.kokkada.com
Written By Shaun Stenning Managing Director of Integrated Marketing Solutions Australia - Internet Marketing Australia
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
The Benefits of Link Building to Website Promotion
Search engine optimization seems to be becoming more and more difficult, with search engine algorithms becoming more complexed with what they require to be important. However, one thing for sure is that backlinks in particular are still one of the most effective search engine optimization techniques.
When you receive links to your website, search engines view this as a vote for your site. Now the value of this vote depends on a number of factors such as the number of outgoing links the page with your link on has, the number of incoming links the page has, and whether the site that contains your link is seen by the search engines as an "authority" site.
There are many contributing factors for your website to rank highly in SERP's, but one thing for sure is that you need to continually build the number and quality of links pointing to your site. This could be through a number of methods:
1) Reciprocal linking - you contact other webmasters to offer the opportunity to provide a link to their website for the same in return.
2) One-way linking - this can be from many methods. Write articles and submit to article directories, add a link in your sig in forums, post opinions on blogs with a link back to your site (providing that the site owner does not mind!), and link directories.
There is no doubt that one-way linking is more powerful than reciprocal linking by a long way. Also consider that reciprocal linking should be conducted with sites that are relevant to your own websites theme.
Link building using your chosen keyword is also important. For example, should you have a website that you would like to rank highly in search engines for the phrase "Dog Beds", then if possible have website owner's link to your site using the search term as the actual link to your site. This shows the search engines that your site is relevant to this keyword phrase, and will rank it highly should you receive many links like this. Merely gaining links to your site is not the ONLY optimization that you must do for your site, as mentioned earlier, but it is certainly a significant contributing factor in search results.
An important note to remember is to never link to "link farms". These are sites that contain hundreds upon hundreds of outgoing links on one page. Search engines do not tend to look upon them favorable, and in any case if your link is also on this "link farm" page, the benefit will be minimal due to the large number of other links taking a share of the value of links from the page.
There are many free article directories, and free link directories where it is possible to gain good quality links to your site. However, paying for a link from a link directory is often very rewarding. You may find that paid directories will guarantee the acceptance of your website within hours to a couple of days. This is compared to many free directories often taking months to review your submission, and may not even approve it in the end. There are some exceptions but the key is to find them. Another good point to remember is that many new link directories that are well setup will possibly have categories with very few websites currently accepted. This provides a great opportunity to submit your site to benefit from the page's link value to the fullest.
Article Source: http://www.kokkada.com
The new directory at www.articleblotter.com/directory offers the perfect opportunity to gain one-way links to your website. The site also allows you to write and submit articles if you choose to in order to gain links. Also keep upto date with article marketing information and site news with the article marketing blog.
When you receive links to your website, search engines view this as a vote for your site. Now the value of this vote depends on a number of factors such as the number of outgoing links the page with your link on has, the number of incoming links the page has, and whether the site that contains your link is seen by the search engines as an "authority" site.
There are many contributing factors for your website to rank highly in SERP's, but one thing for sure is that you need to continually build the number and quality of links pointing to your site. This could be through a number of methods:
1) Reciprocal linking - you contact other webmasters to offer the opportunity to provide a link to their website for the same in return.
2) One-way linking - this can be from many methods. Write articles and submit to article directories, add a link in your sig in forums, post opinions on blogs with a link back to your site (providing that the site owner does not mind!), and link directories.
There is no doubt that one-way linking is more powerful than reciprocal linking by a long way. Also consider that reciprocal linking should be conducted with sites that are relevant to your own websites theme.
Link building using your chosen keyword is also important. For example, should you have a website that you would like to rank highly in search engines for the phrase "Dog Beds", then if possible have website owner's link to your site using the search term as the actual link to your site. This shows the search engines that your site is relevant to this keyword phrase, and will rank it highly should you receive many links like this. Merely gaining links to your site is not the ONLY optimization that you must do for your site, as mentioned earlier, but it is certainly a significant contributing factor in search results.
An important note to remember is to never link to "link farms". These are sites that contain hundreds upon hundreds of outgoing links on one page. Search engines do not tend to look upon them favorable, and in any case if your link is also on this "link farm" page, the benefit will be minimal due to the large number of other links taking a share of the value of links from the page.
There are many free article directories, and free link directories where it is possible to gain good quality links to your site. However, paying for a link from a link directory is often very rewarding. You may find that paid directories will guarantee the acceptance of your website within hours to a couple of days. This is compared to many free directories often taking months to review your submission, and may not even approve it in the end. There are some exceptions but the key is to find them. Another good point to remember is that many new link directories that are well setup will possibly have categories with very few websites currently accepted. This provides a great opportunity to submit your site to benefit from the page's link value to the fullest.
Article Source: http://www.kokkada.com
The new directory at www.articleblotter.com/directory offers the perfect opportunity to gain one-way links to your website. The site also allows you to write and submit articles if you choose to in order to gain links. Also keep upto date with article marketing information and site news with the article marketing blog.
Monday, May 22, 2006
How to Generate Quality One way links?
Jack had an amazing idea & started his online business with a vision of making it big someday. But few years down the line Jack is left wondering as to why his business isn’t turning up the way he expected it to!
Mark thinks that he has a better service than his competitors, but still fails to understand why their Balance Sheet figures are running into millions, while his are still in few thousands!
All these puzzling facts make one doubt himself. But my friend, the problem is not with the idea or the service! The problem lies in the promotion strategies. No matter how good an idea or a service is, it won’t be successful unless you put it to the right people in the right manner. Good Web Promotion can do wonders to an average idea; forget what it can do to a good one. Had Jack & Mark adopted the right kind of Internet Promotion strategy, they would have achieved what they wanted to.
Everyone will agree that today’s Web Promotion is dominated by Search Engines, or to be precise, Google. If your site is in the top thirty, for the right “Keyword”, you can be a winner. But how can one make it to the top & stay there for a long time? (Mind you, in this dynamic world called Internet, sticking to your position is as important as getting there!)
The best way to “optimize” your site is through a new “Organic Method of Search Engine Optimization” (SEO) that Google & other search engines just love, generating “Quality One Way Links”. One can generate quality back links by way of “Directory Submission” & “Article Submission”.
Online directories provide you with quality back links, which is precisely what you are looking for. Apart from this, you need to submit your site to the most appropriate category & with a brief description about your business. Thus, they also send targeted audience your way!
Another way of generating quality targeted audience & one way links is by writing quality articles & submitting them to Article Directories! By writing a quality article, you are not just informing your potential customers about your service, but are also sharing your knowledge with them. Again, Article Directories gives you an opportunity to inform people about yourself & also provide a link to your site. This way, people get to know about you & your site. And if your article provides a visitor what he came looking for, you have most definitely found yourself a new client!
Had Jack written an article about his idea & explained his service to his target audience and submitted his site to Hundreds of Search Engine Friendly Directories, he would have been on “Cloud 9” by now. Had Mark written an article informing his potential customers, how his service is better than his customers & also submitted his site to Online Directories, his Balance Sheet too might have run into Millions.To summarize, when you submit your article or your site to various online directories, this is what you get -
1. You generate hundreds of quality back links to your site.2. People who search these directories may find your article or your sites description interesting & visit your site. Thus you get large targeted audience.The end result is that your site satisfies all the criterions set by various search engines to have a favorable Rank. You thus reach high positions in search engines & stay there for a long time!
About Author:Rahul Rungta is a Professional Internet Marketer. Having done intensive research on Search Engine Optimization & Traffic Generation, he is now pioneering two new innovative tools in Internet Marketing - Article & Directory Submission. To know more about him, please visit http://www.submit2please.com
Article Source: http://www.kokkada.com
www.submit2please.com
Mark thinks that he has a better service than his competitors, but still fails to understand why their Balance Sheet figures are running into millions, while his are still in few thousands!
All these puzzling facts make one doubt himself. But my friend, the problem is not with the idea or the service! The problem lies in the promotion strategies. No matter how good an idea or a service is, it won’t be successful unless you put it to the right people in the right manner. Good Web Promotion can do wonders to an average idea; forget what it can do to a good one. Had Jack & Mark adopted the right kind of Internet Promotion strategy, they would have achieved what they wanted to.
Everyone will agree that today’s Web Promotion is dominated by Search Engines, or to be precise, Google. If your site is in the top thirty, for the right “Keyword”, you can be a winner. But how can one make it to the top & stay there for a long time? (Mind you, in this dynamic world called Internet, sticking to your position is as important as getting there!)
The best way to “optimize” your site is through a new “Organic Method of Search Engine Optimization” (SEO) that Google & other search engines just love, generating “Quality One Way Links”. One can generate quality back links by way of “Directory Submission” & “Article Submission”.
Online directories provide you with quality back links, which is precisely what you are looking for. Apart from this, you need to submit your site to the most appropriate category & with a brief description about your business. Thus, they also send targeted audience your way!
Another way of generating quality targeted audience & one way links is by writing quality articles & submitting them to Article Directories! By writing a quality article, you are not just informing your potential customers about your service, but are also sharing your knowledge with them. Again, Article Directories gives you an opportunity to inform people about yourself & also provide a link to your site. This way, people get to know about you & your site. And if your article provides a visitor what he came looking for, you have most definitely found yourself a new client!
Had Jack written an article about his idea & explained his service to his target audience and submitted his site to Hundreds of Search Engine Friendly Directories, he would have been on “Cloud 9” by now. Had Mark written an article informing his potential customers, how his service is better than his customers & also submitted his site to Online Directories, his Balance Sheet too might have run into Millions.To summarize, when you submit your article or your site to various online directories, this is what you get -
1. You generate hundreds of quality back links to your site.2. People who search these directories may find your article or your sites description interesting & visit your site. Thus you get large targeted audience.The end result is that your site satisfies all the criterions set by various search engines to have a favorable Rank. You thus reach high positions in search engines & stay there for a long time!
About Author:Rahul Rungta is a Professional Internet Marketer. Having done intensive research on Search Engine Optimization & Traffic Generation, he is now pioneering two new innovative tools in Internet Marketing - Article & Directory Submission. To know more about him, please visit http://www.submit2please.com
Article Source: http://www.kokkada.com
www.submit2please.com
Sunday, May 21, 2006
Top 10 Ways To Get People To Link To Your Web Site!
1. Offer other web sites free content to post on their web site. Include your link on all of your content. The content should relate to your web site because it will be in front of your target audience.
2. When you visit a web site you've enjoyed a lot, write a review for the site. Write about the benefits you gain from the web site. Tell them they can publish it on their web site if they link to your web site.
3. Allow other people to publish your e-zine on their web site. Include your web site's ad and link in each issue you publish. This may also help you increase the number of people that subscribe to your e-zine.
4. Market your web site as a free web book. Design your web site with a title page, table of contents, chapters, etc. Just allow other people to give away the web book by linking to your web site.
5.Give your visitors an instant article directory. Tell your visitors they can instantly add a free article directory to their web site by linking to yours. Just place your ad or banner ad on top of the article directory for your main web site. 6. Allow other web sites to use your discussion board for their web site visitors. Just have them link directly to the discussion board. Include your web site's ad or banner ad at the top of the discussion board.
7. Start a members only web site. Tell visitors what's in your members only site and what it costs to gain access. Offer them a free membership if, in exchange, they link to your web site.
8. Offer your visitors a free sign up to your affiliate program. Pay them commission to sell your products or services. Just give them an affiliate link to track their sales. People will link to your web site to make extra money.
9. Create your own award site for other web sites. Give the winners a graphic or text link to place on their web site when they win. This will link your web site to theirs and draw more traffic to your web site.
10. Are you an expert on a particular subject? Offer people free consulting via e-mail if, in exchange, they link to your site. People will consider this a huge value because consulting fees can be very expensive.
Visit us:halfvalue.com
halfvalue.co.uk
lookbookstores.com
About the Author
Devendra Jaiswal
2. When you visit a web site you've enjoyed a lot, write a review for the site. Write about the benefits you gain from the web site. Tell them they can publish it on their web site if they link to your web site.
3. Allow other people to publish your e-zine on their web site. Include your web site's ad and link in each issue you publish. This may also help you increase the number of people that subscribe to your e-zine.
4. Market your web site as a free web book. Design your web site with a title page, table of contents, chapters, etc. Just allow other people to give away the web book by linking to your web site.
5.Give your visitors an instant article directory. Tell your visitors they can instantly add a free article directory to their web site by linking to yours. Just place your ad or banner ad on top of the article directory for your main web site. 6. Allow other web sites to use your discussion board for their web site visitors. Just have them link directly to the discussion board. Include your web site's ad or banner ad at the top of the discussion board.
7. Start a members only web site. Tell visitors what's in your members only site and what it costs to gain access. Offer them a free membership if, in exchange, they link to your web site.
8. Offer your visitors a free sign up to your affiliate program. Pay them commission to sell your products or services. Just give them an affiliate link to track their sales. People will link to your web site to make extra money.
9. Create your own award site for other web sites. Give the winners a graphic or text link to place on their web site when they win. This will link your web site to theirs and draw more traffic to your web site.
10. Are you an expert on a particular subject? Offer people free consulting via e-mail if, in exchange, they link to your site. People will consider this a huge value because consulting fees can be very expensive.
Visit us:halfvalue.com
halfvalue.co.uk
lookbookstores.com
About the Author
Devendra Jaiswal
Saturday, May 20, 2006
Paris Hilton's Reputation is SHOT! How's Yours?
With apologies for the cheap trick of mentioning Paris Hilton to get your attention, coming to grips with the idea you're about to discover is critically important to your success with search engines!
Because while it's true that there are many factors that determine how well a page ranks in Google - did you know that one stands out above the rest? It's link text. (Also known as anchor text?)
So much so, link text can be the deciding factor when chasing top rankings for extremely competitive keywords.
And for sure can't hurt for lesser search terms.
You see link text creates what's known as "link reputation". Have enough links using the same phrase as the link text and Google can’t help but conclude that's what the page linked to is all about.
Yeah but…how powerful is the link text of inbound links, really?
Well guess what? It's so powerful you can land top listings for a given keyword phrase without the keyword phrase even appearing anywhere on the page.
Since I can sense your skepticism from here, let me prove it using 6 examples which I was able to dig up in about 15 minutes. Starting with
===> The "website traffic" Mystery
First I did a search for "website traffic" in Google.
When I did the search, (and we both know things can change) this site, http://buytraffic.1st-casinoaffiliateprograms.com, was poised in position #3.
Casino affiliates?
Not necessarily what would come to mind as a site dealing with website traffic now is it?
Yet try as I might, when I searched that page for the term "website traffic" I couldn’t find it. Not even once. But when I went in search of the links to that page however here’s what I did find:
"Buy website traffic - casino traffic - You can choose to buy website traffic or if you own an online casino you can buy complete packages including signups, banner displays and unique visitors. This can push your website traffic and signups dramatically."
Huh? See that? That listing’s got "website traffic" in the link text. And a couple more times in the description.
I guess the only possible explanation for the #3 ranking for "website traffic" is the link text. That’s what is causing that page to rank #3 for that term.
===> Cell Phone
For example two I searched on "cell phone". This time Sprint PCS came in at #5 out of 5,100,000 listings in Google.
Once again, the term "cell phone" did NOT appear anywhere on their page.
===> Laptop/Laptops Examples
Next I tried "laptop". The Apple Powerbook listing came in at #4. Yet, and you guessed it, the word "laptop" was no where to be found on that page.
Since I was in the neighborhood, for the fourth example I gave "laptops" a shot. The site was sitting in #4 out of 5,910,000 competing pages when I did that search. Yet once again, the word "laptops" doesn’t show up on that page either.
Of course a check of the backlinks turned this up from the Yahoo Directory:
"Discount Laptops - retailer of new and refurbished notebook computers."
Oh and I found the exact same listing in DMOZ. Since it featured "Discount Laptops" as the link text, it’s only natural Google would conclude the page is about what else? Laptops!
===> Jobs
Monster.com currently holds down the #1 spot for the search term "jobs". Once again, (you beginning to see a trend here?) the word "jobs" does not even appear on that page.
===> Money
Finally I searched on "money". Perched at #16 was MasterCard’s website. Here too, the word "money" was not used even once in the visible text.
===> Summing Up This Link Text Stuff
Based on the evidence when it comes to ranking high in Google, saying link text trumps all is surely not too strong of a statement.
In fact it’s absolutely positively true. Focusing on link text is a surefire Google seo tactic. Yes, content counts, but link text counts for more..
Making link text the closest thing to a sure thing you can get.
Simply put, link text, which is used to develop your site’s link reputation, is one of the most powerful seo techniques going. It gives you ranking momentum like nothing else. Use tightly focused link text with links from high PR pages and you’ve got yourself an unstoppable combination.
So are you capitalizing on the power of link text?
Are you constantly getting links with the appropriate link text in them?
If not why not?
Because as I’ve shown you - link text really does trump all.
John Gergye shares more ideas like this in his recently updated eBook "Traffic From Google in 35 Days". Find out more here: http://www.traffic-test-tube.com/j/tfg35cl.shtml/ Or test your search engine IQ by taking his seo quiz http://www.traffic-test-tube.com/search-engine-quiz.shtml/ and get the free special report "Coming Out On Top".
Because while it's true that there are many factors that determine how well a page ranks in Google - did you know that one stands out above the rest? It's link text. (Also known as anchor text?)
So much so, link text can be the deciding factor when chasing top rankings for extremely competitive keywords.
And for sure can't hurt for lesser search terms.
You see link text creates what's known as "link reputation". Have enough links using the same phrase as the link text and Google can’t help but conclude that's what the page linked to is all about.
Yeah but…how powerful is the link text of inbound links, really?
Well guess what? It's so powerful you can land top listings for a given keyword phrase without the keyword phrase even appearing anywhere on the page.
Since I can sense your skepticism from here, let me prove it using 6 examples which I was able to dig up in about 15 minutes. Starting with
===> The "website traffic" Mystery
First I did a search for "website traffic" in Google.
When I did the search, (and we both know things can change) this site, http://buytraffic.1st-casinoaffiliateprograms.com, was poised in position #3.
Casino affiliates?
Not necessarily what would come to mind as a site dealing with website traffic now is it?
Yet try as I might, when I searched that page for the term "website traffic" I couldn’t find it. Not even once. But when I went in search of the links to that page however here’s what I did find:
"Buy website traffic - casino traffic - You can choose to buy website traffic or if you own an online casino you can buy complete packages including signups, banner displays and unique visitors. This can push your website traffic and signups dramatically."
Huh? See that? That listing’s got "website traffic" in the link text. And a couple more times in the description.
I guess the only possible explanation for the #3 ranking for "website traffic" is the link text. That’s what is causing that page to rank #3 for that term.
===> Cell Phone
For example two I searched on "cell phone". This time Sprint PCS came in at #5 out of 5,100,000 listings in Google.
Once again, the term "cell phone" did NOT appear anywhere on their page.
===> Laptop/Laptops Examples
Next I tried "laptop". The Apple Powerbook listing came in at #4. Yet, and you guessed it, the word "laptop" was no where to be found on that page.
Since I was in the neighborhood, for the fourth example I gave "laptops" a shot. The site was sitting in #4 out of 5,910,000 competing pages when I did that search. Yet once again, the word "laptops" doesn’t show up on that page either.
Of course a check of the backlinks turned this up from the Yahoo Directory:
"Discount Laptops - retailer of new and refurbished notebook computers."
Oh and I found the exact same listing in DMOZ. Since it featured "Discount Laptops" as the link text, it’s only natural Google would conclude the page is about what else? Laptops!
===> Jobs
Monster.com currently holds down the #1 spot for the search term "jobs". Once again, (you beginning to see a trend here?) the word "jobs" does not even appear on that page.
===> Money
Finally I searched on "money". Perched at #16 was MasterCard’s website. Here too, the word "money" was not used even once in the visible text.
===> Summing Up This Link Text Stuff
Based on the evidence when it comes to ranking high in Google, saying link text trumps all is surely not too strong of a statement.
In fact it’s absolutely positively true. Focusing on link text is a surefire Google seo tactic. Yes, content counts, but link text counts for more..
Making link text the closest thing to a sure thing you can get.
Simply put, link text, which is used to develop your site’s link reputation, is one of the most powerful seo techniques going. It gives you ranking momentum like nothing else. Use tightly focused link text with links from high PR pages and you’ve got yourself an unstoppable combination.
So are you capitalizing on the power of link text?
Are you constantly getting links with the appropriate link text in them?
If not why not?
Because as I’ve shown you - link text really does trump all.
John Gergye shares more ideas like this in his recently updated eBook "Traffic From Google in 35 Days". Find out more here: http://www.traffic-test-tube.com/j/tfg35cl.shtml/ Or test your search engine IQ by taking his seo quiz http://www.traffic-test-tube.com/search-engine-quiz.shtml/ and get the free special report "Coming Out On Top".
Friday, May 19, 2006
Away From Links And Toward Popularity?
Google has established itself as a leader in the search engine industry. Effectively Google retains, month after month, almost 1/2 of search engine inquiries. Their PPC advertising model, Adwords, is second to none and the possibilities for website publishers are endless with their Adsense, ad-publishing client. The company has created popular computer programs such as: Google Earth, Google Desktop, Google Toolbar, Picasa, and SketchUp. And they operate such online services as: Gmail, Google Trends, Google Scholar, Google News, and Google Groups.
The reason I mention these facts is that there have been many in the search engine world that have speculated that Google is moving away from links and toward popularity. What I mean is that in the traditional sense, Google has used the data based on the individual links that a certain website has pointing to it. There are several factors involved in evaluating the links data that helps Google determine the popularity of a site and importance of its content. In the new sense, many have speculated that Google has been able to gain a finite amount of aggregate usage data from its various programs and services that allows them to further develop their algorithm into a more accurate and relevant service. This allows them to really evaluate a site based on how popular it truly is and weigh it's content and position in the search engines accordingly.
Honestly to me, it's an ingenious idea and in part it has been verified by a post on Matt Cutts Blog where he mentions the new efforts Google is using to reduce bandwidth. He mentions the fact that Google uses their popular Adsense service to help index the web faster. This spreads the indexing load out a bit and encourages Google to use the same technique on their other popular services.
So what does this mean for the individual webmaster? This means that the direction of search results could take a drastic shift from the norm of link popularity to actual user popularity, which is more powerful than the alternatives. So in the future, I still believe link popularity will remain a cornerstone of the search engines algorithm, but that data will supplemented or be the supplement, in part to the popularity data.
Author and Creator,
The SEO Journal Blog
http://seojournal05.blogspot.com
The reason I mention these facts is that there have been many in the search engine world that have speculated that Google is moving away from links and toward popularity. What I mean is that in the traditional sense, Google has used the data based on the individual links that a certain website has pointing to it. There are several factors involved in evaluating the links data that helps Google determine the popularity of a site and importance of its content. In the new sense, many have speculated that Google has been able to gain a finite amount of aggregate usage data from its various programs and services that allows them to further develop their algorithm into a more accurate and relevant service. This allows them to really evaluate a site based on how popular it truly is and weigh it's content and position in the search engines accordingly.
Honestly to me, it's an ingenious idea and in part it has been verified by a post on Matt Cutts Blog where he mentions the new efforts Google is using to reduce bandwidth. He mentions the fact that Google uses their popular Adsense service to help index the web faster. This spreads the indexing load out a bit and encourages Google to use the same technique on their other popular services.
So what does this mean for the individual webmaster? This means that the direction of search results could take a drastic shift from the norm of link popularity to actual user popularity, which is more powerful than the alternatives. So in the future, I still believe link popularity will remain a cornerstone of the search engines algorithm, but that data will supplemented or be the supplement, in part to the popularity data.
Author and Creator,
The SEO Journal Blog
http://seojournal05.blogspot.com
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Google SEO - the most important step!
Google SEO - the most important step!
Google is by far the largest and most successful search engine in the world - and its getting bigger! Google searches account for over half of all web inquiries.
Although many believe that Google is moving away from links and toward popularity it is still very much a link-based search engine. You can optimise your site until the cows come home but if your link text and anchor text are not optimised properly you will not see a good search engine placement for your desired keywords in Google! The key to good placement is, firstly, anchor text - the search term used as your actual link on another person's site. Get this right, get enough of them and you are guaranteed a high page rank!
Don't believe me?
Go to Google and place a search term for "Miserable Failure" and "Failure". Did you get the results you expected? How did such a prominent site feature on the number one spot? - Simple. One blog owner started a campaign as as a joke to see if he could get a friend's blog high in the search rankings for a particular joke keyword (by getting opther bloggers to put a link to the nother site with the anchor text would produce such results and it worked! So they took it a step further and decided to make a polical statement using the same method. It was initiated by George Johnston back at the end of October 2003 and by Novemeber the site had reached number 2 on Google.
Thousands of blogs placed the link with the anchor text saying "miserable failure" and "failure" pointing to the site. Google responded by giving the site a top placement for those search terms.
If they can do it so can you!
This method is known as 'Google bombing' but it is a legitimate tactic to use for your own website when you are getting links. Recipricol links still work because they are a key factor in determining what search term your site should be placed under in the search engines!
Google and the other search engines are taking into account the link text description also but the real fire-power comes from the anchor text. No matter what anyone tells you. Link building is the only way to get good search engine ranking - for now anyway. It is also a great source of traffic.
So start your link building campaign and watch as your Google search position increases. It works. You can get high PR links using SEO ELITE. They also have some other great software products to help your SEO.
As well as the above I also personally use AXANDRA WEB SITE PROMOTION SOFTWARE to build links and keep track of them.
Michael McGrath is the owner of several successful Internet businesses and a university computer graduate specialising in web seo and artificial intelligence.
Google is by far the largest and most successful search engine in the world - and its getting bigger! Google searches account for over half of all web inquiries.
Although many believe that Google is moving away from links and toward popularity it is still very much a link-based search engine. You can optimise your site until the cows come home but if your link text and anchor text are not optimised properly you will not see a good search engine placement for your desired keywords in Google! The key to good placement is, firstly, anchor text - the search term used as your actual link on another person's site. Get this right, get enough of them and you are guaranteed a high page rank!
Don't believe me?
Go to Google and place a search term for "Miserable Failure" and "Failure". Did you get the results you expected? How did such a prominent site feature on the number one spot? - Simple. One blog owner started a campaign as as a joke to see if he could get a friend's blog high in the search rankings for a particular joke keyword (by getting opther bloggers to put a link to the nother site with the anchor text would produce such results and it worked! So they took it a step further and decided to make a polical statement using the same method. It was initiated by George Johnston back at the end of October 2003 and by Novemeber the site had reached number 2 on Google.
Thousands of blogs placed the link with the anchor text saying "miserable failure" and "failure" pointing to the site. Google responded by giving the site a top placement for those search terms.
If they can do it so can you!
This method is known as 'Google bombing' but it is a legitimate tactic to use for your own website when you are getting links. Recipricol links still work because they are a key factor in determining what search term your site should be placed under in the search engines!
Google and the other search engines are taking into account the link text description also but the real fire-power comes from the anchor text. No matter what anyone tells you. Link building is the only way to get good search engine ranking - for now anyway. It is also a great source of traffic.
So start your link building campaign and watch as your Google search position increases. It works. You can get high PR links using SEO ELITE. They also have some other great software products to help your SEO.
As well as the above I also personally use AXANDRA WEB SITE PROMOTION SOFTWARE to build links and keep track of them.
Michael McGrath is the owner of several successful Internet businesses and a university computer graduate specialising in web seo and artificial intelligence.
Monday, May 15, 2006
SEO - All about Links
What is SEO? We call it, Search Engine Optimization – a process or method to gain higher positions on major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN by searching the targeted keywords and phrases to increase online visitors, customers and inquiries to a particular website which is to be optimized for its web promotion, services offered by web development and search engine optimization companies.
Major Techniques and methods used in search engines optimization for a website are meta tags placement in website code, alternative tags (alt tags), directories submission which could be free or paid, link building or link popularity services which includes one-way links and link exchanging campaigns to increase the website popularity in search engines.
Now, let us elaborate these technique one by one - 1. Meta Tags Placement – these are the tags used to define website title, description and keywords to search engine spiders or crawlers for fast indexing in search engines which can be appear in organic listing on searching any keywords or key phrase for a website. Meta tags are basically used to show your keywords and phrases to the search engines and to online visitors that what services you are offering.
2. Directories Submission – submitting a site to free directories like dmoz and paid directories like yahoo directory which is the most important technique to raise your website up in search engines. There are thousand of free submission website and paid directories on internet. Directory submissions will make a website link popular by giving listing to that website in their directory category or categories. Like if you have submitted your website in 500 directories, then your website link is 500 times popular, if got listed. It means your website is being popular to the online visitors.
3. Link Popularity – the techniques includes one-way link service and link exchanging services. One way links are those link directed to your website on any other website which is not so easy to gain and helps in making more back links to a website. Second one is link exchanging which is a partnership between two websites. We can simply say it exchanging of links which is also good method to increase website back links. So, by both methods in link popularity services, we make our link listed on other website, means giving website links to get popular to online customers and visitors. There are so many websites that are looking for link exchange campaigns for the their websites and also buy one way links with web pages that have a higher Google page rank.
Nowadays, Blogs and articles are also a good source in website promotion. We are saying search engine optimization process is website promotion. So, we have to understand what really website promotion is – promotion of website means promotion of your website link.How can a visitor come to your website? Simply by clicking your website link – what matters from where? No one can predict the customer.Even from major search engines point of view, if you have higher no. of relevant links pointing to your website, then you can win on search engines with your targeting keywords and key phrases. That’s why it is concluded that its all about Links - your own website links which is to be popular to achieve ranking on search engine listing.Note – These are only my thoughts and views about this context.
Amit Verma is with Neuronimbus software services providing Custom Website Design and SEO Services worldwide as Sr. Internet Marketing Executive and writes about Search Engine Optimization. Currently working on Swiftravel International providing Tour Packages in India.
Major Techniques and methods used in search engines optimization for a website are meta tags placement in website code, alternative tags (alt tags), directories submission which could be free or paid, link building or link popularity services which includes one-way links and link exchanging campaigns to increase the website popularity in search engines.
Now, let us elaborate these technique one by one - 1. Meta Tags Placement – these are the tags used to define website title, description and keywords to search engine spiders or crawlers for fast indexing in search engines which can be appear in organic listing on searching any keywords or key phrase for a website. Meta tags are basically used to show your keywords and phrases to the search engines and to online visitors that what services you are offering.
2. Directories Submission – submitting a site to free directories like dmoz and paid directories like yahoo directory which is the most important technique to raise your website up in search engines. There are thousand of free submission website and paid directories on internet. Directory submissions will make a website link popular by giving listing to that website in their directory category or categories. Like if you have submitted your website in 500 directories, then your website link is 500 times popular, if got listed. It means your website is being popular to the online visitors.
3. Link Popularity – the techniques includes one-way link service and link exchanging services. One way links are those link directed to your website on any other website which is not so easy to gain and helps in making more back links to a website. Second one is link exchanging which is a partnership between two websites. We can simply say it exchanging of links which is also good method to increase website back links. So, by both methods in link popularity services, we make our link listed on other website, means giving website links to get popular to online customers and visitors. There are so many websites that are looking for link exchange campaigns for the their websites and also buy one way links with web pages that have a higher Google page rank.
Nowadays, Blogs and articles are also a good source in website promotion. We are saying search engine optimization process is website promotion. So, we have to understand what really website promotion is – promotion of website means promotion of your website link.How can a visitor come to your website? Simply by clicking your website link – what matters from where? No one can predict the customer.Even from major search engines point of view, if you have higher no. of relevant links pointing to your website, then you can win on search engines with your targeting keywords and key phrases. That’s why it is concluded that its all about Links - your own website links which is to be popular to achieve ranking on search engine listing.Note – These are only my thoughts and views about this context.
Amit Verma is with Neuronimbus software services providing Custom Website Design and SEO Services worldwide as Sr. Internet Marketing Executive and writes about Search Engine Optimization. Currently working on Swiftravel International providing Tour Packages in India.
Friday, May 12, 2006
SEO With Google Sitemaps
What is a Google Sitemap?
A Google Sitemap is a very simple XML document that lists all the pages in your website, but the Google Sitemaps program is actually much more important than that. In fact, the Sitemaps program provides a little peek inside Google’s mind – and it can tell you a lot about what Google thinks of your website!
Why Should You Use Google Sitemaps?
Until Google Sitemaps was released in the summer of 2005, optimizing a site for Google was a guessing game at best. A website’s page might be deleted from the index, and the Webmaster had no idea why. Alternatively, a site’s content could be scanned, but because of the peculiarities of the algorithm, the only pages that would rank well might be the "About Us" page, or the company’s press releases.
As webmasters we were at the whim of Googlebot, the seemingly arbitrary algorithmic kingmaker that could make or break a website overnight through shifts in search engine positioning. There was no way to communicate with Google about a website – either to understand what was wrong with it, or to tell Google when something had been updated.
That all changed about a year ago when Google released Sitemaps, but the program really became useful in February of 2006 when Google updated it with a couple new tools.
So, what exactly is the Google Sitemaps program, and how can you use it to improve the position of your website? Well, there are essentially two reasons to use Google Sitemaps:
1. Sitemaps provide you with a way to tell Google valuable information about your website
2. You can use Sitemaps to learn what Google thinks about your website
What You Can Tell Google About Your Site
Believe it or not, Google is concerned about making sure webmasters have a way of communicating information that is important about their sites. Although Googlebot does a pretty decent job of finding and cataloging web pages, it has very little ability to rate the relative importance of one page versus another. After all, many important pages on the Internet are not properly "optimized", and many of the people who couldn’t care less about spending their time on linking campaigns create some of the best content.
Therefore, Google gives you the ability to tell them on a scale of 0.0 to 1.0 how important a given page is relative to all the others. Using this system, you might tell Google that your home page is a 1.0, each of your product sections is a 0.8, and each of your individual product pages is a 0.5. Pages like your company’s address and contact information might only rate a 0.2.
You can also tell Google how often your pages are updated and the date that each page was last modified. For example your home page might be updated every day, while a particular product page might only be updated on an annual basis.
What Google Can Tell You About Your Site
Having the ability to tell Google all this information is important, but you don’t even need to create a sitemap file in order to enjoy some of the perks of having a Google Sitemaps account.
That's because even without a Sitemap file, you can still learn about any errors that Googlebot has found on your website. As you probably know, your site doesn't have to be "broken" for a robot to have trouble crawling it's pages. Google Sitemaps will tell you about pages it was unable to crawl and links it was unable to follow. Therefore, you can see where these problems are and fix them before your pages get deleted from the index.
You can also get information on the types of searches people are using to find your website. Of course, most website analytics tools will give this information to you anyway, but if the tool you use doesn’t have this feature, then it’s always nice to get it for free from Google.
But the best part of the Sitemaps program is the Page analysis section that was added in February of 2006. This page gives you two lists of words. The first list contains the words that Googlebot associates with your website based on content on your site. The second list contains words that Googlebot has found linking to your site!
Unfortunately, Google limits the number of words in each list to 20. As a consequence, the inbound links column is partly wasted by words such as "http", "www", and "com" – terms that apply equally to all websites (hey Google, how about suppressing those terms from the report?). That said, this list does provide you with a way to judge the effectiveness of your offsite optimization efforts.
When you compare these two lists, you can get an understanding of what Google thinks your website is about. If the words on your Site Content column are not really what you want Googlebot to think about your site, then you know you need to tweak your website’s copy to make it more focused on your core competency.
If, on the other hand your inbound links don’t contain any keywords that you want to rank well for, then perhaps you should focus your efforts in that direction.
Above all else, you really want these two lists to agree. You want your inbound linked words to match up to the site content words. This means that Google has a clear understanding of the focus of your website.
Additional Benefits of the Sitemaps Program
Google has even started notifying Sitemaps-participating Webmasters if they are breaking any of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. This can be very valuable information if your site suddenly becomes de-listed on Google and you don’t know why.
Only Sitemaps participants can get this information, and it is only provided at Google’s discretion. In fact, Google will NOT notify you if you are creating worthless websites that offer no original content, or if you are creating thousands of doorway pages that are redirecting to other web sites. Google doesn’t want to give the sp@ammers any clues as to how to improve their techniques.
How Do You Get Started with Google Site Maps?
The first thing you must do is obtain a Google Account. If you already have a Gmail, Adsense, or Adwords account, then you are all set. If not, you can register an account by visiting the Google Accounts page (https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount).
Building your sitemap file is pretty easy to do if you are familiar with XML, and if you aren’t you can always use a third-party tool such as the ones that are listed on Google’s website (http://code.google.com/sm_thirdparty.html). Google also has a "Sitemap Generator" that you can download and install on your server, but unless you are fairly adept at managing Python scripts, you should probably stick to the third-party tools.
At any rate, once you have your Google Account and your Sitemap file built, the rest is very easy. All you have to do is:
1. Log into your account (http://google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/siteoverview)
2. Type your website’s URL into the "Add Site" box and click on "OK"
3. Click on the Manage Sites link for the website you are adding, and add your sitemap file to your account.
Google Sitemaps – An Excellent SEO Tool
Google Sitemaps help Googlebot quickly find new content on your website. They allow you to tell Google what’s important, what’s new, and what changes often. The tools provided to webmasters through the program can play a vital role in helping you understand how the search engines (especially Google) view your website.
Using this information you can dramatically improve the position of your website and quickly clear up any issues Google finds. You can also use the tools provided by Google to gauge the effectiveness of your off-site optimization efforts so you can better focus your time and energy on activities that bring you the most success.
Matthew Coers is an Internet marketing expert. His website, ProfitChoice.com contains online courses designed to teach entrepreneurs how to build a website and make money online. Download his FREE Internet Marketing report, 7 Days to Website Success.
A Google Sitemap is a very simple XML document that lists all the pages in your website, but the Google Sitemaps program is actually much more important than that. In fact, the Sitemaps program provides a little peek inside Google’s mind – and it can tell you a lot about what Google thinks of your website!
Why Should You Use Google Sitemaps?
Until Google Sitemaps was released in the summer of 2005, optimizing a site for Google was a guessing game at best. A website’s page might be deleted from the index, and the Webmaster had no idea why. Alternatively, a site’s content could be scanned, but because of the peculiarities of the algorithm, the only pages that would rank well might be the "About Us" page, or the company’s press releases.
As webmasters we were at the whim of Googlebot, the seemingly arbitrary algorithmic kingmaker that could make or break a website overnight through shifts in search engine positioning. There was no way to communicate with Google about a website – either to understand what was wrong with it, or to tell Google when something had been updated.
That all changed about a year ago when Google released Sitemaps, but the program really became useful in February of 2006 when Google updated it with a couple new tools.
So, what exactly is the Google Sitemaps program, and how can you use it to improve the position of your website? Well, there are essentially two reasons to use Google Sitemaps:
1. Sitemaps provide you with a way to tell Google valuable information about your website
2. You can use Sitemaps to learn what Google thinks about your website
What You Can Tell Google About Your Site
Believe it or not, Google is concerned about making sure webmasters have a way of communicating information that is important about their sites. Although Googlebot does a pretty decent job of finding and cataloging web pages, it has very little ability to rate the relative importance of one page versus another. After all, many important pages on the Internet are not properly "optimized", and many of the people who couldn’t care less about spending their time on linking campaigns create some of the best content.
Therefore, Google gives you the ability to tell them on a scale of 0.0 to 1.0 how important a given page is relative to all the others. Using this system, you might tell Google that your home page is a 1.0, each of your product sections is a 0.8, and each of your individual product pages is a 0.5. Pages like your company’s address and contact information might only rate a 0.2.
You can also tell Google how often your pages are updated and the date that each page was last modified. For example your home page might be updated every day, while a particular product page might only be updated on an annual basis.
What Google Can Tell You About Your Site
Having the ability to tell Google all this information is important, but you don’t even need to create a sitemap file in order to enjoy some of the perks of having a Google Sitemaps account.
That's because even without a Sitemap file, you can still learn about any errors that Googlebot has found on your website. As you probably know, your site doesn't have to be "broken" for a robot to have trouble crawling it's pages. Google Sitemaps will tell you about pages it was unable to crawl and links it was unable to follow. Therefore, you can see where these problems are and fix them before your pages get deleted from the index.
You can also get information on the types of searches people are using to find your website. Of course, most website analytics tools will give this information to you anyway, but if the tool you use doesn’t have this feature, then it’s always nice to get it for free from Google.
But the best part of the Sitemaps program is the Page analysis section that was added in February of 2006. This page gives you two lists of words. The first list contains the words that Googlebot associates with your website based on content on your site. The second list contains words that Googlebot has found linking to your site!
Unfortunately, Google limits the number of words in each list to 20. As a consequence, the inbound links column is partly wasted by words such as "http", "www", and "com" – terms that apply equally to all websites (hey Google, how about suppressing those terms from the report?). That said, this list does provide you with a way to judge the effectiveness of your offsite optimization efforts.
When you compare these two lists, you can get an understanding of what Google thinks your website is about. If the words on your Site Content column are not really what you want Googlebot to think about your site, then you know you need to tweak your website’s copy to make it more focused on your core competency.
If, on the other hand your inbound links don’t contain any keywords that you want to rank well for, then perhaps you should focus your efforts in that direction.
Above all else, you really want these two lists to agree. You want your inbound linked words to match up to the site content words. This means that Google has a clear understanding of the focus of your website.
Additional Benefits of the Sitemaps Program
Google has even started notifying Sitemaps-participating Webmasters if they are breaking any of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. This can be very valuable information if your site suddenly becomes de-listed on Google and you don’t know why.
Only Sitemaps participants can get this information, and it is only provided at Google’s discretion. In fact, Google will NOT notify you if you are creating worthless websites that offer no original content, or if you are creating thousands of doorway pages that are redirecting to other web sites. Google doesn’t want to give the sp@ammers any clues as to how to improve their techniques.
How Do You Get Started with Google Site Maps?
The first thing you must do is obtain a Google Account. If you already have a Gmail, Adsense, or Adwords account, then you are all set. If not, you can register an account by visiting the Google Accounts page (https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount).
Building your sitemap file is pretty easy to do if you are familiar with XML, and if you aren’t you can always use a third-party tool such as the ones that are listed on Google’s website (http://code.google.com/sm_thirdparty.html). Google also has a "Sitemap Generator" that you can download and install on your server, but unless you are fairly adept at managing Python scripts, you should probably stick to the third-party tools.
At any rate, once you have your Google Account and your Sitemap file built, the rest is very easy. All you have to do is:
1. Log into your account (http://google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/siteoverview)
2. Type your website’s URL into the "Add Site" box and click on "OK"
3. Click on the Manage Sites link for the website you are adding, and add your sitemap file to your account.
Google Sitemaps – An Excellent SEO Tool
Google Sitemaps help Googlebot quickly find new content on your website. They allow you to tell Google what’s important, what’s new, and what changes often. The tools provided to webmasters through the program can play a vital role in helping you understand how the search engines (especially Google) view your website.
Using this information you can dramatically improve the position of your website and quickly clear up any issues Google finds. You can also use the tools provided by Google to gauge the effectiveness of your off-site optimization efforts so you can better focus your time and energy on activities that bring you the most success.
Matthew Coers is an Internet marketing expert. His website, ProfitChoice.com contains online courses designed to teach entrepreneurs how to build a website and make money online. Download his FREE Internet Marketing report, 7 Days to Website Success.
Thursday, May 11, 2006
Unethical SEO Practices to Avoid
SEO, or search engine optimization, is how search engines are used to maximize the chances of getting a high ranking. As most Internet users know, you have to have a high ranking among the search engines if you want to get visitors. Anyone who is searching for something online isn’t going to waste a lot of time by going through several pages of results before they give up and try a different search. That second search may not even locate your web site, and your potential visitor becomes a lost visitor.
So, search engine optimization is used to boost page rankings with the search engines. Search engines look for sites and rate them upon the number of the keywords searched appear within content on pages on the site. They also look for lots of links.
The desire to have a high ranking with the search engines is great. As everyone knows, you have to have a high ranking if you want to get visitors. And let’s face it, the whole point of having a web site is to get visitors! If you aren’t getting visitors, you aren’t improving business and you aren’t getting customers. And your web site is totally worthless if no one is looking at it. Search engine optimization becomes very, very important when you think about it and everything that it means.
Some may be so determined to get those high rankings that they do unethical things with their web sites in order to boost rankings. These unethical practices are best avoided. These practices can be changed, these unethical motives turned into ethical ones, and you can boost your site’s rankings the way you’re supposed to. First, identify the wrong things that you might be doing.
- Using your keywords improperly
Search engines are very clever, but they aren’t so smart that they can’t be tricked. Search engines do search sites for content, but they can’t exactly read the content the way that human beings can. Some web sites bury their keywords around a bunch of other words, in text that has no form and makes no sense. Long strings of text with random words like “boating fishing hunting outdoor adventure fish boat hunting the great outdoors forestry fishing rock climbing boating water onboard Alaska” come up all the time. Search engines may only be looking for the words “fish” and “fishing” and since those keywords appear within what seems to be content, a false ranking is given. But don’t do this! Customers don’t like this, and in the end “tricking” a search engine is never a good idea. Your keywords should appear within real content on your web site. Then you will get a genuinely high ranking.
- Improper use of META tags
META tags are part of the html code that is used to create a web page. The META tags are what you use to tell search engines what keywords are on your web site, what keywords you want potential visitors to use when searching for your piece of the Internet. Some may use META tags to try and “trick” search engines in a similar way as described above. This won’t work long, however, and search engines do not look by META tags alone. Search engines always search content.
- Having false content
“False” content are long strings of text that make no sense, that are only on the site to make use of keywords for search engines. While it’s important to impress the search engines and get that high ranking that’s so valuable, it’s more important to impress your visitors. Visitors like great content, too, and they’re going to be put off by a bunch of text that doesn’t make sense and isn’t a good read. While it’s true that most of the content on web sites is only skimmed over briefly by viewers, you still want that content to make a little bit of sense to them. Have good content, at least real content, and make the most out of your keywords using that content. That’s how to get a truly high ranking with a search engine, ethically.
Charles Preston is the president of Click Response. Click Response offers small businesses a search engine optimization service that guarantees 1st page ranking at an affordable price.
So, search engine optimization is used to boost page rankings with the search engines. Search engines look for sites and rate them upon the number of the keywords searched appear within content on pages on the site. They also look for lots of links.
The desire to have a high ranking with the search engines is great. As everyone knows, you have to have a high ranking if you want to get visitors. And let’s face it, the whole point of having a web site is to get visitors! If you aren’t getting visitors, you aren’t improving business and you aren’t getting customers. And your web site is totally worthless if no one is looking at it. Search engine optimization becomes very, very important when you think about it and everything that it means.
Some may be so determined to get those high rankings that they do unethical things with their web sites in order to boost rankings. These unethical practices are best avoided. These practices can be changed, these unethical motives turned into ethical ones, and you can boost your site’s rankings the way you’re supposed to. First, identify the wrong things that you might be doing.
- Using your keywords improperly
Search engines are very clever, but they aren’t so smart that they can’t be tricked. Search engines do search sites for content, but they can’t exactly read the content the way that human beings can. Some web sites bury their keywords around a bunch of other words, in text that has no form and makes no sense. Long strings of text with random words like “boating fishing hunting outdoor adventure fish boat hunting the great outdoors forestry fishing rock climbing boating water onboard Alaska” come up all the time. Search engines may only be looking for the words “fish” and “fishing” and since those keywords appear within what seems to be content, a false ranking is given. But don’t do this! Customers don’t like this, and in the end “tricking” a search engine is never a good idea. Your keywords should appear within real content on your web site. Then you will get a genuinely high ranking.
- Improper use of META tags
META tags are part of the html code that is used to create a web page. The META tags are what you use to tell search engines what keywords are on your web site, what keywords you want potential visitors to use when searching for your piece of the Internet. Some may use META tags to try and “trick” search engines in a similar way as described above. This won’t work long, however, and search engines do not look by META tags alone. Search engines always search content.
- Having false content
“False” content are long strings of text that make no sense, that are only on the site to make use of keywords for search engines. While it’s important to impress the search engines and get that high ranking that’s so valuable, it’s more important to impress your visitors. Visitors like great content, too, and they’re going to be put off by a bunch of text that doesn’t make sense and isn’t a good read. While it’s true that most of the content on web sites is only skimmed over briefly by viewers, you still want that content to make a little bit of sense to them. Have good content, at least real content, and make the most out of your keywords using that content. That’s how to get a truly high ranking with a search engine, ethically.
Charles Preston is the president of Click Response. Click Response offers small businesses a search engine optimization service that guarantees 1st page ranking at an affordable price.
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Link Exchange Tips - Natural Linking
Many people would agree that having alot of links to your website is the key to rank well in all search engines. As Search Engine Optimisation becomes more popular, everybody tries to come up with new ways to get as many links as possible when designing websites. Link exchange is just one of the many techniques.
Link exchange is one of the earliest and most popular SEO technique among smaller websites to get inbound links (urls pointing to your website). Basically, what a web master does is to exchange urls of his website with another website. There are a few variations to link exchange, ie it could be 2-way, 3-way, 4-way...etc. 2-way link exchange means site A exchange links with site B (This is the most common definition of link exchange). 3-way means A link to B, B link to C, and C link to A. You could figure out the rest of the variations easily...
The most complex link exchange today is a Link Exchange Network. In the network, you post a url of another website in your site and the server will post your url in another person's website based on a merit or point system. There are also people who incorporate the idea of MLM into link exchange, turning the whole linking system into a pyramid. Why the hassle? The whole idea is not to let the search spiders detect your linking strategies.
Search engines want to display the most relevant search results with the most important websites ranked first. If the number of links pointing to the website is the only criteria to determine the importance of the website, then search engine results could be manipulated easily. Nobody knows the exact Google, MSN or Yahoo ranking algorithm but we do know that Google especially, take strong measures to prevent people from manipulating search ranking results.
Many small companies are often blamed for manipulating search results because they are able to get alot of inbound links without spending any money using the link exchange technique. The link exchange boom makes everybody to post and exchange links in blogs, link directories and affliate pages... Almost everyone would want to incorporate a link directory when designing their website just for SEO purpose. As such, we also witness a boom in link directories.
Even if you can get 1000 links overnight, does it really mean that your website is important? Does the amount of links pointing to your website really equate to the importance of your website? These are debatable tough questions which is hard to answer in a short time.
Many people believe that Google and Yahoo have already started penalising web sites that does link exchange in a large scale but we do not know the extend of it. In my opinon, it is very hard to justify whether link exchange is ethical or not. Everyone will have a case to say but generally, all of us would agree that websites that get large amounts of links within a short time, has many outbound and inbound links to and from many unrelated websites are trying to manipulate search results but again, there can be exceptions.
It does not make sense to me to punish website A, B or/and C if they are practising 2, 3 or whatever ways link exchange; doesn't matter if their websites are related or not. There are many real life examples. If my friend Andy is web designer and he has a web design blog and another friend of mine Joe loves swimming and he has a swimming blog. Both of the sites are totally different in nature but they are friends and they want to link to each other. If this is not permissible in the SEO context, then it will be a sad news for everyone of us.
Search engines, like human being, are evolving everyday. they are getting more intelligent and are able to pick up websites that are trying to hack the ranking system. With enough computing power and time, I believe they would one day be able to detect more complex linking systems. Many experts believe that search engines are too clever to be manipulated and started advocating "Natural Search Engine Optimisation" - NSEO. The word "Natural" is important because it means that you are trying to optimise your website legally. In NSEO, you write content naturally, link to pages naturally and so on. To withstand the test of time, the practise of NSEO is highly
Many believe that links to a website will still be an important factor in calculating its searched ranking in major search engines. Therefore, link exchange and other SEO techniques to get inbound links should still be important. The only problem is that the inbound links have to be natural. Personally, I would think that natural links should have certain features:
1. The Ratio of Text to LinksIf I have a 5 page website and 5 pages of links, do you think that there is something wrong with the site? I have seen many professional websites having a full section dedicated to link exchange and there are actually more link exchange content as compared to the site's main content. Unless it is a link directory, I would personally devalue the site's importance.
2. The Density of Links If all the links are cramped together in one corner, I would think that the site is running a link exchange network or something similar. Natual linking means that you link at certain point in your content where you feel that it is important, ie you do not normally insert alot of links at one go. To me, 4 or 5 links together would be considered as unnatural.
3. Google PageRankWebsites that only have high PR linking to them seems unnatural. It could be that the owner of the site is buying PR or is trying to manipulate the PR system. Why shouldn't I link to Mr. Nobody when Mr. Nobody has good content in his site? I would think that a natural site should have a mixture of websites with different PR linking to it.
4. Quality Is Better Than QuantityMany SEO packages in the web offers many one way links from different websites. The more money you can afford, the more links you can get. Buying links is a common SEO tactic nowsadays but whether the links occur naturally or not is questionable. I don't like to think that buying links is wrong. To me, "Buying Links" is just the crude word for online advertising and it is wrong to penalise people for advertising online. I would like to think that a natural link in MSN is so much valuable that 10000 links from web directories.
5. TimeAn important website can withstand the test of time and will have its inbound links building up slowly. Unless the website is about a special event like world Web Design competition...etc, it is very hard to explain why a website is able to attain many links overnight.
I think the list for "The features of Natural Links" could go on. So back to the ultimate question... Is Link Exchange dead? My personal opinion is more inclined towards a 'No' but we have to start practising natural linking when doing link exchange. One think to keep in mind is that search engine spiders are getting more intelligent everyday.
If we are more careful with links, search engines will have an easier task of displaying relevant search results. Let us all make internet free from spam!
* Note: I use SEO to refer to Search Engine Optimization or Search Engine Optimizers in this article to cut short the typing time. The opinions expressed in this article is purely personal and speculative.
Bernard Peh is a great passioner of web technologies and one of the co-founders of Sitecritic.net Web Design. He works with experienced web designers and developers for more than 5 years, developing and designing commercial and non-commercial websites. During his free time, he does website reviews, freelance SEO and PHP work.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bernard_Peh
Link exchange is one of the earliest and most popular SEO technique among smaller websites to get inbound links (urls pointing to your website). Basically, what a web master does is to exchange urls of his website with another website. There are a few variations to link exchange, ie it could be 2-way, 3-way, 4-way...etc. 2-way link exchange means site A exchange links with site B (This is the most common definition of link exchange). 3-way means A link to B, B link to C, and C link to A. You could figure out the rest of the variations easily...
The most complex link exchange today is a Link Exchange Network. In the network, you post a url of another website in your site and the server will post your url in another person's website based on a merit or point system. There are also people who incorporate the idea of MLM into link exchange, turning the whole linking system into a pyramid. Why the hassle? The whole idea is not to let the search spiders detect your linking strategies.
Search engines want to display the most relevant search results with the most important websites ranked first. If the number of links pointing to the website is the only criteria to determine the importance of the website, then search engine results could be manipulated easily. Nobody knows the exact Google, MSN or Yahoo ranking algorithm but we do know that Google especially, take strong measures to prevent people from manipulating search ranking results.
Many small companies are often blamed for manipulating search results because they are able to get alot of inbound links without spending any money using the link exchange technique. The link exchange boom makes everybody to post and exchange links in blogs, link directories and affliate pages... Almost everyone would want to incorporate a link directory when designing their website just for SEO purpose. As such, we also witness a boom in link directories.
Even if you can get 1000 links overnight, does it really mean that your website is important? Does the amount of links pointing to your website really equate to the importance of your website? These are debatable tough questions which is hard to answer in a short time.
Many people believe that Google and Yahoo have already started penalising web sites that does link exchange in a large scale but we do not know the extend of it. In my opinon, it is very hard to justify whether link exchange is ethical or not. Everyone will have a case to say but generally, all of us would agree that websites that get large amounts of links within a short time, has many outbound and inbound links to and from many unrelated websites are trying to manipulate search results but again, there can be exceptions.
It does not make sense to me to punish website A, B or/and C if they are practising 2, 3 or whatever ways link exchange; doesn't matter if their websites are related or not. There are many real life examples. If my friend Andy is web designer and he has a web design blog and another friend of mine Joe loves swimming and he has a swimming blog. Both of the sites are totally different in nature but they are friends and they want to link to each other. If this is not permissible in the SEO context, then it will be a sad news for everyone of us.
Search engines, like human being, are evolving everyday. they are getting more intelligent and are able to pick up websites that are trying to hack the ranking system. With enough computing power and time, I believe they would one day be able to detect more complex linking systems. Many experts believe that search engines are too clever to be manipulated and started advocating "Natural Search Engine Optimisation" - NSEO. The word "Natural" is important because it means that you are trying to optimise your website legally. In NSEO, you write content naturally, link to pages naturally and so on. To withstand the test of time, the practise of NSEO is highly
Many believe that links to a website will still be an important factor in calculating its searched ranking in major search engines. Therefore, link exchange and other SEO techniques to get inbound links should still be important. The only problem is that the inbound links have to be natural. Personally, I would think that natural links should have certain features:
1. The Ratio of Text to LinksIf I have a 5 page website and 5 pages of links, do you think that there is something wrong with the site? I have seen many professional websites having a full section dedicated to link exchange and there are actually more link exchange content as compared to the site's main content. Unless it is a link directory, I would personally devalue the site's importance.
2. The Density of Links If all the links are cramped together in one corner, I would think that the site is running a link exchange network or something similar. Natual linking means that you link at certain point in your content where you feel that it is important, ie you do not normally insert alot of links at one go. To me, 4 or 5 links together would be considered as unnatural.
3. Google PageRankWebsites that only have high PR linking to them seems unnatural. It could be that the owner of the site is buying PR or is trying to manipulate the PR system. Why shouldn't I link to Mr. Nobody when Mr. Nobody has good content in his site? I would think that a natural site should have a mixture of websites with different PR linking to it.
4. Quality Is Better Than QuantityMany SEO packages in the web offers many one way links from different websites. The more money you can afford, the more links you can get. Buying links is a common SEO tactic nowsadays but whether the links occur naturally or not is questionable. I don't like to think that buying links is wrong. To me, "Buying Links" is just the crude word for online advertising and it is wrong to penalise people for advertising online. I would like to think that a natural link in MSN is so much valuable that 10000 links from web directories.
5. TimeAn important website can withstand the test of time and will have its inbound links building up slowly. Unless the website is about a special event like world Web Design competition...etc, it is very hard to explain why a website is able to attain many links overnight.
I think the list for "The features of Natural Links" could go on. So back to the ultimate question... Is Link Exchange dead? My personal opinion is more inclined towards a 'No' but we have to start practising natural linking when doing link exchange. One think to keep in mind is that search engine spiders are getting more intelligent everyday.
If we are more careful with links, search engines will have an easier task of displaying relevant search results. Let us all make internet free from spam!
* Note: I use SEO to refer to Search Engine Optimization or Search Engine Optimizers in this article to cut short the typing time. The opinions expressed in this article is purely personal and speculative.
Bernard Peh is a great passioner of web technologies and one of the co-founders of Sitecritic.net Web Design. He works with experienced web designers and developers for more than 5 years, developing and designing commercial and non-commercial websites. During his free time, he does website reviews, freelance SEO and PHP work.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bernard_Peh
Sunday, May 07, 2006
How To Hire A Good SEO Consultant
The importance of choosing the right SEO is greater than many of us can imagine. Search engine optimizing is what keeps your site indexed and ranked by search engines and ensures you a good amount of traffic. Without it, your website is either dead, or struggling for survival, hoping to be noticed.
The importance of choosing the right SEO is greater than many of us can imagine. Search engine optimizing is what keeps your site indexed and ranked by search engines and ensures you a good amount of traffic. Without it, your website is either dead, or struggling for survival, hoping to be noticed.
Things to find out on your own
• Find out for how long has the company been in business. This should be listed on their website.
• Search their website for previous projects to find out whether they have a marketing related experience.
• A reliable company also has client testimonials and case studies to prove they are able to keep their customers satisfied.
• Be skeptical with companies that email you out of the blue to advertise their SEO services.
• Beware of SEO companies that claim they can provide a #1 ranking guarantee. Ranking is determined by many factors that are beyond the SEO's control.
• Beware of SEOs that claim they have a priority submit or special relationships with Google or other search engines. There's no such thing.
Things to ask the SEO consultant
Do they include link building in their SEO services?
A professional SEO consultant doesn't limit to building keyword rich content, but also incoming links from relevant website to increase your PageRank.
What are they doing for website conversion enhancement?
A high traffic is meaningless unless your website provides what the users are looking for. A good SEO consultant uses several conversion enhancement techniques, such as copywriting strategies, site usability, call to action tactics and advanced conversion reporting.
Do they help you with calculating your ROI (Return of Investment)?
SEO services can be quite expensive and you need to calculate your potential returns. ROI depends on various factors, such as target population, size of your market place, the sales value of your services and the number of people searching for them on the Internet etc. An experienced SEO should be able to help you predict your ROI.
Do they use SEO best practice and anti-spam methods?
There are many SEOs that use various strategies to trick search engines in thinking your page is more relevant than it actually is. No SEO consultant will admit to using spamming and other unethical strategies, so you can't ask him the question directly. However, ask as many questions as possible about the methods they will be using and make sure you receive straight answers.
Do they put a limit on the number of search phrases?
Many SEOs have a limited number of phrases they will optimize for. However, if you're paying a monthly retainer to the SEO Company, they shouldn't do this. Even though there are a few phrases more important than others, the rest shouldn't be neglected either.
The first thing a good SEO consultant will do is perform an analysis on the current state of your website and provide a Website Analyzing report. Further analysis should be performed on a regular basis and your website traffic should be permanently monitored. A professional consultant understands the difference between bulk traffic, getting to your website for irrelevant keywords, and qualified traffic. Making the right choice will provide you with qualified traffic, as well as well-structured pages and a high usability level.
Copyright © 2006 Andreas Obermueller
Article Source: http://www.kokkada.com
About the Author: Andreas Obermueller is webmaster of Hit4Biz.com - Marketing Related Information and recommends Marble Host as reliable Web Host
The importance of choosing the right SEO is greater than many of us can imagine. Search engine optimizing is what keeps your site indexed and ranked by search engines and ensures you a good amount of traffic. Without it, your website is either dead, or struggling for survival, hoping to be noticed.
Things to find out on your own
• Find out for how long has the company been in business. This should be listed on their website.
• Search their website for previous projects to find out whether they have a marketing related experience.
• A reliable company also has client testimonials and case studies to prove they are able to keep their customers satisfied.
• Be skeptical with companies that email you out of the blue to advertise their SEO services.
• Beware of SEO companies that claim they can provide a #1 ranking guarantee. Ranking is determined by many factors that are beyond the SEO's control.
• Beware of SEOs that claim they have a priority submit or special relationships with Google or other search engines. There's no such thing.
Things to ask the SEO consultant
Do they include link building in their SEO services?
A professional SEO consultant doesn't limit to building keyword rich content, but also incoming links from relevant website to increase your PageRank.
What are they doing for website conversion enhancement?
A high traffic is meaningless unless your website provides what the users are looking for. A good SEO consultant uses several conversion enhancement techniques, such as copywriting strategies, site usability, call to action tactics and advanced conversion reporting.
Do they help you with calculating your ROI (Return of Investment)?
SEO services can be quite expensive and you need to calculate your potential returns. ROI depends on various factors, such as target population, size of your market place, the sales value of your services and the number of people searching for them on the Internet etc. An experienced SEO should be able to help you predict your ROI.
Do they use SEO best practice and anti-spam methods?
There are many SEOs that use various strategies to trick search engines in thinking your page is more relevant than it actually is. No SEO consultant will admit to using spamming and other unethical strategies, so you can't ask him the question directly. However, ask as many questions as possible about the methods they will be using and make sure you receive straight answers.
Do they put a limit on the number of search phrases?
Many SEOs have a limited number of phrases they will optimize for. However, if you're paying a monthly retainer to the SEO Company, they shouldn't do this. Even though there are a few phrases more important than others, the rest shouldn't be neglected either.
The first thing a good SEO consultant will do is perform an analysis on the current state of your website and provide a Website Analyzing report. Further analysis should be performed on a regular basis and your website traffic should be permanently monitored. A professional consultant understands the difference between bulk traffic, getting to your website for irrelevant keywords, and qualified traffic. Making the right choice will provide you with qualified traffic, as well as well-structured pages and a high usability level.
Copyright © 2006 Andreas Obermueller
Article Source: http://www.kokkada.com
About the Author: Andreas Obermueller is webmaster of Hit4Biz.com - Marketing Related Information and recommends Marble Host as reliable Web Host
Friday, May 05, 2006
An SEO Checklist
Would you like a checklist of the important steps to take in optimizing a web site? Well, here it is:
1. Use a keyword research tool to find profitable phrases (i.e. those that are actually being searched for).
2. Build each page optimized for a single keyword phrase. Also sprinkle in some secondary keywords relevant to the main keyword.
3. Link your web site together so that all pages are only a couple of clicks away from the homepage.
4. Use text links instead of fancy graphics or buttons to link to your pages.
5. When you add a link to a page where the main keyword phrase for that page is "blue widgets", make sure the links to that page include the phrase "blue widgets".
6. Build a sitemap.
7. Add articles / Content to your web site and add links from these articles to your important pages.
8. Get quality link partners.
Once you have completed these 8 steps, repeat steps 7 & 8 over and over again. I would say that 80% of your time on a new site should be steps 7 and 8. Add content & find link partners. A great way of getting links into your site is writing and publishing articles on article submission sites. When webmasters take up your article and publish it on their site, you get an incoming link to yours.
As your site climbs in the search engine rankings, you can decide when you are happy with your rankings and reduce the amount of time spent on 7 & 8.
*********************************************************Andy Williams is author of the free, ezSEO internet marketing newsletter, offering subscribers up-to-date information on all aspects of internet marketing. His search engine optimization website offers unique, no BS information, for free.*********************************************************
1. Use a keyword research tool to find profitable phrases (i.e. those that are actually being searched for).
2. Build each page optimized for a single keyword phrase. Also sprinkle in some secondary keywords relevant to the main keyword.
3. Link your web site together so that all pages are only a couple of clicks away from the homepage.
4. Use text links instead of fancy graphics or buttons to link to your pages.
5. When you add a link to a page where the main keyword phrase for that page is "blue widgets", make sure the links to that page include the phrase "blue widgets".
6. Build a sitemap.
7. Add articles / Content to your web site and add links from these articles to your important pages.
8. Get quality link partners.
Once you have completed these 8 steps, repeat steps 7 & 8 over and over again. I would say that 80% of your time on a new site should be steps 7 and 8. Add content & find link partners. A great way of getting links into your site is writing and publishing articles on article submission sites. When webmasters take up your article and publish it on their site, you get an incoming link to yours.
As your site climbs in the search engine rankings, you can decide when you are happy with your rankings and reduce the amount of time spent on 7 & 8.
*********************************************************Andy Williams is author of the free, ezSEO internet marketing newsletter, offering subscribers up-to-date information on all aspects of internet marketing. His search engine optimization website offers unique, no BS information, for free.*********************************************************
Tips on Increasing Your Link Popularity
Search engines are the gateway to the Internet; they are the first tool that potential customers use to find the products and services they need. This is why link popularity is so imperative. If the customers do not find your website, you have no possibilities of making any sales.
You're probably wondering what the blazes is popular about a link! Well, in a word - plenty! Link popularity refers to the ranking assigned to your website by the search engines, and it determines the ranking your page gets when keywords are entered into a search engine. So, you're probably wondering, how do I make my link popular?
Search engines are discretionary, giving status and ranking to sites that have links to their pages from related, quality sites. It's a simple formula, but a very important one. Google created the system, and now virtually all the most popular search engines employ it to rank your web pages in their indexes.
The more commonly used your keyword is, the harder it will be to achieve link popularity, but without achieving this step, it is almost certain your site will never rank highly on any search engine. But don't be discouraged; there are tried and true ways of achieving link popularity using the most competitive keywords.
There are a few things you should be aware of. The first is that just linking up with a large number of other websites will not achieve link popularity. In fact, it may have quite the opposite effect. This is particularly true when pertaining to websites that are nothing more than "link farms" - pages containing line after line of indiscriminate links. Search engines may aggressively discriminate against your website if you are associated with a link farm, so steer clear of them!
The next thing to bear in mind is the quality of the site you are linking to. Never link to a page you have reservations about your visitors seeing. The last thing you want your website to appear as is indiscriminate and cheap. Linking to sites of poor quality will only lessen your link popularity, if not completely destroy it.
So let's get to what you need to do to achieve supreme link popularity and improve your rankings to stellar status on all the popular search engines.
The first step, and the fastest way to get your foot in the door, is to get a listing in a popular directory, such as Open Directory Project and Yahoo. If your site is business-related, you will want to be listed on Yahoo, and despite the fact that it will cost you around $300 a year, it will be money well spent. If your site is non-commercial, the listing will be free, but it will take time and follow-up to actually get it listed. Open Directory is gives you a free listing whether you are business-related or non-commercial, but be prepared to make a lot of follow-up inquiries before you see your site listed.
You are aiming to get listed in the highest level of appropriate category, and this just takes some common sense. For example, if your company ships Alpaca wool from an Alpaca farm located in the middle of Nowhere, Tiny State, do NOT submit your listing to "Retailers from Nowhere, Tiny State." BIG MISTAKE! All you have to do is look a little deeper - and submit your listing to the "Fine Alpaca Wool" category. You will not only associate yourself with culture and quality, but you will be listed in a national category.
The next step after you have attained directory listings is to locate other quality sites that will increase your link popularity. Try to find sites that are in some way related to yours, so not only will your link popularity increase, but your customer base may also be expanded. You want to avoid your competitors and look for sites that are useful to your site's visitors. Let's look at the Alpaca Wool site example. Linking up to a site that sells knitting supplies would be helpful to your visitors, and the chances of the knitting supply site wanting to link up to your site are also greater. By linking to a related site that will be relevant to your website's traffic, you are increasing both of your site's business prospects - and both of your sites' link popularity.
Not all sites want to link to other sites, so you will have to do some research when you are looking for possible linking partners. Google is an excellent starting place for your search. Make sure you enter keywords that you think quality customers will also enter to find your own site. Remember, your criteria are quality, highly ranked, non-competing websites that have a links or resources page Go to these sites and objectively assess them. Look at the quality of the product, the graphics, and the ease of use. Then check out the other sites they are linked to, and determine if your own site would fit in with the crowd.
When you decide you have found a good prospect, you must set out to woo them. The first thing to do is to add a link on your own links page to their site. This is an essential first step; it shows good faith, and ups your chances significantly of their reciprocity. After you have added their link, you must contact the webmaster of their site. Since this is almost always done by email, you want to make sure it is immediately clear that your message is not junk mail. This requires that you tell them right off the bat that you have added a link to their page on your site. A hook like this almost always insures the reader will read on.
Next, be sure to be flattering and let them know how much you appreciate their website. Make sure you emphasize that you have actually visited their site, and that their site is not just a random pick. Give them the address of your links page, and ask them to check out the link for themselves. It's a good idea to mention that they will not only benefit from the increased traffic your website will direct their way, but you will also increase their link popularity. Briefly, explain why link popularity is so essential, but do this in a sentence or two so you don't sound like a professor! Finally, tell them you would greatly appreciate if they would reciprocally add a link on their own links page to your website.
Go through this process with as many appropriate sites as you can find, bearing in mind the criteria of quality and non-competitiveness. After you have emailed all relevant sites, be sure to check these website frequently to see if they have added a link to your page. Give it about a month, and if no link appears, try another charming email. Then give it another month, and if your site is still absent from their links page, it's time to remove their link from your own links page. The only time you want to pursue a link further than this is if you believe a site is crucial to your link popularity and your business needs. Just remember to keep all your communications complimentary and cordial.
Then set up a schedule to check your ranking in search engines frequently to see if your link popularity has improved. This is not achievable in the blink of an eye. It will take some time and a good deal of work. There is no way around the labor-intensive quality of improving your link popularity, which is why search engines regard it with such importance.
By the way - make sure you have a beautiful, streamlined site or you will never persuade anyone to link up to you. Be prepared to keep plugging away at this process, as long as it takes, until you achieve link popularity stardom!
Timothy James is the sole owner of http://www.timzbiz.com which is an information portal containing numerous articles for webmasters. He is also the owner of http://www.timbozone.com which is a sales outlet for games and software
You're probably wondering what the blazes is popular about a link! Well, in a word - plenty! Link popularity refers to the ranking assigned to your website by the search engines, and it determines the ranking your page gets when keywords are entered into a search engine. So, you're probably wondering, how do I make my link popular?
Search engines are discretionary, giving status and ranking to sites that have links to their pages from related, quality sites. It's a simple formula, but a very important one. Google created the system, and now virtually all the most popular search engines employ it to rank your web pages in their indexes.
The more commonly used your keyword is, the harder it will be to achieve link popularity, but without achieving this step, it is almost certain your site will never rank highly on any search engine. But don't be discouraged; there are tried and true ways of achieving link popularity using the most competitive keywords.
There are a few things you should be aware of. The first is that just linking up with a large number of other websites will not achieve link popularity. In fact, it may have quite the opposite effect. This is particularly true when pertaining to websites that are nothing more than "link farms" - pages containing line after line of indiscriminate links. Search engines may aggressively discriminate against your website if you are associated with a link farm, so steer clear of them!
The next thing to bear in mind is the quality of the site you are linking to. Never link to a page you have reservations about your visitors seeing. The last thing you want your website to appear as is indiscriminate and cheap. Linking to sites of poor quality will only lessen your link popularity, if not completely destroy it.
So let's get to what you need to do to achieve supreme link popularity and improve your rankings to stellar status on all the popular search engines.
The first step, and the fastest way to get your foot in the door, is to get a listing in a popular directory, such as Open Directory Project and Yahoo. If your site is business-related, you will want to be listed on Yahoo, and despite the fact that it will cost you around $300 a year, it will be money well spent. If your site is non-commercial, the listing will be free, but it will take time and follow-up to actually get it listed. Open Directory is gives you a free listing whether you are business-related or non-commercial, but be prepared to make a lot of follow-up inquiries before you see your site listed.
You are aiming to get listed in the highest level of appropriate category, and this just takes some common sense. For example, if your company ships Alpaca wool from an Alpaca farm located in the middle of Nowhere, Tiny State, do NOT submit your listing to "Retailers from Nowhere, Tiny State." BIG MISTAKE! All you have to do is look a little deeper - and submit your listing to the "Fine Alpaca Wool" category. You will not only associate yourself with culture and quality, but you will be listed in a national category.
The next step after you have attained directory listings is to locate other quality sites that will increase your link popularity. Try to find sites that are in some way related to yours, so not only will your link popularity increase, but your customer base may also be expanded. You want to avoid your competitors and look for sites that are useful to your site's visitors. Let's look at the Alpaca Wool site example. Linking up to a site that sells knitting supplies would be helpful to your visitors, and the chances of the knitting supply site wanting to link up to your site are also greater. By linking to a related site that will be relevant to your website's traffic, you are increasing both of your site's business prospects - and both of your sites' link popularity.
Not all sites want to link to other sites, so you will have to do some research when you are looking for possible linking partners. Google is an excellent starting place for your search. Make sure you enter keywords that you think quality customers will also enter to find your own site. Remember, your criteria are quality, highly ranked, non-competing websites that have a links or resources page Go to these sites and objectively assess them. Look at the quality of the product, the graphics, and the ease of use. Then check out the other sites they are linked to, and determine if your own site would fit in with the crowd.
When you decide you have found a good prospect, you must set out to woo them. The first thing to do is to add a link on your own links page to their site. This is an essential first step; it shows good faith, and ups your chances significantly of their reciprocity. After you have added their link, you must contact the webmaster of their site. Since this is almost always done by email, you want to make sure it is immediately clear that your message is not junk mail. This requires that you tell them right off the bat that you have added a link to their page on your site. A hook like this almost always insures the reader will read on.
Next, be sure to be flattering and let them know how much you appreciate their website. Make sure you emphasize that you have actually visited their site, and that their site is not just a random pick. Give them the address of your links page, and ask them to check out the link for themselves. It's a good idea to mention that they will not only benefit from the increased traffic your website will direct their way, but you will also increase their link popularity. Briefly, explain why link popularity is so essential, but do this in a sentence or two so you don't sound like a professor! Finally, tell them you would greatly appreciate if they would reciprocally add a link on their own links page to your website.
Go through this process with as many appropriate sites as you can find, bearing in mind the criteria of quality and non-competitiveness. After you have emailed all relevant sites, be sure to check these website frequently to see if they have added a link to your page. Give it about a month, and if no link appears, try another charming email. Then give it another month, and if your site is still absent from their links page, it's time to remove their link from your own links page. The only time you want to pursue a link further than this is if you believe a site is crucial to your link popularity and your business needs. Just remember to keep all your communications complimentary and cordial.
Then set up a schedule to check your ranking in search engines frequently to see if your link popularity has improved. This is not achievable in the blink of an eye. It will take some time and a good deal of work. There is no way around the labor-intensive quality of improving your link popularity, which is why search engines regard it with such importance.
By the way - make sure you have a beautiful, streamlined site or you will never persuade anyone to link up to you. Be prepared to keep plugging away at this process, as long as it takes, until you achieve link popularity stardom!
Timothy James is the sole owner of http://www.timzbiz.com which is an information portal containing numerous articles for webmasters. He is also the owner of http://www.timbozone.com which is a sales outlet for games and software
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Top 10 Ways to Improve Your Site's "Link Pop"
10. Post comments in discussion groups and on message boards. Be sure to make useful, relevant statements based on topics being discussed. Comments that only contain a link will usually be deleted or banned. If you make valuable contributions, people will want to find out what else you have to say by visiting your site.
9. Give away awards to other sites that you find particularly outstanding. Provide a graphic with the award title and a link to your webpage.
8. Email other webmasters and simply ask for a link. Let them know why your website will benefit their readers, and provide a pre-coded html link for them to cut and paste to their page.
7. Never underestimate the power of blogs. Talk to bloggers about links and posts about your website. The blogging community is ever-growing, and blogmasters are always looking for cool new things to post.
6. Write a site review on your webpage and send the site's webmaster a link. Who would pass up an opportunity to advertise a great testimonial?
5. If your site distributes a newsletter, start a contest for ad space. Offer to advertise a website in your publication to the sites that offer you a free link.
4. Write free articles for an article directory (search "article directory" in Yahoo! or Google for submission options). This allows people to read your work and publish it for free. Make sure to include a Bio Box that includes a link to your site. Stipulate that the article may be reprinted for free as long as the Bio Box is included. This will instantaneously provide extra links to your page when people reprint your work.
3. Write to webmasters and compliment their site. Often, they will want to include your kind statements in a testimonial section, and a link to your site will give the quote credibility.
2. Start your own reciprocal linking campaign. Write to webmasters of quality, relevant sites that you want your readers to see. Choose wisely! Tell them why your site will benefit their readers, and show them how prominently their link will be displayed on your page. Make sure to include a pre-made html link to your site that can be easily cut and pasted.
1. Submit to as many directories as you can. Webmasters agree that directory submission is the BEST way to gain targeted traffic to your site. By listing your site in a directory, web users will view your page as a reliable resource tailored specifically to their search criteria. And a great way to quickly submit your website to hundreds of Link Directories is by using the Link Directory Submitter.
Article Source: http://www.kokkada.com
Tom Dahne and Paul MartinAre the creators of the very popular Directory Submitter Software found at Directory Submitter. Submitted with Article Distributor.
9. Give away awards to other sites that you find particularly outstanding. Provide a graphic with the award title and a link to your webpage.
8. Email other webmasters and simply ask for a link. Let them know why your website will benefit their readers, and provide a pre-coded html link for them to cut and paste to their page.
7. Never underestimate the power of blogs. Talk to bloggers about links and posts about your website. The blogging community is ever-growing, and blogmasters are always looking for cool new things to post.
6. Write a site review on your webpage and send the site's webmaster a link. Who would pass up an opportunity to advertise a great testimonial?
5. If your site distributes a newsletter, start a contest for ad space. Offer to advertise a website in your publication to the sites that offer you a free link.
4. Write free articles for an article directory (search "article directory" in Yahoo! or Google for submission options). This allows people to read your work and publish it for free. Make sure to include a Bio Box that includes a link to your site. Stipulate that the article may be reprinted for free as long as the Bio Box is included. This will instantaneously provide extra links to your page when people reprint your work.
3. Write to webmasters and compliment their site. Often, they will want to include your kind statements in a testimonial section, and a link to your site will give the quote credibility.
2. Start your own reciprocal linking campaign. Write to webmasters of quality, relevant sites that you want your readers to see. Choose wisely! Tell them why your site will benefit their readers, and show them how prominently their link will be displayed on your page. Make sure to include a pre-made html link to your site that can be easily cut and pasted.
1. Submit to as many directories as you can. Webmasters agree that directory submission is the BEST way to gain targeted traffic to your site. By listing your site in a directory, web users will view your page as a reliable resource tailored specifically to their search criteria. And a great way to quickly submit your website to hundreds of Link Directories is by using the Link Directory Submitter.
Article Source: http://www.kokkada.com
Tom Dahne and Paul MartinAre the creators of the very popular Directory Submitter Software found at Directory Submitter. Submitted with Article Distributor.
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