Feed me - Satisfy the Search Engines and Your Site’s Visitors With Keyword-Rich Content

Search engines love content. Graphics may make your site look great, but a nice picture does not attract a search engine. Or a searcher for that matter. Good, relevant content does.

Search engines aren’t all that different from people. When faced with a ton of choices, they want to know which sites are the best. And, the best sites are the ones that give the most accurate and relevant information.

Good content serves three main purposes:

1. Search engines will rank your site higher for keywords and phrases included within your content.

2. Users will return to your site, and recommend it to others

3. Other sites will link to you, which will improve your linking popularity and make your web site visible to the spiders.

But, how do you get good content? Simple. You write it, or get someone else to write it for you, using keywords and phrases your visitors will actually use on a search query.

Feeling a little hot under the collar? Relax. It’s not as difficult as it sounds. Anyone can learn to write for crawler search engines. It just takes a little planning, detective work and focus. Ready to begin? Follow the steps below and you’ll be writing like a pro in no time.

1. Determine which keywords and phrases you want to target

Before you sit down to write anything, you’ll need to decide which keywords and keyphrases are relevant to your site. One of the best ways to do this is to use the Word Tracker keyword tracking service at www.wordtracker.com. Word Tracker receives its data from the Dogpile and Metacrawler search engines and estimates search counts for all other search engines based on its market share. You can sign up for a day, a week, a month or a year.

Another good way to find keywords your visitors are using is to look at your site’s server logs. These will tell you what phrases people are using to find your site. Some keywords will be too competitive. For example, the keywords “real estate” will return hundreds, if not thousands of search results, and may not place your site near the top, but “Houston Real Estate” or is more focused and targeted to a particular query.

If you want your site to be included in local and regional searches you may want to design your site with local searches in mind, even if you also market globally. How do you do this? Just include local keywords such as address, city, state, province and zip code in the header or footer of your web pages. For example:

XYZ Business Consultant, 3657 Acacia Avenue, Santa Cruz, California 95067. Tel: 408 746 8954. Located close to San Jose, CA.

That way you have a much better chance of getting a first page listing on a localized search.

2. Scatter your chosen keywords and phrases throughout your text.

Let’s say one of the keyphrases you want to target is “cotton duvets”. You’ll want to weave this phrase throughout your copy without making it sound stilted or contrived. Remember, you still need to persuade your prospects to buy your product, so don’t be tempted to write paragraphs like this:

“Our cotton duvets are the softest cotton duvets around. Check out our affordable cotton duvets in our online cotton duvet store now.” While it’s obvious what your keyphrases are, the two sentences don’t exactly encourage your visitor to place an order. Be subtle. Use your keywords to emphasize your point and insert them where they naturally fit, without compromising flow and readability.

3. Review your headings, titles and hyperlinks

Use your keywords in headings, subtitles, page titles (found in the blue bar at the top of your Web browser), bold face and hyperlinks, because these stand out to the search engines. For example, returning to the cotton duvets you may want to change your “contact us” hyperlink to “contact us now about our luxurious cotton duvets.” Or, “learn more about how our cotton duvets can keep you warm and snug this winter”

4. Post keyphrase-rich, informative articles on your site

Another great way to fill your site up with keyword-laden content is to post relevant, informative articles. Every article you post on your site adds more content–content that the search engines thrive on. And, if you write each article as if you are giving the spider a good, healthy meal full of essential keywords, they’ll devour every word, and index it for future use.

You can also post your articles on article directories such as GoArticles, Article City or IdeaMarketers that offer free content to ezine publishers and website owners. That way you’ll spread the word about your site, get some great back links and even free publicity.

5. Publish a Newsletter or Ezine

Newsletters and ezines are another way to add content to your site. If you’ve written articles already, you get to reuse them, and you can create a newsletter archive section on your website.

6. Post a blog or weblog

Blogs or Weblogs are frequently updated journals. that point to articles elsewhere on the web, and to existing on-site articles. The popularity of blogs have spawned blog services such as Typepad and Blogger which make it easy for non-techies to update their sites and add them to an existing web site. Because both the search engines and your site’s visitor’s love new, updated information, blogs can be a great way of adding content to your site on a daily basis. You can use a blog to announce company news or comment on industry news, announce new product details or to create a “brand” or “personality” for your company.

Before you begin publishing your blog, think about what you’re customers want to know. Then, answer their questions on a daily basis. It won’t be long before you’ll have them, and the search engines hooked.

About The Author

Julia is an independent copywriter specializing in advertising and search engine marketing services. To learn more about how Julia can help boost your company’s profits visit her site at www.juliahyde.com. You may also like to sign up for Marketing Works! Julia’s monthly ezine. Visit www.juliahyde.com/form.html or email Julia for details.

info@juliahyde.com

Twelve Steps to Higher Search Engine Placement

Recent studies suggest that more than 80% of new visitors to any web site get there as a result of a search engine query. If this study is to believed, it certainly suggests that working to get high rankings in the search engines might be the most effective thing you can do to bring traffic to your site.

The following 12 design tips will help you get started in optimizing your site’s search engine placement.

1. Design for Specific Search Engines - there are hundreds of different search engines, but for best results you should design your site to take full advantage of the search criteria of the big three - Yahoo, Google and MSN. If you can get high rankings in these three, you won’t need to worry about the other search engines. Knowing how these search engines rank sites (as well as why they will penalize a site) is important. The rules change often, but the tips below are the most current.

2. Know your target audience. Before you apply any of the tips below, do some research and find out what are the most likely key words and phrases your target audience will be searching for. In most cases, the key words or phrases won’t be your site name, but will be something related to the solution to a specific problem or the answer to a specific question. Knowing the question that will be asked is half the battle.

3. Use Meta tags. By now just about everyone knows about Meta tags. These are commands you can place in the html on your web page to help the search engines categorize what your page is about. The two most important Meta Tags are ‘Keyword’ and ‘Description’. The description Meta tag should describe what is on the particular page, and the keyword Meta tag should include the important key words from the page. Avoid using ‘fluff’ words and phrases as these will be ignored by the site.

Warning: If the keywords in the Meta keyword line are not found within the text on the web page, some search engines will penalize the page or simply not list it. This is done to prevent ‘meta tag’ spoofing.

My advice - have a different Meta description tag on every page. And be sure that keywords in the keyword tags are used on the page.

4. Optimize your Title tag. Many search engines give considerable weight to the html title tag on the page. It is the first element the search engine will scan and weight. Not including a title instantly reduces the search engine ranking your page will receive. When yo create a title tag, include keywords and write it to catch the attention of the users be scanning lengthy lists of titles in search engine results.

For higher ranking, make sure the title tag matches headline text on the page. And be sure to use a different title tag for each page on your site. (Pages with the same title tag will often be ignored.)

5. Use Keywords in page headlines. Page headlines are important - to your visitor as well as to search engines. Use short keyword phrases, including hot button words and phrases. Avoid ‘fluff’ and generic words.

My advice - use a strong headline on the page, and use the same headline in the title tag.

6. Use interesting text. Search engines actually count all the words on a webpage, then rank those words by frequency of use. The more often you use a word or phrase(up to a point), the higher you will rank with that word or phrase in the search engine. For that reason, be sure to include words or phrases that are likely to be searched for on your pages.

My advice - Keep your text short, on topic, and packed full of keywords. Avoid useless and meaningless words, and certain phrases that will place you in the penalty box.

7. Use the AlT tags on all images. Search engines are starting to index sites by the images found on the site. They accomplish this by looking at all the image tags on the page, and cataloging the ALT tags accompanying the image. Obviously if you don’t use the ALT tag, then images on your site won’t be properly cataloged. When using the alt tag, be sure to use a keyword or phrase describing the content of the image.

8. Use the Title tag on links. Search engines look at all text on the site, including the title tag on the links on your site. Most sites still don’t use the link title tag, so when you do, you gain an advantage. The link title should be a short keyword or phrase.

My advice - Check out how the pages on my site have a left navigation menu filled with department names. I try to make these names keywords for my site, and the link to the departments all make use of the title tag. Doing it this way means that the search engine ranks the department names twice. Once as text, and again as a Link Title Tag.

9. Provide a Link Trail. Search engines coming to your site follow the links on the front page that lead into your site. These links should provide a 2 level trail to all pages on your site. If you don’t provide a link trail, the search engines probably won’t find all your pages. (And even if you do provide a ‘link trail’ - if you use the same title tag and Meta tags on your pages, the search engine may ignore all the pages beyond the first one.)

My advice - check out how every page on my site has a one click link trail to any department on the site. You are never more than two clicks away from any page. Plus every page has at least 30 different link trails (through the departments) making it easy for visitors as well as search engine spiders to move through the site.

10. Avoid the Penalty Box. Search engines are getting smarter every day, and they will penalize a site if it violates search engine rules. These rules include:

Keyword spoofing - using keywords not related to site content

Keyword spamming - pasting hundreds of copies of the keywords on the page just to get high ranking

Numerous doorway pages - using hundreds of index pages that do nothing but point to the site

Link Spamming - submitting links to the 500,000 link submission services

Page Redirects - not necessarily a major penalty, but can cause loss of ranking

Frames on Main Page - not necessarily a major penalty, but can cause loss of ranking

Flash Movie on Main Page - not necessarily a major penalty, but can cause loss of ranking

My advice: Keep in mind that search engines are intelligent software. When they visit a page they try to determine what the page is about, relying primarily on the titles, headlines, text, links, and images on the page. That’s why it is important to focus on those elements, and avoid the ones that can put you in the penalty box.

11. Check for errors. Before you submit your page to the search engines, run the page through an html checker and a spelling checker. Search engines do check and take into consideration spelling and html errors, and will penalize a page that has too many of either.

My advice - take the time to do it right. If you get a poor ranking on a search engine it might be six weeks before the search engine comes back to re-rank you. Get it right before you submit to the search engines, and then keep it right so when the search engine returns, you will continue to get high rankings.

12. Manually submit the site. Don’t be tempted to use an automatic site submission program. They don’t work, and can get you penalized. Better to manually submit your site to the top search engines. Yahoo, Google, MSN.

My advice - Start with Google.com, then yahoo.com, and then MSN.com. Each has a place to register your site with their search engine.

This may seem a lot of work, but if you do it right and get high rankings, it will pay off.

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

Google PageRank Information

PageRank - an exclusive technology developed by Google which can have a major impact on the success of your website. This article will attempt to explain the concept of PageRank and how your ranking can be improved without spending any money at all.

How is PageRank beneficial?
Google refers to the technology as a way of evaluating the usefulness, importance, and quality of a website. The PR of a webpage can mean different things for different people.

For a webmaster, a high PR is a sign of accomplishment. It shows that your website is moving in the right direction and has the potential to become successful. PageRank also directly effects your Google search engine listings. Acquiring a higher PR than your competition could mean more traffic for you, and less traffic for your competitors.

Visitors to your website probably won’t care about the page’s rank (most surfers have no idea what PageRank is). However, visitors who understand PageRank may use your PR as a sign of how credible your content is. Would you rather use the information from a website with 0 PR or a website with 5 PR and hundreds of other websites linking to it?

How is PageRank determined?
PageRank is basically determined by backlinks. A backlink is when another page links to your page. For every page that links to you, that page is “voting” for you. The more votes you get, the better your PageRank will be.

However, it gets more complicated than that because some votes weigh more heavily than others. The weight of the vote is determined by the PageRank of the page linking to you. This means that a couple links from pages with high PR could be more beneficial than hundreds of links from pages with low PR. But it gets even more complicated - each page can only transfer so much PageRank. The set amount of PR that the page can transfer must be split up between each “vote” that the page gives out. This means that a PR 7 page could actually give out as much weight per vote as a PR 3 page if it had too many outgoing links.

How can I improve my PageRank?
There are many different methods to obtain quality backlinks to your website. You will find that some methods work better than others depending on the subject and popularity of your site.

Directories
Submitting your website to directories is one of the best ways to increase your PageRank and even get some traffic at the same time. But submitting your site to just a few directories won’t be good enough. You need to sit down and spend the necessary time to submit your site to a large amount of directories. This may seem like a painstakingly long process, but you’ll be glad you did it when you notice results. I have taken the time to make a large list of free directories with high PageRank which you visit here. Although directories with low PR may seem like a waste of time, you should submit your site to them too because it still helps and they could eventually become a high PR site which charges money to submit to.

Link Exchanges
A very common practice to improve your PageRank is a link exchange. This is simply where two people link to the other person’s website. It’s best that you only link exchange with someone who has at least as much PR as you and the subject of the two websites are similar. If you receive a link from a website with a subject which has nothing to do with yours, you’ll find that very little if any PR will actually be transferred to you.

Forum Signatures
If you are an active user on a forum or message board, it would be wise to put a link to your website in your signature. This could help improve your PageRank if the forum has a high PR, it could help improve your traffic from the forum members seeing your signature, and your site could get spidered more often because it is linking to a forum (forums generally have a lot of new content every day and search engines love new content).

Buy Advertising
Although it isn’t the best of choices, many webmasters will buy text link ads on websites with high PR. Although this can be effective, it can be very expensive and only a temporary thing. If you purchase text links for just a couple months, after the months are over you won’t have the backlinks which were giving you the “votes” you needed to keep your PageRank. So you have now spent a large amount of money on text links, but in the end you’re right back where you started.

Articles
This is a method which not many people know about. Basically, you write articles about the subjects you know a lot about. You then let other people use these articles as long as they provide a link back to your site. If you wrote a quality article, you’ll find many websites will want to use it, thus giving you plenty of backlinks. This method can work well with anything which you develope and give away for free such as scripts, web design, etc.

Stay On Google’s Good Side
The most important thing to remember when trying to increase your PageRank is to not cheat and to always follow the rules. The people which run Google aren’t fools and they have many ways of catching cheaters. Don’t even think about using any of the “link farms” or trying to hide keywords on your pages. If caught, you may not get unbanned for many months.

Make A Quality Website
If you have a quality website which your visitors enjoy going to, then you will receive backlinks without having to do anything. Websites will link to you with the intention of informing people of a helpful resource, or showing off a cool new website they found, or any other reason other than trying to increase your PageRank. If you build it, backlinks will come…

This article is from PRchecker.net
Instantly check the Google PageRank, Alexa ranking, indexed pages, and backlinks of any web page! Also has detailed articles on webmaster issues such as improving PageRank.

Increasing 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!

Get Better Search Engine Rankings with RSS

RSS is the latest craze in online publishing. But what  exactly is RSS?

RSS or Rich Site Syndication is a file format similar to XML, and is used by publishers to make their content available to others in a format that can be universally understood.

RSS allows publishers to “syndicate” their content through the distribution of lists of hyperlinks.

It has actually been around for a while, but with the advent of spam filters and online blogging, it is fast becoming the choice of ezine publishers who want to get their message across to their subscribers.

However, not much attention has been given to the advantages RSS provides for search engine optimization.


Why Search Engines Love RSS

Many SEO experts believe that sites optimized around themes,or niches, where all pages correspond to a particular subject or set of keywords, rank better in the search engines.

For example, if your website is designed to sell tennis rackets, your entire site content would be focused around tennis and tennis rackets.

Search engines like Google seem to prefer tightly-themed pages.


But where does RSS figure in all this?

RSS feeds, usually sourced from newsfeeds or blogs, often correspond to a particular theme or niche.

By using highly targeted RSS feeds, you can enhance your site’s content without having to write a single line on your own.

It’s like having your own content writer - writing theme-based articles for you - for free!


How can RSS improve my Search Engine Rankings?

There are three powerful reasons why content from RSS Feeds is irresistible bait for search engine spiders.


1. RSS Feeds Provide Instant Themed Content

There are several publishers of RSS feeds that are specific to a particular theme.

Since the feed is highly targeted, it could contain several keywords that you want to rank highly for.

Adding these keywords to your pages helps Google tag your site as one with relevant content.


2. RSS Feeds Provide Fresh, Updated Content

RSS feeds from large publishers are updated at specific intervals. When the publisher adds a new article to the feed, the oldest article is dropped.

These changes are immediately effected on your pages with the RSS feed as well. So you have fresh relevant content for your visitors every hour or day.


3. RSS Feeds Result in More Frequent Spidering

One thing I never anticipated would happen as a result of adding an RSS feed to my site was that the Googlebot visited my site almost daily.
To the Googlebot, my page that had the RSS feed incorporated into it was as good as a page that was being updated daily, and in its judgement, was a page that was worth visiting daily.

What this means to you, is that you will have your site being indexed more frequently by the Googlebot and so any new pages that you add to your site will be picked up much faster than your competitors.

How does this benefit you as a marketer?

Well, for example, let’s says a top Internet Marketer comes out with a new product that you review and write up a little article on, and that your competitors do the same.

Google generally tends to index pages at the start of the month and if you miss that update, you will probably need to wait till the next month to even see your entry in.

But, since your site has RSS feeds, it now gets indexed more frequently. So the chances of getting your page indexed quickly are much higher.

This gives you an advantage over the competition, as your review will show up sooner in the search results than theirs.

Imagine what an entire month’s advantage could do to your affiliate sales!


Why Javascript Feeds Are Not Effective

Some sites offer javascript code that generates content sourced from RSS feeds for your site.

These are of absolutely no value in terms of search engine rankings, as the googlebot cannot read javascript and the content is not interpreted as part of your page.

What you need is code that parses the RSS feed and renders the feed as html content that’s part of your page.

This is achieved using server side scripting languages like PHP or ASP.

A good free ASP script is available from Kattanweb
http://www.kattanweb.com/webdev/projects/index.asp?ID=7

An equally good PHP script is CARP
http://www.geckotribe.com/rss/carp/

So in conclusion, besides optimizing on page and off page factors, adding RSS feeds to your pages should be an important part of your strategy to boost your search engine rankings.

Satyajeet Hattangadi is the CEO of Novasoft Inc, a software
solutions provider, that specializes in affordable
customized software solutions. http://www.novasoft-inc.com
Get the Free Email Course “RSS Riches” and learn how to use
RSS to get high search engine rankings and monetize your
website at http://www.trafficturbocharger.com

Seek Engines: What If ‘Seek’ Had Bumped Out ‘Search’?

In the early days of the World Wide Web, when things were just getting started many geek speak terms were jockeying for position to be the standards for years to come. I used to drive by a California-based company every day that had named itself YKK and think, “What a pity.”

Then I think what if the World Wide Web had lost out to the World Wide Subway System (WWSS) or some other less noble term? Then I take it one step further and think, “What if the term search had lost out to seek”? Let’s think about this for a moment. Seek is a good word with a nearly identical meaning to search. In fact, in the Oxford American Dictionary (with the torn off cover and publishing info) it states that seek means “…to make a search or inquiry for, to try to find or obtain or do.”

In Seek Of

What would be the repercussions of using seek speak instead of search? First there would be the seek engines and the seek engine optimizers who would try to get top rankings on these engines. Then you would have specialized seeking going on like local seek, personalized seek and contextual seek. There may be terms bandied about like seek engine specific algorithms, seek options, seek tips, seek tools and seek toolbars. If you’re looking for someone online, this would be people seek. If there is something that you cannot find, you would be seeking high and low. Out in the real world you may conduct a talent seek for the next teen idol.

Heck if you happened to be out and lost in the woods at night, the seek party would come looking for you using their seek lights. If by some chance, you had done something morally reprehensible to a bear or a small woodland creature while you were in the woods, you may wish to do a little soul seeking. If you have a pattern of committing these reprehensible acts and keeping pictures on your home PC, then the police may obtain a seek warrant to bring you to justice.

Search and Ye Shall Find

What if there had also been a backlash to all of this seeking? In the struggle to become the number one term for the same activity, this could happen. The instant messenger service ICQ could have chosen to go another direction and today we would have cumbersome ISEARCH4U. Some of the search engine themselves may now have different names such as WhatUSearch.com, OneSearch.com and ExactSearch.com. Out in the real world, your kids could be playing Hide & Search. And, if the police were closing in on you for the aforementioned reprehensible acts, you may be searching asylum in another country.

Fun of Finding

The goal of seeking or searching is to find. If you find what you need, you’ve had a successful experience. But, what if from the early experiences on the Internet, neither search nor seek were chosen in order to find? We could talk about the Look or Find Engines now, but that’s a whole new subject altogether, my friend. Let’s just leave this one alone.

About The Author

Copyright © 2004 SEO Resource

http://www.seoresource.net

Kevin Kantola head’s up SEO Resource, an Orange County, California search engine optimization company devoted to achieving high rankings.

info@seoresource.net

What’s All This Hype About Links?

What’s all the talk about links we hear about? Reciprocal links? Non-reciprocal links? Targeted links? Link Popularity? I need links. You should have links. What about the dead links? I don’t have enough links! Ever since I joined the link farm, I dropped out of the search engines! Well, you musn’t fret; we’re going to shed the light on all theses different links. You’ll learn the different types, how to get them, how to keep them and how to keep them current.

Over the next few issues, we will investigate the ABCs of linking, look into some helpful software and a take a close look at how Technet has solved this time consuming, but necessary issue for several top sites.

Let’s start with some definitions.

Reciprocal Link (Two-way link): When you link to a web site and that web site links back to you, you have one reciprocal link. Reciprocal links need to be related to your web site’s subject matter. For example, if your web site sells Milk, then links from other sites that sell milk products. Sites about dairy products would also be good reciprocal linking candidates. While, a link from say a tobacco company would not be recommended. Your reciprocal links need to be related to your web site’s main keyword phrase or subject matter.

Non Reciprocal Link (One-way): These links are the most beneficial and also can be the hardest to obtain. Links from search engines or directories are a form of a non-reciprocal linking. However, the links that hold the most weight with the search engines are from other relevant web sites, sites we have not linked to. When a dairy site links to your milk site because they feel your site is of value to their visitors, it is the ultimate compliment and also holds more weight in the search engines. The best way to get this type of link, is to have unique content that is well written. Your site needs to look professional and sound professional. Related sites will be eager to link to you because you have quality, relevant content.

Targeted Links: Targeted links are just what they sound like, links that are related to your sites main subject matter. For example, if you have a site devoted to music then links from other music sites or music stores are good, while links from a site specializing in window blinds are not so good.

Text Links: Text links are simply that, text links. Text links are very important as a search engine can follow a text link and catalog it. It’s like a vote for your site.

Graphical Links: Graphic links, such as logos and banners, may look great and attract visitors, but they cannot be read by search engines and are rarely followed by them. While having a graphical link, such as a logo, can give you some recognition and look professional, it must be well made and identifiable. Furthermore, you should always add alt* tags to the graphic html code, as alt tags help with content and keyword density. A text link directly below the graphic for the search engines to follow should be included when ever possible.

* (An alt tag or alternate text is an attribute added to the image tag in html. It is designed to give a text example of what the image is for people browsing without image support, some search engines count this as part of the page content.)

Links Page: This is very important. Your links page needs to fit into your site. It should have the same look and feel as the rest of your pages. Unless you only have five or ten links on your link page, you will need to have categories and even sub-categories for extensive link pages. It’s important to keep the number of links per page as low as possible and never over 100 links.

Adding a small form for visitors to suggest links can be a nice feature and I recommend it, but it also can lead to a lot of off-target links suggestions.

When exchanging links, you will have to show the other site owners where their link is placed on your site. Therefore, you’ll want to have the links page well laid out and visually appealing.

Dead Links: This is really a maintenance issue, sites go off-line, from time to time page addresses change, or the site changes owners and the content changes. It is important to check your links often to ensure you don’t have a page full of dead links or links that have changed and now point to unrelated content. If you don’t keep up on this task, you will soon have a page full of dead links and visitors wont come back to use it. Search engines also frown on pages with too many dead links.

Link Farms: Link farms should be avoided; adding your site to one can cause you to loose popularity or have a negative effect on your Page Rank, joining one and displaying their links on your site can get you banned from the most important search engines. With 90% of web traffic originating from only a hand full of search engines, this is something you don’t want to happen. It is almost impossible to reverse and it can take you out of the search engines for up to a year or more. Staying away from places that guarantee hundreds or thousands of links by filling out a form.

Links should be arranged one at a time by contacting the desired site owner, by e-mail or more prefferrably by phone, and notifying them that you want to exchange links. This is the best way to do it, any short cuts or get link quick schemes can lead to trouble as soon as the search engines crawl your site.

Links are very important to any site that wants to rank highly in the top search engine results. The more targeted links you have pointing to your site, the more important your site is to the search engines. It’s like a voting system. If 100 sites think your content is worth linking to, then search engines like Google will take notice. However, if 10,000 related sites link to you, then search engines will treat you like a king and you will be on the A list for sure.

About the Author:

Mark Hochhaus owns and operates InHisServiceProductions, a Web site design firm based in Washington State. He also publishes weekly SEO and online marketing articles in an RSS enabled blog titled The Optimizer.

SEO and its current use

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

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

Killer-Content.com - Copywriting Services

Free Online SEO Tools

For anyone wanting to do a bit of their own Search Engine Optimisation, there is an abundance of free online SEO tools available on the internet. Most of them provide some pretty impressive statistics and information to help you optimise your website, analyse search engine positions, research your competitors, plus much more!

There are two ways these free online SEO tools can be used:
(1) For those who are new to the area of search engine optimisation, these tools provide excellent insight on how a website is performing and ranking. They can quickly highlight issues and trends with their current website and provide a good insight as to where optimisation work is necessary.

(2) For the more experienced search engine optimisers amongst us, these tools will act as a complement to the more specialised SEO tools, like WebPosition Gold or SpyderOpts. They can even be used to supplement an SEO’s internal knowledge base and experience.

Here is a selection of some choice tools for both the novice and the experienced search engine optimisers:

Keyword Research Tool

http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/keyword-research-tool.shtml
This helps to research appropriate words and phrases to include in your webpage’s body text to aid promotion. It’s simple and to use and requires the user to enter the sort of word of phrase you wish to be found under, the tool will then suggest some additional words and phrases you can think about using. One of the great things about this tool is that it gives you the option to select from a range of top search engines, e.g. Google, Yahoo, MSN, Teoma, etc.

Keyword Analyser Tool

http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/keyword-analysis-tool.shtml
This tool reads the body of the page you specify and gives a report on what words are used, and how many times they are used.
This is a valuable tool as most engines will rank your site depending on your keyword density (which typically ranges between 3% and 9%).

Search Engine Position Checker Tool

http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/search-engine-position-checker.shtml
This tool checks whether your website appears in the first fifty results in major search engines for your chosen keyword or phrase.
If the URL is present, it will output what position it occupies. As an additional feature, the tool also informs you if any other URLs from your domain appear in the search results.

Link Popularity Tool

http://www.instantposition.com/link_popularity_check.cfm
This tool measures the total number of links or “votes” that a search engine has found for your website.
This is a pretty cool tool because as well as tabulated data it also produces a nice graph of the resulting data. One final key element of this tool is its ability to compare your website to your competitors to help you with your overall marketing strategy.

Meta Tag Generator

http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/meta-tag-generator.shtml
This automatically generates a Meta Keyword tag by reading the page you specify, removing common words from it, and picking the most used words on the page. Extra weight is given to words in a heading tag

Search Term Suggestion Tool

http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
Displays how many times a certain keyword was searched for at Overture.com. Shows all related searches for the entered keyword. A good measure to use in determining frequency of search among related keyword phrases

Search Engine Optimisation Tool

http://www.instantposition.com/seo_doctor.cfm.
A very impressive tool that tests the performance of a web site, by analysing a page on the important elements of web page creation, such as its title and content. It then scores the page against given criteria for the top search engines, followed by some valuable SEO advice to improve overall ranking. The report produced is well laid out and easy to follow for anyone doing their own optimisation.
A freebie tool that works better than many costly SEO tools I know!

The area of online SEO tools is an exciting area of growth as SEO developers come up with more and more tools to represent website positions on the internet. No doubt we will be revisiting this area again…

Author

Arif Hanid

Internet Marketing Manager for Ambleton Computing.
Experts in Internet Development and Internet Marketing Strategies.

arif.hanid@ambleton.co.uk

http://www.ambleton.co.uk

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Work With The Search Engines - Don’t try to Outsmart the Search Engines

Contrary to the claims of high-priced SEO firms, optimizing your
web site for search engines is not brain surgery. But you
must first accept the fact that “spiders” - the search engine
programs that read web pages - run away from non-HTML code.
This is why the first thing any SEO expert does - before
researching keywords or rewriting your copy - is look at your
web site code.

If your web pages are full of Javascript, graphical navigation
buttons, Flash animation, and other glitzy stuff, your odds
of ranking high in the search engines sink like a stone.
The spiders may never even find your site, let alone start
adding your pages to their search results.

You say you just can’t give up those cool Javascript menus
or that glitzy Flash intro? Then be prepared to get shunned
by the search engines. Spiders are good at only two things:
reading basic HTML and finding text. If your sites throw
obstacles in their path, resign yourself to obscurity
- and poverty!

The most important SEO secret you will ever grasp is
incredibly simple. Your web site must be built so spiders
can read your text. The text is where the gold is.
This means no Flash animations. Your HTML must be plain
and clean. Your graphics must be kept to a minimum.
And links should always be text - not Javascript buttons
or drop-down menus.

Millions of dollars are wasted trying to outfox the
search engines. People everywhere scramble from gimmick to
gimmick to be #1 for a general search term like “weight loss.”
Sometimes they even manage to do it - for about 10 minutes.
Then one little tweak by Google … and they’re back to #8,734.

The lesson? Neither you, nor any analytical tool,
nor any automatic site submission service, nor any SEO guru,
can manipulate Google for long! Google employs too many
brilliant engineers. Their minds collectively focus on one
task - to make Google results as relevant as possible.
These people invent Google’s algorithm - a mathematical formula
that decides your rank.

The algorithm is impartial. The algorithm is complex.
The algorithm - not a human being - decides your page rank.
Given the millions of web sites on “weight loss,”
your odds of outsmarting the algorithm to get a #1 spot
are ludicrously small. So instead of spending money on
SEO gimmicks, invest in educating yourself so you can work
harmoniously WITH the search engines.

Instead of trying to manipulate the search engines, build a site
that doesn’t FIGHT them. Avoid questionable gimmicks, but
embrace search engine friendly techniques to get yourself ranked
high for almost any keyword you wish. For more information
visit
DominateSearchEngines.
Focus on strategies that help you save time, add real value
to your site, and are designed to work hand in hand with
the search engines.

Don’t try to outsmart the search engines. Work WITH them,
not against them.

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Kusuma Widjaja is President of Yahoo Cyber Technology, CV., based in Surabaya. He has over 2 years experience in Internet Marketing Arena, Custom Web Site Design and Graphic Design Services. For more information go to http://www.whycity.net or you can reach us at +62-8315-838474.