Want to get into the top 5 of either Google or Yahoo? Make sure your website contains the top 10 factors for deciding a top search engine ranking.

It does not matter if you have the cure for cancer, if nobody knows about it you are not going to make any money. A top search engine ranking in either Google or Yahoo is the surest way for buyers to find your products so you can become a wealthy marketer. Google and Yahoo are responsible for about 80% of all search engine traffic in the world.

Make sure your online business or website contains these top 10 factors used for determining sites with a top 5 search engine ranking in Google and Yahoo.

Factor #1: Number of Quality Sites that Link to Yours

Google and Yahoo put a lot of significance on how many quality sites link back to yours with a page rank of at least 4 and above. This is probably the most important factor when considering a top search engine ranking.

When search engines see lots of important sites link back to yours it must mean that your site is also pretty important.

Remember the purpose of the internet is to provide information back to the end user. As someone is conducting research on the World Wide Web, sites must also participate and flow and connect to other related sites allowing those searching for your keyword terms various paths to the information being inquired.

Factor #2: Number of Pages Your Website Has

A website with less than 50 pages is really going to struggle to get a top search engine ranking unless it has more quality back links coming into it than their competitors.

Factor #3: Keywords in Your Title Tag

Google and Yahoo look to see if your keywords are contained in your page title and description. Make sure your keywords are also listed within your heading and subheading tags.

Factor #4: Keywords Showing in Links

Keywords that are highlighted within a link are considered more significant than those not at all highlighted within a link.

Factor #5: Keywords in Bold

Likewise words in bold are also considered more important than those not in bold.

Factor #6: Keywords in URL

Websites that are in less competitive markets that contain the keywords within their URL are considered more important than those sites that respectively do not.

Also keywords in the URL that come before unrelated words are considered better than a URL that follows an unrelated word within the URL. For example if your keyword is televisions, a URL with `televisions' followed by unrelated words such as your name `Mike' is better than putting your name `Mike' before `televisions.'

Factor #7: More Significance Given to First 25 Words on Page

The first 25 words of each page are given more weight than all other words on the page. Make sure your keywords are in the first few words of your page. However, if you try and just list the same word or phrase 25 times repeatedly Google and Yahoo will penalize you.

Factor #8: Greater Than 300 Words on Your Homepage

Make sure you have at least 300 or more words on your homepage.

Factor #9: Keyword Density

Keyword density is not as important as it once was in the past but it still is an important factor. In order to get a top 5 search engine ranking look at your competitors sites and compare the density of their sites to yours and try and match their density.

Factor #10: Page Rank

Want to find out the page rank of your website or the page rank of another site? Download the Google toolbar and make sure the page rank indicator is activated. One major factor in determining your page rank is the first factor listed in this article. Quality back links are the most important factor for formulating your page rank.

A top search engine ranking in Google and Yahoo is decided most often by the combination of these 10 factors. If you want to get into the top 5 of the two most important search engines than make sure your website applies these major search engine ranking factors.

About the author: Tim McGaffin, Tim has helped many online businesses achieve their financial goals. Vist: http://www.WealthyMarketerDirect.com

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Just 5 years ago getting a high ranking in the search engines was easy. As search engines have gotten smarter it has become impossible to get a high ranking in the search engines with gimmicks. Now the only way is to have one of the best pages about your topic and lots of people agreeing that it is one of the best by linking to it. Before explaining how to get high rankings in the search engines it is important to understand some basics about search engines.

If you were to run a search engine what would be your number one goal. This one is simple; you would want to be the most used search engine on the Internet. The only way to become the most used search engine is accuracy. People use a search engine for one reason and that is to find what they are looking for. When I first started using the Internet 12 years ago, it was difficult to find anything in a search engine. You would type in baby toys and get hundreds of sex toy sites with a few baby toys sites mixed in. Now you type in baby toys and you get baby toys. The reason Google became number one was that for several years they had the most accurate results. So if you want to get a high ranking in a search engine for the terms your pages are about, then you must give the search engine what it is looking for.

The search engines became more accurate because now they look primarily at one thing. That one thing is content. The only way for a search engine to find out what a page is about is to scan the page and see what it is about. Yes, there are a few other things the search engine looks at but none of those things matter if the content does not match what people are typing in a search engine. If you want to rank high in the search engines, you must make a great page specifically about the topic that page is about.

It also matters how you put your content on the page. One of the things search engines look at now is natural language. You cannot just put a search term a bunch of times on the page. It is true than once upon a time that worked. But stacking search terms no longer works. Search engines look at how many times a term shows up in a sentence and how many times it shows up in a paragraph. In a normal paragraph you will not have a search term that shows up 6 to ten times. That is not the way a paragraph is normally constructed. When a search engine sees this it counts against you and not for you. The same is true about sentences. So be careful how you word your content. Try not to put the same term multiple times in a sentence or several times in a paragraph.

It is also a good idea to make sure you write in complete sentences and make your content read well. This is not just a good idea for search engine consideration but also for the reader of your page. You want them to find the page informative and easy to read. Having them come back and telling their friends about the page is important. If they find it interesting enough, they may just give you that all-important link to your page.

Here are some other things to consider about content.

The content of your page is not just limited to the words written on the page. Search engines also look at how you present your content and what you say about it. For example, every page in your site should have a title. This is the first thing written on the page such as the title to an article. When you present a title you place it as a heading. Heading tags are a way to tell the search engines this is what my page is about. To be effective your heading needs to be about the same thing as the rest of the content of your page. You can also put sub headings on the page. You can title different sections of the page with heading 2 or heading 3 tags.

Search engines also give you two places to tell them what you think your content is about. This is done through your meta title and description tags. These are the only two meta tags that most search engines look at so far as determining how they are going to rank your page. I do not even add a key word tag to any of my pages. The meta title is the place where you tell the search engine what your page is about. It can be exactly the same as the title on the page itself (your H 1 tag or page heading). Your description tag gives you the opportunity to describe the content of the page to the search engine. The description needs to be short and to the point. It should be no more than two sentences but preferably only one sentence. There is no reason a good description of a page cannot be made in one simple but complete sentence.

Last but not least is the overall content of the page. Make each page about one thing. The more topics your page talks about the less credit you get for each topic. For example you want to make a page about the three most influential people in medicine today. You can make your first page generic and mention the names of the three people and their general contributions to medicine while concentrating on making sure every paragraph is about the main topic of "most influential people in medicine". Then, if you want to go into detail about the three individual people, make a separate page about each and have them linked to from the "most influential" page.

About The Author:Article by Rusty Ford, Editor Arthritis-Symptom.com .

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Who haven’t been in the Google Sandbox? As new website owners, we all experience the Google Sandbox dilemma. I can relate to the pain of webmasters and website owners who are currently experiencing being on the Google Sandbox. And I bring good news: there is a guaranteed way to come out of the Google Sandbox! But first, it is important that you know what is meant by Google Sandbox.

The Google Sandbox

Google Sandbox is such a popular term among webmasters, web marketing specialists and new website owners. Google Sandbox refers to the period when a new website appears invisible on the Google search results even after a month or two of search engine optimization. The most probable reason why new websites are placed in the Google Sandbox is that Google doesn’t see yet the importance of these websites.

New websites can be on the Google sandbox for at least three months. This is a test of patience for the website owner and of course the web marketers who have tried their best in promoting the website. It would be understandable to be on the Google sandbox for at least three months. But what about those websites which seem to be locked on the sandbox for many months already?

How To Get Out Of The Google Sandbox?

Who would want to be in the Google Sandbox forever? Of course, every single website owners aim to finally get hold of Google Sandbox freedom. But what can we do? The best and guaranteed way to get out of the Google sandbox is to focus on your website and not on Google. Forget about the Google Sandbox first and concentrate on more important things in web marketing.

Shift your focus from the Google sandbox to making your website more relevant. You can’t simply get out of the sandbox – you need to impress Google with your website. This way, Google will be able to see your website’s importance and when it does – boom! Out of the Google sandbox you go!

How Earn Google’s Respect

These effective tips in search engine optimization will help your website in its struggle to be free from the Google Sandbox. These are easy steps that are undoubtedly effective.

• Equip your website with the relevant and useful web content. Your website must have a unique content.

• Submit your website to high quality and relevant web directories.

• Create relevant articles that provide useful information about your website’s theme and submit them to article directories. This a good way of generating quality one way links.

• Blogs, forums and other interactive stuffs can add to your website’s relevance.

Why let your website remain on the Google Sandbox when you can let it come out in no time? Don’t be contented being on the shadows of other websites. Instead create your website’s own shadow! Come out of the Google Sandbox now – it’s easy, just follow these tips and soon your website is free!

About the author:-Monica Lorica, Owns nPresence, an online web marketing agency that specializes in Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click advertising, Content Management Systems, Web Design, Conversion Tracking and Analysis. For all your web marketing needs, please visit http://www.npresence.net/

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I’ve been using Google AdWords for several months now and I have to say the whole setup really is a work of genius on Google’s part. Its seemingly endless pages of charts, tables and numbers appeal to the geeks; the need for lexical simplicity and brevity appeals to the creatives; and the stats and feedback appeal to the analysts and bean counters. In creating a complex, infinitely configurable advertising tool that has many of the hallmarks of a strategy game, Google have pulled off a masterstroke.

In fact, so easy is it to get lost in the world of AdWords that you can quickly forget that it is essentially a business tool, and one that costs money – lots of money if you’re not careful. So based on my experience of the last few months, here are some essential tips for getting the most of out of Google AdWords.

1. Be Creative

The toughest stage of AdWords is one of the first – writing your ad. You have 95 characters (25-word title and two 35-word lines) to not only get your message across, but also to differentiate that message from your competitors’ ads. Throw Google’s strict policies on truth and honesty into the equation, and you have a real challenge on your hands, particularly if you don’t have a resident creative genius to call on!

However, with a little planning and research it shouldn’t be too difficult to come up with an attractive ad. Decide on what your real message is and keep it simple. Do a search using the keywords you want to use and look at your competitors’ ads. Think about your target audience and the language that will attract them. And finally, and this may sound a bit wacky, try reading and then writing a few haiku, the traditional Japanese poetic form in which writers have a mere 17 syllables to express themselves – it will help you trim the fat from your writing and concentrate on the meat.

2. Be relevant

Putting your keywords into your ad text is more likely to generate clicks. Why? Because searchers can see that your ad is relevant to their search. If I search for ‘tom waits tickets’, I will only click on those results that contain this search phrase and will consider results without this phrase to be irrelevant.

3. Think about your landing page

When you’re happy with the content of your ad, think about where it will take the user. Don’t just direct them to your homepage and expect them to find their own way to what they want – take them straight there. If I click on my ‘tom waits tickets’ ad and am taken to a generic homepage on which my chosen topic isn’t immediately visible, I’ll go elsewhere.

Also, make sure the content of the landing page matches the content of the ad. Your keywords should feature in the text, and also as metatags, to improve your quality score and your overall search ranking. If the content of your landing page doesn’t match the content of your ad, users will feel misled.

You should also ensure that your landing page isn’t a ‘dead end’, i.e. a page that people will look at once and then close or leave. Don’t include external links on the page – make sure users are guided to another page on your site or channeled to your sales, booking or feedback page.

4. Work geographically

When you first set up your Google ad, the temptation is to maximise your web hits by targeting a broad geographical sector. But think again – if you only operate in a particular country or region, there’s no point in your ad appearing to users elsewhere. I set up an ad for a hotel software product which we only sell in Southeast Asia, with a tight budget of $5 per day. Allowing the ad to appear to users outside SE Asia would mean my ad budget being eaten up by people with no interest in my product.

So look at where your target customers are and restrict your ad to those territories, to ensure your money is being spent wisely.

5. Don’t insist on being no.1

AdWords allows you to pay top dollar for your ad to be top of the pile. But is this really what you want? Chances are you’ll get a lot of clicks from indiscriminate, impatient surfers who just click on the top result without reading it first. Serious searchers will read every ad above the fold (i.e. positions 1-5); really serious searchers will read every ad on the page. So spend enough to ensure you’re on the first page, but no more.

6. Test, test, test

This is where your inner strategy game geek comes in. If you’ve played sports sims like the life-consuming Championship Manager, you’ll already know the benefits of testing different team formations, tactics, training routines and so on. And so you’ll probably get the hang of AdWords pretty quickly. Testing different keywords, ad copy, landing pages, landing page copy, ad scheduling, min/max CPC and so on will give you lots of different results and allow you to optimise every ad in every campaign.

One of the first ads I set up was a recruitment ad for our company. It generated a lot of clicks but I discovered that the landing page had a bounce rate (i.e. the number of visitors who visit a page and then leave immediately) of around 85%. I was using a landing page which gave general information about the benefits of working for the company but didn’t contain any actual vacancies. So I switched the landing page to one which simply listed every current vacancy we have, and within days the bounce rate had gone down to 60%!

7. Set goals

Every campaign, be it military, sporting or advertising, must have an ultimate goal by which the campaign’s success can be measured. If you run an e-commerce site then it’s easy to measure the ROI of AdWords, but if, like mine, your site is designed to increase brand awareness and display product information, it’s not so easy. Sure, AdWords will send your traffic sky-high but how do you know you’re getting your money’s worth?

The simple answer is to use Google Analytics’ Goal Conversion function, which allows you to define a specific page you wish people to visit or an action you wish them to complete – submitting a feedback form for example, or downloading a PDF or podcast. You’ll quickly find your conversion rate will become an obsession and lead to constant tweaking, tinkering and testing, all of which will ensure you get maximum return on your AdWords investment.

8. Try CPM ads

If you’re not convinced by CPC, try CPM advertising instead. Rather than set up lots of keywords, instead you choose sites from Google’s content networks on which you wish your ad to appear. If I’m selling bicycles in Bolivia for example, I’ll scour Google for Bolivian cycling and leisure websites and flag these sites in my CPM campaign – this is more secure than blindly using the Google Content Network as it allows me to personally vet each site on which my ad will be displayed.

9. Monitor results

Checking ad performance should, and will, become a daily habit for you once you get started with AdWords. Google’s tracking tools allow you to quickly identify under- or over-performing ads and take remedial action, and using the superb free Google Analytics service allows you to monitor the effect of your AdWords campaigns on your website.

10. CTR isn’t everything!

CTR – or click-through rate – is seen by many AdWords users as the only stat that counts. But don’t get too hung up on it. Remember, the higher the click-through rate, the higher your outlay. Sure, if you’re running an e-commerce site then clicks are your bread & butter, but if your site doesn’t actually sell anything and is designed more with brand awareness in mind, then a high number of above-the-fold impressions combined with a low CTR may be sufficient for you.

I hope you find these ten tips useful in running your own AdWords campaigns – and please let me know if you have any good advice of your own!

About the author:- Tim Russell is Marketing Director at TRG International, one of Vietnam's leading providers of IT business solutions and services. Originally from the UK, he has been in Vietnam since 2003. Prior to coming to Vietnam he spent over a decade in the tourism industry in both operations and marketing, before moving into IT where he helped set up a company providing reservations software for tour operators and travel agents. He lives in Ho Chi Minh City with wife Nhung and daughter Emilie.

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If you sell products or services over your web site, then traffic to your site is the name of the game. It’s simple: if you want more sales, you better get more traffic. To do that, make sure that you’ve covered all the bases of driving traffic to your site.

First, optimize. Make sure your search engine listings are all they can be. This means that you need to make sure that you’re on the key search engines and second that your site is associated with the best searching key words. Check to ensure you are included in Yahoo!, Google, MSN and the Open Directory Project. After that, look at some private or industry-specific directories. If you’re not listed, submit. But before you do make sure your keyword tags, description tags, and content have been optimized for being “find-able.”

Second, advertise. Tell people about your web site. You can do this by email, pay-per-click advertising, print advertising or almost any other means of advertising. Whatever it is, point it to your web site. Experiment with the linkage between your ads and your site – e.g. make different offers and see what the effect is on traffic.

Third, collateralize. Collateral is the paper materials you use to conduct business. Yes, include this in your traffic building efforts, too. Make sure your web address is on your signs, your stationery, business cards, brochures, invoices and any other material that goes to the public.

With every change or addition you make to your web site, just remember: Optimize, Advertise, Collateralize. Your web traffic is directly related to these three activities.

About the author: Mark Fortimer, Download the free ebook, Steps to Internet Marketing Success.

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