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

• 5 comments »

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 .

• 0 comments »

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/

• 3 comments »

Create interesting feed- Create some interesting feed, because people will like only the interesting feed. They will only subscribe to the feed that are of some use. Interesting feed will make fast RSS.

Constantly update- Update your feed constantly and make them available. Constant updating it will help you to keep the readers and get more subscribers. Updated RSS can help you to create fast RSS.

Promote your RSS feeds- Promote you RSS feed through different ways. Promoting your feed will make it known to the readers and they will like to try it.

Send RSS in your email- Send your RSS feed using emails. It is easier to send, easier to reach and easier to get through the barriers. You can reach intended customers without any problem.

RSS to your website- Place RSS feed to your website which will make it more interesting. Many people will not like to visit websites but they will like to get the RSS feed at their own place. Fast RSS is possible with more visitors.

Paid subscription- Paid subscribers will get you more profit from the RSS feed. You can always earn profit from your RSS feed if you have interesting and quality content.

RSS advertising- You can do advertising through RSS feed. It is possible to add your ads to the feed and send them to the subscribers. RSS advertising will help you to send your advertisements as well as advertisement of other companies in return of money.

PR- RSS can a great PR tool for you. You can create good PR campaign by using your RSS feed. Incorporate article, sales letters, press releases in to RSS and send them to the subscribers.

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

• 1 comments »

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 the 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

• 0 comments »

By now, you've all heard about Google's new Universal Search concept, which combines all the information within its vertical databases into one index to serve a single set of Web search results. As you can imagine, this will require some adjustments to standard search engine optimization techniques. If you have been following the Bruce Clay methodology, then you should already be on the right track to optimizing every aspect of your Web site that is under your control. With the arrival of universal search, it's not just a good idea; it's a necessity.

Google Vice President of Search Products and User Experience Marissa Mayer said the company's goal for universal search is to create "a seamless, integrated experience to get users the best answers." Mayer stated on the official Google blog that the universal search vision would be "one of the biggest architectural, ranking, and interface challenges" the search engine would face.

Google Relevancy Challenge

Based on industry research, Google has a relevancy problem because the database is too vast. Back in 2005, Jupiter Research touched on this, stating it identified an opportuníty for vertical search engines. The study inferred that general search engines were good at classifying vast amounts of information, but not very good at serving results that helped users make decisions.

A year later, Outsell came out with "Vertical Search Delivers What Big Search Engines Miss," a study that also mentioned the opportuníty for vertical search due to dissatisfaction with general search engines. This report published the oft-quoted fact stating that the average Internet search failure rate is 31.9 percent. The study identified two market trends contributing to the growth of vertical search – failed general searches and rising keyword prices in paid search.

Another noteworthy study was conducted by Convera. Over 1,000 online business users were asked about their search practices, successes, and failures. Only 21 percent of the respondents thought that search queries on general search engines were understood, a mere 10 percent found critical information on the first try in general search engines. This study concluded, "To date, professionals have not been adequately served by consumer search engines."

The results of these studies show that Google and other general search engines are challenged to produce relevant results, suggesting vertical and niche search engines could eliminate such problems because the niche databases contain topic-specific information, serving targeted, more relevant answers to user queries.

Google's Solution to Relevancy

Since Google's move toward universal search, one can only assume it has considered the above problems and decided that pulling all its databases together, comparing and ranking them accurately at warp speed, could be the solution to relevancy. Doing this requires new technical infrastructure, including new algorithms, software and hardware, which Google has been working on since 2001 and is now in the process of implementing. Universal search has implications for search marketers because it is a departure from the uniformity that characterized search marketing in the past, requiring adjustments in SEO methodology. Since the modifications will be implemented in steps, immediate changes in the SERPS won't be obvious, and there is time to develop new optimization strategies.

Search Personalization

In addition to universal search, Google is also focusing on personalization in the SERPs. This means users will be seeing different SERPS based on their previous queries, if signed into their Google accounts. Users may or may not notice many changes in the SERPs due to universal search and personalization, depending on their level of sophistication and/or powers of observation. However, marketers will be scrambling. Marketers will need to get their clients listed into as many niche databases as possible to íncrease the breadth of coverage for universal search. Social media optimization techniques can be used to enhance both universal and personalized search results.

Universal Search Optimization Strategies The focus on personalization and universal search requires more emphasis on social media SEO strategies because of user interest in creating content and the vast amounts of new multimedia content created daily on the Web. Marketers are beginning to drive traffíc via social networking sites, and these efforts are known to enhance search engine optimization campaigns. Strategies include creating multimedia content such as blogs, videos and podcasts, and then getting them listed on social search sites like Del.icio.us, Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon, as well as niche search engines like Technorati, Podzinger and Blinx.

When creating multimedia content, you must ensure that it is tagged and cataloged correctly. Multimedia content is optimized through established fundamental SEO techniques, such as creating keyword-rich, user-friendly content, unique Meta tags, good site navigation and structure, and implementing a successful linking strategy. Below are a few suggestions for creating and submitting multimedia content for several of Google's vertical databases to gain extended reach through universal search.

Google Image Search: It has always been a good idea to use images on your site for illustrating your products and services. Now, this becomes a way for your customers to find your site via Google Image Search. Optimize your images with descriptive, keyword-rich file names and ALT tags. Use accurate descriptions of your image files for the benefit of the vision impaired and others who might need to view the site with text only.

Google Video (beta): As with optimizing images, use descriptive, keyword-rich file names for your video files. Also create a keyword-rich title tag, description tag, and video site map. Create a Web page to launch your video, optimizing content for SEO and using anchor text wherever possible. Besides submitting to Google Video, also include Blinkx and other social networking and search sites like YouTube and Podzinger (audio and video search engine).

Google News: Here's where you can submit your press releases for display as "news" and subsequent indexing. Issue press releases containing current information about new products and events your site is involved with and Google News will likely pick it up.

Google Maps: This is also known as Google Local, a vertical that has been included in Google search results for a while. Give your site a local presence through the Google Maps Local Business Center where local businesses can get a frëe basic listing to extend their reach in the SERPs.

Google Blog Search (beta): You all have a corporate blog, right? This is how modern companies communicate with their customers and stakeholders. Tag it (digg, del.icio.us, stumbleupon, etc.), submit to Google Blog search, and extend your reach for Web searches on Google.

In closing, there are many ways social and multimedia content can enhance your SEO efforts. Experiment and learn how to use social media to extend your SEO rankings. As you become aware of the many niche databases for submitting multimedia content, this can go a long way toward gaining visibility through Google's personalized and universal search.

About The Author:Claudia Bruemmer is a writer and editor for Bruce Clay Inc. .

• 2 comments »

Abstract : In addition to Google AdSense advertisements in the business environment has played a role,Sometimes, they can even as their web search engine optimization conditions (SEO) detection tool!If your website or the website of just doing a column optimization,but just joined the Google AdSense advertising code.AdSense refer to the content of the advertisements may be some food for thought from the information.

If your website joined the Google AdSense.look at the Google advertising on their website that there are some surprising discovery and enlightenment.For example, found a new competitor, or some of the new trends within counterparts.This is the Google AdSense advertising in the business environment has been playing the role of relevant articles.In addition,Google AdSense advertisements and sometimes even their own web search engine optimization can be used as a tool for measuring the conditions!

AdSense website as search engine optimization (SEO) tool.This is my columns on the front page of a web site observation and the analysis found.Google's AdSense discovered in the course of the trial, the front page columns online marketing a new observation.Although the text of a lot and seldom changesIt also believed that the body had been included and web pages related to the themes of the word.However, the website of AdSense advertisements are often not normal,the advertisement and bore little relation to the core content pages. In addition, visit the website,by Alexa toolbar shows and related sites are not directly related to the web page (Alexa website statistics and information that can be used as a reference tool).According to the information analysis, preliminary assessment is the theme of the website homepage.Meta labels or website content may exist some problems search engines can not make an accurate judgment of the core content of the website.According to !

this idea, words related to the website, so a lot of checksMeta found that the problem is the label "page description" content to a certain extent,Since the adoption of a common template, the website of the "page description" and the theme of the website,website content is not much correlation.Simple modification of this issue shortly after a big improvement on the aforementioned issues.

This is what I use AdSense advertising search engine optimization tool for measuring the website as an example.But this "search engine optimization tool for measuring" of a certain limitations, are not effective for all website,Moreover, a strong correlation between advertising pages there AdSense advertising or not.Another possible situation is thattheme and content of the website pages contain keywords corresponding advertisers do not put advertisementsor is not suitable for advertising in this area, of course, impossible for advertising,Google advertising alone can not determine the site of the phenomenon to a simple search engine optimization,only as a reference to a certain extent.

If your website or the website of just doing a column optimization,but just joined the Google AdSense advertising code.

AdSense refer to the content of the advertisements may be some food for thought from the information.

About The Author: James Yaqins is owner of http://www.kersearch.com, a free articles search engine and directory for search engine marketing.

• 0 comments »

WHAT ARE DOMAIN NAMES?

Website is your location (i.e. your office) and name in the Internet world. There is no way you can easily differentiate between big organisations from small ones through their websites. Therefore, it makes you look big and can do business through out the world even when you are sleeping. Website can easily be defined as the hosting of domain name. Domain names are host names that provide memorable names to stand for numeric Internet protocol {IP} addresses. They make us (human beings) to easily interact with websites and other network services. Computers communicate through IP addresses e.g. 196.168.56.10, 80.229.24.50, etc. Domain names are Yahoo.com, Domaintutor.biz, Google.com, Forexinformation.org, Hotmail.com, etc.

HOW TO CHOOSE GOOD DOMAIN NAMES?

The name you give your website has much to say about you. When I was preparing this article, I have to check some domain names to know whether they exist. Will you be surprised if I tell you that websites like Devil.com, Lesbian.com, Terrorist.com and Oralsex.com exist live on the Internet. Who are the visitors to these sites? For the name you give to your website has much to say about you for examples Dogs.com and Birds.com are self explanatory. Any visitor to these sites has actually known what he is likely to see.

These tools will guide you in choosing your domain names. (a) Overture suggestion tools: It shows you how many times people searched for the word(s) or term(s) you want to register in the last one month (it is yahoo-advertising network). It is highly recommended that it should be more than 8,000 times. Note that overture combines the result of both plural and singular searches i.e. if you are searching for the word “chair” it will bring results on both “chair “and “chairs”. (b) Google.com: Millions of people search on Google search box daily, this makes it a place where we can check for the popularity of the word or terms we are looking for. If the term is more than one word for example ‘baby shoes’, it is better you put it in quote like ”baby shoes” when typing it on Google search box. Google search pages will show how many pages contain the word(s) or term(s). The one that appears more than 700,000 times is recommended. (c) View bid tool: This tool tells you what advertisers are currently bidding to pay for the word(s) or term(s) i.e. the higher, the better. Words like domain, forex, etc may be getting $6 bid when words like school, books may be $1.Logicaly, you will agree with me that it is better to go for the words that have higher bid. This is a very good tool for Google Adsense.

DOMAIN LOOKUP

Who is? : Is a tool use to view the owner’s or company’s name, postal address, e-mail address and phone number of registered domain name. This will show whether the name has been registered, if not, it will indicate that it is available for registration. If yes, it will also show the date it was registered and when it will expire.

(a) You can simply type whois.com to a web browser address space and lookup for the owner of the domain name. You can also check it out from Dnsstuff.com. (b) Go to Google.com, type who is in their search box. This takes you to many websites that enable sourcing the owner of domain name or its availability.

DOMAIN REGISTRATION

The Registry is the body that has the power to handle an entire extension (sometimes more than one extension) e.g. Verisign.com is the Registry for all .com and .net domains. Registrar stands as a middleman between the Registry and the public. Most of them can register more than one extension. Examples of registrars are Godaddy.com, 007names.com, Moniker.com, etc. To register, check for the availability of the name, if the .com or .net or .biz or .us has been taken, quickly take .org.(that means the name is widely accepted). Note: (a) Domain registration is on first come, first serve basis, once any domain is registered, it will not be available. If you want to register any one, please do quickly because any body throughout the world can have the same name in mind.

(b) The shorter the name, the better it is. For it will be easier to remember. It may be difficult to get one word name for popular suffix like .com, .org, .net, .biz, but you can still get from. mobil, .tv, fm, etc.

There are three factors to consider when choosing registrars. (1) Security: Your domains are your “Online estates” protect them. I will recommend Moniker.com for they have won award on domain security. It is difficult to steal domain from them. (2) Management: Companies like 007names and Fabulous.com are good at domain management. You can easily sell your domains to buyers. (3) Price: Many registrars charge high price while some are low. Yahoo.com charges just $1.99 for a first timer only. GoDaddy.com charges less but it takes some time before finishing your registration. They do advertise their products and services. Warning: Be careful if the price is too low for your name may be stolen.

About the author: Akinwumi Alarima: An expert in pay per click adverts and domain monetisation. For more information visit http://www.domaintutor.biz

• 0 comments »

Automated search engine robots, sometimes called "spiders" or "crawlers", are the seekers of web pages. How do they work? What is it they really do? Why are they important?

You'd think with all the fuss about indexing web pages to add to search engine databases, that robots would be great and powerful beings. Wrong.

Search engine robots have only basic functionality like that of early browsers in terms of what they can understand in a web page. Like early browsers, robots just can't do certain things. Robots don't understand frames, Flash movies, images or JavaScript.

They can't enter password protected areas and they can't click all those buttons you have on your website. They can be stopped cold while indexing a dynamically generated URL and slowed to a stop with JavaScript navigation.

How Do Search Engine Robots Work?

Think of search engine robots as automated data retrieval programs, traveling the web to find information and links.

When you submit a web page to a search engine at the "Submit a URL" page, the new URL is added to the robot's queue of websites to visit on its next foray out onto the web.

Even if you don't directly submit a page, many robots will find your site because of links from other sites that point back to yours. This is one of the reasons why it is important to build your link popularity and to get links from other topical sites back to yours.

When arriving at your website, the automated robots first check to see if you have a robots.txt file. This file is used to tell robots which areas of your site are off-limits to them. Typically these may be directories containing only binaries or other files the robot doesn't need to concern itself with.

Robots collect links from each page they visit, and later follow those links through to other pages. In this way, they essentially follow the links from one page to another.

The entire World Wide Web is made up of links, the original idea being that you could follow links from one place to another. This is how robots get around.

The "smarts" about indexing pages online comes from the search engine engineers, who devise the methods used to evaluate the information the search engine robots retrieve.

When introduced into the search engine database, the information is available for searchers querying the search engine.

When a search engine user enters their query into the search engine, there are a number of quick calculations done to make sure that the search engine presents just the right set of results to give their visitor the most relevant response to their query.

You can see which pages on your site the search engine robots have visited by looking at your server logs or the results from your log statistics program.

Identifying the robots will show you when they visited your website, which pages they visited and how often they visit. Some robots are readily identifiable by their user agent names, like Google's "Googlebot"; others are bit more obscure, like Inktomi's "Slurp". Still other robots may be listed in your logs that you cannot readily identify; some of them may even appear to be human-powered browsers.

Along with identifying individual robots and counting the number of their visits, the statistics can also show you aggressive bandwidth-grabbing robots or robots you may not want visiting your website.

In the resources section of the end of this article, you will find sites that list names and IP addresses of search engine robots to help you identify them.

How Do They Read The Pages On Your Website?

When the search engine robot visits your page, it looks at the visible text on the page, the content of the various tags in your page's source code (title tag, meta tags, etc.), and the hyperlinks on your page. From the words and the links that the robot finds, the search engine decides what your page is about.

There are many factors used to figure out what "matters" and each search engine has its own algorithm in order to evaluate and process the information. Depending on how the robot is set up through the search engine, the information is indexed and then delivered to the search engine's database.

The information delivered to the databases then becomes part of the search engine and directory ranking process. When the search engine visitor submits their query, the search engine digs through its database to give the final listing that is displayed on the results page.

The search engine databases update at varying times. Once you are in the search engine databases, the robots keep visiting you periodically, to pick up any changes to your pages, and to make sure they have the latest info.

The number of times you are visited depends on how the search engine sets up its visits, which can vary per search engine.

Sometimes visiting robots are unable to access the website they are visiting. If your site is down, or you are experiencing huge amounts of traffic, the robot may not be able to access your site.

When this happens, the website may not be re-indexed, depending on the frequency of the robot visits to your website. In most cases, robots that cannot access your pages will try again later, hoping that your site will be accessible then.

About the Author: Michael Biehn, SEO Consultant.
Affordable Search Engine Optimization Services.com
Professional And Affordable Search Engine Optimization Services Trought Natural Search Engines Results.

• 0 comments »

The PageRank of a website is determined largely by the importance, or popularity, of the site based on the PageRank of the sites linking back to it. You must take advantage of quality backlinks to increase the PageRank of your site.

What are backlinks?

Plain and simple, backlinks are links that point back to your site. They are links you have exchanged with or received from other sites, as well as links placed strategically by you in forum posts, blog posts and comments, and the resource box of submitted articles. The submission of your site to website directories also provides backlinks that are highly favored by search engines.

Ideally these links, especially those placed in your forum signature and resource box of published articles (see my related article "Your Signature - An Internet Marketing Goldmine"), will contain keywords in the text of the link to create "anchor text." For example, Online source for anniversary gifts instead of Click here for online anniversary gifts. Placing keywords in the text of the link anchors your keyword(s) to your url rather than anchoring "Click here" to your url. Not only do you have a backlink to your site, you have created a link of higher quality that includes the keywords you are targeting in your overall marketing campaign.

Why do I need backlinks?

The number of quality backlinks linking to a site is one of the main criteria used by Google and other search engines to rank and place websites. This statement, written by David Austin in a Feature Column of the Monthly Essays on Mathematical Topics, sums it up: "The fundamental idea put forth by PageRank's creators, Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, is this: the importance of a page is judged by the number of pages linking to it as well as their importance."

With this all-powerful statement from the creators of Google, the importance should be clear: you need backlinks to attract the robots that determine the importance of your website. The value of your page, your website, in the eyes of Google's robot lies in the number and quality of the links that it finds from other sites to yours. As the number of other popular, high-ranking sites find your site worth linking to grows, your popularity goes up along with your position in the search results.

In other words, quality backlinks are needed to entice search engines to stand up and take notice.

Backlinks are also helpful in leading visitors to your site. In this regard, backlinks are much like bread crumbs left by Hansel and Gretel to find their way back home. When your site is new, the robot will not place your site at the top of the results list immediately no matter how much time and effort went into the design and SEO of your site. Links from other sites that searchers are likely to find could lead them to your site if they look through the links page to find related products that might be available on your site.

In addition, links placed in posts to forums and blogs and the resource box of published articles have the potential of being seen and followed by thousands of visitors every day. If the forums, blogs, and article directories have high page ranks, you have more than just a link for visitors to follow, you have a quality link that will serve to increase your page rank as well as your traffic.

What are quality backlinks?

Quality backlinks are links from websites that have a higher page rank than your site, links from websites that have content or purpose related to your site (also known as relevance), links that include anchored text, and links that are built naturally over time, not a sudden increase in links just for the sake of having a high number of links.

Google has made it very clear that the importance of a site in the eyes of Googlebot is greatly influenced by the number and importance of the pages linking to it. In order to increase your PageRank, your website's importance in the eyes of search engines, seek out links from higher-ranking sites that have related content, include anchored text in your signature for forum and blog posts as well as your resource box in articles, and let links build naturally over time. These practices will be a valuable part of your overall marketing strategy.

About the author: Claudia Pate is the owner of The Anniversary Shop, traditional and modern anniversary gifts, and Common Sense Ebiz, guide to online business opportunities. Learn more about article writing to increase your PageRank with quality backlinks.

• 0 comments »

When the Internet was new to me, I was fascinated by following links and going to new sites. It was like an adventure. And when I had my own website the first thing that I wanted to do was to place my site's links on other sites. I began reciprocal linking (trading links with other sites) way back then, but 11 years later things have changed and now I dread getting a "reciprocal link request" in my email inbox. I have a few pet peeves with reciprocal linking, as it is practiced today, and here they are:

1. Most of the Requests are Automated

It used to be flattering to get a link request, knowing that someone had visited your site and wanted to exchange a link. These days most of the requests are done with software and it means that no one has really visited your site. Automation in itself is not bad, but it leads to all kinds of abuses, and it prevents you from picking out the good links from the bad. Even if you have an automated directory to handle link requests, which is what I installed, you will still be swamped with tons of link requests.

2. Most Link Requests are of Extremely Low Quality

The original idea of linking was to provide your own visitors with quality sites where they could visit next. The links were provided as a resource. Today, many sites have been set up only to make monëy from Adsense and other advertising programs. In addition, driven by the need to acquire PageRank many webmasters went into a link gathering frenzy and sent requests to any and all sites whether they were related to their site or not. If a link is to be a resource to visitors of both sites, then the two sites should somehow be related and the sites should be of comparable quality. Most reciprocal link requests fail this test.

3. Links are Buried on Pages Where Human Eyes Will Nevër See Them

In addition to being a resource to your own visitors, you want to exchange links in hopes of getting some targeted traffíc back to your site. It used to be easier; a webmaster would have a site with say ten different pages and one of his pages would be a "links" page. On that page he would display 30 or so links. The link to this page would be prominent in the site's navigation menu. You could be assured of getting some meaningful traffíc if your link was placed on this kind of page.

That has all changed. People now build huge directories of hundreds of categories, stuffed with pages and pages of links. It is extremely unlikely that many visitors will drill down through all the pages and find your site in such a directory.

4. Many of the Link Requests are for "Three Way Links"

I find three-way links "creepy." They work like this, if I link to site A, then they will give a link to my site originating from site B. This is done because Google is supposed to value one-way links more than reciprocal links. I can understand this. If someone links to you without asking you and doesn't request a reciprocal link it means that your site is really good and this is why Google values true one-way links. However, the three-way links proposed by many people are just an attempt to trick the search engines; they are not true one-way links. Sooner or later Google will get wise to such schemes and this kind of effort will yield little benefit to the linking websites.

In addition, I dislike this kind of linking arrangement because you first have to chëck out who you are linking to, and then you are faced with checking another site that is going to link to you. Usually the site where the link to you will be placed is some kind of strange directory, a link-farm.

This is the state of reciprocal linking today. I delete most requests coming into my inbox, and do mass deleting on my automated systems as well. Now I don't want to end on a negative note so here are a few suggestions on how to get quality incoming links without adding another reciprocal link request to the flood that is already out there:

1. Make Your Site so Cool that People Will Link to You Without Asking

People come to the Internet to solve a problem, find a solution and get information. If you can make your website a true resource and a great place where visitors can get the information that they need, then it will not go unnoticed. Even if you have a commercial e-commerce site, it is possible to add reviews, articles and information. This additional information will help your own customers and will be a resource for the entire web. Who knows? Maybe one day you will chëck your referrer logs and see that Wikipedia is linking to you. This is the goal, but it will take some work to achieve it.

2. Get Involved in Blogs and Forums that are Related to Your Field of Expertise

You can learn something from forums and blogs and you can contribute something as well. You can usually leave your url when you make a comment or a posting. If you offer solid advice, you will get a good online reputation and become known as an expert in your field. This newfound recognition as an expert, combined with links from these blogs and forums will be worth much more than low quality reciprocal links.

3. Get into Article Marketing

Article marketing means that you will write articles about your field of interest and distribute them for publication on other websites, blogs and ezines with a link back to your site. Each time your article is published on a website you get a one-way link to your site. As with most good things, this method has been pounced upon by Internet marketers and the net is flooded with a lot of low-quality articles. However, if you produce meaningful articles, you can still get a lot of benefit by distributing your articles.

4. Do Judicious Reciprocal Linking

There is nothing wrong with the idea of websites trading links. However, if you are going to do it, then only link to a site that you think is a good one or has some value for your web visitors. Make sure that your link will be placed on a page that has the potential of sending you some traffíc. Make your request with an email that clearly shows that you are a living and breathing human being and not a robot.

So, instead of adding to the spam-like flood of reciprocal link requests, go about building your own content and start using more reliable methods of increasing the number of incoming links to your site.

About The Author: Donald Nelson is a search engine optimization specialist. His SEO company A1-Optimization provides affordable search engine optimization, website copywriting, article marketing and other website promotion services.

Digg this - Post to del.icio.us - Post to Furl

• 0 comments »

Maybe you own your own business, or perhaps you're a critical cog in the corporate machinery responsible for marketing your company, brand, product or service. If that describes you, here's eighteen things you need to know about Web-marketing but were afraid to believe.

1. Time To Be Heard
Your mother told you 'children should be seen and not heard,' but you're not a kid anymore. So why are you listening to all those guys telling you not to use audio on your website. If you want to deliver a lot of content that people will remember, try letting your website do the talking.

2. There's Nothing Like the Real Thing
In a world of virtual everything there's nothing like the real thing. The sound and image of real people delivering your marketing message makes it a believable, memorable presentation.

3. Unlock the Conventional Wisdom Straightjacket
Driving traffíc to your site is great, if those visitors stay long enough to find out why they should be doing business with you. If your website traffíc is leaving as fast as it's arriving, maybe search engine optimization isn't the answer you've been looking for.

4. Linking Your Way To Obscurity
You know the reciprocal linking strategy everyone is talking about as a way to generate leads? Did you ever consider that each link to another website is an invitation to leave your site? Is that really what you want - to invite people to leave? I think not!

5. Your Company's Voice Is It's Personality
Give your company a professional voice, with a finely crafted scrípt delivered by a professional voice-over announcer that presents a compelling, memorable marketing message and a unique brand personality. Or do it yourself and sound like an amateur. The choice is yours.

6. Addressing Ass-backwards Priorities
If your website design firm is twisting your marketing message out of shape to conform to the technical 'technique du jour' that only looks good in one popular browser, then you hired the wrong guys. It's not about technology; it's about communication.

7. Text-Ads Are Dead. Long Live Web-Video
Squeezing your marketing message into a pay-per-click text-ad is like trying to attract leads using one of those newspaper real estate ads where every word needs to be decoded. Start communicating with a Web-video that tells a story - your story.

8. Nobody Ever Bored Anybody Into Buying
The vast majority of website text is boring, unimaginative and self-promoting. If you don't present a compelling focused story then you are just wasting peoples' time. Seduce your audience with an informative, entertaining, and memorable presentation created by marketing professionals.

9. Too Much of Good Thing, Isn't So Good
You were worried about load times and search engine optimization so you dumped most of your images and multimedia and proceeded to put enough text on your site that would take a month to study; but have you considered whether anybody is ever going to actually read that stuff? And that's assuming people could ever find what they were looking for in the first place.

10. Stop Hiding Behind Your Email Address
You've got a killer website. It tells visitors everything. All they have to do is place an order. But wait � somebody has a question. So they go to your contact page and find an email address. No contact name. No address and no telephone number. You've provided a Q&A, an FAQ, and a líst of technical specs. What more do they want? Well, what they want is to talk to somebody to make sure you're legit and if they have a problem that you'll stand behind what you're selling. Silly them.

11. Do You Suffer From Redundant Redux Reflux?
Search engines love content. They index all your text, searching for keywords and phrases. So what do you do? You repeat and repeat stuff, over and over to make sure the search engines understand what you're all about. To bad all your Web-visitors get indigestion from reading your redundant copy and leave because they forgot why they were there.

12. Inform. Enlighten. Persuade.
Knowledge is today's high-value commodity. If you have a set of skills that people want to acquire, then you've got something to sell: something to build a business around. But if you don't know how to present that knowledge to an audience, then your skills are unmarketable. If you want to get paid for what you know, you better find out how to deliver your content.

13. It's Not About Numbers; It's About Quality
It's not the number of hits you get on your website, it's how long visitors stay on your site and how much information they retain after they leave that counts. It's about the quality of traffíc not the quantity. And the best way to create quality traffíc is to provide easy to find, easy to understand, easy to remember content.

14. Don't Play Constant S.E.O. Catch-up
Every time an S.E.O. whiz kid comes up with a trick to beat the search engine algorithms, the experts at the search engines change their criteria. This means you're constantly playing S.E.O. catch-up. Good for the whiz kid, not so good for you. And have you ever wondered how all those search engine optimizers can guarantëe you, and everybody else they are selling, top billing - kind of hard to believe isn't it?

15. Show Me What To Do
Anybody who has ever spent the night before Christmas trying to decipher the arcane instructions provided by the manufacturer of the bicycle you bought your kid, or the bizarre graphics included with the do-it-yourself kitchen you bought from 'you know who', knows that there is nothing like a good video to explain how Part A actually does fit into Part B.

16. Even Cows Have Brands
If you've got a business, you've got a brand. We're not just talking about a logo. We're talking about every thing you do: your website, your print collaterals, everything, including how you answer the telephone. You do answer the telephone don't you? If your website design firm doesn't get it, if they aren't creating a brand personality, what are they doing?

17. Lost In Space
Ever go to one of those websites that's impossible to navigate. Maybe the navigation system doesn't work in your favorite browser, or maybe the navigation system is so confusing visitors get lost in cyber-content-hell. Information architecture, how people find the content they are looking for, is critical to creating a satisfying user experience.

18. You Can Have It Both Ways
Remember when your mother told you, you couldn't have dessert if you didn't finish your broccoli? Sounds like those know-it-all search engine gurus telling you that you can't have multimedia on your site. Well you're a big boy now, and if you want that multimedia hot fudge sundae you can have it. And you can also have all the good-for-you search engine friendly copy too. Who said you couldn't have it both ways?

About The Author Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design firm that specializes in Web-audio and Web-video. Visit www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, www.136words.com and www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246.

Digg this - Post to del.icio.us - Post to Furl

• 0 comments »

If you want to get serious about driving more traffíc to your website and improving your search engine rankings you need to develop a linking strategy. There are three primary linking strategies:

1. Reciprocal Linking
2. Purchasing text links
3. Employing a link finding service

This month's issue of BizAtomic Advisor focuses on Reciprocal Linking – How it can help. When a trusted site links to yours, people follow that recommendation.

Reciprocal link means your website links to another website and that website links back to you. Search engines use link popularity to rank websites. Exchanging reciprocal links with other sites will build a great link directory that will motivate visitors to bookmark your website to get access to your link directory.

One of the factors search engines use to determine your relevancy to a search term is the number of websites linking to your website. This is an effective way to increase your search engine rankings.

Three key success factors for a reciprocal linking strategy are:

1. Quality of links should outweigh quantity
2. Link partners must relate to your site content
3. Partners should link to you from pages listing as few links as possible

Linking is what the web is all about. It helps you move from one document to another and from site to site while maintaining your focus on a particular subject. The ideal situation is to have one way links from related sites without you pointing back to them. However, you would have to have a lot of valuable information, tips, tools, articles, resources, etc. in order to motivate people to link to your website. Unfortunately most sites don't fall into this category and reciprocal linking is a requirement.

Step 1 - Get people to want to link to your website. Generating quality inbound links to your website requires a systematic approach and hard work. But the payoff is worth it. To begin with you must have good content on your website. Step one is to analyze the value of your content in relation to competitors. You will also need a page of outbound links on your website that visitors will find valuable.

Step 2 – Research websites that are worth linking to and that will bring relevant traffíc to you. You need to identify the portals, directories, news sites, ezines, blogs, and other information sources specific to your industry. You can let your fingers do the walking across the keyboard or you can purchase one of the many software tools on the market designed to locate relevant sites. They also help collect email addresses and even prepare letters requesting that a site add a link to your site. Without making any recommendations you may want to look into the following tools:

• Arelis Reciprocal Link Solution
• Zeus Internet Marketing Robot
• Linking 101 Linking Management Script
• Duncan Carver's Link Management System
• Hot Links SQL V2.3
• LinkMaster Pro
• Links Manager
• Links4Trade
• PowerLinks.com

Make sure you at least visit the sites these tools generate. However, the best way to build long-term link popularity is to offer good content and features providing real value to your visitors. People will discover your website.

Google is a great help with your research because it ensures your partners are properly indexed. Look for sites closely related to you in terms of theme and keywords. Google's ranking algorithm takes into account each link's importance along with other factors like the proximity of your search keywords in the documents. In other words, it's not just about the number of sites that link to a given page, but also the importance of those sites (measured by the links to each of them). Google has given a name to its ranking algorithm for determining a web page's importance; it's called PageRank(TM) .

Human based directories like Yahoo and the Open Directory project have a lot of influence over search results. List your site in the correct category with a good description.

Next, make sure you are linked to and from topic specific and niche directory websites. These are sites that provide information that is an exact match for what you provide.

Don't forget partners and vendors from your business. Since you already have a relationship you are more likely to be able to request and receive a link from their websites.

Step 3 – Implementing your strategy. Like any marketing campaign you need a plan.

• Set business benefit objectives for your Linking strategy. Think about what you are trying to achieve and write it down on paper.

• Develop a content plan for populating your website with valuable content.

• Set linking policies, pages, and linking code you can give to link partners for your site.

• Monitor the progress of your linking strategy so that you can see what results have been achieved and adapt or tweak what you are doing to improve results.

• Benchmark your site's link popularity against competitors

A Reciprocal Linking Program will require that you manage the following:

1. The name of the site

2. The URL

3. The name and email address of the person who runs the site

4. The date you contact the person who runs the site and the date he or she responds

5. The resulting deal (Some will say yes, some will say no, others will not reply at all, others will want a link back from you, some may want monëy for links, some will be out of town and take weeks to reply, etc.)

6. The status of the deal

7. Verifying that the link is in place

8. Checking the site periodically for the link (Yes, some folks swap links and then pull yours for odd reasons.)

Remember the most important benefit of a link exchange is the traffíc resulting directly from these links. Search engines are highly unpredictable. They keep changing their algorithms every now and then. Your site is on the top 10 results today, but it may not be so tomorrow. Of course, you don't want to exclude search engine optimization but your main concern should be getting traffíc from direct links.

About the author: BizAtomic - http://www.bizatomic.com - 800-942-9475

Digg this - Post to del.icio.us - Post to Furl

• 0 comments »

So you’ve built your website, you know what keywords you want to target (i.e. what words your customers are searching for), and you’re ready to write your copy. You’ve been told that you should use your keywords frequently so that you appear in search results for those words. But what does “frequently” mean?

How many times should you use your primary keyword? This case study helps answer that question.

Some background on ”Keyword Density”

In order to understand optimum keyword usage, we first need to have some way of measuring keyword frequency. In the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) world, frequency is actually referred to as density. Keyword density is a measure of the number of times your keyword appears on a page expressed as a percentage of the total wordcount of that page. For example, if your page has 100 words, and your keyword phrase appears 5 times, its density is 5%. So when you hear someone say “keyword density”, that’s normally what they’re talking about. (TIP: You can automatically check the keyword density of your page at http://www.live-keyword-analysis.com.)

However, there is another, more complex measure of keyword density which takes into account the text components in the HTML of the page (i.e. the meta tags: Title, Keywords, Alt Text, Description, and Comments). When using this measure, you don’t just count the words your visitor sees; you also count the words in your meta tags. For example, if you have 100 words on your home page, 10 words in your Title tag, 20 words in your Description tag, 70 words in your Alt tags, and 10 words in your Comments tag, your total wordcount for the page is 100 + 10 + 20 + 70 + 10 = 210. Similarly, when counting keywords, you don’t just add up the number of times a visitor will see your keyword, you also count the number of times that keyword appears in your meta tags. For example, if your keyword appears 5 times in the home page copy, 3 times in the Title tag, 5 times in the Description tag, 30 times in your Alt tags, and twice in your Comments tag, your total keyword count is 5 + 3 + 5 + 30 + 2 = 45. So with a total wordcount of 210 and a keyword count of 45, your keyword density is 45/210 x 100 = 21%. It is argued that this measure of keyword density is more relevant as the search engines measure density in this fashion. (TIP: You can automatically check the keyword density of your page using this more complex measure at http://www.gorank.com/analyze.php.)

As you can see, you need to be very aware of which measure you’re talking about when you’re talking “keyword density”. But let me reiterate; mostly when people talk about keyword density, they’re talking the simple measure.

What is the optimum keyword density

And now down to business… What keyword density (of either kind) should you be targeting on your website?

There’s a lot of debate surrounding this issue because the search engine companies don’t disclose the details of their algorithms (as that would allow people to abuse the system). Instead, people working in the SEO world are left to figure it out based on their experience.

A recent article by respected SEO and Blog expert, Wayne Hurlbert, (see http://www.webpronews.com/news/ebusinessnews/wpn-45-20050501KeywordDensitySEOconsiderations.html) suggests that Google sees pages with a keyword density of greater than 2% as spam. It was this article which prompted me to analyze the keyword density of my copywriting website.

CASE STUDY

The Website: This case study analyzes the website for my advertising copywriting and SEO copywriting business, Divine Write – http://www.divinewrite.com. For my primary keyword, my site is now on page 1 of Google.com (out of approximately 900,000 search results).

Number of pages on site: At the time of writing, my website contained a total of 53 pages.

Primary keyword phrase: “copywriter”

Average keyword density: Using the simple measure of keyword density discussed above, the average keyword density of my copywriting website is 1.9%. Using the complex measure it’s 4.9%.

Keyword density range: Using the simple measure, my density ranged from 0.4% to 7.6%. Using the complex measure it ranged from 1.6% to 17.5%

Some comments on the figures

• The figures and corresponding ranking detailed in this case study may not be directly relevant to every site. There’s a lot I don’t know about the algorithms and there are bound to be other factors at play which I don’t know about.

• With regard to Wayne Hurlbert’s article, it would seem that he is referring to keyword density as calculated using the simple method discussed above.

• The range figures are noteworthy because they suggest that you don’t need to be paranoid about having some pages with a very high density and some with a very low density.

Conclusion

A simple keyword density of 1.9% can be enough for a first page ranking in Google.com (assuming you have enough quality backlinks – see http://www.divinewrite.com/SEOCEO.htm and http://www.divinewrite.com/seoarticles.htm for more information).

Happy SEO writing!

About the Author: * Glenn Murray is an SEO copywriter and article submission and article PR specialist. He is a director of article PR company, Article PR, and also of copywriting studio Divine Write. He can be contacted on Sydney +612 4334 6222 or at glenn@divinewrite.com. Visit http://www.DivineWrite.com or http://www.ArticlePR.com for further details.

Digg this - Post to del.icio.us - Post to Furl

• 0 comments »

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.

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. 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

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.

About the author: 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

Digg this - Post to del.icio.us - Post to Furl

• 0 comments »

Many of you have heard of submitting your website, but what does this really mean? What places should you really submit your website? What about submitting to thousands of search engines and directories through some website promotion service?

What Pages To Submit:

At the minimum, you should submit your home page. Many search engines will promise to find and crawl the rest of your website automatically (in their own good time). But if they don't discourage you from doing so, I would submit several of the important pages in your site. For example, a site map is definitely something I would want to submit, since it should have direct links to the rest of your website.

Also, if I get another webmaster to link to my website, I like to submit that page as well. I want the search engines to recognize that this resource has changed - it has a link to my website and I want the credit for it.

What To Prepare:

For the search engines, I would make sure that the website is properly optimized. At a minimum, I would do double check the meta-tags to ensure that the title, meta-description and meta-keywords properly describe the web pages and have some of my desired keywords in it. I would also run a website validator on the pages I intend on submitting - to keep the search engine spiders from choking on my website. For more information on optimizing a website for the search engines, go to http://website-optimization-2.blogspot.com.

For the directories, I would normally prepare some commonly requested information. This really helps to speed up the process. I normally use a generic text editor like Microsoft Notepad and save the following data before I go and submit to the different search engines and directories. This enables me to use copy and paste.

This should have:

• Your email
  
• Your website url
  
• A good title for your website
  
• A description for the website

Since Yahoo will allow you to submit a list of URLS that are in a text document (or an RSS feed) I would encourage you to prepare one to help them out. These should be at the root directory of your website and be updated whenever there is a change to your pages. That way you can just submit the location of the RSS feed or the text file and let Yahoo use that to find the rest of your pages. It is a nice time saver. Personally, I like using an automated RSS feed since Yahoo can use it to determine when the last changes occurred and decide what pages to re-crawl first.

(If you don't know what RSS is, here is a great article on it: http://feedvalidator.org/docs/rss2.html.)

Google uses a similar technology to help it find all of your web pages. It is called a "Google Site Map". That is the subject of another article. I wrote one that has a lot more info on the Google Site Maps, for when you are ready to build one. Google also has a special way to submit these. Just follow their instructions. If this is too complicated, contact a webmaster or a SEO specialist who is familiar with this feature.

Where To Submit:

I would recommend submitting your home page to the major search engines individually, at least initially. However, there are several services that do groups of them for you - and is a big time saver for the rest of your site. The following is one of my favorites: FreeWebSubmission.com. I have always deselected Google, though, since I submit to them manually through the Google website. I submit my web pages to the following search engines manually (without a special tool) just to ensure that it is done.

You will need a Yahoo account to submit to the Yahoo search engine. And don't fret if you don't see immediate results. Your site should normally exist in MSN within about 6 weeks, in Yahoo in 8-12 weeks, and in Google within about 3 months. (You will not likely get much search results from Google for the first year though - but hold out and keep working on the other tricks. In the long run, Google will normally give you about 60 - 70% of the search engine traffic if you follow these methods.)

Also, if you have the Alexa toolbar installed, navigate to your website and click on the "info" button on the toolbar. Then you will have to fill in information about your website. Once this is registered, you will start seeing how your website's Alexa rating looks. There have been some rumors that Google considers the Alexa description in its searches - so make sure it is relevant to your website as a whole and has at least one of your keywords.

You should also submit your website to DMOZ. This is a massive directory that is republished in several other websites. It is managed by humans, and is therefore considered to be of special relevance by other search engines. I strongly recommend reading all their rules before submitting - and follow them closely. Make sure that you try to get listed in only one category - the most relevant one for your business. It can take a month or two to get listed, but it really helps with your backlinks and overall relevancy as a website.

After DMOZ, here are the most important list of directories to be listed in.

• Yahoo Directory website submission ($299 annual fee)

• Business.com website submission ($199 annual fee)

• Microsoft Bcentral Directory website submission ($49 annual fee)

• Best of Web website submission ($40 annual fee)

• GoGuides.org website submission ($40 lifetime fee)

• Gimpsy.com website submission ($40 lifetime fee)

• JoeAnt website submission ($40 lifetime fee)

• Tygo website submission ($40 lifetime fee)

• Skaffe.com website submission ($40 lifetime fee)

• WowDirectory.com website submission ($25 lifetime fee)

If you haven't used directories before - try browsing these before you fill out the form to submit your site. They are organized by category. You need to find the most relevant category to put your website before you start to fill out the form for each of these. Have a pen and paper as you browse - and write down directory paths of where you want to be.

Being in some directories just adds some good backlinks. (When another webmaster links to your website, this is considered a backlink.) Others, like Yahoo and DMOZ, tend to get some special relevance to certain search engines. After you get familiar with these well-known directories, look for niche directories that are specific to the type of business your website is about.

There are specialized directories that focus on a particular category of links. These can be valuable - you will just have to do a bit of searching to find them. These may be considered as part of your overall strategy.

Being listed in a search engine doesn't guarantee that you will have a good ranking - this is just the first step - letting them know that you exist.

If You See An Offer To Get Listed In Hundreds Of Directories And Websites Automatically - Beware! Many of these will list you in hundreds of FFA (free for all) sites. These sites are considered SPAM by search engines and I would strongly encourage you to avoid them. Did I mention to avoid these? Check out what Google has to say about these. They may get you quick backlinks, but they are from the "wrong" type of site. These are just a list of sites - and they stay there temporarily. Only the latest 100 submitted or so are displayed there and you need to be resubmitted regularly to stay there. Few humans use this - it is just a linking game to trick the search engines about your popularity (and search engines don't like it). Don't bother.

To Wrap It Up:

Get backlinks - but avoid FFA sites. There are some important directories, but being listed in "Thousands Of Websites And Directories" is likely a promotional trick to get you listed in FFA sites. The most important backlinks are from web pages with content related to your website and those that your customers visit. If it isn't likely to draw your customers, it may not be very important for your website traffic.

About the author: Robert Fuess is a veteran website designer who specializes in making dynamic search engine optimized websites. SpiderwebLogic.com | SchoolAndTeacher.com

Digg this - Post to del.icio.us - Post to Furl

• 0 comments »

There is a tactic out there embraced by bloggers but rarely used by typical websites. It is called Link Baiting.

In this article I explain what link baiting is and how everyone, not just bloggers, can use it to build quality links.

This is a topic that's been around for a while but I don't think a lot of people know what it is, or how to use it to their advantage.

I think the name "Link Baiting" could be considered a black hat technique which is why most people wouldn't consider it as a legitimate organic tactic.

However link baiting is merely link building with a twist: Rather than hunting out links, you are bringing the links to you through unique and popular site content.

So how does Link Baiting work?

Link Baiting is just like fishing. You publish a new page on a topic (I'll cover those later) and set it free on the web. Hopefully others pick up on the content as fresh and interesting and link to it. The article is the bait, and the link is the catch.

A properly created page can capture huge links on its own with little to no effort from you.

For example, on another site, about a year ago, I wrote an article about the Florida Update. I spend the month or 2 after the initial update analyzing results and I then published my theory on what the update was.

That article has earned 88 links to date. And the best link, in my view, is a link from the ODP from the Google News category.

In fact my article appears in the top 10, and is linked to as a reference in many of the other top listings for a Google search for "Florida Update."

So what was so special about the article?

While I never intended for it to be link bait, it turns out it was a typical "hook" page. Performancing blog has a really good summary on link baiting which I will further explain here.

With link building there are essentially 5 types of "hooks" or pages built to encourage links. They are: News, Contrary, Attack, Resource and Humor.

A News hook is one where you report on industry news. But it's not just a rehashing of someone else's post. It should be unique – either a scoop that no one else has caught, or it could even be a summary of various viewpoints. A news hook could also be comprised of a story you have proved to be false.

Contrary hooks are when you contradict what someone else says. It should be someone prominent in the industry and it should be controversial.

For example, if I was to write an article that proclaimed that Danny Sullivan's latest theory was bunk, it would probably generate buzz. Especially if I could provide corroborating evidence backing up my assertion.

Recently Mike Grehan posted just such an article on Clickz in which he again pointed out that he doesn't believe in a Google Sandbox. He even refers to other posts in which the Sandbox has been beaten to death.

Soon after he posted this article (which, by the way was posted just one week ago) many other SEM's jumped on him purporting to have proof of the Sandbox.

And, if you use Yahoo's Site Explorer to look at who links to this article, you will see that Yahoo! Has already picked up on almost 80 links to this one article. I'd say that Mike has done a great job of link baiting!

Attack hooks take the contrary hooks a step further, by launching personal attacks on people taking the debunking of theories to the next level. The original post from SEOmoz was close to an attack hook, but after they edited it, it became less of an attack They reacted to the Mike Grehan article on the Sandbox with some haste and turned it personal. To their credit they did tone it down some, but it's pretty close to a flame. Who knows, maybe this article will be considered an attack on SEOmoz and will generate similar buzz.

A Resource hook is more of an informational page. It's one that aggregates a bunch of information and distills it for visitors.

In fact this site is much like that. We take a bunch of news, distill it to its most meaningful and then provide our interpretation of what it means. Then, others pick up on the article and either repost it, or at least link to it.

Finally is a Humour hook. With this link bait you post jokes, funny stories, weird or funny pictures that you've found or anything else that will warrant a review from others and hopefully a link.

There are tons of blogs devoted to this such as the Obscure Store & Reading Room and Small Town Misfit which scour the web for weird and funny stories and then display them, encouraging others to link to them.

And it must be working – Small Town Misfit has over 1,600 Yahoo! Links while Obscure Store has over 1,700.

So, if you were ever worried about the amount of link building you'd have to do to become an "authority", consider link baiting in your arsenal. It can be a very effective way of building links quickly and easily. Also, it's an effective way to build your reputation and brand online as more and more people learn about you through these links.

About the author: Rob Sullivan is a SEO Consultant and Writer for Textlinkbrokers.com.

Digg this - Post to del.icio.us - Post to Furl

• 0 comments »