Web Moves Blog

Do Static IP Sites Rank Higher than Sites With Dynamic IPs?
This is a hotly debated topic. Some SEOs claim that sites with a static IP address rank higher while other SEOs claim that shared hosting is just fine… that it would be stupid for search engines to penalize shared hosting since we are running out of IP addresses and so many sites are currently using name based hosting.

First, let’s define what we are talking about when we say “static IP” vs “name based” hosting. Here are some synonyms:

For “static hosting”, the following all mean the same thing: static IP, dedicated IP, http/1.0, non-shared hosting. For “dynamic hosting”, the following all mean the same thing: dynamic IP, name based hosting, http/1.1.

Let’s take a brief history of the Internet to put things more in focus. Once upon a time, every host on the Internet had a unique IP address. It is usually expressed as 4 numbers from 0-255 separated by dots. An example would be 207.44.161.131. There are billions of such IP addresses possible… however, there is a finite number.

An organization called ARIN hands out IP addresses in the western hemisphere while another organization handles Europe and another Asia. Those organizations noticed several years ago that we were going to eventually run out of those IP addresses because of the proliferation of web-sites. At the time, every website had it’s own dedicated IP address that was associated with it’s domain name.

The solution? A new protocol was developed called HTTP 1.1 (to replace HTTP 1.0). The new protocol allowed more than one domain/website to share the same IP address. In fact, hundreds of websites can now share the same IP address.
The new type of hosting is called “name based”, “shared IP”, “http 1.1”, etc.

Some SEOs theorize that your choice of dedicated hosting vs. shared hosting might affect your rankings. Some others claim that is ridiculous because all hosting will eventually be shared in order to preserve IP addresses.
Which are correct?

I decided to run it through our statistical analysis engine to get the facts. Here is the methodology I used to answer this question. I gathered the results of the queries naturally performed last month by myself and three associates using Yahoo and Google. I then pinged each site to get it’s IP address. I then tried to visit the site using the IP address. With shared hosting, this isn’t possible. You get some kind of generic page instead of the specific site you want. I tallied my results for each of the first eight rankings.

On the Y-axis, you will see the number of sites found that use a static IP (do not use shared/name based hosting). On the X-axis, we have rankings from 1 to 8. Here is the graph showing Yahoo and Google results:

First, it is interesting to note that the number of sites using shared vs. dedicated hosting is just about half and half. We expect that as time goes on, more and more sites will be using shared hosting.

The second thing to note is that there is no trend for either Yahoo or Google that would indicate any preference for either type of site. Google might show a slight preference for static IP. Yahoo might show a slight preference for shared hosting. The net effect is null. The correlations for both are very close to zero (on a scale of -100 to +100, Google’s correlation was a +35 and Yahoo’s was a -21). I generally consider anything from -35 to +35 to be statistically insignificant.

Do you use dedicated hosting in order to improve your rankings? Don’t bother. There isn’t any advantage in this factor. Often dedicated hosting is more expensive than static IP hosting… so save your money and invest it in other factors that do affect your ranking!

Notes:

1. Over 1,000 queries and over 10,000 sites were examined for this study.

2. There was no exercise to attempt to isolate different keywords. I merely took a random sampling of the queries performed by myself and three associates during the prior month.

Conclusion:

Sites using static hosting do not rank significantly higher or lower than sites using shared hosting on both Yahoo and Google.

This is merely a correlation study, so it cannot be determined from this study whether the leading search engines purposefully entertain this factor or not. The actual factors used may be far distant from the factor we studied, but the end result is that both of these search engines do, in fact, rank pages with a “window.open” command higher on average.

Author:
Jon Ricerca

Using Google
Thanks to a unique algorithm that produces most relevant results to any given query, Google has become, indisputably, the best search engine on the Internet. On the last count, Google has indexed over 4 billion pages and tackles around 200 million searches a day! A cluster of 100 thousand servers are used to store, crunch and spew out the query results with lightning speed that you are so accustomed to see.

This phenomenal growth has made Google from a garage startup to an Internet behemoth faster than any company has done before. The prodigies behind this unique search engine, Larry Page and Sergey Brin in the process already got enlisted themselves in billionaire club.

Google is no longer a mere search engine! It is increasingly broadening its offerings to include great new services and excellent tools. Among these services, most notables are News
– a news aggregation and searching service, Blogger
– an online journal-keeping solution, Froogle
– a marketplace for comparison shopping, Groups
– online discussion groups, Answers
– a place to get hard-to-find information for a price, etc.

Google also recently unveiled two more programs. Orkut – a social networking service and Gmail – a free web mail service. Orkut is an online community, where a person can participate in it by invitation from a member only.

If you constantly frown over limited space of your hotmail or Yahoo accounts because they get filled up with junk mails and force you to delete old messages frequently, you will love Gmail with its 1 GB of storage capacity. There are several great features available in Gmail system too. One of them, dubbed as Conversations, allow you to view all exchange mails with somebody, once you select one of the mails. Sorting and searching emails also become much easier with Gmail. The only catch is Gmail displays relevant ads – based on the keywords found in your email – on the right side of the screen when you view an email, much like Google displays ads when you view search results.

Although, Google is constantly adding new and extremely useful features, most of us unfortunately do not use all the capacities of the search engine itself. The following tips will make your Internet browsing more effective if even you are an avid net user.

Choose most specific search words
Google returns web pages that contain all the words in your query. If you would like to see the most relevant pages on the first page of your search result, be very specific with your choice of words. For example: if you would like to research on former NHL hockey player Makarov, you should start your search with Makarov not hockey player. Even better if you search for the words: hockey player Makarov. Because just the word Makarov will show web pages on “Makarov” a Russian-made handgun and numerous other people and products with the name Makarov. Refining your query in Google means adding more specific words to your initial search. In this example you will hit the right web pages if your search contains: NHL hockey player Makarov.

Sets – a new feature
What if you are looking for a pair of Valentino designer jeans but can’t recall the name of the designer? Query on Italian designer jeans may bring you the right result; however, there is a better tool that Google is planning to implement soon, called “Sets”.

Fill up the names of some designers that you remember in the given form such as Levis, Wrangler, Versace and click either of the two buttons and voila! You will get a list of designers name and probably, Valentino will be there. But bear in mind that this feature is still at Beta stage.

Calculator
The other day, I was sitting in a colleague’s office. She needed to calculate some basic stuffs and looking for her calculator on her desk. Much to her dismay, she could not find the calculator and started to fumble through her computer programs in her attempt to find Microsoft calculator. I noticed that she was online and the browser was open. I, politely, asked her whether she knew that Google could actually calculate most common mathematical expressions. It came out to be, she did not! She was just amazed after trying it herself. Google is even capable of unit conversion!

Give it a try!

Definition
If you are looking for a definition of a particular word or a phrase, Google is the best place to get it. In Google search box, write “define: the word or phrase” without the quotation marks and click search button. If there is a definition available for your search term you will, most certainly, get it. It’s a very useful feature for students and people, those who write research papers.

Synonyms
You may think that search engines are too dumb to show query results of the synonyms of your search term. It’s not so! At least, in the case of Google! If you use tilde “~” in front of a keyword in your search term, Google will bring results on the synonyms of that word as well.

Searching within a website
Another great feature of Google search engine allows you to make your query within a specific website. First you write your search term in the Google search box and then write “site: the website or domain name”. For example: if you are looking for word “Microsoft” within the website www.micromedia.com you will write: Microsoft site: micromedia.com.

Check backward links to your website
If you have a website, Google search engine also has a nice feature to show you which web pages are linking to yours. In the search box, write: Link: you website address.

Other important tips to remember
There is no need to use “AND”. Google always relate all the words in a search term with Boolean “and”.

However, if you would like to make your query for two words – one or another – you can use “OR”. You have to write “or” in capital letters to give it Boolean value.

Google is not case sensitive. You can write your search terms either in capital or in small letters. You can even mix them up.

Google omits most of the very common words, such as the, in, etc. If you, indeed, need to add a specific word forcefully, use plus (+) sign in front of that particular word. Same way, you can exclude a word from your search expression by putting minus (-) sign in front it.

If you would like to make a search on an exact phrase or expression, put the words within quotation marks. That way, your search result will show only those pages where the exact expression was found. In order to search the phrase: For whom the bell tolls, write “For whom the bell tolls” in the search box.

I’ll also suggest you to download the Google Toolbar. Apart from the search box and its ability to block pop-ups, Google Toolbar also shows the pagerank of the website you are visiting now. Pagerank is a system of evaluating web pages – developed by Google founders and used as the core of Google’s search engine algorithm. The Toolbar also includes feature with the ability to fill up online forms from stored information automatically. You can also keep your daily journal or blog right from the toolbar.

Summary
Much to net users delight, Google, in accordance with its ambitious mission statement to organize world’s information and make it universally useful and accessible, so far doing a great job by providing us the best search engine and extremely handy features and services. We can only hope that the flow of innovative ideas from Google will not slow down in future, when it becomes a public company.

Author Bio:
Nowshade Kabir is the founder, primary developer and present CEO of Rusbiz.com. A Ph. D. in Information Technology, he has wide experience in Business Consulting, International Trade and Web Marketing. Rusbiz is a Global B2B Emarketplace with solutions to start and run online business. You can contact him at nowshade@rusbiz.com, http://ezine.rusbiz.com.

Background
Search Engines use a number of criteria to decide what a given web page is all about. These criteria, which can be different from Search Engine to Search Engine, and which may even change over time, all aim at deciding how “relevant” a page is to a given user’s search. The Search Engine wants to return the results most relevant to a user’s search.

While the particulars may change over time, there are some criteria which remain constant. One of these is where the keywords are located on the page. Typically words that are located closer to the beginning of a page are considered more important than words that occur further down the page. This stands to reason:
think of a newspaper article, where the headline and the first paragraph usually have more “meat” than the rest of the story.

Another measure of relevance is “keyword density”. This is roughly the ratio of keywords on a page to the total number of words on a page. Having a higher ratio of keywords to total words will make a page more relevant for a search on those keywords.

When a Search Engine sends its robot out to look at your page, you want to make sure that it finds important information near the top of the web page, and that the page has a high keyword density. Sometimes there are complications, even when you have a lot of keyword-rich text early in the visible portion of your page. Two of these complications, extensive JavaScript code and extensive Cascading Style Sheet code, can be easily remedied.

JavaScript problem
Large amounts of JavaScript code can get in the way. Typically the largest amount of JavaScript code in a web page is found in the HEAD section. This is usually where variables and functions are defined, and so forth. Unfortunately, having a large amount of JavaScript code in a page can be detrimental to a page’s ranking in the Search Engines.

Since Search Engines tend to pay more attention to text at the beginning of a web page than they do to text further from the beginning, it stands to reason that if you have several dozen lines of JavaScript code at the top of the page, your real content is going to be further from the beginning of the page. Further down the page means less important to the Search Engine.

Keyword density is also important. Here again, if you have several hundred words of JavaScript code in a page, the keyword density�the ratio of your keywords to all the words in the whole page, both text and code�is going to be much lower. That means that some Search Engines will decide that your page is less relevant.

JavaScript solution
So how do you maintain JavaScript functionality, but make your page as Search Engine-friendly as possible? You put the JavaScript code into a separate file, and link it back to the web page.

The original page, “mypage.html”, may look something like this.

function helloWorld(){
alert(“Hello, World!”);
return;
}

…body of page…

Example 1–mypage.html with JavaScript code

We replace the JavaScript code with an instruction for the browser to go and grab the code from a separate file. The new page will look like this.

…body of page…

Example 2–mypage.html with JavaScript code offloaded

Note the addition of the “src” attribute to the SCRIPT tag. The value assigned to that attribute is the name of the external file that contains the JavaScript code. Typically, these external files will be given the filename extension “.js”
to indicate that they contain JavaScript code. Note also that there are both tags here, even though there is nothing between those tags.

A new page is then created that holds the code that was formerly held in the SCRIPT tags. We will call it “codepage.js”, and it looks like this.

function helloWorld(){
alert(“Hello, World!”);
return;
}

Example 3–codepage.js includes only JavaScript code

This new file doesn’t need any kind of HTML markup. It contains only the code that was originally held between the SCRIPT tags.

Style Sheet problem
In addition to JavaScript code, Style Sheet code can cause complications for Search Engines when it is put into a web page. For the same reasons as JavaScript–moving the important content further down the page, and diluting the keyword density–it is important to move Style Sheet code off of the page as well.

Style Sheet solution
The thought behind removing Style Sheet information from a page is very similar to that of offloading JavaScript; the syntax to do so is different.

The original page, “mypage.html”, may look something like this.

body{
background:white;
color:red;
}

…body of page…

Example 4–mypage.html with style sheet code

We want to move this code into a separate file, so we remove it from the
original page, and add a link to point to the separate file that now holds
the Style Sheet code.

…body of page…

Example 5–mypage.html with Style Sheet code offloaded

Note the addition of the LINK tag. This contains three types of information that the browser will need to reconstruct the page when a visitor looks at it. The “rel=’stylesheet'” attribute/value pair indicates that we are looking at a Style Sheet file here. The “href=’style.css'” attribute/value pair points to the external file that contains the Style Sheet information. Typically these external files will be given the filename extension “.css” to indicate that they contain Cascading Style Sheet code. You will replace the filename “style.css” with the name of the actual file into which you place your stylesheet code. Finally, we have to specify the MIME type of the file, in the “type=’text/css'” attribute/value pair.

A new page is then created that holds the code that was formerly held in the STYLE tags. We will call it “style.css”, and it looks like this.

body{
background:white;
color:red;
}

Example 6–style.css includes only Style Sheet code

This new file doesn’t need any kind of HTML markup. It contains only the code that was originally held between the STYLE tags.

Conclusion
By following these two procedures, you have now made your web page more friendly to the Search Engines. This means that the next time your page is spidered by the Search Engine robots, the important content on your page will be closer to the top of the page, and you will have a better keyword density. This will result in your page appearing higher in the Search Engine listings, and will probably bring more traffic to your website.

Author Bio:
Dale Goetsch is the Technical Consultant for Search Innovation Marketing, a Search Engine Promotion company serving small businesses and non-profits. He has over twelve years experience in software development. Along with programming in Perl, JavaScript, ASP and VB, he is a technical writer and editor, with an emphasis on making technical subjects accessible to non-technical readers.

You Had Me At the Search Engine
You’ve likely heard of the movie, Jerry Maguire, with its famous line, “You had me at hello.” Jerry Maguire was luckier than web sites we find in search engines. Many web sites don’t attract user devotion at the first word, let alone after scanning the home page.

How many times has this scenario happened to you? You’ve performed a search in a search engine or directory, reviewed the results and found a page description that fits your needs. When you click on the page that looks the most promising, you often arrive at the web site’s home page, where one or more things might happen:

1. The page loads slowly due to too many graphics, dynamic applications or scripts.

2. There are terms used on the page that you don’t understand.

3. It promotes products or services that were not mentioned in the page description from the search engine.

4. The products or services are unrelated to your search.

5. The page is “amateurish” in appearance and you’re not feeling confident about things like customer service, user privacy and security, experience with the product, or other credibility issues.

6. The page is so busy you don’t know where to go to next, or distractions caused you to forget your original mission.

7. Something has turned you off, such as swimsuit models that don’t look like you do, corporate images of businessmen, not women, or multiple animated things.

8. An invasive advertisement appeared that you had to click away so you could read the content underneath it.

9. The page loads but your scumware radar starts beeping like crazy or popup and security alerts appear.

10. You need a magnifying glass to read the content.

If a keyword search brings back an inside page, more common frustrations occur to drive people away from the web site.
They include:

1. There is no navigation to the rest of the web site.

2. There is navigation, but no visible, easy-to-locate link to the main home page or main web site.

3. A link “home” is offered, but sub-navigation is missing, so that the user must start at the beginning to figure out where they landed inside the web site.

4. Link labels do not explain what the web site is about, so the visitor may not be inspired to click around.

5. There is no suggested click path to follow. For example, if the page happens to be an article, it might be useful to say “Did you find this article helpful? Here are more articles that may interest you.”

We often forget that search engines index more than our home page. People often stumble into our web sites while searching for other things, linking from another web site, or receiving an email link from a friend. The starting place isn’t always home base.

So, how do you make a web site page approachable in a crowded room of search engine results? First, make sure your title tag is accurate. Every page requires a title tag unique to the content it represents. The home page is an overview page, so focus on the main goal, which is often also your primary keyword(s).

Next, write a genuine, honest description that isn’t all hype and glorified self-worship about your great website. If the site is going to sell something, what does it sell? Does it specialize? Avoid words like “unique”, “amazing”, and “special” because, frankly, everybody makes these claims.

It’s important to not “stuff” keywords in your title and description tags because these are displayed in search engines as your site or page description. When read by humans, they don’t make sense. People are getting wiser. They know that you are trying to get higher rank but it doesn’t mean your web site is any better in quality that those lower in search results.

Regardless of where the page is in your site, there are lots of ways to attract attention or generate curiosity so that your visitor becomes a potential customer, or least finds the content interesting enough to keep browsing around. My favorite part of discount stores are the displays where they toss clearance items, or the impulse “Oh yes, I forgot I needed that”-type items. You can do the same thing with your web site. Simply place the toenail clippers, scotch tape and calling cards out front where they’re easily seen. In other words, remind your visitors you carry the items they didn’t know they needed.

Here are some other ideas to try:

1. Provide a good reason to enter your site. Don’t expect anyone to take your word for anything. Offer incentives.

2. Put a visible text link to your sitemap on every page. Even your local shopping mall has a map with a “You Are Here” pointer.

3. Be forthcoming and descriptive with pictures. If you sell shoes, show the tread. If you design and make your own crafts, show close-ups of the detail and workmanship. The sunglasses line you offer is likely filled with brand name shades, but what types of faces will they complement? I have a difficult time buying artwork online because I can’t visualize the dimensions in my head. A picture of a framed version, hanging in a room with furniture, will help me understand what I’m trying to purchase. In a virtual world, you must go to great lengths to sell things people can’t touch or see in use.

4. Place words like “sale”, “getting started”, “first-time user”, “learn more”, “try now”, “buy now”, “free”, “download”, “we deliver” and “free shipping” on your pages, above the page “fold”.

5. On your home page, provide an introduction and suggestions for where your visitors might like to go next, based on their needs.

6. Search engines can only bring a visitor to your doorstep. It’s your job to grab them by the hand, invite them inside and show it off.

Author Bio:
Written by Kimberly Krause Cre8pc Edited by Jill Whalen of HighRankings.com

Link to get traffic – Not search engine rankings!
There have been a lot of changes on the web since I wrote the first edition of “Power Linking Your Way to 1 Million Hits” in 2002. Back then I told everyone that the only thing that will never change, despite search engine shake-ups and search technology improvements, is that links will always be the most important part of any website promotion campaign.

In fact, the people best able to withstand major changes and shifts in the search engines that affect their rankings are the people who have a broad, multi-faceted marketing campaign.

In order to weather any drops from single-sources of traffic to your site, you must have a lot of irons in the fire (links). People you have targeted as your best prospects should be able to find your site virtually everywhere they surf.

Web site owners who rely solely on search engine ranking are leaving 90% of the marketing pie on the plate! For long-term stability and steady, predictable traffic, you simply must broaden your reach and utilize a host of different publicity tactics in order to keep sales up.

One of the most effective tactics I talk about is article publishing. It is also one of the most misunderstood and abused tactics I teach. If you don’t get it, don’t do it. Below is my explanation of why we write articles and other short publications in the first place.

Publishing and Syndication of Your Articles, a lot of people miss the boat on this one and it’s too bad that many people see that articles and other published works are important, but they don’t produce quality work, therefore their work doesn’t get picked up by big web sites and newsletter owners.

You see, most people focus on article publishing as a way to get a link published to their site. (Solely for search engines to find) Problem is, once they have syndicated their article to tons of free content sites, all they have at the end of the day is a link pointing to their site.

No one is READING the articles! Why? Because, honestly, they are terrible. Or they are just short of being blatant ads. People pick up on an amateur article within the first sentence or two and move on. Didn’t you write your article to get traffic?

Produce shoddy work and there is no click on the link. There is no traffic produced. The webmasters who focus totally on getting links as a tool to increase their pagerank in Google are missing the point entirely.

The point of Power Linking and all the tactics in the system was never to get high search engine rankings. Getting ranked well in the search engines was and still is a BY-PRODUCT of a properly executed Power Linking campaign.

When I talk to my clients about getting links, what I am talking about is getting links placed in places where human beings will see them and click on them. Not just link directories which are created solely for boosting link popularity with Google.

So when you publish an article, take the time to think about what people in your market need or want to know and give it to them. And write a GOOD article!

Linking is not just something that looks like this: www.power-linking-profits.com. Real linking is networking and making connections with future customers on an emotional level through your publicity pieces.

Linking is about respect. You gain respect by being published and being seen as the expert in your field. And it goes without saying that your published work needs to stand up to basic quality expectations of savvy readers in your target market.

Come off looking like a hack who is only interested in getting a link published at the end of their cruddy article, and you lose all respect. So even if someone does click on your link, they have reservations about you right off the bat before they even get to your site. This is no way to sell products and services.

If you remember nothing else, please remember this: No matter what linking method you work on this week, keep in mind that the most important links of all are the links intended for real people to see and click on!

Get linked in content directories and on web pages that get hit by as many of your target prospects as possible. And link to get traffic, not search engine rankings!

People focus too much on search engine marketing. If you do your job as a marketer, you will naturally rank high in the search engines. There is no need whatsoever to focus your marketing campaign on search engines entirely.

Focus your marketing efforts on people, your customers, and you will have what I call “Natural Search Engine Rankings.” You see, Google wants the most relevant results. That’s where their bread is buttered. Well, what I have been trying to teach thousands of customers all this time is that you need to focus your marketing campaign on your customers so that you are the MOST relevant site on the net in your market.

Don’t worry about Google. They WANT you to be #1 if you deserve to be. How to be #1? By marketing to your customers directly on sites they surf the most and being the natural relevant result in their search.

Good search engine rankings will follow a great marketing campaign. By the time you get your #1 position on Yahoo though, you should have so much traffic and sales because of a properly implemented marketing campaign that you hardly notice you finally made it!

That’s the REAL power of linking.

Author Bio:
Jack Humphrey is the author of Power Linking 2: Evolution, now in it’s 4th revision at http://power-linking-profits.com. He is also the CEO of http://EquipMint.com, a membership site for anyone who sells anything online.

What Is A CMS?
A Content Management System (CMS) allows you to add, edit or delete content to your website without having to create and format the pages manually. All the pages get generated on the fly, the CMS application picks the template, adds the headers and footers, generates the menus and blocks for your page and then automatically renders the page.

The main reason people hesitate to use CMS is because they think a CMS site will not perform well with search engines. But when used properly, CMS can actually help with scoring points with the search engines. This article shows you how.

We all know that content is king and that the primary function of today’s Internet is to deliver content to those that are seeking it. CMS allows you to easily manage multiple pages on your site, categorized into appropriate topics and categories.

While it is a fact that most free CMS’s available were not designed with the search engine spider in mind, CMS applications are flexible and can be tweaked to help you gain a top rankings with search engines.

How Do You Customize A CMS Application To Improve Search Engine Rankings?
First, there is the issue of dynamic URLs. Most CMS’s will generate URLs with parameters embedded into them. As an example, each article link on your site may look like this:

http://yoursite.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=35&SESSIONID=200dbf5df81843102bc2ba2560207841

Not only does it look ugly, the search engines probably won’t spider it. It’s is best to cast that URL, into something like this:

http://yoursite.com/article35.html

This can be achieved by making use of the web server module called mod-rewrite. To use this, you’ll need to add a rule to your .htaccess file using regular expressions to convert the URL. The following 2 lines added to your .htaccess file (in your document root) will achieve the URL conversion for the example above.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^article([1-9][0-9]*).* modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=$1

For more details on mod-rewrite, have a look at
http://powersitesystem.com/article1.html

The session id is usually not necessary in the URL. Most users have cookies enabled so CMS can store the session id using cookies. URL rewriting for session maintenance can and should be turned off in your web server settings.

Which CMS Application Do You Use?
For my purposes, the PostNuke Open Source Content Management System works well. But there are many CMS applications available that are open source and are easy to install. To access a review of the various CMS’s available see http://biz-whiz.com/article225.html – For a hands-free CMS setup with training to help build a search engine friendly website see http://powersitesystem.com

Site Navigation
Generally SEO’s feel that having the navigation links at the bottom or on the right side of your page allow you to position your optimized content towards the beginning of your html page, but users are accustomed to naturally look for a navigation menu towards the top left of the page. Attention to the anchor text used in the navigation links is important because these links will appear on all the pages of your site.

Islands of Related Content
When you add content to your CMS, you would classify it into a topic. A CMS like PostNuke, allows you to choose a category and a topic for each article that you add. The CMS will automatically create links in the chosen category page and topics page. If you define your topics and your categories properly, you can create a brilliant linking strategy.

Conclusion
Setting up a CMS managed website that can achieve good search engine rankings is possible if you take care of the key factors as outlined above. For proof that a properly customized CMS application can help you to gain top search engine rankings see the links in the signature below.

Author Bio:
Mufad has successfully setup a high ranking work at home community that ranks on top for “work at home” and “home business” at http://biz-whiz.com using CMS. He provides his clients with a template driven website setup using a search engine friendly CMS at http://powersitesystem.com

How to Use Your Google API Key as Your Secret Weapon
Just over a year ago, Google.com began to provide access to its’ web search API to programmers and developers. This provided them with a way to utilize the optimum resources of Google’s database of listings. At first, there were few practical applications that would help the average webmaster. However, there are now plenty of ways that any site owner with an API key can benefit from these innovative programs, and web applications.

And since the licensing of the API restricts the creation of tools for commercial use, these resources will not cost you anything but some well-invested time. In the next few minutes, you’ll learn how to use this information to your advantage.

Let’s back up a moment and get some of the terminology out of the way. This won’t be a tech-guru explanation, more like an oversimplification to give you a basic idea in layperson’s terms.

An API means application programmer interface. Basically, the Google API gives programmers access to Google’s database of listings, which they can then use to create web applications.

When you get an API key it simply gives you the ability to access the interface the programs are based on. Therefore, your key will allow you to plug into the application they’ve created, for a pre-determined number of queries.

So now you can harness the power of Google’s database to your site’s advantage.

How?
First, get a Google API key.

The myriad of ways sites are using Google API keys are astounding. Some of them require you to provide your own API key to use them. You can get it at no charge here:

http://www.google.com/apis/

Your queries are limited to 1000 per day. But that’s more than enough for most web site owners. For some of the tools, you won’t even need it, as the developers seem to be allowing you to run tools using their own keys.

Don’t worry, you don’t need to be a software genius for this key to be useful to you. Developers have already built tools for you to use, all you’ll have to do is find the sites where their online applications are housed, and if necessary, plug in your key.

Think of it as a universal password. You’ll get the key via email, then all you’ll need to do is cut and paste it in the box provided. Which brings us to the next piece in the puzzle.

Tools
There are literally hundreds of places you can use the Google API key.

Some people have developed plug-ins you can use with database-driven sites. Many have developed tools that will help you increase or study your present rankings in Google, resulting in more targeted traffic to your site.

My favorite tool helps you study countless different pieces of data found through Google via email, automating hours of research. But we’ll come back to that later.

I’ve already written a step by step guide to help you increase your current Google rankings. Instead of repeating my brief review of those sites here, I’ve posted that article to a page that you can read at http://www.freetrafficdirectory.com/increaserankings – it’s
a free online guide that you can start using today.

I wanted to get that out of the way so we can talk about some of the other sites I’ve discovered since then.

One site will search Google for you and compile a site map using the pages it finds for your site in Google. Visit it here:

http://www.tele-pro.co.uk/scripts/google/indexer_info.htm

You can study the relationship between your sites and others using GARBO (stands for Google API Relation Browsing Outliner). This can help you find sites to trade links with, or sites you can link to from your site to provide more information to your visitors, and otherwise study the relationship between two sites, as told by Google. Read more about it here:

http://www.staggernation.com/garbo/readme.html

Want to query only the newest additions, for research or for tracking purposes? Try Goofresh here:

http://www.researchbuzz.org/archives/001405.shtml

You can also add Google searches to your site. It’s the number one search engine, and especially if you have a member’s area, it can help make your site “sticky”, meaning that your visitors will find themselves coming to your site over and over to use your resources. You can find the script to add this to your site here:

http://scriptsearch.com/details/8886.html

Another helpful Google API Tool can help you get users to search your site using Google. It uses PHP, and can be found here:

http://www.thinkbling.com/scripts.php

To find more applications on your own, you’ll first want to look around at the sites I have already mentioned, as many of them have multiple web based applications developed with their access to Google’s API, or will in the near future.

Summary
The reason I wrote this article is because it takes a bit of digging to find some of the best ones. Here is a good starting places that I found, naturally, through Google:

http://www.soapware.org/directory/4/services/googleApi/applications

If you want to search Google itself, you might try search terms like “Google API applications”, “Google API software” or “Google API scripts”. You can also start from “Google API” and search within results for implementations or the word “key”.

To read part two of this article, and learn how to combine the Google API key with tools that can traffic to your site, visit http://www.freetrafficdirectory.com/apikey2

Author Bio:
Subscribe to Free Traffic Secrets to find out how to get the Googlebot spider sooner at ftdsecrets-subscribe@topica.com or visit http://www.freetrafficdirectory.com to get more time-tested information on getting Free Quality Traffic to Your Site.

Beyond Keyword Optimization
The rate of change online used to be fun. Chasing the cutting edge was an exciting occupation with limited accountability. But now ROI, quarterly budgets, and the need to grow sales AND profits have replaced the cutting edge as the object of our efforts. Yet despite the transition to more traditional business goals and outcomes, the rate change remains the same.

Take keyword buys. This is still a relatively new phenomena, and many businesses are only just beginning to develop an approach to extract the benefits. Nevertheless returns have already been compressed as the cost of key words has quickly been bid up to their marginal rates of return – and in some case beyond. The ease with which results can be tracked has allowed the market to be extremely efficient in pricing keywords, making it harder and harder for the buyers of words to generate a return.

Pockets of gold still exist. Keywords that have been overlooked by competitors can still produce outsized returns. But these pockets will only shrink over time as more buyers enter the market chasing the same end customers.

To continue to extract value from keywords, marketers are going to have to turn inward. For most companies, getting the traffic is seen as the whole of the equation. But just as important is what you do with the traffic. So even as we are only starting to get the hang of keyword buys, we need to tackle landing page optimization.

To date, landing page optimization has been too hard and too expensive to generate a return. But with the returns on keywords contracting and the advent of new optimization tools, the math behind such efforts looks better everyday.

To date, most companies purchasing keywords have to settle with dropping a potential customer off at the home page. In some cases, they can send them to a category level page or to a particular product page. Going beyond this to a more customized landing page that better matches the keyword is simply too taxing in terms of time, people, and money. Simply getting the requisite page changes through IT is often a sufficient barrier in and of itself.

Some helpful services
But solutions exist for these problems. Services like Offermatica from Fort Point and Optimost offer tools that allow marketers and merchants to cost-effectively manipulate a page to reflect any number of necessary variants. Now a home page can show language and featured products that clearly tie to the keyword that brought a potential customer to the site. Even product level pages can be improved, be it through highlighting particularly relevant product features, adjusting pricing and promotion, or showing related products — all of which tie back to the source keyword.

In the case of Offermatica, the tool works as a hosted application. Portions of a page are defined as “mBoxes” that are then filled based on the keyword source. The content can be anything you would normally put on a web page – text, images, links, forms, etc. Because it is a hosted application, it bypasses the need for internal IT while providing the responsiveness needed to keep up with rapidly changing marketing requirements. And best of all, both Offermatica and Optimost are priced as a service – eliminating both difficulty and cost as an excuse for doing nothing.

Keywords – at least the ones that work – are not going to get any cheaper. They will remain a valuable tool for driving qualified traffic. But increasingly buying the right ones will only be the first step. Generating a return on the resulting traffic through landing page optimization will be the key to continuing to generate positive returns.

Author:
Robert Schmultz

Nigritude Ultramarine
Search engine optimization experts are having fun with Google. Experts, with DarkBlue.com at the helm, are holding a contest to determine how Google really works. Experts are competing, with the goal of optimizing a webpage for a non-sensical phrase: ‘nigritude ultramarine’. On May 7th, the day the terms ‘nigritude ultramarine’ was announced, typing the phrase into Google generated no search listings.
Search engine optimizers hoping to define themselves as industry leaders are all vying for the number one spot.

Others see the contest as an opportunity to test theories and experiment without jeopardizing existing traffic. Some webmasters are leery at staking their professional reputation on a contest with an undefined number of participants.

As an added incentive for search engine experts and webmasters to participate and work their magic, DarkBlue.com is giving away an Apple Mini iPod� and a Sony Flat Screen Monitor to anyone who can take their page to #1 for the phrase ‘nigritude ultramarine’. The contest is scheduled to run for two months and will conclude on July 7th, 2004.

Magical Phrase
The phrase generating the frenzy, ‘nigritude ultramarine’, is likely to bring out the best and the worst in optimization tactics. The black magic optimization techniques that are suspected in having sites banned from Google are likely to be exercised, along with tried and true optimization practices. Immediately after the contest was announced experts snapped up hyphenated domain names and began tweaking their text. Many experts were surprised to see how quickly ‘nigritude ultramarine’ made its way into the Google’s listings, with new listings appearing daily it is clear that the contest is well underway.

The experts will be at the mercy of Google and any new algorithms implemented over the course of the next two months. Experts will have to anticipate and update on a regular basis, to ensure that they are able to obtain and retain a strong listings.

Results
The results of the contest are unlikely to have any lasting effects, as Google will likely implement filters that will prevent search engine experts from reaping the rewards of any tactics that are found to be effective. Regardless the sense of adventure and a method of testing Google are intriguing.

Author Bio:
Sharon Housley manages marketing for NotePage, Inc. http://www.notepage.net a company specializing in alphanumeric paging, SMS and wireless messaging software solutions. Other sites by Sharon can be found at http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com, and http://www.small-business-software.net

How to lower your client acquisition cost
The whole purpose of search engine marketing is to attract new prospects and buying customers. In certain cases however, your sales could become limited, for the simple reason that not everybody is seeking the products or services your company offers. Across the World Wide Web, if there are only 6,000 searches a month for the keywords �industrial pump rebuilding�, it will be hard for you to make more people search for that keyword phrase when Wordtracker tells us there has been only 6,000 searches for those three keywords in any given month or period.

Even if you were to buy the keywords �industrial pump rebuilding�, you cannot expect them to appear more than about 6,000 times a month, which will limit your page impressions to that same number of 6,000.

One efficient way to turn around this problem is to lower your client acquisition cost (CAC). If you can successfully achieve that goal, it will effectively boost your ROI for the search engine marketing campaigns you are currently managing.

The breakeven point
If your company sells a product for $25, there is normally a percentage or dollar amount of that total price which is profit. Using information from your search engine marketing ad campaign, if you actually spend $25 on advertising, you will actually need to acquire at least one new client at $25 just to break even.

In such an example, $25 would be your maximum client acquisition cost for this particular ad campaign.

Since search engine marketers usually want to maximize their ROI on their campaigns, to increase your profit level and by the same way reduce your CAC, some will try to reduce the unit acquisition cost set in this example ($25) to a lower level.

Importance of making some �road checks� along the way
Before committing any kind of significant ad budget to any campaign, an experienced search engine marketer will perform a few �road checks� along the way. This single step is critical to the overall success and ROI of your ad campaign, and will act as a �test-bed� for all your online marketing efforts.

One great way to start such a road check is by utilizing Google�s AdWords program. For only $ 5.00 you can set up a new PPC (Pay per Click) ad program, where your listings can appear within less than 30 minutes in most cases. Depending on your industry, and depending on the general level of competition there is in your market, it is suggested that you start with a low bid price, say fifty cents to a dollar. You might even try an initial bid price of less than fifty cents if you think it is appropriate to do so. This is one area where trial and error can actually save you money.

It is extremely important that you accurately monitor all of your road checks along the way, since you want to learn as much as you can from these tests. Failing to do this could seriously hinder your overall ROI later, once your ad campaign starts maturing.

More ways to �test-drive� your ads
As you delve deeper into your test runs, it will become more and more important to check your click-through reports (CTR) provided by your paid inclusion or paid placement search engine. Just log into your Google AdWords account and verify your number of clicks, page impressions, click-through rates and also check your single click fees for each and every keyword or keyword phrase in all of your ad campaigns.

One word of caution: CTR�s don�t always deliver the tell tale signs you need to discover or won�t always give you a true or accurate picture of your campaign profitability. The best tool to achieve that goal is to utilize a good ROI tracking system that will carefully monitor all your sales data, and produce individual reports for every product you sell on every search engine you are using, along with every keyword or keyword phrase used in your campaign.

Putting to work those conversion-tracking tools
No search engine marketing campaign can ever be complete or efficient without an accurate system of measuring conversion tracking. It�s great to get targeted traffic, but if those prospects don�t convert into buying customers, this will have a damaging effect in the overall profitability of any online ad campaign.

Today, most paid inclusion or paid placement search engine offers conversion tracking to most of their advertisers, large or small. Most of those tracking packages are good and can spell a marked improvement in a campaign.

However, if you are running many individual ad campaigns, spread across many different search engines, you should consider a third-party ROI and conversion-tracking tool available from a number of good vendors.

Conclusion
Significantly lowering your client acquisition costs for all of your online marketing campaigns can be easily implemented if the tips and techniques given in this article are followed. Remember that time can work for you, as it can very well work against you, if your competition is harder at work than you are.

Accurately measuring your ad performance against certain benchmarks you have developed in-house, by a third-party or by an experienced search engine marketing firm can make a big difference in the ROI your campaigns can really deliver.

Make good use of today�s campaign management tools available, either by buying the commercially available software needed for your application, or by using third-party management and monitoring programs offered for that task.

____________
Reference:
“Search Engine Advertising” by Catherine Seda.
347 pages. New Riders Publishing. Indianapolis, IN. 46240.

Author:
Serge Thibodeau or Rank For Sales