Web Moves Blog

SEO Tips
Did you know that, before search engine users visit a specific Web site, they already have made four separate and distinct choices:

Choice number one: They choose to use the Internet to find a specific product or service, to research an issue of interest to them or solve a problem, as much in their professional careers as in their personal lives.

Choice number two: They choose one of the five to six major search engines on the Internet to launch their search, the most popular by far being Google.

Choice number three: They choose a particular keyword or phrase as the basis of their search, trying to narrow it down as best they can.

Choice number four: They discriminate among the first ten search results on the same, first page. Then they take their final decision as to wich web site (or company) will get their business.

These are your ultimate targeted site visitors. These web visitors are already fifty to sixty percent of the way toward reaching a final buying decision as a result of having taken the initiative to use a good search engine to investigate or research a specific product or service. This is exactly the visitor that you want to attract to your web site. These are real, serious buyers.

Your Ultimate Strategy
Did you know that, after investing thousands, sometimes hundred of thousands of dollars developing a Web site, businesses often discover that the site is invisible in the major search properties. Failing to take your Web site’s search engine and directory visibility into consideration when making site development decisions is an untimely and very expensive mistake. As a direct consequence, companies must either reinvest in a post-launch redesign of their site, or accept the extremely limited results that they will achieve with their site, if any.

By recognizing both the importance and the need of search engine optimization in the development of your Web site, you hold a significant advantage over your competition. As an example, after making the decision to implement a website positioning strategy, one Rank for Sales client now maintains a sizeable advantage over its competitors. Boasting significantly more and higher rankings in every major search engines including key players such as Google, AltaVista and Yahoo! Because of their decision to implement a website optimization strategy, our client has since closed a number of new business deals through search, including a recent $1.1 million sale that they acquired directly through a targeted search referral.

Users of Internet search engines are on a “mission” to solve a “problem.” How quickly they are able to find an answer to their problem is directly related to customer satisfaction. How quickly they are able to find your website, if they are searching for you by name, is directly related to their opinion of your brand. Where and if your website places itself in a priority position on top of the SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages) is entirely up to your site’s optimization features, or lack thereof. So a lifetime relationship with your brand is very literally at stake every time someone conducts a query via a search engine.

Divide And Conquer
Did you know that, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be a very controversial and hotly disputed subject and is actually a discipline finding itself in a constant state of movement. Major search engines such as Yahoo!, Google, AltaVista and the others are relentlessly changing their search engine ranking algorithms and related criteria on which they determine what factors they consider important for delivering the most relevant results to user search queries.

These criterias have an extremely powerful influence on your search engine rankings. What’s more, partnerships change, new search properties emerge, mergers or buyouts happen and others disappear altogether. All of these changes can directly impact your search engine rankings. Fortunately, there are a number of helpful resources where you can learn more about increasing and maintaining your website’s search engine rankings and keep up-to-date on the latest trends and changes in the search engine industry.

Author:
Serge Thibodeau of Rank For Sales

Introduction
Recognizing, identifying and requesting reciprocal links is a bit more complicated than it used to be in the past. Rank for $ales knows that one important ingredient to a successful SEO reciprocal link exchange campaign, particularly in the case of Google and its PageRank algorithm, is increasing the quantity of web sites providing plain-text reciprocal links to your site. Web sites with related and similar content will provide more benefit to your own site’s rankings than will several links from less relevant sources, wich proves again the importance of link and content relevancy.

The unique goals of a search engine optimization professional then lies in the precise task of identifying relevant pages that will link to your site, effectively yielding you quality, inbound links. One must be careful to not fall into the ever-growing quantity of link farms or web sites that offer little, if any content that is of value to your site visitors or to the engines.

How To Start On The Right Foot
Initiate your reciprocal link exchange program by developing a site theme, topic or title that you will use as part of your link-request invitations. Many sites limit the length and syntax of this variable so try to keep it short, ideally less than 25 characters and make it directly relevant to your site’s content. Because most sites use this theme or title to hyperlink to your site, be sure to include the one or two keywords or a short keyphrase that is of the most value to your optimization program.

The exact keywords that link to your site are just as valuable as the link itself when determining the overall impact of a backlink on search engine rankings. When that is done, develop a site description in a manner similar to that above. Try to keep your description under 150 characters as some online submission sites could eliminate some of your most important keywords after that point. When writing your site’s description, try not to make superlative statements and don’t risk sounding spammy by simply listing some keywords placed here and there.

Another important suggestion for your initial preparation phase is to devise a way of recording your requests and submissions. You will soon realize that, like us, an effective reciprocal link exchange program that really works can leave a lot of email trails that can rapidly overwhelm you in a short time. At Rank for $ales, we use a complex spreadsheet system we developed wich is tailored for each of our clients. Our system basically identifies the inbound links and URL’s and the dates on which they were originally submitted. It’s not totally imperative, but accurately recording each link partner will help prevent submitting to the same site more than once, thus reducing any wasted time as well as almost eliminating the potential for upsetting your potential link partners.

Determining Potential Link Partners
Where do you go to find content-related and industry-related web sites that will link with your site? Well, you can start by searching a popular engine such as Google or another, and entering key phrases such as add a site, suggest a site, add link etc. Be certain to request exact search results as these key phrases are often included on small directories and categorized as such on certain link pages. We have found on many occasions that this method will return sites at which you’ll submit your site through an online form itemized by category, title, description and other relevant information.

Next, your research should concentrate on key phrases such as industry links, where the word industry is an important keyword related to your site’s industry or field of interest. You might discover that this search technique returns more results for smaller linked pages that will require you to email the webmaster for possible inclusion. Start writing a list of the sites you find relevant to yours and then you can come back later.

Sparsing And Fine-Tuning Your List
Keep in mind that, of all the web sites you have written on that list, not all might be willing to provide a link to your site. Their reasons or possible objections could be personal or otherwise- whatever the reason, you should not insist or become offended at a refusal. Just remember that a good link exchange program can help you by a large factor in the Google Page Rank algorithm. You should install the Google Toolbar on your browser if it’s not done yet, so that you can view PageRank when visiting any web site. Do not submit your site for inclusion on any page with a PageRank of two or lower as links from these sites might actually have a negative effect on your optimization campaign.

Your next step is to determine whether a search engine crawler (or spider) will be able to discover the link as one going to your site or web page. A true backlink is one that directs from visible text directly to your site. Always keep in mind that a text link is ten times more efficient than any gif or jpg image link. Search engines cannot see or read images like humans can. What they crave on is pure, old-fashioned text. Now many small online directories use scripts to organize their data. So instead of actually providing a link to http://www.yoursite.com/ they effectively format their directory to include a number of links in the form of http://theirsite.com/cgi-bin/links/jump.cgi?12345. Though click through traffic is directed to the same place with both formats, we found on most occasions that the latter provides no real value to your optimization program per se. As a hint, a link that opens as a new page from the referring site is a valid link.

The Actual Link Request Process Or Invitation
On many industry-related web sites and others, most have what is called a links page or partners page, such as our own web site wich you can see at the bottom of any of our pages on this web site. Many links pages of these sites allow you to submit your site’s information to the webmaster through an online form. When completing these forms be sure to provide complete and accurate information. Evaluate your options when confidential contact information such as address, phone number and email address is optional. You don’t want your name or email address put on any solicitation list or spam-related sites. However, providing a valid email address allows means for the webmaster to contact you should they have questions or comments concerning your site. You could also consider creating a temporary email address that you would use for link submissions exclusively.

In the on-going development of your reciprocal link exchange program (RLEP), you’ll come across some links pages that do not display clear instructions for submitting your site. Some of these sites might not be true-to-form link pages but rather lists of personal favorites or similar theme-category web sites with little relevancy to your site. In either case, it doesn’t hurt to ask to have your site reviewed. Just remember that relevancy is the name of the game in RLEP and to that end, write the webmaster a basic letter that includes your site’s URL, title as well as the URL of the page on which you would like inclusion. Many webmasters are in charge of multiple sites and might not know to which site you’re referring too so make certain there are no mistakes or misunderstandings. Be concise yet thorough with the information you provide in that email in order to minimize the effort it takes the targeted webmaster to summarize and consequently list your web site on his or her’s. Begin your email with a friendly greeting and end with a statement inviting the addressee to contact you with any questions concerning your site. A polite and personal message is less likely to be confused with spam-reciprocal-link requests, as most webmasters today are constantly flooded with spam messages.

Polish Off And Perfect Your Strategy
The last step is your most important: personally thank all positively responding webmasters who agreed to your reciprocal link invitation. Regardless of any frustration or confusion you may encounter in the process of your link exchange program, always remember that other websites are actually doing you a favor by posting your link, even if you post their’s on your site.

Author Bio:
Serge Thibodeau of Rank For Sales

The Early Evolution Of A New Online Business
Do you know what is wrong with doing business on the Internet? Oh sure, spam is a real issue for most people, but it only emphasizes the point I would like to share with you today.

See the problem is locating productive methods of advertising.

Most people are of the mind that the website itself is the only form of advertising one actually needs. But when they realize that getting listed in the search engines in a way that will actually drive traffic to their website is much harder than it seems, then people are driven to find a better way to advertise. Herein lies the problem.

If you were to build your website and wait for people to come, the only page views that you would see on your page counter are those that you have made to the site yourself to be sure that it was truly working as designed. Are you going to be buying your own products? Certainly not. You need paying customers to come visit your website so that you can begin to see some sales.

Then you submit your site to the search engines. If you were to wait for a time to see who comes from the search engines, you might notice in your server logs that the search engine spiders came to visit shortly after submitting your site to them. Although you have submitted your site and noticed the spider came to your domain, you may not see your link in the spider’s parent search engine for several more days, weeks or months.

The long and short of it is that although you are working in the real-time environment of the web, your new site may not receive traffic by its own merits until a good six months after you first build it. That is not exactly what you had in mind, is it?

The next thing you might notice is that when your link begins appearing in the search engine results, your search keywords will not present your website in the top 200 results. Bear in mind that appearing in the top 200 results means nothing in the
real world. Few people will click through to see results deeper than the first 20 results.

Separate Yourself From The Masses
Most people will not begin to generate an income from their online endeavors until they have spent some time beating their heads against the brick wall. However, when you know what to do, you can begin to turn a slow profit until you learn enough to begin to earn an actual living online.

The trick is in learning what to do to generate sales and turn a profit.

This is the step in the process that you should begin to depart from the ways of the masses. Most turn to free advertising or non-productive paid advertising.

Advertising should not be free. Oh sure, there is free advertising available, but good advertising is not free!

In the real world of advertising, you can place free ads all day long, but your free ads may generate only one visitor for every 10,000 ad exposures. And then notice that it may take 200 visitors to get one sale. Under this formula, You must be exposed to 2,000,000 people to get one sale! In the free advertising world, those free ads may have cost you 50 labor hours to turn one sale. Unless your profit margin is in the range of $350 to $1000 per sale, then you will not be earning what your online time should be worth to you!

Paid advertising on the other hand is often very different. Paid advertising models that have been around for a while generally produce profits for their customers.

The Lesson About Paid Advertising
If you learn nothing else from this article, let me share with you a very important lesson about paid advertising.

People will not continue to buy advertising in one medium unless that medium continues to produce the sales and profits the advertiser seeks and needs.

By investing some time and research in different advertising mediums, you will begin to notice that certain types of advertisers return to the medium again and again.

News Flash: Advertisers return to an advertising medium over and again because the medium works… the medium continues to generate enough sales to pay the advertising costs and then some.

What Advertising Methods Are Proven
The effectiveness of one advertising medium over another is entirely dependent upon what type of product or service is being sold.

If you were to take a moment to “think outside of the Internet box,” you would soon realize that the advertising medium with the highest long-term performance and proof of concept is any medium that existed in the pre-Internet world, a.k.a. offline advertising.

Magazine and newspaper classifieds have been used by mail-order businesses since the beginning of print advertising. These mediums have proven themselves very successful throughout their long history. When you realize that an Internet business is a lot
like a normal offline mail-order business, you will understand what I am trying to tell you.

While there are a few online advertising mediums that have been proven over the long haul, they are few and far between. There is simply too much misinformation on the web about what advertising medium’s work, to know just where you should spend your online advertising dollar.

My experience has shown that the best place online to place your advertising dollars is in search engine placement, pay-per-click search engines, some ezine advertising, and creating articles for the free-reprint marketplace.

While some companies have seen success with pop-up ads and banner advertising, neither is suitable for my purposes. And unless you are dealing with tangible, inexpensive products, they are probably not suitable to your purposes either.

In Conclusion
You must take time to study what works and what does not. Too many people who own an online business are stuck in the mindset that they must advertise in the online environment only. The truth is that you should consider all forms of advertising —
both online and offline advertising. And most importantly, you should forget free advertising and focus your time and effort on paid advertising that works.

Author Bio:
John Calder is the owner and editor of http://www.TheEzine.Net
If you are only going to do one thing today, that should be to subscribe to John’s newsletter! The fact is, Misinformation is killing your chance of becoming successful in an online business. Subscribe Today and get real information YOU can use to help build your online business today! mailto:news@ezinedot.net

Website Traffic – Introduction
Besides using search engine traffic, It is possible to generate a steady stream of website traffic by repackaging existing marketing collateral and content that might be
collecting dust or virtual dust on your desk or hard drive and giving it away free.

If you’re wondering why anyone would want to give away his or her work for free, it’s called viral marketing. Some readers will download your ebooks or reports and then send them to friends, family and associates, especially if you invite them to. Client By Design has successfully used this method of traffic generation to pull thousands of
visitors to our site and our client’s sites.

Just think of it as distributing your business card or catalog to targeted visitors and then getting others to give you referrals at no cost. This can lead to enormous amounts of visitor traffic, phone calls and orders.

Finding Content
You might be sitting on a goldmine of information that your site visitors need. Whether it’s unused or just some older information in digital form (word docs, text files, notes,
power points, etc or unwritten work) you probably have a lot of shareable info that you can repackage to either sell or give away.

If you took time in the past to write or compose it, it probably has greater value than you realize. So revisit your “my documents” folder or sift through some of your old files and look for original info: old newsletters, articles, research reports, product catalogs, etc that you feel would still have relevance to web site visitors today. Ebooks and reports can have a few pages, as little as one to five or as much as 200 or more pages of info depending on the message delivered.

Distribution Formats & Readying Documents For Distribution
Method 1: The self-executable ebook route:

Self-executable ebooks are compiled software applications that readers can use without meeting any additional requirements. A reader can simply launch (open) an ebook of this type and begin enjoying it right away without needing to download anything else.

These ebooks are popular because of their interactive capabilities, compact file size and ease of distribution. You can compile a full color ebook of magazine quality, with full color photos, compress it and end up with a file small enough to be sent by email.

Be advised, though, that it’s not a good idea to send exe files through email, unless they’re zipped since anti-virus programs and even some ISPs will block or delete them. In fact, it’s probably best to send the user a link where they can download the file themselves, until anti-virus and blockers become more sophisticated.

If you know how to make web pages, you can just use your favorite html editor to create web pages with useful interactive content. Once created, save the files on your
hard- drive. Be sure to include an introduction, table of contents, graphics and links to your web site (if you have one)and contact information so your readers can
contact you for more info, interviews or more ebooks.

Once your pages are complete, you will need to compile your files into standalone format with an ebook compiler. While there are quite a few compilers on the market, I have found
two to be extremely useful. I use Ebook Generator or Ebook Creator to generate ebooks or reports.

One neat branding feature, both share, is the ability to create splash-screens that come up, once your files have been opened. These screens can hold a special thank you
message, logo or some other notification that you want readers to see.

Ebook compilers are powerful tools that will help you get your ideas or info distributed online in a short time. Visit: http://www.clientbydesign.com/ecovers.html to learn more about these products

Method 2: The PDF Route
If you don’t know anything about html or creating web pages, you can type your documents with a word processor or desktop publisher, add some nice graphics and then convert your documents to PDF files. PDF stands for portable document format and is a widely accepted standard for content distribution. PDFs are easy to distribute via download or email, depending on size and look great, if you create your original documents the right way.

To open and view PDFs, your readers will need to have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on their systems. Acrobat reader is free and available for download on the web. It also
comes pre-installed on most new PCs or comes distributed with just about any commercial software purchased these days. In other words, it would be rare for anyone to not-have acrobat installed on his or her system.

I use Win2PDF (www.win2pdf.com) to handle my PDF conversions. It’s real easy to use, since all I have to do is select it as my printer and print to it when I’m ready
to create my file. It converts my document into a PDF and saves them to my hard drive ready for distribution. There are also more expensive and even some free software that
you can use to create your own PDFs, including Adobe Acrobat (a PDF creation tool) www.adobe.com

–Tip It’s a great idea, to include your web site address or product/service links in your PDF (perhaps as a footer on every page) so readers can contact you for more
information, order products or to download more ebooks/reports. Your readers will be able to click on your links from directly within your document and, if they are
on the Internet they can visit your web site(s) to view more resources or to buy more products.

What To Include
Regardless of the method you choose to publish with, you should:

1. Include copyright information (example: C 2002-2003 Richard Bailey).
2. Include information regarding permission or NOT to reprint or redistribute your materials.
3. Include a table of contents for long documents.
4. Include your contact information (email, web site url, phone, etc).
5. Give credit where credit is due for any materials that you include in your ebooks, if you didn’t write the materials yourself.
6. Never break copyright laws – theft of other people’s work is downright wrong and can lead to severe legal penalties. If you are in doubt, just contact the author to get
permission to quote or use their material.

Promote And Distribute Your Ebook
Now that you’re ready to get your ebook out to the public, you will need a way to promote and distribute it.

The best method is to setup a web page that collects the user’s contact info and then, once they submit the form, you can take them to a download page or you can send an email download link via auto-responder.

Note: The auto-responder method is my method of choice since some spam (unsolicited email) weary site visitors and also a few frauds will type phony email addresses to get your free download. With auto-responders they won’t get anything unless they give a valid address. Plus, as an added bonus, you will have their contact info to follow-up with after they have downloaded your ebook. Use this info to invite them to subscribe to your newsletter or to get more products. Just be reasonable, not pushy and don’t sell or give away your visitor’s info, that’s the fastest way to a bad reputation, so always give explicit instructions on how to cancel (opt-out of) future email notices from you.

Be sure to encourage readers to forward your download link or a copy of your ebook or report to everyone they know or anyone interested in the same topic. Just tell them not to send to strangers.

Imagine selling products this way via free referral marketing. Or imagine putting just the first chapter of your ebook or document in a free download and having hundreds or thousands of people requesting to see the rest of your work or to learn more about your products or services all because of one free download. It could happen.

Be sure to promote links to download your ebook or report in your search engine, banner ad and other marketing efforts

As you have read in this article, you can reuse, repackage and publish your content and then give it away.

Author: Richard Bailey
To learn more about going the extra route of distributing and selling ebooks and reports online and also how to create audio ebooks in minutes–instead of weeks, please send email to esdinfo@clientbydesign.com or visit www.clientbydesign.com/instant-audio.html

Press Release SEO – Media Kit Linking Campaigns
Search Engine Optimization requires strategizing as well as optimizing for SEO firms seeking online visibility for their clients. Last month a client of our firm sought
counsel on their web strategy for an already optimized site. We had tightened up their keywords, focused their content and appropriately titled each well crafted page.

The only thing lacking was a linking campaign and extra keyword focused content beyond their product-centered, but limited text. What more could we do for them?

The single line item NOT accepted from among a list of recommendations made was a link campaign, early in the SEO sales process. We had discovered later in the beginning
phase of optimization that the CEO believed a linking campaign meant begging industry web sites for a link. He had refused that concept without discussion due to a preconcieved notion of link-building as panhandling.

Once discovered, the panhandling concern was easily overcome with a simple request made of the CEO.

SEO Press Kit
May we have a copy of your press kit?

Press releases very often contain important industry buzz words, highly relevant, keyword-rich text and an ideal word count for optimized web page content. Press
releases are tightly focused on single themes and can be easily plugged into themed sections. Ideal for SEO.

We had discovered that the client had a media kit that was widely distributed at trade shows. This kit offered press releases which trumpeted a stellar Fortune 500 client list. Curiously, the slickly printed, beautiful media kit listed an access URL for a password protected area of their web site where members of the press could download Word.doc and PDF files of this same press kit.

Essentially our client was hiding this content from the public due to concerns that the in-house PR staff would be inundated with emails and phone calls from NON-media
types and-[gasp!]-customers abusing published contact information from press releases. Maybe, but they were also hiding valuable content, customer testimonials, and that stellar client list from everyone but very determined media professionals willing to request site access passwords to download hidden offline documents.

The Complete Solution
That press kit held the complete solution to our link popularity conundrum. By posting those documents online in HTML format and carefully structuring the page title and headline of each page, then linking those press releases to relevant sections of the company website, we dramatically improved search engine visibility for this client by putting it all in publicly accessible pages. The search engines indexed it all quickly while expanding the content and increasing site relevance.

Their Fortune 500 clients have now linked to a vendor that they had no reason to link to before because the releases were posted on those client sites with live links back to their site. Links from well respected and visible companies increases pagerank dramatically.

Press releases emphasizing business relationships with product-centered events featuring small businesses and larger corporations can focus on news hooks that will attract search engine visitors. Visitors that would not have otherwise known about the business relationship or products offered may suddenly find themselves customers.

Small Companies
Small companies doing business with larger corporations should widely distribute their press releases announcing marketing partnerships and sales to those companies. The
big players will often find ways to make news with public relations involving smaller partners and will sometimes use those press releases on their own site for publicity.

With innovative PR professionals working in concert with small businesses, they may even get the corporate client to use their much greater resources to distribute those press releases through giant corporate distribution channels (far beyond the miniscule reach of small businesses). This will gain them press coverage and help establish their brand while linking them to the image of larger corporate clients in the mind of their customers.

A word to the wise though, make your press releases professional and concise with complete contact info and links to relevant data. Include short, single sentence “About Us” company information and DON’T FORGET A URL! That web address included at the foot of all releases is your key to link popularity. Link from your release to the corporate client site you reference in partner- ship announcements and choose headlines that contain keywords relevant to your site and your business.

PR Tutorial
For an excellent tutorial on creating an online press room and case studies on effective online PR strategies, visit the newsletter of PR Diva, BL Ochman at:

http://www.whatsnextonline.com/wno/newsletter28.html

She recommends that companies replace that paper press kit with a CD containing all those documents for that trade show distribution, but the kit belongs online too.

Search Engine Optimization professionals recognize the value of online press rooms as exceptional opportunities to present highly relevant, keyword focused content that encourages linking from well known corporations while exposing that existing content to the search engines. If those press releases also gain media coverage for your business as intended, your linking campaign has struck gold.

Author Bio:
Mike Banks Valentine is a Search Engine Optimization specialist practicing ethical small business SEO Search Engine Placement, Optimization, Marketing.

Understanding The WWW.
I came to the web with an itch to build content, and I needed to understand the technology utilized to build the Internet.

Early on, I confronted the question about whether it was necessary to use the www. in my website URL. It really began to be a concern to me when I began to advertise my domain and I was limited to a certain number of lines and characters in my advertising. Although the www. only comprised four characters, those four characters sometimes made a significant difference in allowing me to have enough space to say what I wanted to say.

Most every website on the planet advertises their website with the www. included in the URL. I wondered if dropping the www. would create a problem with people finding my site. The answer is that it depends on your web server configuration.

What Makes A Web Server Different From Your PC.
Putting it in simple terms, a web server is put together in the same fashion as your own computer. Both have a set of directories, subdirectories and files which let you remain
somewhat organized. The only difference between your computer and a webserver is the type of software that is loaded onto the webserver.

The Purpose Of The WWW_ Designation In Folder Names
A webserver simply consists of software designed to allow external users to access the computer through a specific doorway in the system called a *port*.

The webserver software handles all requests coming into the computer for information.

All folders that represent different domains on the webserver are generally marked off with the www_ in the name of the folder. This reminds the system administrator that the folder is directly accessible from the Internet.

The www_ designation is not needed by the webserver — it is needed by the human operators.

Domain Pointers
Domain pointers are like shortcuts on your desktop. They are only files which point to another location on your computer. Clicking those shortcuts start new programs without your having to search for the actual program.

Most webservers are set up to utilize these pointers to allow someone to direct access another folder on the webserver.

For example, on my server I have a folder called *double-eagles* which is the home for another one of my domains. If you click the link http://double-eagles.com , that is actually a domain pointer directing your browser to open the folder http://thePhantomWriters.com/double-eagles

The same process applies to the use of subdomains, such as URL’s that utilize the www. For example, the URL http://archives.thePhantomWriters.com points to a directory on
my server called http://thePhantomWriters.com/free_content

If you cannot access your domain name without using the www. prefix, then you should contact your webhost to get this feature enabled. The choice of using the www. or not should be made by your visitors, not your webhosting provider.

The Advantage Of Your Web Server Recognizing Both
All day long when I surf, I type in the URL name without the www. included in the URL. I am often still surprised to see top name domains from whom you cannot access the non-www. presentation of their website!

Can you imagine what would happen if someone put yourdomain.com into their browser and they received a Cannot Find Server error?

*Bye-bye visitor… Wish we could have been introduced.*

What About Search Engine Spamming
Search engine spiders are known to frown upon websites who introduce the exact same content under two different domain names. The search engine administrators generally view this as an attempt to gain an unfair advantage in their results. In fact, at one time I had read on the Google website that providing mirror websites could lead to your site being banned from their database.

The common knowledge has always been that the search engines generally count only the www_ version or the non-www_ version of a website. They do not list both in their results as they understand that both versions are the same website.

So, for the last two years I have made available the www_ version for my visitors, but only advertised the non-www_ version of the site.

The Google PageRank Surprise
About one week ago, I installed two new tracking tools on my system to help me to guage the success of my advertising. Those two tools are:

– Google PageRank Toolbar –
http://toolbar.google.com/

– Alexa Toolbar –
http://toolbar.thePhantomWriters.com

Both require using a Windows operating system and Internet Explorer 5.0 or better for a browser, but both are exceptional tools if you are a webmaster who cares about tracking your traffic results.

My Big Surprise
Somehow, I managed to hit my domain with both the www_ prefix and without. The first time I did this, I simply assumed that my Google PageRank was bouncing from day to day with wide swings. The second time I had done it, I realized that Google was seeing the two URL’s as two websites!

The PageRank for the URL I advertise (non-www.) is currently a 5/10, and the PageRank for the URL I do not advertise (www.) holds a value of 2/10!

The Alexa toolbar sees both as the same page and records the data for my domain the same in both cases.

The difference between the two rankings is that the www. version has no links pointing to it. The non-www. version has 30 Google links pointing to it.

It is important to note here that under the current guidelines of Google, a website must have a PageRank of at least 4/10 in order to be listed in Google’s search results. Therefore, although there are hundreds of websites pointing to my website, only those with a PageRank of at least 4/10 will actually show up in the calculations for both Google PageRank and the Alexa results — which utilizes the Google search results in their own rating systems.

What I Have Learned From This Experience
I need to make sure that I can get my URL on more sites with at least a 4/10 Google PageRank.

The number of links pointing to a website do make a significant difference in the PageRank of the website.

If my only goal is to build my own PageRank or to get better results in Google, I don’t need to submit my information to a website that does not have a PageRank of 4/10 or higher.

Putting my URL in my resource box and attaching it to a free-reprint article really can get my URL into hundreds of websites, some of whom will have a good Google PageRank.

And finally, I hope that people who use the Google toolbar who visit my website come through to the non-www. version of my website — or else they might just think that my website has no real value in the eyes of Google.

Author Bio:
Bill Platt owns The Phantom Writers, a company committed to helping people to establish an Internet presence & promote their businesses through the use of Free-Reprint Articles and Press Releases. Articles are distributed to 6,000+ publishers & webmasters as part of the package.  Do you write your own articles? Let us distribute them for you.

Gain Traffic, Links and Search Engine Rank!
Did you realize that thousands of website operators use a simple technique to generate targeted visitors to their websites without paying a dime in advertising? It’s true.

In fact, the technique works so well that many of them don’t want you to discover how they get those thousands of website visitors and make so many sales on virtual “auto-pilot.”

Their method? Creating tightly focused articles other people publish in their ezines (online magazines and email newsletters) and post on their websites.

This method rates so powerful that some even call it “the web’s best kept traffic secret.” Now, you may ask, “Why would an ezine publisher or website owner publish my articles for their subscribers?”The answer: Content!

Over a 100,000 ezines and newsletters operate on the web (along with millions of websites) covering everything from pets and cooking to investments and real estate. Many of them need tightly focused content and they simply can’t produce all of it themselves. Look at it this way… it’s the same reason newspapers use the Associated Press. Individual newspapers often can’t afford staff writers to cover every story, so they accept articles from outside their organization.

You can do the exact same thing for various ezines and websites catering to your niche audience! You can get valuable publicity — exposure you often couldn’t even pay for if you wanted to — by providing valuable, content-rich articles in exchange for a byline and a link to your website (called a “resource box”)!The following represent only a few of the enormous benefits of writing and distributing simple articles online:

The Benefits
** Attain “Expert” Status **
Let’s face it! In the eyes of virtually everyone who reads your articles you rank as the “expert” on the subject. Just look at people who write newspaper columns. You may disagree with their viewpoints, but they still have an elevated status in your mind compared to the “average Joe” off the street.

** Pre-sell Website Visitors **
If your article appeals to a niche audience hungry for more information on a very focused subject, you actually pre-sell them better than any sales pitch. In their minds, you’ve already delivered content they really want so when they click over to your site you already have a “reputation” in their minds.

** Traffic Lasts Longer **
Even though the Internet changes very quickly, webmasters are usually very slow to remove content from their sites. Once you get an article posted on another person’s website, you have an excellent chance of that article staying there for weeks, months, even years.

** Increase Links To Your Site **
In a recent search I found just a dozen of my articles posted on over 813 different websites! Not only do those postings bring me traffic, but they also help my search engine positioning because of my increased “Link Popularity.”

** Builds Your Affiliate Base **
Fact: Affiliates always take the path of least resistance. If you provide excellent articles they can easily post on their sites or copy and paste into their ezines, your affiliates will promote you more often and more effectively compared to those who don’t give them tools. Plus, as you make more sales and publish articles, other people will see you providing excellent tools and will want to sign up as your affiliate so they can use them too!

** Build a Huge “Opt-In” Email List **
You can use articles to build up a huge list of subscribers by simply compiling several articles into a series and delivering them at preset intervals. Often called a “mini-course,” this technique allows you not only to prove to your subscribers that you deliver great information, but enables you to capture their name and email adress so you can send them articles and special offers in the future (with their permission).

** Requires No Special Skills **
People often think they need to be a “writer” in order to publish articles, but that’s not true! FACT: If you have a passion for a subject and can talk and explain things like you would to a friend over a cup of coffee, you can write articles people will love to read.

Summary
So if you operate a website selling virtually any type of product or service (whether your own or as an affiliate), publishing and promoting with articles should rank high on your list of traffic generation strategies. No other method of generating targeted traffic to your website provides the quality, quantity and steadiness of traffic in such a simple, straightforward, and cost- effective manner.

Author Bio:
Jim Edwards of TheNetReporter.com

Google Adsense
The popular search engine, Google has introduced a dramatic new contextual advertising service called Adsense. This new program could mean death to affiliate programs on those web sites that qualify for the Adsense program. Why would Google advertising affect affiliate programs? Because Google is making Adsense ads available to smaller content rich sites.

Adsense dramatically simplifies the process of choosing appropriate advertising for sections of sites. Since it’s all automatic with Adsense, I’m through with searching for affiliate programs to fit my content. It just doesn’t pay enough to justify the effort in most cases. While I won’t dump existing producers, I’m dropping those affiliate programs that don’t produce like hot potatoes.

I’ve moved house often over the last few years and in that process have struggled to keep affiliate programs abreast of the latest contact and banking information. Several honest affiliate program managers have emailed me after getting my affiliate checks returned from previous snail mail addresses. Adsense will resolve this issue for me as I needn’t keep the hundreds of affiliate programs up-to-date on my latest mailing address and/or banking information – only Google Adsense. I’m dropping smaller unproductive affiliate programs.

Allan Gardyne of Associate Programs penned an interesting and insightful article on Adsense this past week where he mentions this as an issue and predicts the death of smaller or weaker affiliate programs.

I agree.

http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/search/adsense.shtml

Google Adsense simply requires the host site to paste in a few lines of HTML code on their pages where they want those ads to appear. Once Google has spidered your content pages, they can assess what those pages are about. Adsense serves a series of ads that match and compliment your page topics automatically without site owner participation!

I’ve been impressed how Adsense has performed for me in just the last week. I’ve actually enjoyed looking at my own sites to see what ads are served to match my content. WebSite101 demonstrates very well how Adsense works. If you visit the HTML tutorial, you see Adsense ads for web page editing software or web hosting. If you visit my email tutorial, you’ll see Adsense ads for email broadcasting software and targeted email list broadcasting services. If you visit the Domain Name tutorial, you’re served Adsense ads for Domain Registrars and web hosting. If you visit the Anti-Spam Tutorial, you get Adsense Ads for Spam Filtering Software.

http://www.website101.com/email_e-mail/
http://www.website101.com/HTML/
http://www.website101.com/Domain_Name
http://website101.com/SpamFilter/

You get the idea.

I like not having to mess with my own ad-serving software and twiddle with the rates and I absolutely LOVE not having to do any ad sales. I’m sold and wholeheartedly recommend Adsense to anyone with sufficient content to support it.

Between my 3 main sites,

http://WebSite101.com
http://SearchEngineOptimism.com
http://PrivacyNotes.com

I’ve got over 1000 pages of good solid content that I’ve built over the last 6 years. I’ve struggled in vain to get that content to pay by carefully choosing affiliate programs to fit neatly into dozens of topic areas. My two biggest producers have been software sales and health insurance referrals for small businesses. Those have been sporadic producers.

My biggest complaint is that I can’t track what is producing clickthroughs. Google simply tells me clickthrough percentage, number of ad impressions per day and average earnings per clickthrough across all of my sites. That makes it very difficult to know where to concentrate my energy to produce additional revenue generating content. But it does seem to offer site owners incentive to maintain quality content and spread the ads across all content pages.

My privacy site runs a variety of HIPAA compliance ads, GLB compliance ads, and DoNotCall List Compliance ads. It seems the money in privacy is in charging large corporations to keep them within the letter of the law so they don’t get sued for violations.

It is interesting to see my own site ads to know where the money is in PPC for each of the topic areas. Sometimes it’s just not what you expect. I’ve got an article about Google’s reverse phone lookup and how to get out of reverse phone lookup databases that is on the Privacy site and it sometimes shows ads about “low long distance rates”. Clearly the keyphrase “Phone number” is triggering ads that are quite off target on this page.

While Adsense won’t outperform my total affiliate income from the many programs spread across my sites, it WILL, if current trends continue, match my total affiliate income and therefore double advertising income!

The biggest benefit was the incentive to rebuild WebSite101, which got it’s design in 1998. I’ve needed to do that, but man is it tedious adapting all that content while maintaining page names and fitting it all back together with existing affiliate links and updating outdated stuff. Adsense gave me the incentive to do that by making my content finally pay for itself. It also gives me incentive to keep adding more relevant content.

I’m sold and wholeheartedly recommend Adsense to anyone with sufficient content to support it. While I won’t dump existing affiliate program producers, I’m dropping those that don’t produce clickthroughs and sales – fast – like hot potatoes. Get Adsense if Google approves your site. You’ll love it too.
http://www.google.com/adsense.

Author Bio:
Mike Banks Valentine is a Search Engine Optimization specialist practicing ethical small business SEO Search Engine Placement, Optimization, Marketin.

Introduction
By now, virtually every webmaster has heard or read that the major search engines are responsible for 80% or more of the traffic received by most web sites and that most searchers never look beyond the first 20 – 50 search results. Not surprisingly, an entire industry devoted to search engine ranking and search engine optimization (SEO) has sprung up to capitalize on these well known facts.

Tens of thousands of web sites compete to achieve top ranking for their chosen keywords and keyword phrases. We’ve published numerous articles by various SEO experts on linking strategies, optimizing meta tags and page content, and relevant page content. And, undoubtedly, we’ll publish many more. Achieving a top ranking for a particular keyword or phrase is a major accomplishment, but the sad fact is that most web sites will never come close to reaching a top 10, a top 30, or even a top 100, listing in any major search engine.

Is it possible to be listed in the top 10 – 30 search results of a major search engine? Yes, possible, just not very likely for the average web site. It’s a lot like playing the lottery and with the same appeal. Get your site in the top 10 search results and the payoffs are big – you just need to knock out a few million competitors.

The Rise Of Pay-Per-Click
The difficulty in achieving a top ranking for a free site listing has in recent years given rise to the pay-per-click search engine phenomena. Overture’s singular success with this model has resulted in hundreds of search engines jumping on the pay-per-click bandwagon. Pay-per-click is a great idea and taps right into the frustrated webmaster/site owner market. Many site owners simply do not want to be bothered with checking keyword density, tweaking their page content, fiddling with their meta tags and undertaking linking campaigns.

With pay-per-click, you get the site ranking you can afford. A simple, understandable concept. If money isn’t a problem, the PPC system is hard to beat.

Most experts would probably recommend combining search engine optimization with PPC for maximizing traffic. And, there you have it – the two dominant methods for driving targeted visitors to your web site. Dominant, but probably irrelevant to the vast
majority of site owners and webmasters who don’t have the time to learn the ever-changing art of SEO or the budget for PPC’s and SEO firms.

What should be relevant is how to get traffic to your site without breaking the bank or having to earn a degree in SEO techniques. Where it comes from should be secondary. Don’t limit your traffic building efforts to just a few of the majors like Google, Yahoo, Inktomi and Overture. The top 8 or 10 search engines may be popular but that doesn’t mean that your site will reap the benefits.

Here Are Several Reasons Why:
1. Sometimes the numbers work against you. Another billion pages added to Google or AlltheWeb are NOT going to help the average site owner – they are just going to bury the needle – your website – deeper in the haystack. And search traffic is only important, if your website can be found.

2. The major search engines cater primarily to searchers not webmasters. Why? Because more search traffic means more revenue and there are far more searchers than webmasters.

3. Even PPC engines deliver more than top 50 search results. That means unless you’re a high bidder, your website may still not be seen by many.

From a webmaster’s perspective what you should be looking for in a search engine is the right balance of search traffic and understandable site listing/ranking options. Engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, and Ask Jeeves have massive traffic, but you need to evaluate your chances for having your web site added and then ranked well. You also need to determine if a search engine is more focused on revenue generation through ads, paid inclusion and Sponsored listings than they are in catering to your concerns about where your web site appears.

More specifically, when evaluating any engine regardless of size or traffic, you should consider the following factors:

1. Free Site Listings
A few years ago, you could submit your site to almost any search engine, small or large, for free. But times have changed. Today, even many second tier engines have PPC or paid inclusion programs, and free submissions, where offered, are often given little attention. This ties right into the second feature you should be looking for in a search engine.

2. Indexing Speed
The usual pitch is that free listings can take a month or more to be added (with some SE’s, never is more likely), but a paid listing will be added within 48 hours to a week. Does this make sense? Most search engines don’t manually review site submissions so whether a submission is free or paid shouldn’t affect indexing speed. Slow indexing for free site submissions is most often nothing more than a deliberate ploy to get your
money.

3. Ranking Options
Look for a search engine that offers some clues on how to improve your site ranking, short of emptying your wallet. Few engines reveal all the factors they use in ranking sites but knowing where the emphasis is (content, link popularity, meta tags, etc.) can be enough to point you in the right direction. There are also a handful of engines and directories that offer innovative listing options that give your website a much better chance of being seen.

4. Quality Searches
Important to site owners and searchers alike. When quality sites are buried in a sea of second rate listings, no one benefits.

5. Traffic
If you want your website seen, the traffic a search engine attracts is important, but don’t be too quick to write off smaller, up and coming engines. Not too long ago both Google and Overture were considered long shots in the search engine wars. Also, keep in mind that top ranking in an engine that receives a few million searches per month may be more important to you than no ranking in an engine that receives millions of searches per day.

6. Paid Listing Options:
Look for paid listing options that offer more than fast inclusion in a database. With PPC, you get what you pay for, but with paid inclusion, you should receive more than
you would with a free listing.

If you’re not familiar with any search engines other than the big players, check out FreeWebSubmission.com (http://www.freewebsubmission.com) where you can find a list
of the 50 top search engines that still offer free site listings. Engines are ranked by their Alexa rating which indicates their user popularity. Here’s a list of the top 10 from FWS with current Alexa rankings:

1. Google – 5
2. Lycos – 44
3. AltaVista – 64
4. About – 86
5. Open Directory – 157
6. AlltheWeb – 215
7. ExactSeek – 1,999
8. ScrubTheWeb – 2,483
9. What U Seek – 2,868
10. SearchHippo – 2,905

Some other engines and directories worth considering in your promotion efforts are Gimpsy (http://www.gimpsy.com/), RoList (http://www.rolist.com), SitesOnDisplay (http://www.sitesondisplay.com) and National Directory (http://www.nationaldirectory.com).

Author Bio:
Mel Strocen is CEO of the Jayde Online Network of websites. The Jayde network currently consists of 12 websites, including ExactSeek.com (http://www.exactseek.com) and SiteProNews.com (http://www.sitepronews.com).

Keyword Voodoo! Invisible Metatag Mumbo Jumbo
Search Engine Optimization clients often ask about secret keywords as if there is some sort of Keyword Voodoo that only Search engine optimization specialists understand.

Rather than simply using keywords liberally in page text, web site owners seem to believe if they use them in those invisible meta tags, that it will improve their ranking for keywords that aren’t on the visible part of the page.

Clients attempt to use site-wide keywords that reference all the products they sell from every page on the site! This widely misunderstood tactic actually hurts ranking rather than helping it. Here’s an easy rule of thumb.

If the keyword isn’t in the page body text in the single page you are looking at, don’t use it in any meta tags. If you feel you must use the keyword in meta tags, then you must also insert it into the visible page text. Not into images or their alt tags, not in title attributes, not in directory names or image names, IN BODY TEXT. If you ignore this recommendation, you dilute relevance of any keywords that ARE in body text. Start on the page!

Clients get caught up in arcane minutia of SEO worrying over details that they don’t understand, taken out of context from articles they’ve seen or arguments they’ve read in discussion lists. A litany of questions ensues.

Am I better off with generic keywords or brand specific keywords? Do I make special landing pages with targeted keyword phrases, or better yet, keyword domains focusing only on specific keywords? Do I put my best keywords all over the page or put them at the top for more relevance? Should I use those important keyword phrases in a title tags even if they aren’t on the page? How about comment tags, alt text tags, noframes tags, and noscript tags?

If you insist on believing in keyword voodoo, I suggest that you concentrate on the no voodoo tag.

For those of you who actually want to rank well in the search engines for your important keyword phrases, and who don’t want to spend time burning candles, chanting incantations and poking keyword pins into voodoo dolls, I suggest you learn the simplest of all SEO rules.

Put your keywords in the text on your web page! If the keywords aren’t already included within the body text of your web site in sufficient density, then it won’t matter what HTML tags you use or where you put them.

Often clients react with intense surprise when I tell them that the keywords they are targeting are nowhere to be found on their home page and we need to add them.

One surprised site owner pointed to the graphic images across the top and bottom of their pages where keyword phrases loomed in giant stylized type across the page. They asked about the menu bar along the left of their site template, “You know, those that change color as you hover your mouse over them?” Sorry, those are images.

The solution is NOT in the images with words painted on them by fancy graphics programs, but in real body text.

Here’s a quick test I recommend to clients. Visit your site home page online. Go to the browser menu, choose “Edit” and then “Select All”. This highlights all text on the page. Then go again to the browser menu, again choose “Edit” then click on “Copy”, which will copy
that highlighted text to your clipboard. Now open up Notepad from your Windows “Start” menu by choosing the “Programs”, then “Accessories” and finally “Notepad”.

When the blank page of Notepad text editor opens, paste the text you’ve copied from your page into it by going to the Notepad menu bar, choosing “Edit” then “Paste”. Many who don’t do their own design work are startled by how few words of text actually appear when doing this little test. This serves as a wake-up call when they experience this demonstration and begin to come to an understanding that this text is all the search engines see, or care about.

This text shows clearly that not everything that you can see on the page is actual text. Much of it is made up of images with stylized text painted on to them by a graphics program. What you see on that Notepad page now is your visible body text. That text that you now have in front of you is all that matters to the search engines. They don’t care about the images or invisible Voodoo meta tags.

Even then, surprised clients blurt, “We included those keywords in the invisible HTML code on the page lots of times in special (Voodoo) meta tags our developer used.”

Entrepreneurs often hire developers based on stellar client lists or personal recommendations from partners or even staff members, but search engine optimization is rarely understood to be among the skill sets needed within web design jobs. SEO is done only by specialist Keyword Voodoo practitioners that come in later to save site owners from “invisible HTML tags” haunting their keyword-less pages.

What do SEO’s do? Add the keywords to the body text – FIRST, before anything else is done. There are clearly additional things we do as well, but the path to highly ranked web pages is not in the HTML that you CAN’T see, it is right in the body text of the page in the form of visible words on the page.

Author Bio:
Mike Banks Valentine is a Search Engine Optimization specialist practicing ethical small business SEO Search Engine Placement, Optimization, Marketing