Free Ezine Advertising That Works!
When I say free ezine advertising, I’m not talking about the free ezine ads that some publishers offer, this technique is FAR more powerful than that.
One of the best ways to get free traffic to your site, is to write articles for ezines.
Now before you shudder and click away, it isn’t that hard to write a good article.
If you’ve got a bout of writers block, just search for info related to the subject you want to write about, then re-write it in YOUR OWN words and style, do not copy.
Your article needs to be around 500 – 700 words, with short paragraphs, 5 or 6 sentences.
DON’T try and disguise an advert as an article and forget about putting in your affiliate links, publishers will delete it straight away, if you want to use this approach to promote an affiliate program, you should really get your own domain as it looks more professional.
Once you have put your masterpiece together, leave it a day, then come back to it and re-read it, you’ll be surprised what other nuggets of info pop out after a nights sleep, and how many errors seem to jump out at you.
When you’re sure your article is ready, run it through a spell checker and format it to 55 – 60 characters per line so the publisher can just cut-n-paste into their ezine.
Don’t forget to put your resource box at the bottom of the article! This is what’s going to get you a ton of free traffic to your site after all.
Believe me folks, just one half decent article can get you alot of free traffic, I remember one article I wrote was published in a ezine that had a circulation of 500,000, if I wanted to pay for advertising in this particular ezine it would have cost me over $400!
Not only does this technique save you money, it also gives you credability, and alot of ezines turn your articles into web pages that will remain there for years to come.
Get published, get credibility, get free traffic for years to come! I think that’s worth a little effort don’t you?
Author:
Neil Moran
Top Ten Reasons to Write Articles to Publicize your Business
If you have spent time and money down the drain waiting for “word of mouth” to kick in, or multiple hours on networking meetings, you may want to investigate this number one way to publicize your service. Beginners welcome. And, once you learn the skills, you can delegate it all to your office assistant.
Here’s the Top Ten Reasons:
1. It’s totally free.
Once you subscribe to 5-10 opt-in ezines such as aabusiness-subscribe@yahoogroups.com, aainet-subscribe@egroups.com, or free-content-subscribe@yahoogroups.com, you can start submitting your professionally edited articles that relate to your service or products. For a list of many more ePublishers in all categories, check out the “How to Market your Business Online” eBook.
You will get many emails from other authors too, so make your articles’ email a separate one from your business account. This number one free publicity will bring many targeted visitors to your site where you present a link to information about your coaching services.
2. You can reach from 10,000 to 500,000 of your targeted audience each day that you submit an article.
These people subscribe to the opt-in ezines and surf the top sites in their fields to get free information. When your articles get published, you will be at the top of well-known online small business people who provide a great service.
Remember Bill Gates prediction: After 2000, you either take your business Online, or you won’t have one.
3. You will spend far less time promoting Online than more traditional ways.
When you spend your time each week writing a short article from 300-800 words (about an hour for each), you can then delegate the submissions to your low-cost office computer assistant. Total time promoting? Less than six hours a week.
This is the best money I spend because after the initial submissions, my assistant’s time to submit to ezines is less than 10 minutes per time. And that’s to 60 plus opt-in ezines. Submitting to Web sites takes more time, maybe 10-15 minutes for each site. We have a list of 20 plus top Web sites who want my particular information. We submit two articles at a time to save time, and many sites carry up to 100 of my articles. The more, the merrier, because these not only put you in the top ten sites through the search engines, but bring you many new potential clients.
4. Submitting articles is 7 times as effective as any other promotion because when you submit many articles, you become known as an expert.
You may start with just two or three, but each week after creating a new one with a different angle or audience, this outstanding viral marketing technique will bring many new opportunities because many of the people who read them will contact you to publish on their site. See how the good word spreads?
Submitting articles is part of the “Big Three Marketing Machine.”
A special report that illustrates how you can succeed far more than you dreamed of by coordinating your sales-driven Web site, your articles, and your service and products.
5. You can raise your own ezine subscribers from 10-25 every time you submit an article to multiple opt-in ezines.
If you submit four or five articles a month to 15 ezines, each with about 1000 subscribers, you will reach 60,000 readers.
The beauty of this benefit is that your ezine and articles work as a team, both catapulting your eventual sales successes. When you put your free offer for your ezine in your signature file that accompanies each article you send out, online lookers become online buyers eventually.
After reading six or seven of your ezines, your targeted audience who came to you through these articles, trusts you more, believes in you, and finally becomes a client or customer.
This list could go on, because as one person sees your articles, they make offers you can’t refuse. Writing and submitting articles is the friendliest way I know of promoting Online. When you are ready, give it a chance. Part two of this article is available at www.bookcoaching.com/freearticles/article-120.shtml.
Author Bio:
Judy Cullins: 20-year author, speaker, book coach Helps entrepreneurs manifest their book and web dreams www.bookcoaching.com eBk: “Ten Non-techie Ways to Market Your Book Online” To receive FREE “The Book Coach Says…” or Business Tip of the Month go to www.bookcoaching.com/opt-in.shtml Ph:619/466/0622
The first 5 SEO tips
From the obvious to the “Hey-I-never-thought-of-that-great-idea-before”, here are 10 of the top 52 tips on how to optimize your website for its turbo-charge rocket ride up the search engine rankings.
1. Deep linking. Make sure you have links coming in to as many pages as possible. What does it tell a search engine when other web sites are linking to different pages on your site? That you obviously have lots of worthwhile content. What does it tell a search engine that all your links are coming in to the home page? That you have a shallow site of little value, or that your links were generated by automation rather than by the value of your site.
2. Become a foreigner. Canada and the UK have many directories for websites of companies based in those countries. Can you get a business address in one of those countries?
3. Newsletters. Offer articles to ezine publishers that archive their ezines. The links stay live often for many years in their archives.
4. First come, first served. If you must have image links in your navigation bar, include also text links. However, make sure the text links show up first in the source code, because search engine robots will follow the first link they find to any particular page. They won’t follow additional links to the same page. You can see this in action at the link to the home page on:
http://www.dotcom-monitor.com/web-site-monitoring.asp .
5. Multiple domains. If you have several topics that could each support their own website, it might be worth having multiple domains. Why? First, search engines usually list only one page per domain for any given search, and you might warrant two. Second, directories usually accept only home pages, so you can get more directory listings this way. Why not a site dedicated to gumbo pudding pops?
5 more SEO tips
6. Article exchanges. You’ve heard of link exchanges, useless as they generally are. Article exchanges are like link exchanges, only much more useful. You publish someone else’s article on the history of pudding pops with a link back to their site. They publish your article on the top ten pudding pop flavors in Viet Nam, with a link back to your site. You both have content. You both get high quality links. (More on high quality links in other tips.)
7. Be bold. Use the tags around some of your keywords on each page. Do NOT use them everywhere the keyword appears. Once or twice is plenty.
8. Titles for links. Links can get titles, too. Not only does this help visually impaired surfers know where you are sending them, but some search engines figure this into their relevancy for a page.
9. Not anchor text. Don’t overdo the anchor text. You don’t want all your inbound links looking the same, because that looks like automation – something Google frowns upon. Use your URL sometimes, your company name other times, “Gumbo Pudding Pop”
occasionally, “Get gumbo pudding pops” as well, “Gumbo-flavored pudding pops” some other times, etc.
10. Site map. A big site needs a site map, which should be linked to from every page on the site. This will help the search engine robots find every page with just two clicks. A small site needs a site map, too. It’s called the navigation bar. See how the second navigation bar at the bottom of http://www.lastminutevillas.net is like a mini-site map?
There you have it: 10 of the 52 Top SEO Tips, a free tip sheet that comes with Don’t Get Banned By the Search Engines:
http://www.thehappyguy.com/SEO.html
There is a lot more to search engine optimization, and there are always more details when looking at an individual site. But these tips should help any website significantly improve its rankings.
Author Bio:
David Leonhardt of the Happy Guy is an online and offline publicity specialist who believes in getting in front of the ball, rather than chasing it downhill. To get your website optimized, email him at info@thehappyguy.com. Pick up a copy of Don’t Get Banned By The Search Engines or of Get In The News.
How to find good keyword phrases
Finding good keywords is a never ending quest, so here’s a couple of links and an example on how to use them to find good keyword phrases.
If you’re trying to optimize a page for a popular keyword that has alot of competition, take a close look at the related keyword phrases.
Let’s say you wanted to optimize your page for the keyword marketing, that was searched for over 240,000 times on Overture alone in the last month, there are nearly 42,000,000 competing websites on Google, the keyword marketing is FAR too general, sure if you got ranked #1 (very doubtful!) you’ll get alot of traffic, but it won’t be targeted traffic.
Be more specific, target keyword PHRASES.
Let’s try internet marketing which was searched for nearly 80,000 times on Overture and has 550,000 competing sites on Google, that’s far better, not brilliant, but at least you’re more targeted now.
Now, under the keywords internet marketing over at Overture, people also searched using these phrases:
79764 internet marketing
6087 internet marketing online
4635 internet marketing strategy
2733 strategic internet marketing
2603 internet marketing consultant
2384 internet marketing consulting
2378 internet marketing service
2355 internet marketing tool
1929 internet marketing company
1855 internet web site marketing
1631 internet marketing san diego
1429 internet marketing solution
1327 internet marketing research
1183 aggressive internet marketing
1178 internet marketing plan
1165 internet marketing business
1058 internet marketing ebook
1026 internet marketing email
There’s a whole lot more but I think you get the picture…
OK, the keywords marketing, and marketing online are obviously going to have their fair share of competition, however, using the tools above point you in the right direction on how you should build your pages and show you the specific keyword phrases people are using and allow you to check the competition for those keywords.
Let’s go one step further and see what other keyword phrases we can find from our example, take internet marketing strategy for instance, here are the other keyword phrases people used:
622 corporate internet marketing strategy
451 developing internet marketing software strategy
191 hosting and internet marketing strategy
66 internet marketing strategy uk
65 marketing strategy internet strategy
65 internet marketing strategy tactic
55 colorado internet marketing strategy
50 boulder internet marketing strategy
47 vancouver internet marketing strategy
46 ebook internet marketing strategy
33 internet marketing strategy edinburgh
33 internet marketing strategy ireland
31 city internet marketing strategy twin
28 minnesota internet marketing strategy
28 internet marketing strategy plan
27 charlotte internet marketing strategy
Now the above list has really narrowed it down, OK, they’re not very popular search terms, however, if you were to weave these phrases into your pages, meta tags and links etc, you will dramatically increase the chances of your webpage getting found than you would if you had just concentrated on the keyword marketing that we originally used in this example on your site.
Here’s some links to help you find your phrases:
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
www.wordtracker.com
At the wordtracker site, click on “trial”.
http://conversion.7search.com/scripts/advertisertools/keywordsuggestion.aspx
www.ranks.nl/tools/spider.html
Use ranks.nl to check your keyword density.
Author:
Neil Moran
Growing Your Website Business
A synopsis of Philippa Gamse’s Presentation to the National Speakers Association, Washington DC chapter on Saturday, January 10, 2004
Someone had asked Philippa why Websites are such a ‘pain’ in a pre-seminar question. Her opening reply was simple, yet powerful, “when you stop improving your site, you stop growing.” She believes that Websites are a work in progress much like a business plan or one’s own self-improvement. In fact, the first question you should ask yourself about your own Website is, “What does it really do for people?”
The second question is “Who is your audience?” You see, websites are really a lot like a business plan! If you are trying to attract prospective clients, then each individual page on your site should offer something of value to your audience. The number one way that Philippa adds value to her audience is through her articles. The best way to keep getting top listings with the most popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo! or MSN, is to constantly change or add content. Her articles add value to her audience and are her number one search engine strategy. Maybe this is why she doesn’t cold-call. Her customers tell her that they have seen her name in multiple locations before they call her directly.
She said that we should think about the emotional connection that our website makes. How does your website represent you when you are not there? Unfortunately most websites are not a true reflection of what we do and who we are. The reality is that our websites need to become an expertise center. We need to show a clear benefit such as how our programs will increase the creativity and balance of a prospective customer. Every page should have a strategy, a way to increase our database and provide a call to action.
Philippa also believes that each web site should have a dynamite testimonial across the front of the homepage, because testimonials are the least-viewed section on every website! She recommends that we pull out our testimonials and sprinkle them throughout our site. And when we think of testimonials, we should be thinking about the substantive ways that we have helped our customers. If we attempt to be clear and specific about our program benefits, why not be clear and specific about their outcomes from real customers. She recommends that we have specific testimonials for specific programs. Talk about maximizing our congruency!
In order to get started, Philippa wants to know what we have done today to improve our website. Two days after her seminar, I added a question and answer section and submitted my site to a dozen search engines. My next step is to write another article. What are you going to do today to improve your web site, your business and even yourself? She encourages you to contact her about the changes you have made.
For more information on how to improve your website further, Philippa recommends that you download her tip sheet, “Twenty-Three Proven Tips and Ideas for On-Line Marketing” at http://www.cyberspeaker.com/tipsheet.html. Philippa can be contacted directly at her office in Santa Cruz, California at 831-465-0317 or pgamse@cyberspeaker.com. If she doesn’t get back to you immediately, it is due to her ongoing quest to find the best deli sandwich outside of New York City.
(c) 2004, Mark Sincevich. All rights in all media reserved.
Author Bio:
If you liked this article and you are interested in building your own opt in list then the FREE opt in list building course in the website below is right for you: http://www.affila.com/course.htm Sign up Now!
Success Guaranteed With Your Opt In List
Some time ago I was thinking about the best and most foolproof way to earn great income on internet. I came to conclusion that success in internet marketing can be reached with my own opt in list. That is why I wrote this article.
In my search for ways to build my own successful opt in list I came to several conclusions how to build an opt in list that buys. In this article I will reveal you four ways to add subscribers to your opt in list and profit from them(guaranteed) Read on…
The 4 ways to build your opt in list that I’m writing about you’ll be able to use in your own opt in list building efforts. Read this article carefully because it may show you a way to profit from internet like you never thought you can before.
Here are the four ways how you can build your opt in list:
1) Buying or renting a list of subscribers for your opt in list.
You can buy subscribers for your opt in list or you can rent a list of emails for one mailing. This is the fastest method to build your opt in list.
2) Signing up for co-registration services.
With co-registration services other people build your opt in list for you. They usually cost $0.10 – $0.30 for a subscriber. With them you can expect 50 – 300 subscribers to your opt in list daily.
3) Build your list using articles.
Using articles is my favorite method to build my opt in list. You can write articles and give them to newsletter publishers to publish them. This way you gain instant exposure and have new subscribers sign up on your opt in list.
4) Using joint ventures to build your opt in list.
Joint ventures are an effective way to build your opt in list. When used right they can add hundreds of subscribers to your list daily.
The best part – they are 100% FREE.
Each of these points illustrate how you can build your opt in list.
There’s really not a way you can NOT earn money from your opt in list. If you build your opt in list and keep relationships with your subscribers your opt in list WILL bring you income.
The greatest way I have found to build relationships with subscribers is offering them a free course. There are lots of places you can find FREE prewritten courses which you can offer to your subscribers.
The prewritten courses that you can send to your subscribers contain in context links to affiliate program / programs you are affiliated with. You earn income when the person follows your in context affiliate link and buys from it.
What I wrote in this article reflects my experience with my opt in list. I hope you find this article worthwhile and learned something from it.
Remember, if you build your opt in list and are persistent there is really no way how you can not earn money on internet. Keep that in mind and also sign up for my list building course.
Author Name: Afilla
Company: Afilla
Author Bio:
If you liked this article and you are interested in building your own opt in list then the FREE opt in list building course in the website below is right for you: http://www.affila.com/course.htm Sign up Now!
Even if Google has been tweaking and fine tuning its search engine algorithms almost daily since it started last November, one thing remains constant: there are things in SEO that you need to do and others that you absolutely need to avoid.
Here are my 10 commandments of rigorous SEO techniques that I practice. As fast and furious as Google ‘dances’ have been lately, these 10 commandments have, to this day, kept my clients out of trouble while helping them to continue enjoying priority rankings in the results pages.
I strongly believe that if you practice ‘safe SEO’ such as the ones described in these 10 commandments, then you should get equally positive results.
SEO Commandment Number One
Thou shall not write invisible text
It continues to surprise me that some people are still trying to get away with this! Just last week, we had to ‘clean up’ a mess that somebody else did who had inserted lots of invisible text on most of the pages in that site. As a result, and as might be expected, the site got banned by Google. We had to remove it, properly optimize the site for its main keywords, utilize Wordtracker and resubmit to Google and the other search engines.
Just to be certain, I also wrote an email to Google advising them of the ‘clean up’ we conducted, with a thank you note for their consideration in re-instating the site back in their index.
SEO Commandment Number Two
Thou shall always use Wordtracker
If you are really serious about getting your site higher in the rankings, don’t waste your time with tools that are just not accurate enough. The only serious tool by today’s standards in the SEO industry is Wordtracker. Optimize a site with the wrong keywords and you will end up with a site that ranks high, but for products or services your company may not even sell! Correctly identifying your ‘right’ keywords and search terms using Wordtracker is the ONLY way you will be successful at targeting your real audience, and your real prospects.
SEO Commandment Number Three
It’s a known and proven fact. I see it everyday. Sites that continually add new content and new pages everyday ultimately get the best rankings all the time. What’s more, when search engine spiders visit your site and find newly added or updated content, they will come and visit you more often! The more often they come, usually the higher and better your rankings. Always remember the search engines are always on the lookout for fresh new ‘meat’ all the time. Surprise them everyday with new content and watch your rankings go higher.
Also, and this is a very well kept secret in the SEO industry: With all else being equal, the greater the number of pages in a given website, the higher the PR (Page Rank). This is a mathematical formula. In combination with the number of links pointing to your site, Google’s Page Rank algorithm uses the number of actual pages in a given site to calculate its final PR value. This is performed once a month during every major Google dance. Contact me if you need to know more about it.
SEO Commandment Number Four
Thou shall never link to bad neighbourhoods
You can’t control who links to you, and, for the most part, no search engine will ever penalize your site if someone links to you, since they know you have no control over it. But you do have control of the sites YOU link to. If you happen to link to a site which some would call ‘a bad neighbourhood’, you might get penalized by some engines for linking to them. Examples of this would be sites that have been penalized in the past (or still are) for prohibited techniques such as invisible text, invisible links, gateway (or doorway pages) or, in some cases, sites that are really nothing more than a bunch of affiliates sites that are heavily cross linked.
If you feel suspicious before linking to a site, it would help to make a few investigations on your own. Make a search of who’s linking to them. Are they penalized too? I like to think it is ‘Linker Beware’ and proceed cautiously before you do, just to keep safe.
SEO Commandment Number Five
Thou shall not spam the meta tags
It’s a known fact that most search engines today don’t even care to look at meta tags anymore, since they were spammed and abused so much in the past. The only search engine today that places some importance on meta tags is Inktomi. Since Yahoo is about to drop Google’s search results any day now, it will exclusively use their own search results produced by their own search property, Inktomi. If you decide to write your meta tags, just write your main keywords that are on that particular page. If the page is about blue and red widgets, then that is all that should be written in the meta tags. Don’t ‘stuff’ them with useless words that have nothing to do with the actual text written on that page.
SEO Commandment Number Six
Thou shall not use Doorway or Gateway pages
You should never even think of using doorway or gateway pages, since they are frowned upon by most search engines. If you implement any kind of software or program that needs to know the IP address of a search engine robot, you are making use of spam tactics that will have your site penalized or banned. Gateway pages serve different pages to search engines than they do to real human visitors, which is a big No-No in the SEO industry!
Some people suggest ‘trusted feeds’ or XML feeds or similar variations. Depending on the exact nature of such implementations, such techniques could be accepted, if certain basic conditions are met. But in almost all the cases I have seen, doorway (or gateway) pages are a bad idea and you should always stay away from them. To give you an example of how doorway pages are hated by the search engines, on January 25, Google changed most of their IP addresses in many of its data centers, as ammunition against this sort of practice.
SEO Commandment Number Seven
Thou shall build the best site you can
Last week, I wrote an article about the importance of usability in any website. If new visitors visit your site in good numbers but then leave just as fast, there is something very wrong with your site! High rankings won’t compensate for a site that has little usability features. Does your site take too long to download? Did you know that even today, about 80% of people are connected to the Internet using slow dialup modem phone lines? This is especially true in rural areas and in many parts of Europe.
Did you know that if your menu system isn’t clear or if your homepage fails to give the slightest clue as to what your website has to offer, they will leave faster than you can say goodbye!
SEO Commandment Number Eight
Thou shall write compelling sales copy and body text
Writing for the Web is a bit different than writing for print. If you want visibility in the search engines, you will have to include your important keywords a few times at strategic locations in your pages, writing text that flows well, but at the same time that is rich in keywords and key phrases. Without sounding repetitive, a normal page with about 750 words on it needs to contain from two to three times your keywords for that page. Also, as stated in the following commandment, make certain you write a proper title tag that is descriptive of that page, and be sure to include your keywords in the title tag.
SEO Commandment Number Nine
Thou shall always write good title tags
This is one of the most neglected activities of SEO, and yet it is still one of the most critical because it can make such a big difference! A well-written title tag has two functions: it helps your users know what the page is all about before they click on your link in the search results pages (SERP’s) and it also helps the search engines better index your page.
To get a better idea of what I mean, type in any meaningful keyword or key phrase in Google or Yahoo and look at the first 10 results that you see. Note that most (if not all) of these sites have a good description of what the page offers, all in the title tag. The title tag is the underlined snippet of text that you actually see written for each result. It is also what you see in your browser at the top.
SEO Commandment Number Ten
Thou shall always keep up to date in SEO news
More than ever today, the search engine optimization (SEO) industry is advancing at a breathtaking pace. Just witness what has happened over the past year and you get the feeling that it will continue to accelerate.
Whether or not Google goes public, the search industry today is one of the fastest growing industries and it is revolutionizing the way companies advertise their products and the way consumers buy them.
Subscribing to good SEO newsletters, reading search engine industry portal sites such as this one and staying current of the news in this rapidly growing industry and you will be certain to remain one step ahead of your competition.
Author:
Serge Thibodeau of Rank For Sales
Optimizing Dynamic Sites
Dynamic content is delivered to the Web browser in a different form than it exists on the server, while static content is stored on the Web server in the same format that is delivered to the Web browser. Dynamic site pages are generated from a database “on the fly” as users request them.
You can often tell when you are looking at a dynamically generated page, because dynamic URLs contain one or more “query strings,” or question marks (?) while static URLs do not, but there are exceptions to this rule, which we shall discuss below.
Search engines have a hard time with dynamic URLs. Dynamic URLs may cause search engines to mistake a small site for a very large one because an unlimited number of URLs can be used to provide essentially the same content. This can cause search engine spiders to avoid such sites for fear of falling into “dynamic spider traps,” crawling through thousands of URLs when only a few are needed to represent the available content. Here’s how three popular search engines handle this:
* The FAST search engine will crawl and index dynamic URLs as quickly and easily as static ones (at this time).
* AltaVista doesn’t crawl dynamic URLs at all, but it will index each dynamic URL that you take the time to submit individually.
* But these two search engines are relatively insignificant. Google will crawl dynamic URL’s at about a third the speed and depth at which it indexes static pages. It will barely crawl at all if there are session IDs in the query strings, because it will soon discover that multiple URLs lead to the same page and regard the site as being full of duplicate content.
Another challenge dynamic sites throw at search engines is serving up different core content at the same URL. This might result when a site has content that may be viewed at the same URL in multiple languages, depending on the browser settings, or content, such as on a news site, which changes every few minutes.
Search engines want to be accurate they want visitors to a particular URL to see the same content the spider saw. They also want to be comprehensive. They vie with each other to have the largest database. Thus, they have billions of pages to index and typically can only visit each URL once every few weeks or so (although Google is pretty good at recognizing content that changes frequently, and spidering it more often). So if a search engine indexes your English content at a given URL, it will probably not index your Spanish content at the same URL during the same indexing period.
The Solution
Search engines want to be accurate they want visitors to a particular URL to see the same content the spider saw. They also want to be comprehensive. They vie with each other to have the largest database. Thus, they have billions of pages to index and typically can only visit each URL once every few weeks or so (although Google is pretty good at recognizing content that changes frequently, and spidering it more often). So if a search engine indexes your English content at a given URL, it will probably not index your Spanish content at the same URL during the same indexing period.
The solution is to give each search engine unique core content at a unique URL, and ensure that all visitors see the same core content. There are three main ways of achieving this.
1) Use static URLs to reference dynamic content. If a search engine sees a static URL, it is more likely to index the content at that URL than if it found the same content at a dynamic URL. There are several ways of turning dynamic URLs into static URLs, despite the fact that you are serving dynamic content. Your method will depend upon your server and other factors. A friend of mine had the following experience after implementing this solution for a client:
“For the last year, since rewriting the dynamic URLs, my client’s site has been riding high in the rankings for thousands of search terms. Before the URL rewriting, Google had indexed just about 3,000 pages in the course of 18 months, on the first week of using URL rewriting, Google was grabbing 3,000 pages per day from the 500,000-item database it had previously barely touched. By the end of the first 2 months of using URL rewriting, Google had indexed over 200,000 pages from the site.”
The following sites offer instructions for two popular servers:
* Apache:
* ASP:
A good step-by-step tutorial can be found at fantomaster.com. The article links are on the right hand side. There are four articles in the series.
Here are some examples of sites that have implemented one of these
approaches:
* Yahoo.com (yes, Yahoo!)
* Epinions.com
* Dooyoo.co.uk
* Pricerunner.com
URL rewriting is a very common practice. Not only is it exceptionally powerful in terms of search engine optimization, but it is also superb for usability and marketing in general. A shorter, more logical-seeming URL is far easier for people to pass on in an email, link to from their homepage, or spell out to a friend on the telephone. Shorter URLs are good business.
Solution 2
2) Link to dynamic URLs from static URL pages. The above solutions are elegant, but may be difficult for some sites to implement. Fortunately, there is a simple work around for smaller sites.
One method search engines use to crawl dynamic content while avoiding dynamic spider traps is to follow links to dynamic URLs from static URLs. If your site isn’t too large, you could build a static site map page consisting of links to dynamic URLs. The search engines should crawl those links, but will probably go no further.
An even more effective technique would be to get other sites to link to your dynamic pages. If these sites have good Google PageRank, your dynamic pages will not only be indexed, but the likelihood of their achieving a high ranking for the key words on them will increase significantly.
Solution 3
3) Pay for inclusion? AltaVista, Ask Jeeves/TEOMA, FAST and Inktomi offer Pay-per-inclusion (PPI) programs. You pay $25/page (or so) to ensure that that page is spidered frequently (Inktomi spiders every 48 hours for that price). This will garner some traffic, but since Google now accounts for over 70% of all search engine traffic and continues to grow stronger all the time, don’t throw too much money into this solution unless you have deep pockets. If your site is huge, the cost could be prohibitive. Paying to have your pages spidered does not guarantee that they will rank well, so they must be optimized properly. Frequent spidering enables you to experiment with optimization and see your results within a day or two. Search engines, including those with PPI options, want their databases to be as large as possible. So if you don’t pay for inclusion, and instead implement one of the solutions discussed above, your pages will probably be indexed anyway. On the other hand, if you pay for some of your pages to be spidered, there’s a good chance the ones you don’t pay for won’t be.
Summary
To summarize:
1. Search engines have problems indexing dynamic content.
2. If possible, use static URLs to reference dynamic content.
3. Otherwise, try to link to your dynamic URLs from static pages.
4. If your budget allows, consider using paid-inclusion programs.
Author Bio:
Rick Archer owns and operates SearchSummit, a one-man SEO company. His clients include many site owners who used to employ large SEO firms, but found that a personal, direct approach was preferable. Visit his website at http://www.searchsummit.com.
How to Get Your Web Site Listed In The Search Engine Directories
Submitting your web site to the search engine directories will give you a great boost in traffic. A listing in a large search engine directory like ODP(Open Directory Project) enables your web site to get indexed for free by the major search engines such as AskJeeves, AOLSearch, Google, and Lycos. Directories will also help increase your page ranking. However getting listed in the search engine directories is more difficult than the major search engines. Preparation and patience is needed.
In Part 1 we covered “How to Get Your Web Site Listed in the Major Search Engines”
So what’s the difference between the major search engines and major search engine directories?
Search engines are often confused as being the same as search directories.
A search engine is a web-based software tool that enables the user to locate sites and pages on the web based on the information they contain.
Search directories use people, so you are dependant on these editors to put in a description of your website that will cover the keyword phrases that you need. Therefore, before submitting your site to a directory think carefully about the description that you enter.
How to prepare your web site for search engine directory submissions.
1. Research the best keywords – use the overture suggestion tool or wordtracker tool to find the keywords best suited for your site. It’s no point entering words in a directory that don’t relate to your site or are not often searched for. Include these keywords in your page content and in each of your meta tags.
2. Evaluate your site – search directories are more particular about allowing web sites to get listed than search engines. Therefore make sure your site has no broken links, includes relevant content-based pages, loads quickly (within 10 seconds), is easy to navigate, and has cross browser compatibility.
3. Prepare your title – if you are a business enter your business name ie Drost Web Design. If you don’t have a business name use the name of your site ie iSiteBuild.com. Don’t use a long title. This may help you get listed in the search engines but not in the directories.
4. Write a description – remember that human beings are looking at your description so don’t create an ad. Create a well written description of about 25 words, that clearly explains what your site has to offer.
5. Look professional – your web site should have a professional appearance. Don’t just put up a bunch of affiliate links to other sites or just have a one page sales letter.
6. Submit your site – navigate through the directory to find the best category for your web site. Don’t just include what you think is the most popular but the most targeted category. An easy way to find out is to enter your search terms in the directory.
7. Be patient – it can take months or sometimes even years to get listed. This is because there are thousands of sites being submitted every day. If your site has not been listed after 3 months, then resubmit.
8. Guarantee – there is no guarantee to get listed as the categories may already be filled. There may also be a backlog of sites to be reviewed. Therefore concentrate your efforts on other marketing methods.
In Part 3 of this article we’ll discuss the detailed requirements for submitting your web site to each Major Search Engine Directory in order to attract thousands of targeted visitors.
Author Bio:
Herman Drost is the author of the new ebook “101 Highly Effective Strategies to Promote Your Web Site” a powerful guide for attracting 1000s of visitors to your web site. Subscribe to his ‘Marketing Tips’ newsletter for more original articles at: subscribe@isitebuild.com. Read more of his in-depth articles at: www.isitebuild.com/articles
Usability & SEO
Today, I will slightly steer away from the subject of search engine optimization and instead present what should be the most important considerations when designing or completely rebuilding an existing site.
While usability features are primarily intended for your end users, you should also think of the search engine robots (spiders) that will regularly come to visit your site, in an effort to index and refresh its pages.
To make a site that is both friendly to your users and to the search engines, you always have to think in terms of usability. In order of priority, the five most important usability features you should always implement in your website are:
1. Ease of navigation
2. Simplicity and intuitive
3. Clearly indicated menus and links
4. A well-designed site map
5. Clean, uncluttered design
Ease of navigation
Your site should always be designed in a way that it’s always easy to navigate, no matter where you happen to be in the site. Always include a ‘Back to our Homepage’ button or link, either at the top or at the bottom of the page. If your visitors get lost, as some of us do at times, clicking on the Home button or link will at least make them come back to the beginning of your site.
It’s also a good idea to place a ‘Back to the Top’ button at the bottom of the page, to help them come back to the top. Also, when you are building or ‘renovating’ a website, always include a contact button or link, either at the top or bottom of all your pages. The contact page is often the only way they can reach you, either by email, by phone or in person.
Make it simple and intuitive
Did you ever try a new software package or tested a new program application for the first time and found it to be so easy to use and friendly? You seem to know in advance what effect on the program every button or menu function will have, even before you click on it. Your website should have the same ‘look and feel’. Make it easy for them and take every step necessary to make their experience as enjoyable as possible and they will come back for more.
People today are always in a rush and they have less and less time to figure out how something works. They came to your site because they typed a keyword or two in a search engine and they expect to rapidly find on your site what it is they are looking for. Make sure they find it fast and they will certainly be repeat buyers.
Clearly indicated menus and links
I still sometimes come across websites that seem to have been designed for the person that originally built it and nobody else. What may seem to you as self-explanatory may not be as simple to figure out for some users. Having a button called ‘Knowledge Base’ may not mean much to some people. Instead, if that button would simply be called ‘Help’ it probably would assist them better.
A well-designed site map
A good site map has two functions: it helps your users find what they are looking for and it also helps the search engines better index all of your site. It’s always a good idea to group your site’s pages under topics. If you are selling both physical products and actual services on your site, it might be a good idea to place them into two different groups. Avoid the temptation of cramping all your pages together to make it go faster.
Take the time to design a good site map where people will easily find the page or section that interests them. Also, make sure your site map is directly linked to your homepage. This last step is important, since one of the first things a search engine robot looks at when it arrives at a website is the site map link. Also, make sure that your site map link is a text link. Remember that most search engines cannot read or understand Java scripts or image maps.
Clean, uncluttered design
For some people, nothing is more frustrating than arriving at a site and not having a clue what to do next or where to go. They usually leave as fast as they came too! For that reason, avoid putting heavily animated graphics, background music or Flash movies in any part of your site. What’s more, most search engines today penalize websites that make a heavy use of animated graphics or Flash movies, since they cannot read them or understand them.
A clean and uncluttered design usually wins hands down. The most simple and ‘clean’ websites are usually the ones that are visited the most, since many people seem to know they will find what it is they are looking for, and they usually come back often too.
Conclusion
You are investing a lot of time, energy, resources and money in your website. Make sure you maximize all of your investments in keeping them on your site for as long as you possibly can. Once they have bought from you, and if they liked the experience, statistics prove they will come back.
Give them a reason or two to come back. Offer them a free weekly or monthly newsletter in which you will talk of the subjects that interests them. Another way to create a lot of interest is to regularly write ‘How To’ articles, similar to this one. Most people are usually interested in learning more, and the Internet is the perfect place for this.
Make your website THEIR focal point of interest by offering your visitors what truly interests them and you will largely increase your chances of success.
Author:
Serge Thibodeau of Rank For Sales
