SEO Defined
The true definition of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be stated as a highly specialized process of building a successful website. We say successful because if a commercial website cannot be found in the major search engines, it is not successful, it just isn’t doing it’s job. SEO directly addresses the need for a website to attract new and targeted visitors, who in turn will convert into buying customers.
Fact: About 90% of all new visitors to a web site found it using the major search engines such as Google or, search directories such as Yahoo! Now SEO professionals and specialists alike are closely accustomed to acquiring top-level search engine results for all their clients. Priority placement and top rankings is a daily, on-going struggle when you are a professional SEO specialist. The SEO field, as a whole, needs to keep up with ever-changing technology and also has to be familiar with other web site marketing techniques such as banner ads, pay-per-click programs and even some offline advertising options.
After a careful industry study, every survey has taught us that each web site competes in a different, segmented market. You could say that some are probably less competitive and others are surely more competitive. But each and every website targets very different customers in very different markets. Some have a more local scope or orientation, others target either national or global markets. In Rank for $ales’s own experience, “the classic one size fits all promotional packages” are usually termed as a “one size fits none” scenario. We have been involved in the professional Search Engine Optimization field since 1997.
Our initial approach is to custom-design a unique Internet marketing strategy that will work for all our clients’ sales goals, market segments and their advertising budgets. Rank for Sales works as an important team inside our client’s sales operations. We diligently work with every department and all concerned to reach their common goals.
Traditional advertising in the brick-and-mortar version of any business model is a proven method of promotion for any business. It has worked since the roaring twenties and continues to work today. Now the Internet is certainly no exception, but achieving a high return (ROI) for your online advertising dollar can be a very expensive, trial and error proposal if not done correctly. A good SEO professional firm can help you choose the most effective programs for your needs. The best programs that will work in your company.
Author:
Serge Thibodeau of Rank For Sales
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
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
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.
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
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.
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
Reciprocal Linking Techniques For A Successful Web Site
Building a successful web site is a process that works best when done in a deliberate, logical step-by-step manner. The first step is to build a top quality web site that is packed with interesting and useful content.
Next, you need to submit your site to the major directories and begin a well thought out advertising campaign.
But the single most important step is getting a top ranking in the major search engines, most notably Google and MSN.
When ranking the sites in their index, Google places a very high importance on “link popularity”, that is the sites that have the most high-quality incoming links generally rank higher in Google. Getting links to your site from other sites is an absolute must for a top ranking in Google and the other top search engines (top 10 at a minimum).
The question that you may be asking is “How do I get these links?”. There are many ways to attain links to your web site, but it can be very difficult for new sites to get other sites to link to them.
There’s a simple way to jump-start the process however. It’s called “reciprocal linking”. This is how it works: You search for sites that are in the same general topic area as yours (but not sites that compete directly). After you find a list of suitable link exchange partners, you place a link to their site on your site. Then you email the webmasters of the other sites and ask for a link exchange.
Do not send generic copies of the same email to each webmaster however. Rather, take a few minutes to browse each site. Then write a personalized email to the webmaster explaining what you liked about the site (be specific) and why you think a link exchange would benefit both parties.
Be sure to address the webmaster by name if at all possible. Also, be sure to give him your link exchange information. This should include the title of your site, a short description, and the URL that you want his site to link to (this doesn’t have to be the home page). And be sure to include the URL of the page that already has his reciprocal link on it.
After you have sent the emails, expect a few rejections for various reasons. This is normal and expected so don’t be at all discouraged. You will also quickly get a few emails from webmasters accepting your offer. Verify that your reciprocal link is in fact on their sites and then send a “thank you” email.
A great way to find potential link partners is to do a Google search on one of your main keywords or phrases. You will most likely have many pages of sites listed in the search results.
Here is a simple way to find out which of these sites actively exchange links: Go to the bottom of the Google search results page. Click on “Search within results”. In the text box type in “Add URL”. This will return only the sites in your original search results listings that have an “Add URL” link on their web site. You can also do a search for “link exchange”.
If you aggressively pursue link exchanges on a regular basis, within a few short months you’ll have built up good rankings in the search engines with a steady flow of targeted traffic to your web site!
Author Bio:
Rick Rouse is the owner of RLROUSE Webmaster Resources and the author of “Super Webmaster SEO Toolkit” which gives step by-step instructions for getting a top 10 listing in Google & Yahoo.
5 Ways To Get Other Websites To Link To Yours
In-bound links from other web sites to yours provide two avenues to success for your site.
First, the number of quality in-bound links pointing to your web site are a major factor that the search engines (including Google) use to rank web pages in their databases. Lots of high-quality in-bound links can help boost a page into the “top 10” of a search engine’s search results page (SERP).
In addition to the search engine ranking benefits provided by in-bound links, they are also a very steady supply of referral traffic to your web site! If you are able to attain a large number of links from quality sites, you will get about as much traffic from referrals as you get from the search engines.
The big question is “How do I get other sites to link to mine?”.
There are several techniques that you can use to entice other webmasters to link to your site:
1 – Simply ask the webmaster for a link! If your site can be a valuable resource for the other site’s visitors, send the webmaster a polite, personalized email asking for a link. Tell the other webmaster why a link to your site would be beneficial to his visitors (and his site).
For example: Your site sells books about web site promotion. Your web site would probably be of value to the visitors of a site that features web authoring books or tutorials. And since your site compliments (but doesn’t compete with) his site, he may well be happy to give you a link!
2 – Offer the other webmaster a freebie in exchange for a link. You could offer a free software download, a free service (such as search engine optimization for his site), or a testimonial for his site (with your link in it of course).
3 – Write articles about a topic in your field of expertise. Offer to let other webmasters use the article on their websites or in their newsletters. At the end of the article will be a “resource box” that provides information about you and a link to your web site. Writing free articles is a major traffic-builder!
4 – Produce and distribute free ebooks about topics in your field of expertise. Give (or better yet sell) other webmasters the right to distribute your ebook via their web sites or newsletters. Of course, each ebook will have information about your web site as well as a link to it!
5 – Exchange links with other web sites that compliment (but don’t compete) with yours. Do a Google search on one of your target keywords. Contact each webmaster with a personalized email explaining why a link exchange would benefit both sites (be very specific). Then ask to exchange links. It helps to already have his “reciprocal” link in place before you contact him with the URL of the page on your site with his link on it.
There are numerous other techniques that you can use to get in-bound links to your site. Simply use your imagination. If you devise a well-thought out plan for your link campaign and apply it with diligence, you can watch your search engine rankings and web site traffic steadily climb to ever new heights!
Author Bio:
Rick Rouse is the owner of RLROUSE Webmaster Resources and the author of “Super Webmaster SEO Toolkit” which gives step by-step instructions for getting a top 10 listing in Google & Yahoo.
How To Reach All The Search Engines
Hi Jill,
I don’t know if you will recollect, but we have communicated several times and your feedback is always so helpful. Hope you can give me a little assistance here.
I am using WPG’s page critic. It is quickly apparent that what works for one search engine is frequently quite different on another. What is the answer?
I could use a robot.txt file and create a different version of each index page but is this a smart approach? Does this look to be like
spamming? How do you handle these differences?
Thanks in advance.
Jerry
~~~Jill’s Reply~~~
Hi Jerry,
Nice to hear from you!
The answer to your problem is to simply not use PageCritic. It’s totally wrong, from my perspective. Pages can and do rank highly on
all the search engines. There’s never a need to design a page for any particular engine at the exclusion of others.
Make your pages the best they can be for your users and search engines in general, and your site will do great!
Jill
[Apparently my reply didn’t quite answer Jerry’s concerns, so he wrote me back with additional questions. See below…as the Q&A
continues… J]
Jerry’s Response
Hi Jill,
The thing that drives me crazy is how well all of my sites do on Google and how poorly they do on MSN (why, btw, do all of MSN’s results come from LookSmart?). So, knowing what needs to be done to the page to move up in MSN is important. Do I simply rely on
Searchenginewatch or others for that insight?
I’m surprised to hear your response. I know better than to use the [WebPositionGold] submitter or the page generator but I thought their knowledge base and page critic were good tools for getting general insights on a page vs. search engine.
Do you mind telling me how you determine what to do on a page when faced with a similar dilemma?
What is about WPG that you believe makes it an invaluable SEO tool?
Again, thanks for your help and feedback.
Jerry
~~~Jill’s Reply~~~
Hi Jerry,
The thing that drives me crazy is how well all of my sites do on Google and how poorly they do on MSN (why, btw, do all of MSN’s results come from LookSmart?).
MSN is all about the money. If you care about doing well with them, you probably should pony up to LookSmart and pay for every click to your site. Unfortunately, the Inktomi listings only show up *after* the LookSmart listings. Of course, even Inktomi wants some of your cash these days. If you absolutely need to be doing well in MSN, you can use paid Inktomi inclusion and tweak your pages to your heart’s content. You’ll be spidered every 48 hours and can see what works and doesn’t. You’ll need to shoot for the phrases that have no LookSmart listings, though, as there’s no way to beat them with Inktomi “natural” results.
So, knowing what needs to be done to the page to move up in MSN is important. Do I simply rely on Searchenginewatch or others for that insight?
All of the search engines want the same thing — to show the pages that are the most relevant to the search query. Keep working on your pages so that they are the most relevant in all respects, and you’ll eventually get lots of highly targeted traffic and sales.
I’m surprised to hear your response. I know better than to use the submitter or the page generator but I thought their knowledge base and page critic were good tools for getting general insights on a page vs. search engine.
If you like numbers, I suppose PageCritic can be interesting. But years ago when I ran some high-ranking sites through the PageCritic and it told me that they needed to be changed, I decided never to look at it again. It only works for the algorithm du jour. If you want to chase whatever algorithm is up to bat on any given day, more power to you.
I prefer a long-term approach, which blankets all the engines with lots of keyword phrases that are relevant to my sites. This way when some phrases are ranking highly in some engines, and others are ranking highly in other engines, I still have good representation across the board. Rankings do change. They can change on any given day. Up and down, down and up. That’s life in the SEO game. The trick is not to look at the minutiae, and see the big picture instead. Forget about rankings even. Are you being found in the engines for relevant phrases, and are you converting that traffic into sales? That’s what matters.
What is about WPG that you believe makes it an invaluable SEO tool?
It’s really not an invaluable tool to me anymore. Five years ago, when we had many competing search engines and it was important to be ranked highly in all of them, WPG as an easy way to check positions. Today, there are only 2 or 3 search databases that anyone cares about, making it easy enough to do some spot checking by hand. Or even
better — to simply check server logs. That’s the best indication of how you’re doing.
Hope this helps!
Jill
Author Bio:
Jill Whalen of High Rankings is an internationally recognized search engine marketing consultant and editor of the free weekly email newsletter, the High Rankings Advisor.
