4 Simple Steps To SEO

Search engine optimization is the process of improving a website in order to acheive higher search engine placement. SEO is not a complicated process, it involves mostly common sense. This article explaines the 4 simple steps that will, if followed correctly greatly improve your search engine rankings and help you gain an inital foothold in the major search engines search results.

#1 Compile a keyword list: Target the most frequently used keywords on your page. Begin with around 10 keywords. Also use combinations of keywords for example: If your site sells video games and game systems, a good keyword phrase would be: video games and game systems or video game systems. Optimizing the word video games would be pointless because the competition would be so huge most websites will not be found in the search results, taking into account the age of the domain and the number of backlinks that point to a site, which will also dramatically affect search engine the rankings. Most searches made by internet users contain keyword phrases instead of just one keyword.

#2 Edit your title, meta description tag and meta keyword tag using the keywords from your newly compiled keyword list. The title should contain no more than 10 or 12 words, the description meta tag should contain no more than 150 characters. and the keyword meta tag should contain no more than 200 characters. Insert the keywords into the title starting with your three main keywords, keep in mind the number of words used, try to stay under 10 or 12. Next, edit your meta description tag using the same keywords, location of each word is crucial. Try to keep the title and meta description as similar as possible, not completly dublicated but as close as possible. It might sound a little strange but it works. This will greatly improve your search engine rankings. Stop words are also a factor than can affect rankings. Words such as: the, and, is, in, are, etc. are words that should not be used if at all possible. Removal of stop words is a guarantee of higher search engine placement. The location of your keywords in the title and meta tags will also affect your placement.

#3 Use keywords as links on your page, referring back to video games as an example, when editing your page use text such as video games, game systems and so on as links as close to the beginning of the page as possible. Keep in mind search engines read a page header first, then starting on the top left reading down the left side, after reaching the bottom of the page the content is read from the center of the page to the bottom. Then the right side of the page is read ending with the footer.

#4 Keyword placement: It is essential that all of your keywords are at the beginning and the end of your webpage. Keywords need to be placed in the first 50 words of a webpage. Keywords also need to be placed into the last 50 words on the page. Start with the header of your webpage, use keywords there first. Then place keywords on the left side of your page. Try not to repeat keywords, and do not stuff images with keywords. One keyword per image. Whenever possible use anchor text instead of images. To place keywords at the end of the page, use keywords in the footer and on the right side of the page. Remember how search engines read a page, header first, then top left reading down, center text reading down, top right reading down and footer last. If these 4 steps are followed exactly you can guarantee yourself excellent search engine placement even #1 on Google.

There are other factors which can improve your search engine rankings such as backlinks. When it comes to linking, reciprocal or one way links both are excellent ways to increase your link popularity. One way links however seem to be the way to go because there is no linkback required by you. Meaning no link pages to set up. Directory and article submissions are an excellent way to build quality one way links. You do not need thousands of useless links to gain high rankings on the search engines. Only a handfull of high quality and relevant links are needed to give you excellent search engine rankings. http://www.submit-site.org/

[tags]seo,search engine optimization,submit site,search engines,website optimization[/tags]

Dealing With Search Engine Stress In A Home-Based Business

As a member of several search engine optimization forums, I have recently noticed (especially since Yahoo recently decided to try their hand at competing with Google) that the stress level of many webmasters has gone way up. This applies not only to webmasters involved in Internet-based home businesses, but to webmasters in general.

Additionally, it seems that many people that are in the business of search engine optimization (SEO) are, with good reason, going completely bonkers. As Google came on the scene in 1998 and quickly dominated the search business, website optimization became largely a game of shooting at a single target, namely, pleasing Google...for all intents and purposes, Google became the "800 pound gorilla" of the search engine business.

Since the advent of search engines (particularly Google) spawned the whole SEO business, I guess its only fair that the search engine industry can once again turn the SEO business on its ear, and it seems now to be sort of a cat and mouse (not desktop) relationship that can get really interesting as we move forward.

Not only are there now several viable players (most notably Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask Jeeves) in the search engine business, but they are all adopting different and frequently changing algorithms for determining the ranking positions for websites. The current game is that webmasters are trying to figure out how the various search engines perform the rankings and, on the flip side, the search engines are striving to be unpredictable to those webmasters and SEO firms.

For those people using websites to promote home-based businesses, it can be stressful constantly trying to determine "what the search engines want" and agonizing over every downward fluctuation in rankings that their website may experience.

Looking forward in time, I think we can expect that rankings will fluctuate frequently and will not be at all consistent from one search engine to another. It will be quite common that for a particular search term a website might suffer a drop in position ranking for search engine "A" and an increase position ranking for search engine "B" at essentially the same point in time.

Rather than stressing out over every position ranking "wiggle", a better approach might be to just focus on "what do visitors to my site want?". The search engines are striving to give their users a quality (relevant) search experience and if you are focused in giving visitors to your website what they are looking for, these paths will meet somewhere down the road.

You can save yourself alot of consternation by focusing upon the needs of the website visitors you are seeking to attract, rather than chasing the frequently changing ranking algorithms of several search engines. Focus on a single target instead of chasing several moving targets at the same time.

This article pertains to natural searches only, as paid search engine advertising is a completely different situation.

About The Author

Kirk Bannerman operates a successful home based business and resides in California. For more details, visit his website at http://business-at-home.us

[tags]seo, search engine optimization, search engine ranking, search engine placement[/tags]

Steps For Search Engine Optimization - Placing Keywords, Part I

Experts who deal in SEO (search engine optimization) are of the opinion that in order to rank well in SERPs' (search engine result pages), each webpage of your site must include 2 to 3 keywords (rather keyphrases) spread 'evenly' over the page. This will enable search engines to understand the importance of those keywords vis-à-vis your webpage and list accordingly in SERPs' when queried for those keywords.

The trick here is how you can 'evenly' spread your keywords within your page content without making it too obvious. After all, the purpose of your webpage must usually be to retain your visitor long enough by imparting certain information or knowledge instead of typical hard-selling of your product or service right away. It is to be acknowledged that viewers who come from search engines are more than likely looking for information rather than deciding on an immediate purchase. The focus therefore will be to ensure that your visitor stays back awhile, so that a sale may result soon.

That being so, it follows that your webpage should be easily readable, yet contain subtle ways to serve your ultimate aim of selling your product or service. This calls for expertise in writing content suitable for your webpage such that a viewer finds sufficient interest to stay tuned to your website, and as a follow-up action, contemplates acquiring your product or service that would serve his need.

Since search engines tend to value your webpage content in a certain manner, it is thus important to have clear idea about where in webpage you must include your chosen keywords. This is necessary so as to convey to search engines the overall importance of your webpage with regard to those keywords.

This article (Part-I) will deal on the aspect of strategic positioning of keywords in your webpage. In the next part (Part-II), I will attempt to give examples of what an ideal content writing should be like. I will also glance through in Part-II what SEO experts say 'must-do' steps for overall optimization of your webpage for the search engines.

What search engines want to see?

Well, I am not about to explain complex algorithms of search engines. That, in any case, is beyond the scope of this article. However, from my experience, I have often felt that search engines look at your webpage just as examiners do while correcting an examination paper. Just as examiners expect that the content of your paper must be relevant, to-the-point and well-narrated, so do search engines.

Let us proceed with an example. Let us assume that you are to write an essay on 'Hurricane Katrina' to be assimilated in a webpage. For simplicity, let us further assume that 'Hurricane Katrina' is a keyphrase you have chosen for your webpage. We will now go step-by-step on how to proceed in order to make your page-content 'optimized' for search engines.

The title

Considering that 'Hurricane Katrina' is the main topic of your webpage content (and incidentally your keyphrase too), you may select to have the title (that is, the 'title' tag) as 'Hurricane Katrina creates havoc', or perhaps 'Hurricane Katrina brings life to halt'. You may like to be a little more specific with the title 'Hurricane Katrina rips through New Orleans'. Note that in all these cases, the title is concise and makes the subject of your essay clear at the outset. The second point to note is that the keyphrase is positioned right at the beginning of the title.

Description or synopsis

The meta-description (that is, description meta-tag) of your webpage ought to come right after the title tag. In reality the meta-description is more like a brief statement about the content of your webpage, just as you would write a brief outline or a synopsis if you are to write an essay on the subject. Let the sentence 'Hurricane Katrina takes everyone by surprise and leaves thousands homeless.' be our meta-description for the webpage.

There are a few points to take note here. First, the meta-description conveys an intent similar to the title above. Second, we have broadened the subject of discussion. That is to say, the content of the webpage will now deal not only on the surprise-factor of the hurricane as it hit the coastlines, but also the damage it did in its wake. This is necessary because search engines are known to quote from description meta-tag sometimes, and so a little elaboration is always a help.

Third, the keyphrase 'Hurricane Katrina' is once again located in the beginning, so that search engines begin to recognize that this keyphrase is indeed important for the page-content. And lastly, it is better that the description ends in a full stop.

At this point, let us ponder awhile. One may argue that the meta-description may not necessarily be one grammatically correct complete sentence. For example, what about 'Hurricane Katrina taking everyone by surprise, leaving thousands homeless.', or for that matter, 'Hurricane Katrina takes everyone by surprise. Thousands left homeless.'. I am inclined to believe that variations such as these are equally feasible, and should not come in the way of search engines' taking due cognition of page-content.

The second portion of this article (Part-I) describes how keyphrases must be placed in body content, including headings, main topic, sub-topic, etc. for search engine optimization. To read the full article, click here.

A freelance content writer, Partha Bhattacharya runs WebInfo, a free web marketing resource. Contact Partha at prioriti@gmail.com for your next content writing assignment. Get quality writing at reasonable rate.

[tags]seo,sem,search engine optimization,top search ranking,keyword,content writing[/tags]

Simple Search Engine Results

Without "Tricking" any search engine the most simplistic approach to getting found by those looking for your offering is to insure your specific Internet Community knows what your site is about. Search Engines do not trust the content on your site to tell them what it is about. There is a very solid reason for this, they've been duped. Web Sites have been "traffic" driven for a very long time. The term " Internet Super Highway " was coined under the premise that when a website is receiving a lot of visitors it is valuable real estate on a popular curve in the freeway of information. The more popular a section of highway is the more expensive the billboard space is. So since the people making the sites were only compensated by advertising dollars they drove traffic in. They did not care what kind of traffic; they just wanted visitors, lots of them. And they were duly compensated, even if the traffic was related to a term that was searched very often but had nothing to do with the site. The Search Engines began to lose face, people would stop using a particular engine because they could not find what they were looking for, they simply found sites that had a lot of banners and had a lot of the text they were looking for on the page, but nothing to offer. This is why the Search Engines do not trust your web site. They must determine what your site is about in some other logical manner. Remember these are machines, they only know numbers. So instead of the machine counting the words on your site, they count the words on all the sites that link to you. The sites that link to you are your Internet Community. If those sites are related, and they are popular, and you make sure the search engines can count the right words the right way, then you will have explained to the engine what your site is about without having to trick it in any way.

Search Engines must trust your internet community. Mathematically they have no choice. They are like any system, they are data driven, they have very little data to go by other than the data on your site and all of the sites that link to you. But because this is all they have to work with, they use every miniscule piece of information within. They look at title tags of your site and the site linking to you. They look at the text under the images, the descriptions, the keywords, and the text in the link. They count all the links on all the pages and all the pages, pages. They are counting everything.

When competing for a specific term all those little things that they are counting come into play! This is when they compare your site to other sites and decide the order in which to place your site. If the other site has more qualifiers than you they get a higher ranking. So in no way are you tricking the search engine, but an effort must be made to increase the qualifiers so your site can compete. Knowing which qualifiers hold more value to the search engine can help a great deal. The trump card of all qualifiers is the text in the link on all those other sites that point to you.

This is simple search engine results because the most effective sites are campaign driven. What this means in a nut shell is that they don't focus just on one term. When competing on many terms the playing field is complicated exponentially. Much attention must be paid to the details, and as you can imagine there are a lot of those laying around in our new Internet media.

Adam Yax is CTO of http://www.phoenixsynergy.com, which provides internet marketing in Phoenix, AZ.

[tags]Internet marketing,increase sales, SEO[/tags]

Search Engine Marketing – The Full Package

After conducting extensive research I have come to the conclusion that there is a great deal of misunderstanding surrounding the subject of Search Engine Marketing. The greatest misunderstanding is in confusing the terms Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

One would think that those individuals claiming to be SEO experts should be knowledgeable about the subject and recognize the clear distinction. Apparently this is not the case; the internet is full of misguided information, from so called experts. Proving, I suppose that the industry is liberally spattered with cowboys.

To start, let us first define the term "Search Engine Optimisation" (henceforth referred to as SEO).

SEO

SEO is the process of manipulating the structure and content of a website in such a way that it will perform better in the search engine's organic listings. The techniques involved can be sub-structured into several areas of activity, as detailed below.

1) Page readiness – Search engines expect to crawl clean HTML code. Every page of a website should be validated to eliminate errors and sloppy coding.

2) Site readiness – Search engine web bots follow the links on your web pages and thereby find new pages to index. If a web bot meets a broken link it cannot continue spidering your site. Make sure you have no broken links. Also, provide a site map. A tool for creating site maps is available at my website, www.pro-seo.co.uk/ror-sitemap-generator.shtml.

3) Keyword selection – It is vitally important to select the right keywords for which a particular page is to be optimized. The most obvious keywords are not always the best choice, and are often mega-competitive. Choose wisely.

4) Site structure – Your website should be structured in such a way that each page can be optimized for a maximum of two keywords. Do not try to optimize for a lot of keywords on one page. Remember, you have to write for your users. Writing copy is a balancing act that keeps both users and search engines happy, and is better achieved on a well structured site.

5) Copy writing – the visible text on your web pages should be structured to include the two most important keywords for that page's content. Get the keywords into headers. Work the keywords into paragraph text, having your keywords appear near the beginning, near the middle, and near the end. Make some keywords bold, some italic and some underlined.

6) HTML tags – The most important of these is the Title tag. Get both keywords for that page into the Title tag, without repetition. For example, if your main key phrase is "diet plans", and your second phrase is "diet supplements", the Title tag should read "diet plans and supplements". Do not repeat the word diet, to search engines it may look like spamming. If your main concern is to improve your Google ranking, you may have overlooked the Meta keywords and Meta description tags, don't, there are more search engines than Google and they can all bring traffic. Also, get the keywords into H1 tags, H2 tags, alt attributes, and very important, your link text.

And after doing all that for every page in your website you may be asking: so where does SEM come in?

SEM

SEM includes SEO plus all the other things you can do to boost your visibility in the search engines and increase targeted visitors to your website. A condensed list may be as follows:

1) SEO (see above).
2) A link building strategy.
3) Pay per click (PPC) campaigns.
4) Banner exchanges.
5) Press releases.
6) And any other activity that will get your website noticed.

SEM then, is the full package. Whereas SEO techniques are a vital, but not the only, component of that package.

Richard Brennan is a search engine optimisation and marketing consultant, and founder of proSEO Zone.

proSEO Zone specialises in improve Google ranking techniques.

[tags]Search Engine Marketing, SEM, Search Engine Optimisation, SEO[/tags]

Search Engine Optimization --- An Overview

Search engine optimization is one of most popular online marketing tool for any website. With most websites looking forward to increasing the online sales of their products/services, search engine optimization can be a very cost-effective tool to target and procure your customers online. In this paper, we will discuss about search engine optimization, its benefits and how you can optimize your website for top search engine rankings.

What is search engine optimization?

Search engine optimization (also known by various other names like search engine ranking, search engine promotion, website promotion, SEO etc.) is a method through which a website is given top rankings in various search engines. According to a recent industry study, 1 in every 20 people go to the second page of search results pages, but only 1 in every 100 people go beyond that. So, by top search engine rankings, we mean that your website should be within the first two pages of the search results, preferably in the first page (i.e. within top 10 rankings).

2. What are the prime benefits of search engine optimization?

§ Top search engine rankings result in more pre-qualified business leads coming to your website which in turn can convert to greater sales for your organization.

§ Search engine promotion is one of the cheapest methods of advertizing for your organization. Compared to advertizements in the newspapers/magazines or in the television, search engine promotion costs many times less and can bring more traffic to your websites, thereby providing greater ROI.

§ Search engine optimization enhances online brand identity of your organization.

3. What are the key factors for your website to have top search engine rankings?

Search engines change their algorithms frequently, thereby forcing the search engine optimization companies to re-strategize their search engine optimization techniques. However, the following attributes are basic and play a major role in procuring top search engine rankings.

a. Keyword Research – Keywords play the most vital role in your search engine optimization campaign. Keywords (can be 1, 2, 3 or more words) are the search terms which a surfer types in the search box of a search engine to reach your website. Let us consider that you are an "India-based Outsourcing consultant" interested in optimizing your website for top search engine rankings. The following are some of the keywords which surfers will type to reach your website -

Keywords

bpo

bpo india

bpo outsourcing services

business outsourcing services

business process outsourcing

offshore companies

offshore outsourcing

offshore outsourcing services

offshore services

outsource india

outsourcing companies

outsourcing consultants

outsourcing india

outsourcing services

outsourcing services company

Keyword research tips –

• Always target keywords that best describe your products/service.

• Try to find multiword potential keywords compared to single keywords.

• Try formulating keywords which give answers to as "why/how/what …….?"

• Utilize your server log files to know what your customers searched most while visiting your site.

• Use keyword generator softwares like Wordtracker (http://www.wordtracker.com) or Overture (http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/)

• Include popular common misspellings (e.g. viagra typed as viagara etc.) in your keyword list.

b. Title of the webpage - …… - Title has a deep impact on your website's search engine rankings. Experience shows that most companies use the following as title of their index page which can prevent them from getting top search engine rankings.

Welcome to the website of XYZ.com

For example, let's continue with the above example of "India-based Outsourcing consultant".

An ideally optimized title should contain the top 3-5 keywords of your business, e.g. outsourcing consultants, outsourcing india, outsource india

Optimized Title - Outsourcing Consultants, Outsourcing India, Outsource India

c. Description Meta tag of the webpage – Description of a webpage also plays important role in getting top search engine rankings.

Optimized Description - Develop a suitable description based on your top 3 keywords

d. Keywords Meta Tag of the webpage - This meta tag was of great importance at one time. But rampant manipulations (i.e. multiple, often non-relevant keyword stuffing in the "keywords" tag), leading to abuse has resulted in search engines giving lesser importance to "keywords" tag while ranking sites. Nevertheless, you can always place top 3 – 5 keywords of your site in the "keywords" tag.

Optimized Keywords -

e. Importance of Content/Keyword-enriched optimized pages for top search engine rankings –

Well, if there is one aspect which holds supreme importance in search engine, specially in Google ranking, then it is this. Yes, content! The popular industry say – "Content is King" was perhaps devised by watching Google's love for content. Develop content based on the top keywords related to your business. While developing content for your web pages, keep in mind the keyword density (KD).

Mathematically speaking, Keyword Density is the ratio of the total number of time a keyword is repeated divided by the total content words. Since KD is normally represented in percentage, the above figure is to be multiplied by 100

For example, if you have developed a web page of around 250 words on the keyword "search engine optimization", and that particular keyword (search engine optimization) is repeated 10 times, then

Keyword Density (KD) = 10/250 * 100 = 4%

As a thumb rule, Keyword Density of an optimized page for top search engine rankings should vary between 2 – 7 % (this figure varies among different search engines)

4. Submission of Keyword-enriched optimized pages – After you have finished content development for the optimized pages based on the keywords targeted for top search engine rankings, submit those pages to various search engines.

1. Google - http://www.google.com/addurl.html

2. AlltheWeb - http://addurl.alltheweb.com/add_url

3. AltaVista - http://addurl.altavista.com/addurl/new

4. MSN - http://submitit.bcentral.com/msnsubmit.htm

5. Role of Link Popularity in top search engine rankings –

Link popularity has assumed tremendous importance for getting good ranks in Google now a days. In fact, what started as a friendly reciprocal link exchange program among various webmasters has now become a sub-industry within the SEO industry itself, with thousands of link farms popping up every day! Yes, if you are interested in getting top ranks in search engines, especially Google, then you must pay effort in building up links for your site.

Create a html page, preferably named as "Resources/Links/Partners" and place a link of this page from Index Page of your site. This page should never be more than 1 click away from the index page of your site, else webmasters won't be interested in participating in the reciprocal link exchange program.

Target both "industry-related" and "non-industry-related" websites as your link exchange partners. For example, if you are providing outsourcing services, then try getting links from "industry-related websites (i.e. websites dealing with outsourcing services, maybe your business rivals!). This is important, because if 10 of your rival sites give links to your site, then Google will surely pay importance to your site, because getting links from rival companies are difficult. Your site MUST be of some high caliber, else the other 10 sites won't have linked! Also, try procuring links from top ranked general informative websites as well.

Always exchange links with websites which have high Google PageRank (PR) of at least 4, the more the better! (both Index Page as well as Resources/Links Page of the Link Partner's site should have PRs of >=4) [PageRank is a proprietary tool that Google uses to determine the importance of a page and varies in a scale of 0 (least important) to 10 (maximum importance)].

Have a link code ready for participating in link exchange program. Here is a sample link code for an India-based Outsourcing consultant.

- Indian outsourcing consultant providing guidance to companies willing to set up outsourcing centers in India.

Always prefer a text link (as given above) in comparison to a banner link, where your chance of Google and other search engine spiders finding the potential keywords is limited only to the "alt tag" of the banner. Also, Google pays importance to the text of the incoming link/anchor text (i.e. the incoming link text must contain high potential, relevant keywords), so develop a link text with title ("indian outsourcing consultant") which will help you in Google Ranking.

Refrain from javascript link code because Google spider finds it difficult to index.

Key SEO Factors

• Targeting the right keywords for your website

• Title of your webpage

• Description Meta tag of your webpage

• Keywords Meta tag of your webpage

• Quality, Informative Content

• Link Popularity

Conclusion -

With Google's numero uno position in the search engine market being threatened by arch-rivals Yahoo! [bought Overture, the largest PPC search engine recently, who in turn bought Altavista and Alltheweb] and Microsoft's MSN [believed to be developing its own search engine], it is no doubt that the search engine industry is going to experience tremendous changes in the next few months. The recent Google "Florida" Update is just one of the many upheavals that we may be witnessing in an industry where the only constant factor is the "change". However, the various techniques outlined in this paper are basic and are we believe that following them you will be able to achieve top 10 ranks in Google and other search engines.

About The Author

Prabuddha S Raychaudhuri is the Founder & CEO of Search Engine Optimization Guru Pvt. Ltd. (http://www.searchengine-optimization-guru.com), a premiere Search Engine Optimization and Marketing (SEO/SEM) consultancy firm, catering to clients which range from Fortune 500 to small home business start-ups. Our services include Top 10 Google and other search engines rankings, Pay Per Click (PPC) targeted traffic campaign, Paid Listing Management, Keyword Advertizing. Prabuddha holds a Bachelor Of Engineering (B.E.) in Construction Engineering and can be contacted at prabuddha@searchengine-optimization-guru.com.

prabuddha@searchengine-optimization-guru.com

[tags]seo,search engine,directories,internet marketing,websites,site promotion[/tags]

How To REALLY Profit From SEO

I want to give you a few more things to think about as you excel and grow in the craft of search engine marketing. If you are anything like me, you were hooked the first time you really made a difference to someone else's success. I soon realized that being able to help business owners to get results from these optimization methods and strategies could also be amazingly profitable. I found out that customers are your greatest resources and many of them are quite generous when you make an impact on their business. So the topic here is for those who want to profit from their skills (if you are not already doing very well and having an awesome time already).

It may seem like a strange thing to talk about but before I begin, I'll say this. There are many folks out there offering various SEO services and they are still not getting the profits that they would like to make. They are not REALLY profiting the way they might if they took a little different approach. The solutions that business owners need to really make a difference in the bottom line, require more than just bringing volumes of traffic to a site. You need targeted traffic mixed with a web strategy to compel response.

Then another group that seems to be doing well at first but the truth is they are making lots of promises and sales but they are not able to hang on to clients very long because they are not delivering long term results.

Many of my SEO clients have been with me 5 years plus. (I am still taking on new ones too.)

Let's talk about the benefits of SEO to you as a search engine marketer, then we'll give you 5 ways to profit:

Here are just a few legitimate benefits of offering SEO services to your clients.

--Increase your sales There's no telling how many sales you can make when you not only can talk the talk but you can walk the walk and REALLY deliver results. Prospects can sense there is something different about you and your services. You are known as the one who fixes up Web sites that don't work.

--Increase your repeat business I learned that just because someone buys a web site, it does not mean that they are happy with it. But if you can turn that Web site around and make it work, then that same client may even BUY a second or a third Web site, not to mention, buy various promotional services. All they need to see is, that what you do… really does work!

--Increase your referral business What can I say, but word gets around quick! Business owners talk to other business owners and every time you help someone out and make them successful on the net, it's like they tell everyone else they know. Referral business is wonderful!

--Increase your credibility With the right training and talent, your client comes to think of you as simply brilliant. This is not because you are REALLY brilliant, but you just look after your client's business as if it were your own. If your client insists that they have the best web marketer and SEO on the planet, why burst their bubble? You make them prosper and they make you prosper.

--Increase your confidence There is a difference your client notices in you...right down to your body language and that inner knowing that if I've gotten other folks awesome results last week, I can do it again no problem this week.

--Increase your authority I can not say enough about solid communication and managing client's expectations honestly.

--Build Client loyalty Let the competitor just try and steal your clients with false promises or tricky claims. You've done a great job of educating your client and making them web wise. Now these things are quite profitable sounding but honestly, they are really just fringe benefits. Lets move on to talk about real profit options.

5 Ways to Profit from SEO: Here's how it starts:

1. Stop focusing on sales and start focusing on your clients success!

There are so many "webmasters", web designers, graphic artists in this business. Does it not just scare you a little bit? Don't we have to enter into competition with other web developers and does it not become a rat race?

Start focusing on your client's success.

Do all that you can do to make them successful. Pour all of your talents into making their projects work. So many folks I talk to can never stop thinking about where they will make their next sale instead of delivering results to the clients they ALREADY have and in so doing, you establish lifetime residuals.

Make your client successful and they will literally become part of YOUR sales team.

2. If you're not up to speed, you better catch up fast. A difference in your performance is a difference in your profits!

If you are not up to speed on solid SEO marketing techniques and methods, start learning now. Take a course or study at a live workshop, but however you do it, get your SEO skills up to speed so you can really help people. If you can show them a strategy that really puts dollars in their pocket, they'll put dollars in YOUR pocket!

3. How's your batting average? How about profit sharing?

If your skills are medium to above average, why not share in the profits yourself. I am referring to offering someone a vertical contract. This would be a deal where you own part of the company in return for making it successful with your SEO skills. Don't brush this off. There are some exceptional deals to be had if you start thinking laterally.

4. Don't forget your community and charitable work.

When's the last time you helped promoting a charitable work at NO cost. Build a site and promote it for the Literacy counsel or the Easter Seals Society or your Local Rotary Group or your Chamber of Commerce. Don't forget that this work will often open unusual and even surprising doors. Help make others successful and you will not fail. Many important leaders within your local community will be serving on these committees right next to you! A great way to network and meet new people and help the cause.

5. Watch the latest SEO trends and position yourself to take advantage.

The study and practice of SEO has been very good to me. Five years ago, I never dreamed that my study of Optimization would lead to the Internet lifestyle. I look after my clients well and sometimes go a little beyond what some might do in the call of duty. I have clients that pay me well for my services and demonstrate that they care about my business. As a result of the work I have done, I have enjoyed wonderful repeat business and client loyalty. Referral business is the best type of business going because it does not really involve a lot of preparation or hard work. You know that when you arrive, that they really want YOU to do the job because of your track record. It's wonderful business.

I could write a lot more but I hope you get the picture. If you have not been enjoying good profits, a rewarding lifestyle and being appreciated by your clients your need a plan of action.

SUGGESTIONS:

1. You MUST be able to "deliver" and really make a difference. Do whatever it takes to get your SEO skills and lateral thinking skills up to speed.

2. Run a balanced business. Are you charging for what your services are worth?

There are some folks who charge steeply and don't know how to get the results. For gosh sakes, if you're good at what you do, make sure you are charging well for your services. You DESERVE fair reward if your considerable skills are helping other business owners to prosper. (some people are afraid to charge for their work)

Note: The ones that charge steeply but DON'T deliver may make a few dollars initially, but they won't enjoy the customer loyalty, the referral business, repeat business that you do and they won't have a "customer for life" like you will.

3. Don't forget to recognize and be thankful for the progress you've already made. Be sure to benchmark your victories but even more important, celebrate your CLIENT'S VICTORIES too! After all, you helped bring them about.

4. Give something back to your community (with gladness). Look for opportunities to help others who genuinely need help and avoid those who are only after your talents to exploit them. (Trust me, when your SEO talents and success stories increase, you'll have strangers coming out of the woodwork to take you to dinner and pick your brain). Proceed with wisdom.

5. You must be willing to change and take action! Performing the way you perform now has delivered a certain result. So if your happy with that result, carry on exactly the same way and you should get very similar results. If you are not happy with your results now, then you must change the way you do things.

Same action = same result

Different action = new results

Are you looking for new results?

Is it a time for a change of action?

Here's wishing you the ultimate success.

About The Author

John Alexander is the Co-Director of Training of Search Engine Workshops with Robin Nobles. Together, they teach 2-day beginner, 3-day advanced, and 5-day all-inclusive "hands on" http://www.searchengineworkshops.com in locations across the globe. John also teaches online search engine marketing courses through http://www.onlinewebtraining.com, and he's a member of Wordtracker's official question support team at http://www.wordtracker.com/moreinfo.html.

john@searchengineworkshops.com

[tags]seo,search engine,search engine optimization,traffic rank,web rank,internet rank,internet[/tags]

Your Master Keyword Chart

In this article, we will briefly touch on one method of finding the best keywords to position your web-site at the top of as many searches as possible.

The 'Master Keyword Chart' that we will create, will, however, fulfill many other functions that will make a definite impact on the effectiveness of our web-sites.

Now we all know that attempts to 'fool' the search engines are doomed to failure 99% of the time. The alogorithms have already been set to scupper your efforts, or if they haven't, they soon will be.

Nonetheless, there are many legitamate, effective ways of optomizing your site such as;

a.. creating well researched meta-tags;

b.. the trading of relevant, quality links;

c.. posting of articles, network posts & advertisements for inward links;

d.. referencing other websites for outbound links; and, most importantly;

a.. filling your pages with compelling, informative content.

The one thing that ties together all these methods, and many more, is KEYWORDS.

Everything a 'spiderbot' (a search engine's little hunter) does is guided by their search for the best keywords that match a search-term that a user enters everytime they perform a search.

With so many web pages (over 1 billion) competing for those prized No.1 spots, however, it pays us to spend some considerable time researching which keywords are worth trying to 'optimize'.

By using a very simple, free tool called the Keyword Selector Tool from Overture;-

http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ , along with the search engine that we want to be placed highly on, we can find which specific 'keyword terms' will bring us the highest number of visitors, whilst offering the least amount of competition.

The result will be a 'Master Keyword Chart'.

1. Creating a 'Master Keyword Chart'.

This can be done in your choice of a database, spreadsheet or text file. I prefer a spreadsheet, but this is a matter of personal preference.

I don't recommend using a basic text editor (such as Notepad or Wordpad) as this will limit the functionality available and calculating the formulas that will be covered later, will be very time consuming. If however, you feel more comfortable using this, you can still produce just as good a chart.

(You can download an excellent free, open-source office suite at OpenOffice.org which comes with both a database and a spreadsheet program).

Using the spreadsheet example, you first need to create 4 columns as illustrated below:-

KEYWORD TERM SUPPLY DEMAND USE-ABILITY

article keyword 511 25 20

marketing keyword article 55,000 35 1571

i) In this example I have used the 'search phrase' or 'keyword term' of 'keyword article' and I created it by;

i) Opening the free Overture Keyword Selector Tool and in the box provided, entered my 'keyword term'. After a few seconds, depending on your connection, a list of all related 'keyword terms' that have been searched for in the course of a month (normally 2 months ago) will be shown. The numbers to the left are the amount of times these terms were searched.

I recommend that you start with a 'keyword term' that is relatively generic as it is often surprising to find what people search for. You may miss a well suited phrase if you are too specific to begin with.

ii) I have then copied each term and entered it into my chart as shown. I have then entered the number of times each was searched into the 'Demand' column.

(In this example, the top searched term was - 'article flighti*******al****keyword search****test' . Now this search term was either the result of a 'bot or someone purposely searching for the term in order to move their own site up the listings. One of the alogorithms the search engines use is that of how many times a term is searched. Many times, when using the Overture Tool used here, you will return results such as these. As in everything else, common sense plays an important part. Do not just blindly follow the formula or entirely hand over your own judgement to statistics.

iii) This search term only returned 4 phrases, which is very low, but fortunately, useful for use in this article. Most searches will return a much larger number.

As you go down the list, only copy those terms that you feel would have a place in your web-page content.

If for instance, you are writing about Birmingham UK, keyword terms that contain Birmingham, Alabama, would have no relevance. Ignore these.

iv) We now have our list of terms and the demand for their searches. Next, we need to know how much competition exists for each term. open your favorite search engine and enter each search term.

N.B. When you enter the terms, be sure to enclose them in " ".

If you just enter the words as on their own, you will be given ALL the sites containing the words, anywhere, and in any order. to illustrate - 'keyword article' above, entered without quotation marks, returned - 30,600,000 compared to 55,000 when using the quotations. you can be pretty sure that all of the 55,000 were relatively well placed in the 30,600,000 since they had the actual phrase as entered.

We are targeting for the top spot, so are only interested ion those other sites that also have the exact phrase.

v) At the top of the search engines window, you will see something like 'Results 1 - 10 of about 55,000'. It is the '55,000' that we now want to enter into the 'Supply' column alongside each keyword term.

vi) Now, before we apply the simple formula, we need to give our common-sense some more exercise. You may have some 'terms' that are showing hundreds of thousands, or even millions, that are optimized for that term. These would be unrealistic for many of us to try and position highly against, so can be deleted straight away. Conversely, there may be some terms that whilst are in very low demand - under 50, for instance. However, these are at times the most profitable.

Let me explain with a different example;-

Entering 'tableware' into the Keyword Selector Tool, I find that 'country moose tableware' had 44 people search for it. Now I have no idea what 'country moose tableware' is, but let us go with it.

On a search in Google, I find that there are only 13 sites returned for this term, and they are all suppliers.

If I can then find an affiliate and/or dropship deal with one or two of them and I write some good copy on 'country moose tableware', what are the chances of my site getting into the top 3 of the page. now only 44 people have searched, but with such a specific term, the chances of these people looking to buy are very high, resulting in excellent conversion, which, in the end, is what we are all looking for.

Anyhow, back on with our chart. We are almost done.

vii) Now we have eliminated all terms that have just too much competition, made a seperate note of any especially specific terms, and have a list of all others. We can now, simply divide the 'supply' figures by the 'demand' figures, entering the results in the 'use-ability' column. We then sort the results in ascending order. (This is where a spreadsheet is particularly useful).

The 'keyword terms' with the lowest 'use-ability' figures are the ones we are most interested in. These are the ones with the least competition, whilst being searched the most often. In the 'keyword article' example above, this was self-evident.

With only 511 sites coming up for 'keyword article marketing' and 25 people searching for it. It is going to be much easier to achieve a good position with these keywords, and click-thru's, than trying to compete with 55,000 others for 'keyword article' for the sake of only 10 more searchers. However, for most other keyword terms, your number of results, and the figures called up, will be much more variable and complex, so it is always worth applying the formula.

Now I know which keyword phrases I want to optomize my pages for, to bring me the best possible position in those searches that will bring me the highest return.

I have a completely FREE course on how to gain top-placement for any web-site available, simply request your copy at firstimp@britishwebmarketing.co.uk

This 250+ page course also gives access to SEARCH IT! - containing the Overture Keyword Selector Tool, and many more analysis tools to help your site optimization.

2006. Andrew E. Barnes. http://www.yourfirstimpression.info You are welcome to reproduce & reprint this article provided that the content & links remains unchanged and this resource box is included intact.

[tags]SEO, Search, Engine, Optomization, Keywords, Web, site, website, overture[/tags]

Tutorial #1 In Google, Yahoo, And MSN In 7 Days

Article submission was something I had tried in the past but I had always done so by hand submitting to 2 or 3 of the larger portals. In my test during February I was pleasantly surprised how easily I nailed #1 positions across Google, Yahoo, and MSN for some well searched terms. And in 7 days no less. On Big Daddy servers I was noticing #1 spots within 48 hours of posting. In this article I aim to explain, step by step, exactly how I pulled this off, and why it works.

About a week ago I noticed I was #1 in Google for most of the stories I had been submitting to submission sites. Yahoo seems to not like me so much but I am always on the main page at least. Another massive benefit in Google that you will see down the road due to link age considerations, is a large amount of backlinks to your website from pages with a decent PR. With one submission I even nailed two PR7 and one PR8 link. Also I found my article republished, links intact, on several same themed blogs and sites. All of this this as we know, is yummy in Google's tummy.

Obviously this can change but take a look for yourself:

VideoLan Tutorial on Google #1
VideoLan Tutorial on MSN #1
VideoLan Tutorial on Yahoo #1

Keep in mind this article was only published on February 20th – and these rankings were achieved in about 7 days. In fact if you search for any of the article titles in my side bar you will find most of them in the top 10 across all search engines – and quite a few are #1. Now you are not going to hit number #1 positions for very competitive keywords right away, but with a little work you can usually find some pay dirt. The trick is finding keywords that are an attainable goal and that still pull in searchers.

Now before any SEM people jump on me for helping to create an army of article site submission spammers, let me explain a bit. This will NOT work for you if you provide crappy, spammy, or just pain lame and useless content. I spend anywhere from 3-8 hours writing a quality article I intend to submit. If you have nothing new, fresh or insightful to write about, put your pen down until you do.

Also keep in mind you are not going to get a flood of traffic by doing this once or even 10 times. I only bother to submit articles that are worthy but article submission is now a time consuming part of my regular writing duties. The idea is to attain a trickle of traffic from many sources and get some chatter going. The next step is teaching your girlfriend how to submit articles for you...Heh, ok seriously...

So here is exactly how I did it:

• I wrote a solid 500-800 word paper on an emerging or current technology.
• I mention my keywords 2-3 times in my article in a natural non spammy way. 1 time in the first paragraph.
• I used my keywords in my title.
• I followed basic SEO principles for page layout: meta, file name, H1 tags etc.
• I triple checked my spelling and never used foul language.
• I use title and alt tags for accessibility reasons (Google positively weights this).
• I generously provide links to sites of interest woven within my article. (this too!)
• I submitted my article to Digg for free.
• I submitted to the top 25 article submission sites with Article Post Robot.

I paired my list down to about 25 article sites. My reasoning is that spammy, cheap looking submission sites that accept any old article, may one day be considered a bad neighborhood. Nobody wants links from the ghetto now do they? I will share the names of the sites I submit to in a future article on ProfitPapers.com.

I also should mention that duplicate content has never been an issue for me when submitting articles, but this is always a potential risk, but more of a long term after thought. Be sure to publish your original article on your website FIRST and always make it clear in your article where the piece originated – like in the bio portion of your submission for example. If you use copyscape keep an eye on things that way.

For now, the above method works extremely well and is quite simple to pull off when using a solid submission tool. The reward for me was a sustainable 500% increase in traffic for some competitive terms. Likely the fact you even found this article is more testimony that this stuff actually works.

Miles Evans provides indepth reviews on every SEO/marketing or killer app he can get his paws on. His reviews, essays, and tools on organic SEO, OLM, reporting, and other equally fascinating subjects are normally carried out at ProfitPapers.com - Thanks for reading ;)

[tags]organic seo, #1 in Google, article submission, article post robot[/tags]

Link Building In Light Of Vision-based Page Segmentation

The days of basing a successful link building strategy on link quantity and anchor text alone may be numbered. The link popularity theories behind PageRank and Hilltop remain important, but major search engines are continually adding new elements to their link algorithms to improve search relevance. One of these new elements is the concept of visual page segmentation which was recently proposed in a paper entitled "Block-level Link Analysis," by Deng Cai, Xaiofei He, Ji-Rong Wen and Wei-Ying, available online at http://research.microsoft.com/research/pubs/view.aspx?tr_id=690.

How VIPS Works

The paper introduces VIsion-based Page Segmentation (VIPS), which begins with the premise that current link popularity algorithms are faulty in that they consider each page on the World Wide Web as a single node. Different "blocks" on a page however often have different semantics; for instance, a block on the left side of the page might contain a general navigational menu or text link advertisements, whereas the block on the right side of the page might contain an informational article or links to other Web sites about a certain topic. When VIPS is applied, these blocks can be separated by a computer with a vision-based program. Each block can then be considered as the fundamental unit of analysis, rather than the entire page. When a link is scored in terms of its block, the link"s contextual relevance can be interpreted more intelligently by search engines.

What VIPS Means for Search Engine Optimization

In the near future major search engines such as Google, Yahoo! Web Search and MSN Search will likely integrate some form of visual page segmentation into their search algorithms. A successful search engine optimization strategy should incorporate knowledge of block-level analysis to ensure that the effects of a link building campaign will be maximized. But how exactly does a concept like VIPS affect search engine optimization? Two consequences in particular should make every SEO take pause.

Devaluation of Links from Certain Blocks

VIPS will allow search engines to differentiate between links from the content block and links from other blocks such as text advertisement blocks or footer blocks. As such, algorithms could easily weight links from each block differently.

A link from the content block could be considered as more likely to be a true recommendation than a link from a text link advertisement block. Search engines may therefore give extra weight to in-content links while devaluing links that appear to be advertisements. Sites that rent links through link networks usually do place them in a block above, below or to the side of the content block. When VIPS is implemented, there is a risk that many rented advertisement links could be devalued.

Improved Contextual Analysis

The theme in which your link is placed also will be more important than ever before. Many search engine optimizers have voiced their opinion that "anchor text is everything"; that is, the theme of a page linking to a Web site does not parse link relevance, but only the anchor text of the link does.

With block-level analysis, search engines will be able to recognize the theme of any given block more easily. This should have the effect of boosting the link relevance for links from tightly-themed content blocks, while devaluing links that are in a block with no apparent theme.

Links That Will Always Soar

A search engine optimizer need not fear the effects of VIsion-based Page Segmentation. Although VIPS will probably devalue certain types of links that are favored by many SEOs, it will concurrently increase the value of themed, in-context links.

I have always stressed the value of legitimate links from directories, articles and press releases. These types of links are placed in a content block and are also tightly themed (that is, your target keywords will be near your link).Webmasters who actively build these types of links will benefit from long term rankings even when new twists such as VIPS are added into the algorithmic mix. In fact, these algorithmic improvements should improve search relevance and neutralize some of the spammier link building methods. And that's something we should all be happy about.

Andy Hagans is a search engine optimization consultant who specializes in link building and risk management. Visit http://www.andyhagans.com for more information. Mr. Hagans also maintains The Link Building Knowledge Base at http://www.linkbuilding.info to help other webmasters.

[tags]seo,link building[/tags]

Search Engine Marketing Advice - Implementing A 301 Redirect

In the earlier days of the web, programmers used a line of coding called a META REFRESH to re-route visitors to another page if a page was updated or changed on a web site. For those unfamiliar, here is what the code looks like:

< meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="4;url=http://www.webtrafficteam.com" >

In this example, content = 4, relates to the length of time (in seconds) the page will display until forwarding to the URL listed. All one would need to do is have this snippet of web coding placed in the HEAD section of the page, and it would automatically redirect you to the URL, in this case www.webtrafficteam.com If you are going to use this piece of code, you will need to remove the extra spaces at the beginning and end of the code; they were added for formatting the article.

The search engines soon caught on that this coding was being used to manipulate the search engines by those who would obtain a high rank on a page and then re-route that traffic to another site which wouldn't normally rank as well.

So how do you avoid being looked at as an unscrupulous web marketer? Enter the 301 Redirect. A 301 redirect is simply a technical means of re-routing a visitor to a new web page without the search engines thinking that you are doing something to manipulate search results. As a side note, it is also a great way to hide an affiliate link.

The short of it is that you can add this code to a web page and now redirect your page without fear of hurting your search engine rankings - for now that is. Using the code below, simply change the URL to your destination URL and upload the page to your server. NOTE: If you have never done this before, please use a test page or folder so you don't take your site down unexpectedly.

Here are the 301 redirect code samples:

Below are samples of coding used to perform a 301 redirect. If you are running on a Microsoft platform, you should use the ASP (VB Script) code and if you are running any flavor of Unix (i.e. Linux), you should use the PHP code.

PHP – Unix/Linux platform

< ?php // Permanent redirection header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently"); header("Location: http://www.destinationurl.com"); exit(); ? >

ASP (VB Script) – Microsoft Windows platform

< %@ Language=VBScript %>

I hope this helps you implement effective redirects that don't get you in trouble with the search engines.

Anthony Kirlew is an Internet Marketing Specialist and a life long entrepreneur. Among his diverse business interests, he is the founder of The Web Traffic Team located at http://www.webtrafficteam.com, an Internet Marketing firm committed to helping businesses increase their revenues, both online and offline, through effective Internet Marketing strategies.

[tags]301 redirect, meta refresh, meta redirect, search engine marketing advice, sem tips, seo[/tags]

Search Engine Marketing - Link Building Strategies

Link building is a pretty important factor in any web marketing campaign. Here are a few things to keep in mind when building links to your site.

1. Submit to all major search engines and directories. This may seem basic, but trust me, many people still don't know the basics. Make these sites your initial targets: Google, Yahoo (paid), MSN, bCentral (paid), DMOZ (Open Directory – Good luck, don't hold your breath), Business.com (paid), GoGuides, JoeAnt, and Gimpsy. This should get you started with several solid inbound links.

2. Make sure to focus on building internal keyword based links. Once you start to get listed in the above referenced search engines and directories, this will work to increase your keyword targeted traffic. A great way to do this is to create content pages that you can link to from other pages within your site.

3. Do a search for your competitors and find out what sites they are listed on. This is key and will help you find specialty directories and sites geared towards your niche market.

4. Use Press Releases and Articles effectively. Make sure your press releases have a link to your site; this is best done by creating a signature or "about" footer with your URL. For articles, make sure they are original, informative, and relevant and make sure you use a signature footer with your URL.

5. Don't give up. You will want to invest some time every month to increasing your sites inbound and internal links. If you are launching a new site, you will need to devote considerable time to link building, and also you will need to exercise patience as it will take a few months to see the effects of each link. Make sure to maximize secondary search portals as well. Some are very inexpensive but are good sources of inbound links such as Linkopedia or SiteSnoop, and others are just not worth the money (I wouldn't pay much for a not well known directory). Ultimately, you will see the evidence of an effective linking campaign in the form of an increasing Google Page Rank.

Happy Linking!

Anthony Kirlew is an Internet Marketing Specialist and a life long entrepreneur. Among his diverse business interests, he is the founder of The Web Traffic Team located at http://www.webtrafficteam.com, an Internet Marketing firm committed to helping businesses increase their revenues, both online and offline, through effective Internet Marketing strategies.

[tags]seo, sem, link building, search engine marketing, search engine optimization[/tags]