If you want to be found in the search engines, it is important
that you add search engine optimization to your action list. In
a nutshell, search engine optimization–or SEO for short–is the
process of making your web pages “search engine friendly.”

SEO is a relatively new marketing industry. Although there are
many purported experts, most of us who call ourselves SEO
specialists are learning. The search engines are constantly
in flux, so SEO techniques that worked yesterday may not
necessarily work tomorrow. As a result, it is exceedingly
important to keep up with the fervent pace of the Internet, and
the search engines in particular.

One of the frustrations of search engine placement is that your
rankings are constantly fluctuating. The key to a successful
search engine optimization campaign is creativity, perseverance
and practice, practice, practice. Do not try to fool the search
engines by “tricking” them with unsavory techniques (e.g.,
keyword stuffing, cloaking, hidden text) because you will risk
having your web site lose favor with the search engines, or
worse, getting banned altogether.

If you are developing a new web site or redesigning an old one,
now is a good time to think about search engine optimization.
This article will describe the process of optimizing your web
pages for the search engines, as well as highlight some of the
other components that are important for a successful search
engine marketing campaign.

WRITING KEYWORD-RICH WEB COPY

I’m sure you’ve heard the old clich : Content is king. Well,
you know what, it is! Although the Internet is graphic-rich, it
is a text-based medium. Information is what your visitors are
seeking. If you web site doesn’t present the information they
want, don’t forget your competitor’s web site is only one mouse
click away.

Search engines need copy to know what your web site’s theme is
and how your site should be indexed in their directory. If your
home page consists solely of a Flash movie or an image map,
there will be nothing for the search engines to index. Flash is
cool, but it is not so cool when your web site doesn’t come up
in search engine results.

So, how do you write keyword-rich copy?

The first thing you need to do is identify the keyword phrases
that are important and relevant to your web site. For instance,
how would you describe your company, products and services? More
importantly, how would your visitors describe your company,
products and services? Although the answer may seem like a no-
brainer, it really isn’t, because you need to think outside of
the box. You need to get into your visitor’s head and think like
your visitor. What search terms would they use to find your web
site?

A good place to start your keyword research is by looking at
your log files. What search terms are your visitors using to
find you? Armed with this information, you can begin researching
the popularity of those terms. Researching your keywords is a
very important task, because if you target the wrong terms, your
traffic will suffer. Although your site may rank number one for
some obscure term, if no one is searching for that term, your
site will not be found in the search engines.

There are a number of handy tools available online to help you
begin building your list of relevant keywords. Overture
(formerly Goto.com) offers a Search Term Suggestion Tool on its
web site that will not only tell you how many times a particular
keyword phrase was queried in the past month, it’ll also present
you with a list of alternative terms to consider for your search
engine optimization campaign.
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

In addition to utilizing keyword suggestion tools to research
your keywords, I highly recommend brainstorming keywords with
your co-workers, employees, friends and family members. Better
yet, ask your clients and customers what terms they would use to
search for your web site. Brainstorming keywords will teach you
a lot about how others think and use the Internet to find
information.

Once you have identified your keywords, you will need to
integrate them into the body of your web page. Your sentences
need to be intelligible and grammatically correct. Don’t forget:
Your web copy will be read by human beings, as well as the
search engines. If your web copy doesn’t make sense, your
visitors will hit their back button never to return again. Bad
web copy will defeat the whole purpose of your search engine
optimization campaign.

WRITING YOUR META TAGS

The most important tag in the header section of your web page
is the title tag. The title tag is displayed in the bar at the
top of your browser window–above the toolbar. Many webmasters
do not use the title tag properly. For example, their page will
be titled “Home” or “Welcome,” or worse yet “untitled,” because
they don’t include a title at all. The search engines place a
lot of relevance on the words contained within the title tag, so
be sure to include your targeted keyword phrases when writing
your title tag. This tag is generally limited to 60 characters,
so choose your words with care.

The next important tag in the header section is the description
meta tag. This tag is used to describe your web page. Like the
title tag, many of the search engines will extrapolate this
information to summarize your web site. Again, be sure to
include your targeted keyword phrases.

The third and least important tag in the header section is the
keywords meta tag. Because of abuse by unscrupulous webmasters,
the keywords tag is ignored by many of the search engines. Even
so, some do use it, so it doesn’t hurt to include it. Like your
title and description tag, choose your keywords carefully. Do
not include keywords that are not included in the body of your
web copy or irrelevant to the theme of your site.

LINK POPULARITY

Much is said about link popularity, but what is it exactly?

A few years ago, people were joining “link farms” to increase
their link popularity, but today that is frowned upon and can
actually be detrimental to your quest for higher rankings in the
search engines. Now the emphasis is more on the quality of the
links pointing to your web site versus the quantity.

Many of the major search engines use link popularity to gauge
the relevancy of your site in its search results. Plus, links
are what makes the web go-round. Many webmasters have the notion
that links are bad because they are sending visitors off of
their web site. Although this is true, links to and from web
sites that complement yours helps to build credibility and sets
the stage for making your web site an authority in your field.

Much is written about the importance of getting links from
directories like Yahoo!, Looksmart and the Open Directory
Project, because they are reviewed by human beings. If you want
a link in the first two, however, it will cost you money. A
listing in Yahoo! and Looksmart is considered “paid inclusion.”
Your marketing dollars will be well spent, though, because
listings here will not only generate increased traffic, it will
add greatly to your web site’s link popularity.

SUBMITTING TO THE SEARCH ENGINES

Once your web page is fully optimized, it is time to submit it
to the search engines. Although there are hundreds of search
engines on the Internet, only a handful are truly important.
Recent statistics show the top three search engines as:

#1 MSN
#2 Yahoo!
#3 Google

Although there are automated services that promise to get you
listed on thousands of search engines, it is recommended that
you manually submit your site to the top search engines. Some of
the search engines view automated submissions as spam and will
not list your site. Others put a higher priority on manual
submissions. And others–such as Inktomi–required an annual fee
to list your site. It can take weeks (sometimes even months!) to
get listed, so again, be patient. The search engines are
important to the success of your web site, so treat them with
the respect they deserve. Most of all, do not over-submit!

For more information about search engine submissions, request a
copy of my article “Web Site Promotion 101″ at
mailto:sitepromotion101@sendfree.com

TRAFFIC REPORTING AND ANALYSIS

Once you have allowed an appropriate amount of time to lapse (I
usually wait six weeks), it is time to generate some reports to
confirm the success of your search engine optimization campaign.
Search engine positioning reports provide a wealth of
information, such as your site’s position in the major search
engines, how you rank on your targeted keyword terms and
phrases, which sites rank above and below you, where you’ve
declined in rankings, and so on.

To automate the process of generating your search engine
positioning reports, download a free trial of 1stPlace
Software’s highly-acclaimed WebPosition Gold at
http://www.webposition.com/

In addition to your search engine positioning reports, be sure
to regularly check your traffic logs. Is your traffic
increasing? Are people finding your site with the search terms
you targeted? Which of the search engines are referring visitors
to your site?

There are many variables that affect rankings, including:

1. Keyword density
2. Link popularity
3. Click popularity
4. Keywords in the title
5. Keywords in the description tag
6. Keywords in the keywords tag
7. Keywords in the names of linked pages and in the linked
words
8. Keywords in the alt tags
9. Keywords in names of images
10. Paying for ranks
11. Listing in online directories

Source: Search Engine Optimization and Placement: An Internet
Marketing Course for Webmasters by Renee Kennedy and Terry Kent.
http://www.thewritemarket.com/seo-book.shtml

CASE STUDY OF GRIEF LOSS & RECOVERY

In October 2001, my web site, Grief Loss & Recovery
(http://www.grieflossrecovery.com), was averaging 98 visitors a
day and 573 page views. Reviewing my traffic logs, I noted that
the most popular search term for my site was “grief poems,” so I
decided to optimize my site for that phrase.

Since October, my traffic has steadily climbed the charts.

In March 2002, my daily unique visitors averaged 325 and my
page views 1962, an increase of 69 percent and 70 percent,
respectively.

With regard to my rankings in the search engines, they have
also improved considerably. For example, for the search phrase
“grief poems” in Google, my site ranks number one out of 102,000
results; and for the search term “grief,” my site ranks 15 out
of 1,690,000.

As for traffic referred by the search engines, Google far
exceeds all other search engines in driving traffic to my site
with 2,953 referrals in March, followed by Yahoo at 1,428. (In
comparison, my October 2001 numbers showed Yahoo referring 535
visitors and Google 423.)

All-in-all, I am pleased with the results of my first attempt
at optimizing Grief Loss & Recovery and am beginning to note
similar results with some of the other web sites I have recently
optimized.

When playing the search engine optimization game, patience is
important, because results do not happen overnight.

CONCLUSION

To be competitive online, your web site needs to be search
engine friendly. Search engine optimization is a function of
Internet marketing and is the most cost-effective means of
marketing to your target audience. With an estimated 84 percent
of web users turning to the search engines to find information
online, it is important that your site rank within the top 30
results if you want to be found. A successful search engine
optimization campaign will not only boost your rankings in the
search engines, it will bring qualified customers and prospects
to your web site who are already on the web searching for your
products and services.

For more information about search engine optimization and
positioning, visit:

Search Engine Watch
http://www.searchenginewatch.com/

Search Engine World
http://www.searchengineworld.com/index.htm

Academy of Web Specialists
http://www.academywebspecialists.com/

Spider Food
http://www.spider-food.net/

Plus be sure to subscribe to:

Adventive I-Search
http://www.adventive.com/lists/isearch/summary.html

About the Author
Joanne Glasspoole is the editor/publisher of
CYBER QUEST. Each issue is jam packed with original reports,
news briefs, cool Webmaster tools, and more. To subscribe, send
email to Majordomo@lists.kdv.com with “subscribe cyberquest” in
the body of your message. Visit Joanne’s web site at
http://www.glasspoole.com

TechTags Plugin [ internet marketing | seo | search engine optimization | web site optimization | internetoutfitter ]

Notice: This article above was written by a 3rd party author and included here “as is” for informational purposes only. The authors of this site make no claims and take no responsibility for the accuracy, use or misuse of the content of this article. If you like the article, please visit the authors site for more information.

If you’ve been involved in SEO (search engine optimization) for a while, you may remember the time when you could create a web page and get it ranked at the top of any search engine with little effort.

All you had to do was load up the page with the keywords you wanted to rank high for, make sure your meta tags were stuffed with those same keywords, submit the page and within a few days or weeks you’ve captured a top 20 or even top 10 result.

The major search engines were pretty easy to figure out. Some focused on the first 90 characters on a page, others gave more weight to the title tag in your HTML, another paid more attention to the overall content and finally some used a combination of factors to determine a page’s rank. And if you were a search engine expert, you knew which engine looked for what information.

Back then, you didn’t get penalized much for keyword stuffing, hidden text, and some of the other tactics that can get you into trouble in today’s world.

The bottom line is search engine optimization for the average webmaster was almost like a cakewalk years ago.

Well, times have certainly changed! Those same methods described above will not only hurt your rank, they can even get your banned from the engine permanently.

Below you’ll find some search engine optimization techniques that may have worked well in the past but have now been known to penalize you if you implement them.

Useless Link Exchanges

It used to be you could go scout out other websites that were related to yours and swap links to help boost your link popularity. These days the search engines are frowning on certain link exchange strategies.

The best kind of link exchange is one that offers a contextual link to both parties. So instead of creating a “page-o-links” that no one will even read, offer your potential link partner a contextual link in an article that is related to their site. Ask your partner to do the same for you. The search engines will see this link as a much better quality link than a link from a page chuck-full of other sites.

Let’s say you have a website on dieting. Instead of creating a “list-o-links” page titled “Other Diet Resources” where you list 300 different partner links, write some diet-related articles and recommend a few of your link partner’s sites within the context of the article.

I’m not saying avoid link directories altogether. There are some good ones like Yahoo!, JoeAnt and The Open Directory to name a few. None of these directories require a link back to them and they all have a pretty high Google PageRank.

Doorway Pages

Doorway pages are small, keyword focused pages that mainly serve the purpose of getting the visitor to your affiliated web site. They usually offer no value to the website as a whole, and often times they are cluttered with several different affiliate links.

Google is smart and can scope those kinds of pages out. You may be penalized if it finds these on your site.

Hidden or Tiny Text

This is an OLD tactic and it amazes me people still use this.

Using white text on a white background or making your text so small it is hardly visible to the human eye is one of the oldest search engine tricks in the book.

Many people would use this technique to hide tons of keyword phrases they wanted to rank high for by hiding the text at the very bottom or top of the page and make it match the background color so they are invisible. Others would use a tiny font to add these keywords in various places all over the site. The human eye may have a difficult time finding them but the search engine spiders would.

What You Should Be Focusing On…

Unique content rules. Don’t get stressed out about your meta tags, link lists, number of backlinks, etc. If you want the search engines to love you, build a website with lots of unique content, get a couple of high-quality sites to link back to you (Yahoo, The Open Directory, etc.) and develop a good link exchange program (described above).

That’s it! Keep building content and make your site as useful as possible. Pretty soon people will link to you voluntarily and your link popularity will begin to increase.

Write for humans, not the search engine spiders. Forget about keyword density (the ratio of a keyword phrase to total body content), just write for real people. After all, rumor has it that Google is using humans to review sites anyway! Could this be the future of search engine rankings? Only time will tell.

Bottom line: Don’t take shortcuts. Be ethical and work hard to build the best site you can. You’ll be rewarded in the end.

Lisa Irby is the author of http://www.2createawebsite.com, a site that offers tutorials on web hosting, HTML, traffic-building, earning money and more.

TechTags Plugin [ internet marketing | seo | search engine optimization | web site optimization | internetoutfitter ]

Notice: This article above was written by a 3rd party author and included here “as is” for informational purposes only. The authors of this site make no claims and take no responsibility for the accuracy, use or misuse of the content of this article. If you like the article, please visit the authors site for more information.

Copyright 2006 Joe McVoy

Everyone wants “organic” or “free” traffic, but it’s a full time job to try to keep on top of the search engines changing rules. Instead, if you build a good content-rich site and do the things on this list, you’ll get traffic and help your ranking at the same time.

1. Use Pay-Per-Click (PPC) - Get traffic in an hour with PPC. Google and Overture (now Yahoo). Don’t bother with others until you make these two work. The key to this is to know your visitor value, bid on hundreds of key words and phrases and split test your ads and track each key word, phrase or ad separately.

2. Distribute Your Content - write articles of value to your target market. Distribute that content for other webmasters to use on their sites as long as they keep the link back to you in a “resource box” at the end of each article. Distribute your articles through article directories, ezines, and distribution services. The key to make this work is valuable content.

3. Submit Press Releases - submit electronic press releases frequently with news of interest to the media and your target market. Since press releases are news, if they get picked up, it will be quickly and you may get hundreds of links back to your site this way. Key to make this work: write 300 - 500 word releases, include a link back to you, and have them written and distributed by experts who know how to optimize each release for key words (not typical PR firms).

4. Set Up a Blog with RSS - to be effective, blogs must have frequently updated content. Base yours on information helpful to your customers, not sales pitches. Don’t do it unless you can commit some ongoing time to it. Seth Godin says the keys to a successful blog are: Candor, Urgency, Timeliness, Pithiness (short & to the point), and Controversy. The key to making this work is to make it interesting to your visitors, submit to blog directories, ping the search engines when you post and distribute your content with RSS.

5. Get One-Way Incoming Links - All the previous tips will create incoming, one-way links but you can also buy links from other sites from text link brokers. Don’t do reciprocal linking, it’s dead. Make sure you get links from pages with a Google Page Rank higher than “0″. A site Google rates as “0″ may be because they are penalizing it for some reason. If you link to it, you’ll get penalized too.

The key to making this work: Make sure links have your key words in the anchor text and make sure they are text, not graphical links. Make sure they are from other relevant sites, not link farms or FFA (Free for All) sites. The ideal is links from relevant pages without many other links.

6. Give Other Sites Your Testimonial - let them publish it on their web site as long as they link back to you. This can get you a one-way link from a site that would otherwise not give it to you. The key to make this work: keep it short and to the point.

7. Email Promotions - Advertise in Ezines, place ads in someone else’s email newsletters that reach your target market. The key to make this work: track everything carefully

8. Joint Ventures - Get promoted to your JV partner’s customer database by your JV partner. John Reese sold over $1 Million of his information product in 24 hours exclusively by using joint venture promotions from his partners sending his offer to their customer lists. He paid his partners commissions on sales. The key to make this work: know your visitor value and have a tested and proven sales page that converts well BEFORE you contact JV prospects.

9. Get Affiliates - If selling a product, offer a commission to affiliates to sell for you. Each affiliate’s link to your sales letter conversion page will bring you traffic and a better search engine rank too. The key to making this work is to make it financially attractive to your affiliates and give them everything they need to promote your product or service. Make it brain dead easy for them to do.

10. Buy Other Web Sites - Find web sites that already rank high on your keywords and verify their traffic with the site owner and independent tools. Make sure you get ownership of the domain - you can let them still use their content elsewhere. Check deleteddomains.com to see what domains you can register for a few dollars that their owners have let expire. The key to making this work: Check Google page rank, Alexa rank and the number of back links for any site before you buy a web site.

One marketer I know challenged some SEO experts to see who could get ranked highest on a given term in 24 hours. He won, the techies did a lot of slick things, but the marketer just bought the site that was already # 1.

About the author:

Joe McVoy is a marketing consultant who has had experience starting up & growing businesses. He founded 2 companies selling to Wal-Mart, Target and other retailers, a mail order company and an Internet marketing business. He helps clients with traditional marketing, direct marketing, on-line marketing and has a free newsletter & resources at: http://www.profitablemarketingsystems.com

TechTags Plugin [ internet marketing | seo | search engine optimization | web site optimization | internetoutfitter ]

Notice: This article above was written by a 3rd party author and included here “as is” for informational purposes only. The authors of this site make no claims and take no responsibility for the accuracy, use or misuse of the content of this article. If you like the article, please visit the authors site for more information.