Internet Marketing Blog

There has been a lot of talk about Google and MSN’s new algorithms and Yahoo’s search engine changes. When these changes finally do occur, it is always important to remember the number one rule in SEO: DON’T PANIC!

If there is one guaranteed constant in this business it is that there will always be changes in the search engines’ rankings. Our job, as search engine marketers, is to stay on top of the changes and to monitor how the change affects our clients’ site’s traffic.

I am actually excited about any algorithm change, because it means that the search engines should actually get better.

What follows is a “back to the basics” on getting good rankings:

Keyphrases

First things first: Always be sure to research the keyphrases you intend on using. Find out what keyphrases Internet users most often employ to find your product or service. There is no point optimizing your site for “online web marketing” if everyone types in “Internet marketing”.

Once you have a list of potential keyphrases with a high amount of Internet traffic, comb over that list and see which keyphrases best describe your product or service. These are the ones you should consider.

Here are some sites that can help you in your research:

• Wordtracker www.wordtracker.com
• Google AdWords https://adwords.google.com/select/ (Click to sign up, it is free to do the keyphrase research)
• Snap www.snap.com

Competition

Research your competition with these questions in mind:

• What keyphrases are they using (take a peek at their keyword Meta tag)?
• What are the titles of their sites?
• When you do a search for the keyphrases you are considering, who comes up in the top five rankings?
• What is their title/keyphrases?
• Are the top ranking sites your competitors or are they industry associations?

Use the keyword effectiveness index (KEI) tool at Wordtracker to compare the effectiveness of your keyphrases. A higher KEI signifies a better ratio of demand-to-competition for a keyphrase.

Do a link search to see who is linking to your competition. In a search engine, type in “link:” (without the quotes) followed by the URL you want to verify. This will allow you to see all the important links to the site that the search engine tracks (I would recommend doing this in both Google and Yahoo).

• Can you get links from the same sites as your competitors?
• Are there industry associations or organizations that are linking to the top sites, but not to you?

Get your link campaign going!
(see the article about linking for search engines to learn why links are important)

Optimizing Your Web Site

Now that you know what keyphrase you are optimizing for, here is how to optimize your site: write good quality content that focuses on your keyphrases.

Above all else, this is the single most important factor.

Sure there are other on-site factors such as:

• Getting the keyphrase into the title (this is the second most important factor)
• Getting the keyphrase into the Meta description tag, the Meta keyword tag, the headers and sub headers, the alt tags, and into some link text (some of these factors are VERY minor)
• Having a good site map so that the search engine spiders can easily navigate your site
• Having a robots.txt to include the pages that you want the search engines to include
• Don’t use frames
• Use flash wisely (not the WHOLE site in flash)
• Use external files for your java scripts
• Use cascading style sheets (a .css file)
• Use dynamic URL’s wisely (Avoid using URL’s with ? or & in them)

Content is king

Oh and did I mention that you need to write good quality content that focuses on your keyphrases? All of the points above are superfluous if you don’t have good content. Content is the food that the search engine spiders like to gobble up with a voracious appetite. The items below are just the side dishes. You need good content to get decent rankings, but you need the side dishes to become a serious competitor in your market.

• Write about your keyphrases.
• Write extra pages.
• Write about your industry.
• Write about your product or service’s uses.
• How will your product/service improve the life of the consumer? Find out, and then write about it.
• Why is your product/service better than your competitor’s? Think of a reason and write about it.
• What is the history of your product/service? Or your industry? Write about it.
• Who are you? Everyone always enjoys “about us” pages
• And of course, be sure to serve the search engine spiders with a tasty main dish full of keyphrases!

Whatever you do, be sure that you don’t write junk or filler copy and double check that everything reads well. Keep in mind that writing about your keyphrase doesn’t mean adding the keyphrase unnaturally into the text. If you have any doubts, employ the talents of an expert to do the writing for you!

Links

Start soliciting links today! Get people in your industry to link to you.
Contact:

• Industry associations and organizations
• Web sites about your industry
• Sites related to your product or service
• Suppliers
• Resellers
• Competitors who don’t compete in the same region
• Sites that sell products/services that relate to your, but don’t compete directly

See my article on soliciting links for more information on how to go about it:
Linking is Queen

Submissions

Submit to all the directories you can find, so long as they are related (e.g., don’t submit to the Abba directory unless your site is about Abba). Submitting to a directory should not be a mindless activity. Read the directory’s directions on how to submit VERY CAREFULLY. Write your description very well, and tailor it to each directory in order to follow their guidelines. Make sure you submit (and get in) to www.dmoz.org - it is probably the most important directory out there today.

Do research and find “vertical directories” that focus on your industry, and submit to them. These directories are very important because, for example, if you have a dodo bird site, what better potential client than someone who found you through a dodo bird directory!

Search engines and directories are different. Do not confuse them.
You can submit to all the search engines you can find, but it usually won’t do much because the good search engines will find you anyway. Submitting to random search engines will usually only increase your email spam. Don’t waste your money on search engine submission software for the same reasons.

Here is a partial list of the current important search engines:

• Google
• Yahoo
• MSN

Conclusion

• Build your web site for your customers, within the guidelines that the search engines set out.
• Don’t make the site awkward by over-conforming.
• The site’s first focus should be on what your clients want.
• Create good content. Good, quality content that reads well and flows seamlessly.
• Update it regularly. An active, living site is healthier than a stagnant, dead one (the search engines spiders like their food alive and full of life).

And remember: Content is King!

About the Author
Shawn Campbell is an enthusiastic player in the ecommerce marketplace, and co-founded Red Carpet Web Promotion, Inc. He has been researching and developing marketing strategies to achieve more prominent listings in search engine results since 1998. Shawn is one of the earliest pioneers in the search engine optimization field.

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.

The basic terminology of SEO. Here is a compiled list of search engine and promotion related terms ………..

Adwords: This is the Pay Per Click advertising program offered by Google.

Adsense: Contextual advertising by Google. Website publishers earn a portion of the advertising revenue for placing Google sponsored links on their site.

Algorithm: The search engine program that ranks sites based on certain criteria. Google has over 100 different ranking criteria that sites need to meet.

Automated Submissions: Services that use a web based tool or software to submit sites to search engines, free for all pages, and directories. CM SEO does not recommend using these services, these submissions can be viewed by the receiving party as spam.

Bid for click: A search engine under which you bid for your site to be ranked under a keyword. See Pay Per Click (PPC) and Paid Placement (PP).

Code: The background code that runs a web site. As well as HTML, this can include, JavaScript, ASP, PHP, JSP, Coldfusion and more.

Click popularity: a measure of how often a listing presented by a search engine is clicked. Some search engines and directories will rank a site higher on their results pages if the site proves to be popular among searchers.

Cloaking: also known as “stealth,” involves serving a specific page to each search engine spider and a different one to human visitors. In most cases, frowned upon by search engines.

Comment tag: html code that describes or documents content. Most search engines ignore the content of comment tags.

Dead link: An Internet link which does not lead to a page or site. This usually occurs when a server is down, the page has moved, or it no longer exists.

Domain: A sub-set of internet addresses. Domains are hierarchical, and lower-level domains often refer to particular web sites within a top-level domain. The most significant part of the address comes at the end - typical top-level domains are .com, .net, .edu, .gov, .org.

Directory: directories are built from submissions made by website owners, and generally arrange site listings hierarchically. Yahoo! is the best known example.

Doorway page: a web page created solely to achieve high ranking in search engines for particular keywords, and perhaps for a specific engine. Today’s doorway pages should contain valuable and useful content related to your site, and be fully linked to the site, and so are often referred to as “information pages.”

Dynamic html: web pages generated on demand by data in databases or using similar technology. Can create ranking problems because a search engine’s spider may not retrieve relevant content.

FFA Site: A so-called “free for all links” page, which is created for the sole purpose of compiling links. Submission software or companies that claim to submit your site to hundreds or thousands of “search engines” actually use these for most of that number. FFA sites are essentially worthless in terms of generating traffic, and links from them will count nothing towards your site’s link popularity. Basically, they’re a waste of time.

Frames: Some sites have pages that are made up of multiple HTML pages. Typically the navigation will be on one page and the content on another. You can tell if you scroll down the page and the navigation remains static. Frames are bad for a sites search engine promotion.

Hand Submissions: A service to develop appropriate titles and descriptions for submission to directories, search engines, and advertising sites. The submission is often unique for each directory, being sure to be compliant with all guidelines. CM SEO always offers hand submissions and has great success in getting relevant listings in appropriate directories.

Hidden text: Text that is visible to the search engine spiders but not to site visitors. Used to add extra keywords in the page without actually adding content to a site. Most search engines will penalize Web sites which use hidden text.

Hit: In the context of visitors to web pages, a hit (or site hit) is a single access request made to the server for either a text file or a graphic. If, for example, a web page contains ten buttons constructed from separate images, a single visit from someone using a web browser with graphics switched on (a “page view”) will involve eleven hits on the server.In the context of a search engine query, a hit is a measure of the number of web pages matching a query returned by a search engine or directory.

Home page: The main page of a Web site.

HTML (HyperText Markup Language): The coding language that all Web sites use to exist on the Internet.

Hyperlinks: Hyperlinks are used to link one or more documents together.

Impression: A single display of an online advertisement.

Inbound link: Links that direct users to another Web site. When a user arrives at a site from another site, that link is known as an inbound link.

Informational page: a content-filled web page created to focus on particular keywords. Differs from a “doorway page” in that is wholly integrated into the site and is useful to human visitors, while a traditional “doorway page” is aimed only at search engines.

Invisible text: using a font color the same or close to the color of the background of a page, in an attempt to allow the content to be indexed by search engines while not being visible to humans. To search engines, this is spam.

IP delivery or IP-based delivery: the technique of serving a particular page in response to a page request from a specific IP address. Used in cloaking; a search engine is identified by the IP address it is using, and a page customized for that search engine is served.

Keyword: A word used to find pages when conducting a search.

Keywords: Due to abuse by many Web sites in the past, search engines have reduced the importance of the keywords meta tag when ranking a Web page for keyword relevance. Many have actually decided to not consider the keywords tag altogether. While it has reduced in significance, it is still an important meta tag to include in your Web pages.

Keyword density: Keyword density is the ratio of a keyword or key phrases to the total number of words on that page. Keyword density is one of the most critical aspects of successful search engine optimization.

Keyword phrase: A phrase used to find pages when conducting a search.

Keyword frequency: Keyword frequency is the number of times keywords occur in the text on a given page. Search engines want to see more than one repetition of a keyword in your text to make sure it’s not an isolated case.

Keyword prominence: The general location of a keyword or phrase in relation to the overall text on that page. You’ll want to make sure your important keywords appear early in your Web site copy and that they draw attention to themselves.

Keyword research: Researching the most relative and popular keywords for a given site.

Keyword Spamming: Deliberate repetition of keywords in a page by using invisible or tiny text to increase keyword density. This is banned by search engines.

Link popularity: Search engines often use link popularity as part of their ranking criterion. In simple terms, link popularity is the measurement of the number of other Web sites that include a link to your Web site on theirs. Each search engine, depending on their specific algorithms, determines it differently.

Link analysis: a measure of the quality and relevance of the set of links pointing to a given site; contrast with link popularity.

Link Farms: sites created and maintained solely for the purpose of constructing links between member sites. Should be avoided as a violation of most search engines’ policies; their use won’t build your site’s link popularity, and may result in a ranking penalty.

META refresh tag: automatically replaces the current page with a different one within the website, or possibly offsite. In general, use of refresh tags is discouraged or penalized by search engines.

META tag: html tag in the header section of a web page, intended to offer content to search engines. Among them are the keyword and description tags, but these days most true search engines de-emphasize or completely ignore META tags.

Mirror sites: Sites designed as duplicates of an original site, but are hosted on a different server. Link cloaking and doorway pages, the creation of mirror sites is a recognized spam tactic and violators will be penalized by many of the major search engines.

ODP - Open Directory Project: The largest human edited directory on the Internet. The Open Directory provides listings for free but only for qualified sites and because editors are volunteers, wait times can be lengthy.

Outbound link: A link to a site outside of your own.

Page Rank: See also Link Popularity. A numerical rating of a site developed by Google as part of it’s algorithms for determining search engine listings. To view page rank requires installing the Google tool bar in your browser. Yahoo also utilizes Page Rank calculations.

PPC: Pay Per Click. This is an advertising option in which the advertiser has typically a small textual ad on a search engine site and pays only if a user clicks on the link in the ad.

PFI: Pay for Inclusion. This is a fee charged by a search engine to be spidered on a periodic basis to be included in the search engine results. Yahoo has a service that is a combination of PFI and PPC.

Reciprocal link: An exchange of links between two sites.

Relevancy: how closely related a particular page is to the search term requested.

Re-index: How often a search engine updates its index. Google updates its index once a month.

Reputation: related to link popularity, a page will score highest for reputation when it is linked to by pages from other sites which themselves are highly ranked. Well-known sites recognized as “authoritive” are given high reputation scores on their own; it’s for this reason that a link to your site from something like cnn.com would be very valuable.

Search engine: A search engine is a database system designed to index and categorize internet addresses, otherwise known as URLs (for example, http://www.yourdomain.com).

Search engine marketing: encompasses several forms of marketing products and services on the internet through management of information presented by search engines and directories. Included are such elements as site optimization, and the purchase and placement of advertisements.

Search engine optimization (SEO): These are the techniques used to improve a Web page’s results in a search.

Search engine positioning: the process of managing a page or site’s positioning in the search engines.

Selective delivery: the technique answering browser’s page request with a specific page selected via an automated process based on some piece of information gained from the browser. For example, reading the browser’s language setting may allow a page in that language to be served. Similar to IP-based delivery.

SERP: A “search engine results page,” the page of site listings that a search engine returns in response to a user’s entry of a search query. Often used in discussion of the way such a page is laid out, for example: “Overture listings are the first sites presented on Yahoo’s SERPs.”

Spam: as it applies to search engines, any attempt to submit or place deceptive information, or to “trick” the search engine into placing a page in an inaccurate position.

Spider: A software program used by search engines to crawl the Web, storing URLs and indexing the keywords and text of pages. Spiders are also referred to as crawlers or robots.

Stop word: common words, or words considered by search engines to be irrelevant, are left out by search algorithms. Examples are “and,” “the,” etc. Generally, a stop word in a query is treated as a “wild card;” that is, the returned results usually won’t be exactly the same as if the word had been left out of the query entirely.

Theme: a relatively recent change in search engine ranking algorithms, theme-based engines essentially try to determine what a page is “about” and to compare it to other pages that seem to be related to the same topic and rank it highly for certain keywords that are determined to be related to that page theme.

Traffic: The actual visitors to a Web page or Web site.

Unique Visitor: A real visitor to a web site. Web servers record the IP addresses of each visitor, and this is used to determine the number of real people who have visited a web site. If for example, someone visits twenty pages within a web site, the server will count only one unique visitor.

URL: The Uniform Resource Locator is used to specify the address of Web sites and Web pages.

Author: Kellin Keller
This data are collected from deffent website glossary.
Website: WebTraffic Provide more targeted traffic.
Have a look of the OneWay linking package.

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.

THE ABCs OF SEO
(Search Engine Optimization)
by Joanne Glasspoole
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 influx, 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.
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?
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
_______________________
Copyright 2002 by Joanne Glasspoole. All rights reserved.
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.