Make Money with your Blog

Someone asked on LinkedIn: "If I wanted to have a successful blog that potentially made money, what would I do?"

First thing's first, after figuring out what it is you're going to write about and designing the blog and hosting it somewhere (I would suggest purchasing a keyword-rich domain name rather than hosting it free on Blogger or some other blog site), the most valuable thing you can do is add buttons and links to your blog to allow users to subscribe to it in as many different ways as possible. Some people use services like Bloglines, some people use an RSS app, some people use Firefox live bookmarks, but not all of these people are savvy enough to know how to subscribe to a blog without a specific sub-to-this-blog link for their preferred RSS reader. A great resource to help you make these different links is Feedburner.com. Feedburner also allows you to design email signatures with animated headlines from your blog, and many other different ways to publicize and monetize your blog. Plus, it lets you watch the traffic and subscription trends for your blog's feed.

Next, you want to research keywords to find a keyword that relates to your subject matter that people actually search for, so that if you find yourself in the top ten rankings on Google for said keyword, you will actually get traffic from it. An awesome tool to help you figure this out is Wordtracker GTrends which is here: http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/gtrends/

Once you find your keyword or key phrase, you want to make sure your blog's code is search engine friendly. You want to make sure your meta tags are within search engine guidelines, that your keyword density is appropriate for your subject matter, and that all of your titles have your keyword or key phrase in it. A good way to get a head start on this is to have your blog's backend hosted by Blogger, while the blog itself is published on your own domain. I say this because Google owns blogger and as such, the new version of blogger features extremely Google-friendly code.

After this, you need to get some links pointing to your site from good, Google recognized sites that relate to your subject matter. The best way to do this is to search on Google for your keywords or key phrase and ask the top ten ranking web sites to link to your blog. You may have to be creative about this, using what we like to call link bait. This can be anything that entices another web site owner to link to your site. Because your site will be new and most top ten ranking sites know a thing or two about search engine optimization, you probably won't be able to just get a link exchange - no one wants to link to a brand new blog for two reasons, one is that new bloggers have a tendency to lose interest after a while and you find yourself linking to a blog that never gets updated, and two is because the site has no Google PageRank. If you offer your potential linkers something else, you may have more success. For example, I once ran a campaign for a client that swapped links for a discount on my client's products. Whatever it is you swap for a link is up to you, be creative.

You want to add your web site to blog directories and blog resources such as Technorati. If you haven't spent literally a week straight doing this, you haven't found nearly all of them. There are so many! Your best bet is to search Google for a list of blog directories.

Ask your friends or colleagues to Digg each of your blog posts using digg.com

Add links to the bottom of every post that will allow readers to add to delicious, post to facebook, myspace, stumble upon, etc. Use as much 2.0 power as you possibly can. Get a Twitter account and tweet as much as you can, follow as many users as you can. Make sure every profile you've ever made for yourself or your business on any site, has a link to your blog. Make sure your blog address is everywhere, when you comment on others' blogs, when you talk in forums, etc.

You want to make sure you have an advertising policy available on your web site for potential advertisers to read, and as many different ways for them to contact you.

When all of this is set up and ready, it's time to send out a Press Release. Make sure it is enticing and boldly underlines how this blog is different and why people will want to read it. Submit your press release to as many press release distributors as possible. Again, just search on Google and you'll find a ton. Some cost money, some are free.

Now it's time to post. Make sure your posts have personality. No one wants to read a dry technical blog. You want to make sure your own personality comes out in each and every post. Also, the more controversy, the better. A controversial post will entice readers to send the link to their friends and family in either horror or pride - both are equally as good! It will also encourage comments and repeat visits when something heated has been posted to the comments and the poster wants to come back to check the responses. It will also encourage repeat commenters and some will be compelled to subscribe to your blog. Make it controversial enough and you may even hit the mainstream news, such as Michelle Malkin did recently when she objected to the scarf Rachael Ray was wearing in a Dunkin' Donuts ad.

Submit all of your article length posts to article databases utilizing the author's bio as a spot for a link back to your blog. Hopefully people will syndicate these on their own sites keeping the bio in tact and thus, creating more links to your blog.

Some people use traffic exchanges such as BlogExplosion or Blog Soldiers and while it does actually increase your traffic, most of that traffic is useless. The only one I have ever found that actually results in real readers, is BlogExplosion.com. These sites are not entirely useless, however, as they do have directories that your blog is submitted to when you join. And there are no obligations after joining, so I would suggest doing so just to get into the directories as they are even more links to your blog.

Make sure you blog regularly, but not too much. Many people subscribe to RSS feeds as a much faster way to get their daily reading in. Blogs with a lot of daily headlines, generally get skimmed and sometimes just deleted when there's no time. But blogs that only have a post a week, can tend to be forgotten about. My suggestion is to keep it to once daily, and at the very least, 3 or 4 times per week. If you are going to be unable to post for a period of time, vacation or something, post and let your readers know so that they don't think it's just another blog gone stale.

In the meantime, add Google Adsense to your blog, perhaps Amazon a-store and any high-quality affiliate programs that can relate to your blog's subject matter.

If you keep all of this up, you will have advertising revenue. The key though, is patience. Keep at it and don't get discouraged. Publicizing any web site can take months upon months before you see results. But once you do, it's highly worth it. You may even want to design and sell your own merchandise for further revenue.

Technorati Tags: blogs, blogging, seo, search engine optimization

Search Wars! Battle of the Major Search Engines

It's pretty safe to say that anyone who has a computer has at some point or another used a search engine. Search engines are extremely useful creatures. They have had a major impact on our society, I mean its pretty amazing that you can just go type in anything you want into a search box and get back information about it in about two seconds. Before search engines came along you pretty much had to rely on going to the library to get more information. With that being said the popularity of search has created quite a huge market. The advent of paid advertising has sprung search engines into a multi-billion dollar a year industry, thus creating some pretty stiff competition. Right now we are in the midst of a major war on the internet, with the major players being Yahoo, MSN, Google, and an upcoming strong contender in Ask. So you may ask who is winning this war right now? And why? And who will take the lead in the future? One thing is for sure the reward of being the king of the search mountain will reap billions and billions of dollars annually.

So what are these top gun search engines competing over? The answer is clicks, on the paid advertisements they present every time someone uses their search engine. If you notice when you use Google for example that at the very top of the page and on the right hand side it says sponsored sites. This is where people trying to make money online pay to advertise for their company. These prices range from nickels and dimes per click, all the way up to hundreds of dollars per click, depending on the keyword. So the main objective for a search engine is to get as many people as possible using them to search the internet. Just think about it for a second, the more searches they get, the more chance of people clicking on their paid ads, which is where they make their money. Now of course not everyone is going to click on the paid ads, only a small percentage of the searches they receive ever actually make the search engine money. However, with millions of searches a day it only takes a small percentage to really make a big monetary difference.

So who are the warlords going to battle here? And who is in the lead? The three major competitors are MSN, Google, and Yahoo, and Ask is fighting its way back into the mix of things with some pretty sweet search features.

As of right now Google is in the lead, they receive somewhere in the ballpark of 80% of all search queries on the internet. Google is estimated to gross around 3 billion dollars in 2006, all from just paid advertisement. Now you may ask why is it that Google is so far ahead? Well there are a few reasons. First, Google has the most advanced algorithm, which is the mind boggling mathematical equation that ranks and lists sites depending on the keyword. Trying to understand their algorithm is extremely complicated, Google only hires absolute geniuses to work for them. Second, is the brilliance of Google.com itself, which is their homepage.

Take a look at Google's homepage, all you can do is type your keyword in the search box and hit search. There's really nothing else going on it's pretty clean cut and user friendly, with absolutely no distractions from getting people to do what they want. Which is search

Now take a look at MSN, or Yahoo's homepage. It is just jam packed with all sorts of stuff to do from playing games to reading articles about the news. This stuff is great and all, however it does distract people from typing into the search box and inevitably clicking on a paid ad putting money in their pocket. I believe this is a major part in why Google has such a gigantic lead in the volume of searches they receive compared to the other top guns. .

So I firmly believe that in this case the giant will not be taken down. Even though you see commercials for Yahoo and Ask, you know the ones with the cheesy guy screaming Yahoooo and the monkey that Ask is featuring. The bottom line is Google has the best algorithm right now and their site doesn't distract people from searching, which will yield many more search queries. Who knows though just as Google basically came from no where and took over the market, there may be a new kid on the block that will topple them. However as of now though they are the reigning champions.

Author Bio
Search engine specialist Steve Bis, is the author of the free search secrets newsletter and owns a unique web search tool that will help you find anything on the internet in 60 seconds, eliminating your search frustrations.

Do-It-Yourself or Not - SEO for the Small Business

In the vast world of SEO, there is no shortage of opinions on how, why, and when to do what to your site to make it rank better on the search engines. I have been performing SEO for some time now, but in part it's been on my own website and for my own small business. Now that I've started my own SEO company it gives me far more time to research new techniques, try out the latest fads, and above all else discover what the truth is behind this relatively new form of marketing. Yet, there is something to be said for grabbing the bull by the horns and trying the do-it-yourself method for your small business. SEO is not particularly complicated. All you really need is some basic html knowledge, a few commonly used free online SEO tools for keyword research, and most importantly time. This is where I fell short in my do-it-yourself SEO attempts.

In the business world there is one major factor that contributes largely to all others. Sales. Without sales you have little if any operating budget for marketing, but without marketing where are your sales coming from? From my own experience running a small business, I found that my number one problem was having the time to do enough marketing to generate the sales I needed to run my business profitably. If you're a large company with investors, or at least have a large staff and/or marketing department, perhaps the issues of time aren't as dire. However for the small business owner with just a few employee's, or as it was in my case just myself and the volunteer help of a few friends, I found myself wearing lots of different hats. On the one hand I had to run and maintain my business and develop the products I was trying to sell in a very competitive market. This in itself was a full time job and left little time for much else. And yet on the other hand I had to find a way to market my products so potential customers would know about them and know how to buy them.

I began learning about SEO and how it could benefit my bottom line. I talked to people in the industry and discovered that if I had the time I could in fact do it myself. This of course was extremely appealing because I would be saving money on not having to hire a company or staff to do it for me. Pretty simple. The more I learned, the more work piled up and my product development suffered. I wasn't getting the results on the search engines I had hoped for quick enough, and in turn, I wasn't spending enough time working on my product development either. It became a true catch 22 situation. I didn't have the time I needed to spend on product development and marketing at the same time.

My business was in a state of disarray, so I put it on hold and decided to use what I had learned about SEO and offer my marketing services to other small businesses at an affordable rate in an effort to make enough money to save my company. The venture allowed me to spend all of my time learning about SEO and the ins and outs of the Search Engines. I never did go back to my other business. I found that Search Engine Optimization was a better market for me, and I like helping the small businesses compete against the giant corporations. I continue to provide affordable SEO services to small businesses and take a personal approach to each client simply because I know what it's like on that side of the fence too. Business is about one thing. Sales. A slick SEO campaign will generate nothing but sales. The return on investment is exponential and any small based business is a big step ahead of the rest with the right Search Engine Optimization company behind them.

John Simmonds
Affordable SEO Services

Identifying the Inbound Links that are Good, Bad or Useless is the Pathway to Success.

Inbound Links are the life blood of a website and the Pathway to Success revolves around these links. In a broad sense these inbound links can be categorized under three groups, Good, Bad and Useless Links. The good links can indeed sky-rocket your website up the popularity ladder to fame and fortune while on the other hand the bad Links can dump your website out of sight in the internet. The useless Links will be of no help or value to you. So it stands to reason that you cultivate good links if you want to be successful in your online business.

Useful Good Inbound Links:

These links will bring enormous benefits to your website. They can increase your search engine visibility which will indicate the popularity of your site thus increasing your link popularity, page rank, traffic and sales.

If you have unique and useful content in your site other websites will link to your site to provide their website visitors a good website experience. This will give you useful inbound links and valuable targeted traffic.

Listing your website in both paid and free high ranking web directories can give good one way inbound links. Some free directories might insist on reciprocal linking but this should not be of concern to you as they are all useful links.

Writing quality authoritative articles and submitting them to article directories and article distributors with your website URL in the resource box is a smart way of obtaining one way links. This will soon grow viral as webmasters publish them in their articles and ezines bringing you hundreds or even thousands of valuable one way links.

Search Engines do not devalue all reciprocal links. They do appreciate quality, theme related reciprocal links. In addition it will be a great bonus if you can identify sites that the search engines consider as authority sites in the same theme as your site and exchange links with them.

Social Book marking is becoming increasingly popular day by day. Here you can maintain a personal collection of links online and also allow access to any others online. Linking your site or articles to popular social sites is another great way of obtaining useful good links and traffic.

Bad Inbound Links:

These are inbound links that are disliked by search engines especially Google and can do enormous harm to your website. By linking to these websites knowingly or unknowingly, you can be penalized or blacklisted by the search engines.

Avoid linking to sites search engines consider as Link Farms. These are sites that have hundreds of assorted links linking to each other in a page. By linking to them your credibility will be at stake and probably be penalized by the search engines.

Search Engines disapprove Free For All sites also known as FFA sites. Here you can place an advertisement with your link in it. Your advertisement will appear along with thousands of others and would probably get an exposure of an hour or so. It is wise to keep away from these sites.

You should also avoid Bad Neighborhoods because these are websites that have been penalized or banned by the search engines. By linking to them you too risk being penalized by the search engines.

Useless Inbound Links:

Some inbound links are neither good nor bad. They are in fact useless and of no benefit to you. You should avoid linking to sites that are irrelevant to the theme of your website even if they are of high page rank. Search Engines are not going to give any credit for this and you will hardly get any targeted traffic from them either.

Similarly linking to websites with very low PR even if they are of the same theme will not be of immediate benefit.

Conclusion:

Ultimately the secret of your success will depend on the inbound links you obtain from useful good websites and ignoring all the others. The obvious results will be increase in link popularity, good search engine placement and great traffic.

Copyright © 2008 Kanaga Siva.

Kanaga Siva is an experienced Author and Marketer. For more Tips and a useful Internet Marketing experience you are welcome to visit his Free Home Based Business Website and Blog.

Why is it important for other websites to link back to yours

The success of a search engine optimization campaign depends largely on the number of back-links from other websites. Websites are windows to the products and services that you offer. It is hence important that your website ranks high on search engines in order to increase sales.

Statistics show that over 70% visitors to a website come from search engines. There is little doubt now a days that search engine ranking is important for a business to succeed in today's internet driven economy.

There are approximately 40 million websites online today and only a handful can appear on the first few pages of search engines. The number of other websites that link to a website is the most important factor that decides which website appears on the first page of a search engine when a search is performed. Why is it important for other websites to link to your website? Search engines treat links to your website as a sort of a voting system. The more the sites that link to you the higher the vote your website gets. When another website links to your website it adds authority to your website. It is one of the most important factors for coming on top of search engines. Google uses its own set of rules called page rank to determine the importance of a website on its searches. There are about 5 million variables that decide which website appears on search results of a search engine. Links to your website is the most important of them all. In order for a business to maximise the benefits of the internet, It is important to have an ongoing search engine marketing strategy that focuses on getting related websites linking back to yours. An effective search engine optimization campaign should identify other related websites to get back-links from.

www.kronikmedia.co.uk/blog

Principles Of Good Web Design

The banner page should clearly indicate what the site is about. Provide a navigation scheme on the first page and stick to it throughout your website. Your logo should be clearly placed above the fold of the page, and the page should clearly state to your visitor EXACTLY what your website is all about. If you fail this, you will lose your visitors faster than anything. Your banner page should be informative, and should call your visitor to action. The banner page is the place where the visitor decides whether it will be worthwhile staying, they will either click on some of your links, or will leave the site. If you have a discount, or if you offer a certain free service in an attempt to make contact with your potential customers, take care to provide the link to this service on your banner page. If you decide to apply some kind of fancy introduction to your first page, take care to offer the possibility for the user to skip the introduction. The link “skip introduction” should be separate from any flash on the page, because you will force the visitor to wait until the whole thing has downloaded. Nothing irritates visitors more and makes them leave faster than being confused or kept waiting.

Structure of navigation
A commercial website is NOT the place to experiment with navigation. We expect to see navigation on the left or the top of the site because we read from left to right and top to bottom. Placing navigation on the right of the page can be a fundamental but fatal flaw. Users are becoming used to advertisements on the right of a page and this can create a strange kind of menu blindness. Remember the cardinal rule, if they are confused or kept waiting they will leave. Make it as obvious as you can when it comes to navigation, don’t be tempted to experiment for the sake of being different.

Your navigation should be consistent on every page of your website, don’t mix and match different menu placement for different situations. Be clear and consistent. While we are on the subject, avoid the need to open menu links in a new browser in a new frame or new window. It is acceptable to open “external links” this way but a frame is always more acceptable. New windows don’t always open fully and can look like pop up ads.

Size of font
Your font size should be large enough so that your text can be read without effort. There are many people who will not take the trouble of reading tiny fonts. If possible, add an option to re size the font on the page. This is a “requirement” on education and government sites, it is seen as discrimination not to do so. To keep your visitors (and keep them happy) the optimal size seems to be 12-13 point. The visitor should be able to read your text easily and without any effort. Creating breaks between paragraphs makes text easier to read and avoids overloading the visitor.

Line length
The length of a line of the type should be comfortable for reading. The optimal line length for printed materials seems to be approximately 10 to 12 words, or 60 to 70 characters. Lines slightly shorter at approximately 40 to 50 characters can be more suitable for longer texts. Long, awkward text looks amateurish and tends to turn the reader off.

Creating emphasis
It is important to create emphasis and, handled with taste and good judgement, it can help direct and inform the reader. When these qualities are missing, or each word is given equal importance then your Web page begins to resemble a battle field and it becomes difficult to read!

Graphics
It is well-known that a picture is worth a thousand words (more like a million). This rule applies to the Internet too. Make your best effort to show clear, attractive photographs of your product. If you offer a service, find a photograph which will describe it better. However, pay attention to the size of the file. Try not to compress your photograph to the point where it ceases to be clear. Also don’t leave the photograph at full quality. That will make the file much too large, and the loading time will increase.

GIF Vs JPEG
Less experienced Web creators mistakenly think that JPG must be better since it optimises pictures and makes them smaller. Well that is half right but if you have pictures or logos with less than 16 or 32 colours why would you need JPG with it’s 16+ million colours? Gif can reduce down to 16 or 32 colours and can also include transparency information if needed. Whilst JPG is generally a safe option, it makes sense to be aware of it’s limitations (reduction of picture definition, lots of colours) and also the benefits of the GIF format. Personally I have never been a big fan of GIFs, but that doesn’t mean that I refuse to use them if the situation warrants it.

Mike A.

Mike runs a Web Design and SEO site in Oxfordshire. Visit his site at The Meeting Junction.

Techniques in SEO Services

There are several techniques in SEO which every webmaster should know in order to achieve higher search engine rankings for the website. The more you come to know about these techniques, the better will be the performance of your web pages in search engines.

As SEO is the real way to attract traffic to your website, so it is very important that you understand the basic tricks involved in higher search engine rankings. Some of good seo tricks and techniques are:

The title tag is one of the most useful SEO Services technique that should be used with creativeness. Place the exact keyword used for the webpage in the title tag.

Link popularity is the other major aim of SEO Services . Generally most search engines do not like those websites that do not have links pointing to them. This will not only increase the traffic but also provide good rankings and enhance value of your website.

It is essential for all webmasters to have basic understanding of all simple SEO Techniques in order to have the top search engine rankings for their website. The more you know about search engine optimization techniques the better your web pages will be in google.

Keyword density is an important aspect of SEO and it should be properly researched. The keywords should be used only once in the title tag, heading and body text.

Use different title on each of web page with its own primary keywords at the beginning of page title. Get your keywords in much of the anchor text of both internal and external links.

While offering SEO Services it is essential to make a website that is rich in theme because search engines are more interested in themes. Built the content that is related to your website and that is minimum of 250 words per page because the speed of your web page indicates a lot to your visitors and search engines. Always add unique and fresh content on the regular basis that attracts visitors to come back to your website.

Always remember to add sitemap to structure your website for spiders.

Submit article to article directories with link to your sites. Find forums related to your niche. Join these forums, actively participate in it and advertise your website there according to the rules and regulations of these forums.

Submit your website to the good directories.

These techniques listed above can really help you to optimize your website in search engine results and enhance the search engine rankings. But it is necessary for you to follow them regularly.

About the Author

Rajeev Guglani writes articles for SEO.He has vast exposure in writing for Web Promotions.He is working for NDDW. For Website Promotion ,Internet Marketing , SEO Services India visit www.nddw.com

Benefits and Tips on Designing a Site Map

A site map basically is a page that features or lists the links you have on your web site. This will make it easier for search engines to proceed and spider your web site. It is usually found near the bottom page of a web site.

The following tips will be very useful in designing a site map:

1. Link the sitemap only to your homepage. This is to ensure that the spider starts searching from your homepage down to all the pages listed in your sitemap. In this way, no page would be left unvisited by the spider.

2. Do not go beyond 30 pages for a sitemap. Large websites having 50 or more pages should not go beyond 30 since this adds more pages to the site, and might make search engines think that the sitemap is a link farm. Also, this prevents overcrowding of links which could be tiring to view.

3. Check all the links listed in your sitemap. It can be discouraging when you click on a link only to find out that nothing is displayed. Test your sitemap; click all links in every page to make sure that all links are indeed linked to the right page.

4. Give keyword-rich titles to sitemap links. Keyword-rich titles give your site more advantage in being searched properly under the right category. But be sure to have this sitemap link linked back to the sitemap (e.g. back to sitemap).

5. Provide a short description for the links in the sitemap. Doing so would give readers a better idea of what to find in the link and save them time on surfing.

6. Be consistent in designing your sitemap with the other pages of the site. Employ a recurring design and the same HTML template for all pages to establish identity and build character to your website.

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There are at least three major types of sitemaps: indexed, full categorical, and restricted categorical. An indexed site map appears as an alphabetical listing or directory. A full categorical map displays all links classified into categories; while a restricted categorical sitemap displays all links listed in a chosen category at a time. The full and restricted sitemaps are very similar except that the former displays all links in all categories all at once in a page, while the latter focuses only the links under the selected category for easier and less eye-straining viewing.

Some tips in setting up your sitemap

1. No page would be left unturned Going back to the purpose of sitemaps, having one would mean faster and easier tracking and crawling of spiders all over your site. As a result, search engines would surely get to the view all the pages of your site and not just the pages containing random keywords.

2. Easier navigation for site visitors Once a web user has accessed your sitemap, they need not go back to the search engine page to look for what they need. If what they are looking for is in your site, then they would have an easier and faster way of locating it.

3. Potential advertising value If it so happens that a relevant product or service company reaches your site, then it would be easier for them to see how best they can position themselves in the different pages of your site as a paid page advertisement.

4. Encourage greater traffic to your site If your company website has a sitemap then potential buyers would have an easier time in accessing your latest products and services. Moreover, they would not miss out on any product that might be off future interest to them since the sitemap would display all information found the site.

Now that you have learned basic things about sitemaps, maybe it is time for you to build one for your site.

About the Author

Anne-Marie Ronsen is the author of many wealth and self development books. Download FREE e-books from www.e-bestsellers.com, http://www.plrbestsellers.com or http://www.universalpublishingltd.com ...You will learn about the best tips and recommendations to improve your health, weight and wealth. You'll also discover FREE Premium content at http://www.ibestof.com/ and Manual Submission Directory at: http://www.webdirectorybank.com

How to Write for Search Engine Bots

In order to grow your business through the web and optimize your homepage, you have to work with search engine robots. These bots look for relevant web pages and filter out those that are not. They are that simple. But how do you get these bots to find your site and place it in the top ten items searched? One of the most important factors for promoting your site is a good search engine optimization (SEO) copy. Effectively written SEO copy will enable users and bots to find your site with ease and interest.

Let us use a vitamin business as an example. First you need a worthy topic and engaging title to begin writing. Because we are in the vitamin business, an article about phytonutrients, cholesterol blockers or nutrition would be ideal. Next you want a catchy title that will relate to the information and that would have keywords that are relevant to your business. How Phytonutrients Can Save Your Life or The Truth about Cholesterol: the Silent Killer are examples of eye-capturing titles. Now we have to find the right keywords for optimization.

You might want to use a tool like WordTracker or Keyword Optimizer to find out which keywords are viable and which ones will relate best to your product or service. These tools will also help you track your keywords and see how many times the words were used in a search. Google and Google AdWords also have great tools that suggest relevant keywords. If you have high relevance on your SEO copy, you will automatically receive high rankings on Search Engine Results Page (SERPs). However, if your relevant keywords are too competitive, then you will need to do some research in order to succeed.

Finally, when you check out the competition, be sure not to model your SEO campaign after their efforts. Rather, use their campaigns as a base for newer ideas on how to push your site to the top. Some things to look for on competitor sites are layout and format, SEO, sales copy and linking.

About the Author

Converting visitors to buyers is the ultimate objective of most websites. The Web Success Team has an arsenal of online direct response marketing techniques to entice visitors to take action while on your website. Contact the Team today and we'll show you how to beef up your online marketing efforts make your website capture more buyers and generate more income for your products and services. http://www.websuccessteam.com

SEO - The Basics You Should Know

SEO is the acronym for search engine optimization. This title refers to the process of improve the page ranking of your web site through careful use of keywords, keyword placement and links to and from other web sites.

What is it?

SEO is a carefully created method of improving the probability of your web page appearing on the results page of a search engine query. The nearer the top of the search engine results page your web site appears, the more likely that searchers will click on your web site link and go on to purchase the product or service you represent. You can perform search engine optimization yourself, or hire an expert to do it for you. There are approved ways to improve your standing and ways that can get you banned. It's important that you do the optimization correctly to avoid getting your web site shut down.

Who needs it?

Any small business owner with products or services advertised online should make the effort to optimize their web site so as to achieve the best results when the search engine spiders visit your site. There are SEO algorithms that are used that are generally proprietary and different search engines look for different components in order to determine the rank of the specific web page. Naturally, each web site owner wants to achieve the highest possible page ranking for the products or services that are displayed on the web site. Getting your page ranking as near to the top of the search results as possible gives you more web browsers seeing your link.

How to get the best results

The best results for SEO is to determine the specific algorithm used by a particular search engine and write your web site to use the best possible mix of keywords, links, and placement so as to improve your ranking. Attention should be paid to using the keywords or keyword phrases correctly. Not only the number of times they are used, but in what context they are used. Even the placement of keywords on the page is important for best results. Another factor that is important is that of links to other web pages.

How does SERP apply?

SEO best results are returned on the SERP or Search Engine Results Page. When a searcher on the internet uses terms in a search engine query box, the search engine returns results on a page called the Search Engine Results Page. This can be a few links up to thousands of links, but few searchers look beyond the first page or two of results, since the results often are less relevant as you move further down the page. The ranking of your web page up toward the top of the list is what can increase your sales significantly.

Page rankings

Page rankings are the somewhat arbitrary number assigned to web pages based on the SEO results identified by the search engine spiders or robots. Each major search engine relies on a different algorithm for ranking, although there are similarities between the three major search engines, MSN. Yahoo and Google. The goal of search engine optimization techniques is to have the web page appearing on the first page of search results for the specific query.

Optimization techniques and resources information can be found at Search Engine Marketing or Search Engine Optimization. SEO is the goal of each business and web site owner in order to increase the sales revenue for the

Author - Alan Lim

SEO for the Average Joe

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving traffic to your Web Site from Search Engines using targeted keywords. This means that the more you focus your website on your niche the more traffic for your niche you will receive, which translates into More Qualified Buyers!

Optimizing your site means more recognition by Google, Yahoo, MSN, and all the search engines. The Keywords you want to use in your website are words that people would type into the search engines to find your product.

It is best to design your website for one particular niche and not a wide variety. For example if you sell Shoes, you would want to design a site for the different types or Brands of shoes. You build a website for 'Ladies Shoes' or 'Nike Shoes' or 'Golf Shoes'. Focusing on 1 product or 1 type of product.

Having to many different or non-related products will dilute your keyword relevance and lower your ranking in the Search Engines. It is inexpensive and well worth building multiple sites for different types of products rather than trying to pile them in one site.

Why is Search Engine Optimization important? 100% Free! - You don't have to pay for traffic 100% targeted! - What could be more targeted than a person who actually SEARCHED for what you're offering? 100% Auto-pilot! - You don't have to send any emails or place any ads. Your visitors will come round the clock regardless of where you are or what you're doing. There is many online articles and online training courses available to help you learn about & understand SEO. There are also several software packages available that help make Search Engine Optimizing your site easy.

Erog Lee

Getting Your Site Noticed

Getting Your Site Noticed

Today's marketing the internet business calls for many types of media avenues.

Submit articles to directories within specific industry sites including your link at the bottom of your articles. In addition don't forget the most powerful tool which is social media marketing.

Write articles that are up-to-date for the particular industry of your product. Use unique content and ADD your link to them as well. Adding your link and getting it on a social media site will ensure that it will be crawled by the search engines.

Things that you need to remember when posting is to:

Watch these sites and familiarize yourself within them.

Start posting after you have become accustomed to them. Comment on other posts. Be respectful and objective.

Add your profile with your link along with your picture, and participate on a regular basis.

Add RSS feeds.

Use many types of these sites, not just one as this will give yourself more opportunities.

Put your article on your site.

Update your site on a regular basis with refreshing.

Link with other sites for more exposure. Promote the RSS feeds of those who link back to you. More links creates more exposure to your site. Many of these other sites are looking for visibility as well as you. They want the exposure as well in many different mediums.

Use RSS feeds. Also purchase RSS feeds for maximum presence.

Blogging is an essential tool to getting attention to your site. Having these links back to your website is advantageous to search engine optimization.

Creating your website is your first step but don't just stop there! Get YOUR SITE NOTICED!

Sandi Baker See my other articles for more tips letusgetitdone.info

Separating 7 SEO Truths from 7 Common long held Misconceptions

I wanted to review 7 long held SEO misconceptions and discuss the truths. In order to separate the SEO truths from traditional misconceptions or errors, you always must first examine the truth.

For example, if an expert is trying to determine a counterfeit $100 dollar bill from a real $100 bill, he only gains insight by examining the real bill first. You could examine many different counterfeit bills for a long time and never gain any ground at all. But once you know and understand the real government issued bill, then you can spot the false things much more quickly.

A Word about Hats: White, Grey or Black

First let me say that most SEOs are not all bad people. They are not all schemers who are just out to get your money. Like anything else, there are people who are good and bad in every area of life. When it comes to practicing SEO skills, there are many people doing many different things, but it all comes down to the intent of the individual person.

People pegged for being "black hats" usually think quite a little bit differently than the SEO professional. The Black hat is more prepared to lose the domain and knows that they are always on the run and they often view the search engines as the enemy. Search engines MUST be "outsmarted" or so they are convinced. Some tend to enter more like a game with throwaway domain names that they'll purchase in quantity knowing that they'll have to do the same types of things over and over again each time they get penalized.

White hat SEO professionals are more focused on creating high quality, useful content that serves a purpose and satisfies the reason why the user searched. They are not on the run, because they have nothing to fear being caught at. They tend to do the job once for long term stable rankings that can last for years.

Black hat technique tends to relate to "tricks" and little "short cuts" to try and fool the search engine.

Okay so this fits in part, with the first misconception or idea that was first pitched years ago. However, this first misconception is a major misconception. Here it is...

Misconception 1. You are at war with the search engines to gain top rankings. Therefore you must learn to do sneaky tricks to outsmart their algorithm. Therefore you must learn ways to beat the search engine to gain top visibility in search results. Have you heard this story before?

While this whole concept (probably dreamt up by a marketer years ago sometime) it cleverly appeals to a human beings somewhat carnal side of being "sneaky" or being able to beat the search engines at their own game by using "secrets" and "tricks." Even though the pitch may appeal to some people, the only trouble is that the concept is 100% FALSE from beginning to end. Some of you may be disappointed to hear this because for years, you thought you were at war with the search engines. Think a little bit more and let's separate marketing pitches from the real truth.

Truth 1: The truth is that you have never been at "war with the search engines." You are not required to "outsmart" or fool" the search engines at all to gain top visibility for your Web pages.

Listen up now. The only one you are truly competing with for visibility is your competitors, NOT the search engines. The whole idea that you must "beat" the search engines or "outsmart" the search engines is a completely false concept.

You never need to compete with any search engine. You never need to trick it or even try to "fool it" in order to get excellent visibility. A search engine does not really care whether you rank number 1 or not. They are fine with it, so long as you are offering relevant content that is useful and satisfies the reason why the user searched. Obviously any search engine does not want junk showing up in the results.

The only competition you have now or you have ever had, or will ever have in the future is with other competitors pages, not the search engines.

Being "sneaky" may appeal to some emotionally in a marketing pitch. It may make you even feel like the service or the course or publication will ultimately "make you smarter" somehow. But people need to learn to distinguish truth from error and you'll be blowing far less money on e-books, tool sets and memberships that appeal to the emotion but are founded on untruths.

Many marketers come across with this anger or emotion in their messages using words that are planted to trigger your emotions.

You can be sneaky... I am angry because... I am so embarrassed by what happened... You are going to learn a secret... I am going to show you something exciting! etc...

Don't let your emotions be exploited.

Learn to recognize a marketing mailer that is attempting to exploit your emotions. Recognize these types of messages. Separate them out from communications that offer advice based on truths. I'll do an article on this in the future.

Misconception 2: You must submit your Web site to the Search Engines, therefore you need to buy our services and we will submit your site to 30,000 search engines for only $29.95 per month. The misconception here is that a submission to a search engine is beneficial.

Truth 2: You are far better employing strategies that allow search engine robots to find your pages on their own (without submitting.) Any company that bases their whole concept of traffic or SEO on submitting does not understand how search engines work themselves. If you are using this type of service, save your money. There is no valid reason to be using a submission service for search engines. It is still being offered today widespread because there are always new people coming online to be exploited.

Misconception 3: If a Web site has been banned, the person must be an evil or unethical person.

Truth 3: Search Engine Workshops reject anything related to Spam or short cuts or tricks that are outside of the search engines guidelines, but we do not believe people are "always evil." Many people that get banned or penalized by the search engines, are not even aware of SEO best practices. The only thing they turn out to be guilty of in the end, is of never having had any real structured SEO skills training.

In other words they were listening to some bad advice or perhaps were not even aware that each search engine has guidelines. In some cases it's their Webmaster that may have gotten their site banned. Every situation is different but ultimately it's far better to gain your skills sooner than later. It is not always about good and evil but there most definitely is always a story behind the story and it boil down to user intent.

Misconception 4: SEO is a nightmare to try and learn.

It is extremely important to measure each SEO influence and get each factor exactly right. Therefore you need to research how many characters go in a title tag, keyword density, keyword prominence, keyword placement, how many keywords can go in a Meta tag plus all of the other factors for each individual search engine. This concept is what people seem to talk about because it's what some people are selling, but it is also completely false.

Truth 4: Sure you can spend your days measuring these types of things, but chances are you will be burning out after a while and getting very few success stories. This is because there are for more important things to understand that have an extraordinary impact in the results. SEO influences all affect one another, plus each search engine grades on a curve based on each specific industry.

Any researcher that tells you he is giving you the latest criteria based on these old fashion units of measurement will not make much impact. These days you are looking for the big picture, not individual influences one at a time. We have seen cases where people spend hours working on one page, when they could have dozens of pages performing for them in minimal time with much less stress. Yes I mean all 100% white hat strategies too, because these are all that we teach our students.

Misconception 5: You need to spend hours tweaking your source code each month to keep those top ranking positions. Therefore you cannot possibly manage your own in house search marketing. False again.

Truth 5: There are advantages to having your SEO handled by a professional firm that has been structurally trained. But don't buy it if someone says they must continually "tweak your code" to keep you in top place. It is just not true. Yes, you may want them creating fresh new content. Yes, you'll want continued practices if you're Blogging maybe for example. But if a page is ranking in top spot, leave it alone. If you do look at making changes, make sure you are grabbing a look at the entire search landscape for your industry.

Misconception 6: SEO is Dead. This myth makes a great attention grabbing article headline although in my opinion it has been a little bit over-used and rather gimmicky. If you've read it, it is completely false.

Truth 6: SEO is merely more competitive these days but SEO is far from being dead. SEO is alive and well!

It may feel like it is dead if you are relying on old second hand advice or listening to some marketers who are pushing their next big thing. Most Webmasters have access to all of the same old common tools that everyone else has, so there feels like there is less advantage than a few years ago.

Misconception 7: There is only one correct solution to solve a specific SEO challenge. If it is not my way, it is the wrong way. Needless to say this is also false.

Truth 7: For any specific SEO challenge there are often multiple solutions to choose from. In many cases there are alternative strategies that are all white hat and yet very solid solutions. Don't let anyone tell you that there is only one way. Every Web site is different with different challenges and you need to be equipped with the full range of solutions.

To gain a real significant advantage, the answer rests with building your genuine SEO skills and less reliance on tools.

* If you are interested in building genuine skills or managing a team overseeing SEOs then the surest why to close the gaps in your learning time is with a focus on live skills training and ongoing mentoring at a workshop or else study a course that focuses on teaching you the genuine skills. It is safe to say that you will be far less likely to ever be taken advantage of again, once your own knowledge is up to speed. * That being said, there are many who do not feel they can learn the skills. Maybe you're looking for hiring an SEO firm instead of managing your own projects. One of the easiest ways to separate the trained experts who have had good structured training from the hit and miss individuals (or worse,) is to simply examine the evidence of their work. Examine it closely so you can determine that behind them, the results show the evidence of their skills. - Ask them for a list of their recent client's phone numbers. - Ask them for a list of their oldest client contacts and their Web sites. - Dependable SEO services will never have trouble providing you with the evidence of their success although they may want to offer you client contacts in a different business category than the one you are in (out of respect for their clients.)

* While many SEOs will offer you typical proposals, try and watch for those who also have alternative approaches that will serve your best interest at reasonable cost. Optimization is only one aspect of visibility these days. It is not just about how many pages show up in the top rankings for specific keywords anymore. There are a lot of additional things that a well trained graduate can bring to you that are beyond SEO.

* Beware of any service that builds their whole success platform for SEO on "search engine submissions." Submitting to search engines is one thing you don't need to do and you don't need to do certain things over and over to get results. * Due diligence is the word of the day when hiring an SEO firm or seeking SEO skills training.

About the Author

John Alexander has taught live SEO workshops to people from over 80 different countries at http://www.SearchEngineWorkshops.com and also teaches live Webinars online at http://www.SEW-WRC.com

Better Website ROI - How to Catapult Your Website ROI Into Orbit With Organic SEO

If you wish to increase your website ROI (return on investment) It is about time that you start to consider organic SEO seriously because it works! Organic SEO is not an ''automatic type'' of website optimization but it can be implemented by anyone having the right amount of motivation and knowledge. Best of all organic SEO can replace expensive PPC campaign that cost your business a huge amount of money.

What you need to do is to develop your website in strict conformance to the algorithms used by search engines to get a good search engine ranking. Because your website is included to the main search engines through non-paid inclusion routes, it means that you don't pay the search engine themselves for getting your website placed.

Organic SEO techniques are the best method to reach your customer and many website owners would prefer not to have PPC advertising campaigns simply because they are not giving them a good ROI due to the high bid wars.

Statistics show that people favour websites that rank highly in the natural listings over those in the pay per click listings. Organic SEO outclass paid listing by a 3/1 ratio. 96% are viewing these results, while only 33% of sponsored results on the right of the page result in visits.

Getting decent search engine result via organic SEO will provide your website the best ROI on every dollar spent in web marketing. The main downside is that most businesses are not making proper use of organic SEO methods.

More than eighty percent of online dollars are being spent on paid placement and only about eleven percent is spent on organic SEO. To further illustrate how inadequate is the use of proper organic SEO, more than sixty percent of customers believe that natural listings are more to the point.

Though organic SEO is underutilized, you would be better off spending more time, effort as well as money in improving your organic search results as it will pay you back huge dividends and catapult you ROI where no man has gone before!

in fact also effectively bring to your website greater business while also being the most cost beneficial for your online business.

In today's world of information technology, the Internet is the most used medium that people use when looking for products, services and even information as well as news. Thus, search engines such as Google and Yahoo are letting people find what they need which could be anything from looking for friends, best dog food or any other piece of information.

Even people that visit your website will, in more than seventy-five percent cases come to your website via a search engine. What's more, people that scan search engine result pages will generally not look beyond the first three pages of results.

Thus, getting your website ranked high enough to fall within these first three search engine results pages has to be your goal.

If you then consider the fact that a website that ranks high enough can expect to get twice the number of visitors than for low ranked websites, you can easily understand why SEO or search engine optimization will prove to be the best answer to your business's growth needs.

You will also find that on average a high ranked website sees about fifty-seven percent growth in visitors which in turn leads to a possible doubling of the site's revenue.

Since search engine optimization or SEO is generally best done by experts, using their services will definitely help you get better results. With a professionally managed website that incorporates the best in SEO, your website will grow in terms of both visitors and sales and thus your business will realize maximum ROI which would be far more than if you had used other marketing strategies.

About the Author

I have just completed my brand new guide to Search Engine Marketing.

Download it free here: Search Engine Optimization Success.

Serge Daudelin is a Search Engine Optimization Specialist. http://www.affordable-search-engine-optimization-services.com

Basics of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)-Onpage

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a process of making web pages attractive to get high rankings on the search engines. As better the page optimized is, the higher a ranking it will get in search engine results. The objective of Search Engine Optimization is to improve the ranking of the web sites in major search engines like google, msn, yahoo etc. through optimizing content, building link popularity, search engine submission, directory submission etc.

As a part of a large marketing effort, SEO plays a very important role for the initial design and development of the site that help you to popularize your site among your targeted visitors. SEO involves a wide range of ethical strategies and techniques to improve search engine rankings. Below are some ethical seo techniques which are often widely used to utilize SEO:

DESIGN:

Optimising Web design of a web site is one of the important steps in SEO . Your website must be well designed using required applets to be easily noticeable. Here are given some mistakes which people often do not care but you must avoid them otherwise it will be difficult to get better rankings in search engines. You should avoid frames and also if you use flashes in your content as search engine spiders would not able to read flash text. you must add a description while using images.

KEYWORD:

The First and the most crucial step for optimizing a website is to research and define the best keywords. Right keywords selection can make you more visible and help you reach your target visitors and improves your search engine rankings too.You need some relevant or well known keywords which are usually used by people to get listed in search engines. In absence of right keywords search engines will not list your website.

TITLE TAG:

Title Tag have also an important role in SEO. Don't ignore them, they are a powerful tool and must be used to their fullest advantage. The Title tag helps the search engines decide the theme of the web page being crawled for indexing. When a search for keywords is conducted, the Title tag is given heavy consideration by major Search Engines like Google, Msn and Yahoo. You should remember that each page in your website is unique and needs a different Title tag. Place the most important keyword phrase for that particular page in the Title tag, and the page will get higher rankings in the search engines.

META TAG:

META tags are HTML tags that are used to include information about your web page they are created to give search engines the important information about your website. Search engines have recognized that website owners and administrators can use this resource to control their positioning and descriptions in search engine results.

ALT TAG:

ALT Tags are commonly omitted from web pages, from the smallest personal pages to the largest web corporate sites. Yet, if properly used, ALT Tags can be quite useful. Among other things ALT tags provide further detail about an image and other needed information. It also enables and enhances access for people with various disabilities.

Webexcel Solutions (ISO 9001:2000 Certified) A Software Development Company and an SEO Company
Author involve in research and analysis of various search engine strategies and algorithms. For more articles by author please visit- Latest Google SEO Tips and Strategies