Is Directory Submission Obsolete?

“Directories are sooooo 2003.” “Remember BlueFind?” “I thought Google hated directories.” Many people think that directories have become obsolete. The truth however is that while their SEO importance has decreased in the last few years, they should still be an integral part of link building for new sites. Of course, you should no longer submit to directories just for PageRank. As search engines analyze user data and integrate this information into their algorithm, the traffic you receive from a link becomes paramount again. (Shouldn’t it have been this way all along? I digress…) The point is, if you can get relevant traffic from a directory listing, then it’s still a viable marketing channel. And it can still be an effective SEO method, as well (we’ll get to that). Thus the question shouldn't be, "Should I submit to directories?", but rather, "Which directories should I submit to?" The answer is that you should submit to directories that either: a) will send traffic, or b) have listings that will be considered editorial votes of quality by major search engines. Did you know that specifically mentions both the Yahoo Directory and The Open Directory (DMOZ) in their Webmaster Guidelines (see http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html )? This implies that Google believes links from the two mentioned directories are indeed editorial votes of quality. These “trusted links” are the type a site needs to both break out of “the sandbox”, and to rank highly in the current (hard to crack) Google. Of course, I do recommend submitting to more than just the aforementioned two "directory kings" (Yahoo! and DMOZ). It becomes a matter of sorting through the low quality “rough” out there to find the directory “diamonds.” For starters, Best of the Web, MSN bCentral, Gimpsy, and Business.com all have editorial integrity at a level which probably ensures that search engines "trust" their links. Outside of these, there are a few others on the “top tier”, but beware of any that sell sitewide links, as that practice all but ensures that Google won’t trust the directory’s editorial integrity. What about the rest? Submitting to lower quality directories may not propel your site to the top of Google, but my recent research suggests it is still a very efficient link building method to build rankings in both MSN and Yahoo!. I have never been one to put all my eggs in the Google basket, so I still regularly use these second tier directories to quickly (and cheaply!) get my sites to the top of these engines. In conclusion, directory submission should still have a place in your link building strategy. If you are going for Google rankings alone, you should probably stick only to the top tier directories whose listings are considered editorial votes of quality by Google. If you are going for rankings in MSN and Yahoo!, you can cheaply build a slew of effective links by submitting your site to many of the lower quality directories. And of course, if you are trying to rank in all 3 major search engines, you should probably do both of the above. Either way, don’t write off directories just yet!

Harnessing The Power Of Social Book marking To Boost PageRank and Gather A Massive Number of Back links To Your Website

As SEO professionals we are constantly searching for ways to get our sites ranked and indexed better. We all know that backlinks are "life blood" that get a site ranked higher in the search engines.Black hat SEO experts in the quest to get one way backlinks till now relied on various methods like blog comment spam and referer log spam.The latest technique is using social bookmarking to get one way back links. What is social bookmarking? Social bookmarking is utilizing a web service, where users create a public repository of bookmarks pertaining to sites that they like.The concept of social bookmarking dates back to 1996 with the launch of itList.com, followed by services like Blink and Hotlinks and many more. But,the popularity of Social Bookmarking increased with the advent of the most popular bookmarking site till date, del.icio.us.To the uninitated, these bookmarks may seem like geekspeak, but from an SEO standpoint these can build you a massive amount of backlinks which seem tooriginate from authority sites. So how does one go about utilizing these social bookmarking services? You simply sign up for an account and then post your urls. Each post requires you to enter the url, a title for the anchor text, a short description and of course the tags under which you want your link bookmarked. A tag is a keyword which acts like a subject or category. Each user "tags" a webpage or image using his own unique tag. An image or webpage may have multiple tags that identify it. Webpages and images with identical tags are then linked together and users may use the tag to search for similar webpages and images. Most of these services give you a personalized book mark page that has all your bookmarks displayed, and though when you start out the pagerank of your personalized page might be zero, it slowly builds up over time. An additional important point worth looking at is that each tag page on the site has a pagerank which gets passed on to your site. For example the page for the tag "advertising" has a pagerank of 3. Below is a list of various services that you can utilize to boost your page rank 1) http://del.icio.us/ : This one of the most popular of all social bookmarking sites and has a huge pagerank of 8. 2) http://digg.com: Digg is a technology news website where users submit stories for review, but rather than allowing an editor to decide which stories go on the homepage, the users do. Digg is a site with a pagerank of 7 3) http://www.reddit.com, Page Rank 7 4)http://www.blinklist.com, page rank 6 5) http://www.simpy.com, page rank 6 A great way to get visitors to your sites to bookmark your website is using a neat service available at http://ekstreme.com/socializer/. This service provides a small snippet of code that when added to your site creates a special link on your site. When any visitor clicks on this link they are provided with a large list of social bookmarking sites which they can add your site to. In case your website is a wordpress blog a similar wordpress plugin called Sociable that can be found at http://push.cx/sociable Thus, using social bookmarking you can improve the ranking of your website and gain valuable pagerank.

Tips for Choosing a SEO Company

Even if you have a good knowledge of SEO & you try hard to get a good ranking, your site doesn’t do well. It is simply because your site needs to be optimized & maintained on a regular basis. It is a ongoing process which requires a lot of time. So, in this case, it is advisable to hire a Search Engine Optimization Company in UK for your website. There are many search engine marketing company in uk but choosing a right internet marketing service in uk is the most important. Here are some of the main points that should be kept in mind while selecting SEO services. Do they provide website analysis report – a good semcompany will provide you a complete analysis of your site regarding what all needs to be done. The hampering elements in reading & indexing of your pages can be in functionality, page design & its content. Do they understand “traffic” and “qualified” traffic – if unqualified traffic is coming to your site due to irrelevant keywords, then it will not be productive for you. They need to work on relevant keywords. Tools to determine keywords – what tools they use for searching keywords. What methodology they use for keyword analysis? There are suggestion tools provided by google adwords or they use basic tools. Collecting back links – from where they get back links as back links are very important for good SEO working. They should have it from good sites only. Cost structure – a good SEO company will give the costing after analyzing the work involved. High prices do not ensure high quality always. Prices should be consistent with the services provided by the company. Timeline involved – If sheer hard work & proper planning is involved then only results can be achieved in time. Some SEO packages claim to get first page result in 10 days. No SEO company can guarantee you of no. 1 ranking in Google in just 10 days. This is the guideline published by even google. So, beware of false promises. There could be some other factors too but the main thing is that if you’re looking for long term SEO partners for your site, you should get some knowledge about it. SEO services enable your site to get maximum exposure within search engines and it means more prospective traffic to your site. A Website marketing company will analyze the overall functionality of your site. Links are very important in website optimisation. A good SEO company can also give an off-page optimisation linking strategy. But a linking strategy is a long term process. So, now-a-days SEO packages do not include this. Your SEO services should not be secretive of their services. If it does something deceptive on your behalf, your site could be out from Google’s indexing. And later you will be in trouble. So, getting familiar with some knowledge on search engine optimisation will help you to choose a right search engine company for your website. For more information about Search Engine Optimisation, visit:: http://www.brickblue.co.uk

Things I Love About Google

The word Google is on the lips of young and old. Ask anyone a question and if they don’t know pat will come the answer “ask Google.” Among the many search engines in the World Wide Web, Google stands apart. Its unique, exciting, innovative, and a pioneer. Like adventurers of yesteryears that sailed the un-chartered seas, Google sails the cyber universe in search of adventure. Easy to use, Google is a free service with a mission to offer at a click the world’s information. A clever use of the mathematical term Googol, 1 followed by a 100 zeros, it just means infinite information presented in an organized way. Google is not any ordinary set up its philosophy and commitment to cost containment just means that every employee in any part of the world is a multi-tasker and hands on contributor. Work and play are both inborn in Google staff that enjoy their work and are obsessive about creating search perfection. So, employees from all over the world, speaking dozens of languages, originating from widely differing yet colorful cultures have one thing in common “Google is their life and breathe of fresh air.” It is simplicity and faith in its staff that has enabled Google to better the best. Every one thinks on the go and before a blink of an eye innovations are introduced –be it a spell checker or Google Number Search to facilitate use of Google from WAP phones. The keys to success lie in information has no end just beginnings, fast is better than slow, the motto is to provide instantaneous answers to surfer queries. The secret to the success is to focus on user needs and keep things simple. And do not stray from the “path.” The key is to concentrate on “search.” What makes great business sense is the motto “do no evil.” This serves to reemphasize the business ideals and philosophies. In fact one thing people love about Google is that it stands by its beliefs. Google was unique in refusing to give in to a subpoena and submit search query records. On the other hand, Google has the sense to adapt to different needs, in China Google took a step in a different direction and started self-censoring human rights organizations. Google has strayed into everyone’s hearts and become a part of everyday life. Gmail, Gtalk, blogs, news, Google maps, and more. Whatever a person needs or dreams about becomes a reality and what more it is at no cost to users. Googlers are friendly, helpful, spirited, and inspired. They evoke admiration among internet browsers. Its not just service Google has extremely good business sense. Usability is their aim and simplicity their secret password. Anything complex is not evident to the user. Google realizes that to be ahead even non techies, young and old must be able to use the search engine and different services. They should not be confounded by complexities. No frontier is too far and no problem too great. If a problem exists Google will make all attempts to solve it. Smart, devoted, and dedicated are three words that can aptly describe Googlers world wide.

Backlinking plays a vital role in SEO and also termed as backbone of the website.

Today the field of search engine optimization is becoming competitive day by day and backlinking is gaining popularity as a crucial SEO tool. There are number of factors determining one’s position on the website and driving traffic towards your site and backlinking is gaining significance and plays an important role for SEO. While discussing about the importance of backlinks, they can be termed as backbone of the website giving it the invisible but essential support. Defining technically backlinks are the inbound links on the website. They are the links placed on other webpage’s and are directed towards your website, these are also known as incoming links, inlinks, and inward links. Quality inbound links add weight to the website popularity and search engine ranking. 95% of SEO focus today revolves around quality backlinking. There are a number of ways to build quality and effective backlinks for your website. Submitting your site to directories, article sites, Online Press Releases, placing signature links in the forums, leaving comments on the blogs etc. are some easiest methods for inbound linking. You can use reciprocal link exchange program with quality websites to get related with them. Importance of backlinking for the SEO game can be discussed under following points: • Quality backlinks attracts search engines to find your website. Here, quality of the links dominates over the no. of links directed towards your website. Important thing to be noticed is, a web site linked to you having content relevant to your website will perform better than the website having content unrelated to your website. • Backlinking is a part of the entire ranking algorithm process for all the search engines. If two sites are similar in content and design, search engines have a tendency to prefer site having more inbound links but again quality links dominate. Linking with a bad site will cause a drop off for your websites on the search engines. • Quality backlinks drive not only search engines but are a crucial factor to attract the web users towards your website. • Backlinks helps to point towards your site. Backlinks found on forums, blogs and other sites across the internet boost up your website popularity. • In today’s PR obsessed internet world inbound links are an effective tool to gain better Google PR. Google always consider number of inbound links while raking the websites. • Not only Google but all the biggies like Yahoo and MSN now use link popularity and link anchor text as the most important factors in determining their rankings. • Linking to the relevant and standard websites enhance your credibility in the World Wide Web. You can increase your website PR and web traffic through the inbound linking with trusted resources. Add some quality links to your website and see your web business rocking.

SEO - finding (niche) keywords

Finding the most suitable keywords is one of the major factors in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) that can boost the website ratings, determined by a search engine, of your webpage. The keywords of your website should have a close relation with the content so that it can help the search engine understand what your website is all about. Optimizing the keywords in your website is the best way to attain a good traffic, which is also the key for ranking well in Google as well as in other major search engines. Also study the keywords used by other competitors' websites. The popularity of your keyword that is, does the users search for your keyword, and the competitiveness are two major factors to be kept in mind while choosing keywords for website. In competitiveness you may have to focus on the research of - is there other websites using your keywords and how many specific and unique keywords do you webpage holds. There are many specialized tools in SEO that helps in determining the competitiveness and popularity of your keywords. Word tracker tools are available online that helps to track the keywords which are often used by the Internet users. These tools will give you a log report mentioning the priority of each word for searchers. These reports with keywords of log statistics programs display the most frequently typed keywords by the users. The use of such keywords will help them find your website and promote your website for a better ranking. Looking for such keywords using these log statistics program or server logs will give you a clear idea about keywords which in turn help in bringing your website among the top list of websites. The latest SEO technique, white hat SEO top-left-down method, will help in optimizing the keyword using the most appropriate keywords for your website. The top left down keyword optimization strategy has just two steps for a successful keyword optimization. The first step in this is the keyword selection, which need to be selected by keeping a clear idea about what is your website explains and then research for the priority words used by the customers for searching. Then prepare a list of keywords based on the above studies. The second step is keyword optimization, where the selected keywords have to be sorted according to priority starting from top left to downwards. The top left keyword in the series will be given more weight by Google and other search engines. Thus sorting the keywords in the descending order of their priority is a good practice in SEO. Moreover, these selected keywords have to be applied to the appropriate pages such as title tag, header tag, and meta tags. The method of stuffing HTML tags with keywords which has no match with the actual content of the website can mislead both the search engines as well as the users. You are also permitted to use the keywords repeatedly, but make sure to avoid spam. Some of the relevant factors about these keyword used by the search engines are the keyword density, the place where it appears in the body text and tags, and the mode of arrangement of these keywords according to the relation to one another. Copyright © 2006 Andreas Obermueller

Linking Your Way To The Top Of The Search Engines

One of the most important things you can do to raise your search engine rankings and drive more traffic to your site is to convince other websites to link to yours. It's free, of course, and very easy, but doing it properly does take some time and effort. I recommend a couple of ways to find websites which might be willing to link to you. One way is to do a simple search to find websites with information about the same subject as your site, or closely related information. If you have a website about flowers, for instance, you can use search terms such as "gardens", "gardening", "flowers", "plants", and "seedlings" to find sites which may be interested in linking to yours. Or, you can take another route. Just identify a related site which is already highly popular, and find the websites which link to it. You can do that with a search in Google or http://alltheweb.com for "link:" (without the quotation marks) and the complete URL of the website. For example, link: http://www.college-scholarships.com (and don’t forget the colon after the word "link"). Once you've identified the websites most likely to link to yours, visit them, obtain the email addresses of their webmasters, and send an email requesting a link. To be effective, your email must: 1. be brief, well written, and polite. Always use "please" and "thank you". 2. describe your site in no more than 25-30 words. The description of your site must be interesting and explain why the webmaster's visitors will find it helpful or enjoyable. The less hype the better. 3. offer the webmaster something in return. For example: a. a link on your site. b. information about how to submit their website to 300,000+ search engines, directories, and links pages for free. When they agree to link to you, send them to: http://www.college-scholarships.com/free_search_engine_submission.htm. Contact an average of at least ten webmasters a day, more if you have the time. With just a ten percent success rate, that will net you a minimum of thirty new links a month. If you follow this advice, you should experience an almost immediate, albeit modest, increase in visitors to your website. However, the biggest benefit of a good linking campaign, higher search engine rankings, will take a bit longer. There is no magic formula, and there are lots of variables, but your search engine ranking could improve in as little as a few weeks, and should continue to improve as time goes on and more sites link to you as both a direct result of your efforts and webmasters seeing your links on other sites. Keep at it and, all things being equal, you can obtain the kind of search engine rankings that can transform your website from a hobby (as my wife originally referred to my first site) to a site which can pay your children’s full college costs and more, as that same site now does for us.

SEO and Your Targeted Market

SEO is a continuing process and one that should not be ignored. As you know, or will soon realize, is that the search engines are the main entry point at which your customers will find your website. But there are other issues you must be aware of to get the targeted customers that you want. Keywords You may have optimized your webpages and people are coming -- but not many. Why? It could be the keywords you are choosing. Choosing the right keywords take time and effort, and it is an important factor to consider. When choosing keywords you should be asking yourself - 1.) What are the exact words people are using to find the product or service that you are offering. For example: Is it refurbished tools, cheap tools, free tools, red, ugly tools -- you get my meaning. 2.) Are my keywords too general, or overused. If the keywords are too general, you may receive visitors that are not buyers, just browsers. If the keywords are overused, you may be so far down in the search engine rankings that your site will never be seen. 3.) Do you have your keywords or keyword phases in your "Title Tag". Your keywords in the Title Page should be relevant to what your web copy relates too. If it doesn't, you've just wasted an important keyword tool that the Search Engines utilize. 4. Meta Keywords Tag -- Some people use the meta keywords Tag and others say that the search engines no longer use them. And still others, claim that it gives their competition an unfair advantage. I personally will continue to use them, because I don't believe all the search engines ignore this tag. Finding the correct keywords is no easy task. However, did you think of asking the people around you what keywords or phases they would use to get to one of your web pages. You might be surprised -- it may not have been a keyword or phase that you even considered. Popularity Even though a keyword may be popular to the masses, you also must consider if it is targeting your specific market. Why? You may begin to get the traffic, but not the specific target market that will buy your products. And that is the bottom line, not so much the popularity of the word, as the quality of the traffic that the keyword brings. And if the keyword is popular, you may find your web page competing with established websites -- which translates into poor positioning. Thus, you could consider other smaller niche words, and still get the ranking you seek. Experiment You will have to experiment with the keywords that you use on your webpage/website, to determine if the keywords you are using is giving you the sales you want. I have found testing, evaluating and re-evaluating is the name of the game of SEO. If you keep that in mind, you will begin to see the results you want. However, once you are in the top ten of the search engines, do not think your job is done. You must continue to monitor -- because the Internet is not a static environment -- and people can come online that can slide your web page or website down the line in the search engines.

Top 7 Fundamentals for Google Optimization! Google SEO Tips and Techniques by Expert!

Who doesn’t want to get Top Ranking Positions in Google? 1st Page Placement in Google is NOT difficult, you need to follow Google Optimization Guidelines, and this Article has Summary of the Seven Fundamentals for Google Optimization. Google optimization is about following Google guidelines, Google likes ethical SEO practices, those SEO practices which are to help website owners as well as Google and it has published guidelines for SEOs here: http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/seo.html Top 7 Fundamentals for Google Optimization Fresh and Original Content Clean and Validated Code Easy and Accessible Navigation Good Interlinking of Web pages Healthy and Relevant Incoming Links Domain Age and Registered Period For Same Contacts at Site and Domain Registration Fresh and Original Content Google love fresh and original content on web page, selectable content/text copy of your web page, google can’t read content on images or at pics. Clean and Validated Code Clean and validate code helps google to crawl deeply, try to put content at the beginning of your web page, ignore nesting, javascript or comments, in fact try to shorten the text format with the help of external CSS. Easy and Accessible Navigation Text or image base navigation helps google to read, google bot can’t read javascript, dhtml, flash base navigation, try to avoid using these practices which google doesn’t like. Keep your navigation at top or left side of the web pages, make sure to add a sitemap page which will guide web surfers and web bots to each and every page of your website, if you have huge website then make sure to add at least all main categories’ links at sitemap page. Good Interlinking of Web pages Web links are like roads and streets at website, make sure all website’s internal links are text base or image base, with relevant content. Healthy and Relevant Incoming Links Google likes referred websites, specially referred from quality and relevant resources. The more referrer links the more top rankings. Here one thing should be remembered that one relevant incoming links is better than hundred irrelevant links. Domain Age and Registered Period For Google started keeping new registered domains in sandbox since April 2004, in sandbox almost all new domains kept on probationary period for 6 to 8 months, in some cases for longer period, Sandbox domains don’t get good rankings. Google also likes to rank better to those domains which are registered for longer period like for 5 or 10 years, because whoever registered domains for longer period shows how much s/he is serious with her/his business and most probably won’t do SPAM with those domains. Same Contacts at Site and Domain Registration Google likes true businessmen and a true businessman doesn’t misguide his website visitors, google likes those websites which have physical mailing address to their contact pages and google compares it with that physical mailing address which is used in domain registering.

How To Not Get Lost In The SEO World

The ever-increasing level of competition in the Web these days is like a mad scramble for most businesses, with thousands of sites and affiliates boxing-out each other for niche markets, increased traffic, and higher sales. Website and business owners who spend money on optimizing their websites in the search engines want to know they are getting a good return on their investments. SEO firms and experts need concrete numbers to show that the campaign is working, and that they should continue to invest in optimization. According to the experts, there are several good reasons why you should measure your SEO efforts, so that you wouldn’t get astray in terms of direction or investment. First, you need to justify how much you're spending to management, your client, or whoever holds you responsible for getting traffic to your website. Second, is to make sure that all the time and funds you're spending on SEO is actually working. Third, to enable you to secure more money for next year's SEO budget. And lastly, to enable you to stay competitive always. It is also notable to take note that you should understand industry averages, such as how much the average website owner spends on outsourcing SEO, and this could range from $100 to $500 per web page for example, and what sort of return you can expect to receive for paying premium cash. In finding out these spending averages, you are fully equipped with the knowledge when formulating a plan that will convince yourself, or the higher-ups, to spend the money on SEO. Tips On How Not To Get Lost In The SEO World It is far better to get started on your SEO journey of learning and make a couple mistakes, than to let months go by, never make a mistake and never get started. Here are a few tips on succeeding, and in preventing yourself from getting lost in the wide, and sometimes tricky world of SEO. * Make a firm decision to get started. There are a lot of people who will buy a program or purchase a product, but for some reason have difficulty in getting to know how to use it: as a result, they never do. * Gain self-confidence through experience and constant practice. Far too many people hesitate to try out their ideas. The sooner you strengthen your confidence, the sooner you will realize the potential for what you can achieve and do. In the beginning, start with a few of your own sites where you have full creative liberty without encountering the demands or pressures that come from a client. * Gather advice from the SEO community by visiting respected forums and discussion groups. Although at times you may not get leading edge stuff, since most of that costs a lot of money, however you will get an awesome amount of pertinent information. Plus, you'll also hear both sides of a story, both the pros and cons, from the debates that seethe within the community. * Subscribe to reputable newsletters and learn from what the experts say. Many of them are free to sign up to and they can be a wonderful venue to start learning.

Link Relevance

We are constantly being told by SEO experts and the Search Engines that the importance of a link is determined by its page rank and relevance to our own web sites. Consequently when developing a linking strategy we should only be concerned with relevant links. That is other web sites which have some connection to our own. For example I run a web site devoted to providing a variety of cleaning services to commercial clients throughout the UK, so a relevant site would be a cleaning machine supplier or a cleaning chemicals supplier. Not other cleaning companies for the obvious reason they are our direct competitors. Now this sounds simple and straightforward and if we did this we would end up linking to about twenty sites. This number is not in any way sufficient for us to compete with our competitors who have many hundreds and in some cases thousands of links recognised by the search engines. How does Google determine relevance? I would suggest that it is a completely random process. If I look at my own back links which Google are registering then many are relevant in terms of the definition above, but many are not. None of our suppliers who provide us with a back link and incidentally have high page ranks form part of this list and yet they are highly relevant? It may be that these form part of Google’s count but they choose for one reason or another not to divulge these. It remains a mystery. How does a mathematical formula work out relevance? If I back link to my customers who are a very divers group to me they are relevant but apparently not to Google. We have many back links from construction and building companies because we carry out builders cleans for them. Yet these are seemingly not deemed to be relevant but a mortgage company is? Builders and construction firms are mentioned several times on the web site and so a relevant connection should be able to be made. If I look at the back links of my major competitors then the situation becomes even more confusing. Very few would appear on the surface to be of any relevance at all but who am I to judge? I do not have inside knowledge of the workings of these companies and their possible connections. To me the whole process seems completely arbitrary and I will continue developing links to sites that I consider relevant. If Google paid attention to its own advice in only developing links to relevant sites then presumably it would only link to other search engines? It is an easy statement to make for Google and SEO experts, ‘only develop links to relevant sites’ but the reality is that they have no way of knowing what is truly relevant and what is not. Consequently my advice is to continue developing your links to websites that you consider of some relevance either to you or surfers who come across your site and continue to be astonished at what Google considers to be relevant!

Why? - Page Rank

What is Page Rank ? In short Page Rank is a "vote", by all the other pages on the Web, about how important a page is. A link to a page counts as a vote of support. If there's no link there's no support (but it's an abstention from voting rather than a vote against the page). How is Page Rank Used? Page Rank is one of the methods Google uses to determine a page's relevance or importance. It is only one part of the story when it comes to the Google listing, but the other aspects are discussed elsewhere (and are ever changing) and Page Rank is interesting enough to deserve a paper of its own. Page Rank is also displayed on the toolbar of your browser if you've installed the Google toolbar (http://toolbar.google.com/). But the Toolbar Page Rank only goes from 0 - 10 and seems to be something like a logarithmic scale: Toolbar Page Rank: (log base 10) Real Page Rank 0 0 - 10 1 100 - 1,000 2 1,000 - 10,000 3 10,000 - 100,000 4 and so on... We can't know the exact details of the scale because, as we'll see later, the maximum PR of all pages on the web changes every month when Google does its re-indexing! If we presume the scale is logarithmic (although there is only anecdotal evidence for this at the time of writing) then Google could simply give the highest actual PR page a toolbar PR of 10 and scale the rest appropriately. Also the toolbar sometimes guesses! The toolbar often shows me a Toolbar PR for pages I've only just uploaded and cannot possibly be in the index yet! What seems to be happening is that the toolbar looks at the URL of the page the browser is displaying and strips off everything down the last "/" (i.e. it goes to the "parent" page in URL terms). If Google has a Toolbar PR for that parent then it subtracts 1 and shows that as the Toolbar PR for this page. If there's no PR for the parent it goes to the parent's page, but subtracting 2, and so on all the way up to the root of your site. If it can't find a Toolbar PR to display in this way, that is if it doesn't find a page with a real calculated PR, then the bar is greyed out. Note that if the Toolbar is guessing in this way, the Actual PR of the page is 0 - though its PR will be calculated shortly after the Google spider first sees it. PageRank says nothing about the content or size of a page, the language it's written in, or the text used in the anchor of a link! Definitions I've started to use some technical terms and shorthand in this paper. Now's as good a time as any to define all the terms I'll use: PR: Shorthand for PageRank: the actual, real, page rank for each page as calculated by Google. As we'll see later this can range from 0.15 to billions. Toolbar PR: The PageRank displayed in the Google toolbar in your browser. This ranges from 0 to 10. Backlink: If page A links out to page B, then page B is said to have a "backlink" from page A. Visit us: http://www.halfvalue.com/top-articles/seo-resources.html

Google is quickly changing

With the big buzz of Novembers fall within Google comes a newly indexed data-base... Did Google do something bad to our great placements? No I don't think so and here's why. While people are screaming for help and wondering what went wrong, I've noticed a MASSIVE shift in page ranking. If you look at top placements at the moment, according to Scroogle, most of the ecommerce search terms got hit really hard. A lot of the top 100 placements were vanishing and quickly. Now on the other hand, less impressive and especially smaller ranking sites have been bumped up top. I firmly believe this is all because of Google's "refreshing" their memory and possibly starting to take on web site ID's with 5 characters plus. What I mean by that is the ability for Google to index more than 3.2 Billion web sites. Adding another character to the already large 4Id's dedicated to each site indexed will allow Google to add a whole other list of sites within their data-base. Now I could be wrong on that one but here's another phenomenon going on. I've been talking to other ecommerce web sites and helping them gain better rankings. It's been a while since they've had their Page Rank change within their site. Working real hard as I instructed, they have followed all the rules and attempted to boost their page ranks. Up until now, nothing has changed and people are loosing their ranks within Google since Novembers algorithm change. Around a week ago I've been getting calls left right and center about page ranks boosting like I’ve never seen. The previous scare before this November change went something like this. Google stopped indexing more than 3 levels within your site. Ex. www.yoursite.com/level1/level2/level3 I affirm to you this: its pure baloney, more sites now have better PR ratings within their entire site than ever before. I believe that Google is rewarding most great resources online before taking on more listings within their index. As towards se placements, I also took a major hit for my better search engine placements but a couple of days ago that started to all change. It almost seems as though Google wanted to take out the top placement companies in order to thoroughly crawl through all their information before letting them get back in the game. I say this because one of my top placements was sitting at #1 for a long time. Since this November change, it immediately dropped to #181 and didn't move one single number for over 3 weeks. To my knowledge, that's a little strange. All of a sudden, my site stats recorded Google browsing through all my 600+ pages and presto, my site is back in the game, just like that. In Conclusion: It seems to me that we're all just lined up to sign an application for better search engine placements. The question isn't if your site will get back in shape, it's a question of when your number will be called. Have a little faith and a little patience and you too will rise again! Just keep doing what you've been doing all along and don't worry about falling down. The ones who get back up are always the ones on top in the end. Best of luck to you! Read more of Martins articles online here: http://www.smartads.info/newsletter

What is SEO and why is it so important?

SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimizing and refers to a set of good practices that teach you how to improve your website so that it would be easily tracked, indexed and ranked by search engines. Getting your site indexed by Google and other major search engines will help you attract visitors and increase traffic. It is the process of increasing the amount of visitors to a Web site by ranking high in the search results of a search engine. The higher a Web site ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that that site will be visited by a user. It is common practice for Internet users to not click through pages and pages of search results, so where a site ranks in a search is essential for directing more traffic toward the site. SEO helps to ensure that a site is accessible to a search engine and improves the chances that the site will be found by the search engine. Basic SEO Tips: 1. Insert keywords within the title tag so that search engine robots will know what your page is about. The title tag is located right at the top of your document within the head tags. 2. Use the same keywords as anchor text to link to the page from different pages on your site. This is especially useful if your site contains many pages. The more keywords that link to a specific page the better. 3. Make sure that the text within the title tag is also within the body of the page. It is unwise to have keywords in the title tag which are not contained within the body of the page. 4. Do not use the exact same title tag on every page on your website. Search engine robots might determine that all your pages are the same if all your title tags are the same. If this happens, your pages might not get indexed. 5. Do not spam the description or keyword meta tag by stuffing meaningless keywords or even spend too much time on this tag. 6. Do not link to link-farms or other search engine unfriendly neighborhoods. A good rule of thumb is if your pages do not contain any words that reflect the content of the site you are linking to, do not link to it. 7. Do not use doorway pages. Doorway pages are designed for robots only, not humans. 8. Title tags for text links. Insert the title tag within the HTML of your text link to add weight to the link and the page where the link resides. This is like the alt tag for images. 9. Describe your images with the use of the alt tag. This will help search engines that index images to find your pages and will also help readers who use text only web browsers. 10. Submit to the search engines yourself. Do not use submission service or submission software. Doing so could get your site penalized or even banned. So in this way Search Engine Optimization, is important, and helps to bring more visitors and Link Exchanging, is important because it can drive more visitors then search engines, once established. Directories ad valuable content for your customers/visitors, and this it improves your SEO. Visit us: http://www.halfvalue.com/top-articles/seo-resources.html

Reasons Why The Best Things In Advertising Are Free

With small businesses, you can’t help but wonder how you can market your enterprise without having to use up your entire budget. As much as you want to stop thinking about it, the fact remains that most of the advertising tools are just too costly for your taste.

Take for example tv and radio commercials. You know for a fact that such medium can cost an arm and a leg that’s why these two are definitely out of the list.

But not all advertising methods are expensive. In fact, some of the most cost effective tools are being used often by most business owners and marketers alike. And these include print ads such as your brochure printing materials, which showcase all the products and services in your list.

As they say, most of the time, the best things in life are free. In advertising, the same adage is true. Many business owners in fact, even the big ones, utilize these marketing tactics because they believe that there are such things that can actually do the job without having to pay so much.

Here are some of the reasons why the best things in advertising are most often free:

- Print ads such as your flyers and brochures can be made without having to hire a professional brochure printing company to do it for you. Lessen the costs; reduce the hassle.

- It never fails to spread out the good word regarding your product or service – word of mouth that is. Having your clients to put in a good word for you to their relatives and friends are the best free advertising there ever is. And remember, a good word can build your reputation steadily; but one bad comment and it’ll spread like wildfire.

- Preparing a special gift for some of your most popular clients can go a long way in endearing you to them. Bring your business cards with you so you can provide them with your contact information while you’re being appreciated.

- Exchanging links with other websites are basically free and you don’t even need to do extra effort in looking for most searched sites.

- Posting your print ads at your local bulletin board helps reduce your costs of posting it by mail.
- When giving tips at a restaurant, include your business cards or brochures. Nowadays, it’s very common to see glass bowls in the cashier area for putting your business cards.

- Press releases in your local newspaper and newsletter can help you advertise your business without having to spend a penny on your advertising campaign.

Lastly, give out free samples or promotional products to your target audience and they’ll definitely gobble up your promo. It may be the one thing that you’ll surely spend your money on but the outcome produces great rewards.


For more information, you can visit this page on Brochure Printing

SEO: For Search Engines or Humans

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is something that many webmasters are now obsessing over. Many web site owners are spending countless hours tweaking and modifying their web sites, adding keyword rich content, and spending hours obtaining back links, so that their site will rank higher in search engines. It is true that over 90% of all web surfers use search engines to visit sites on a regular basis, but should web masters and web site designers build and tweak sites for search engines, or for their visitors? The answer to this question is that when you build a web site, you are not targeting web search engine crawlers, you are targeting people and human visitors. Hence, you should build a web site for humans, not search engines. The whole purpose to create a web site is so that you can get traffic. Without traffic, a web site is worthless. No matter how many features and how functional your site is, without traffic, your design and functionality do not matter. Although search engines can help bring in traffic, web sites that are designed for search engines, are often not designed for human visitors and all the traffic that your web site gets will be worthless. Visitors will visit and then soon leave your web site and not return again. Return visitors are critical for the success of any web site. One good example of optimizing for search engines purely is some webmasters tend to stuff tons of keywords into the Meta-Tags; this is a very bad practice and will get the site blacklisted. Moreover, this black hat technique does not benefit the users. Hence, when building a web site, one should build it for human visitors. If you have articles that are too keyword dense, the quality of the writing will not be as high as it should, and quite frankly, many of your visitors will be annoyed if you keep using words such as “mesothelioma” or “home insurance loan” to get your web site high in the search rankings for these terms. They will leave your web site and most likely not return. If you create a web site where content is created for people to read and is well written, chances are you will get many return visitors who like the quality of the content you provide and come back frequently to read any new content you may have added. The more people that visit and link to your web site, the more popular it well become and naturally, it will be ranked higher in search engines. Also, rather than spending hours building links for SEO purposes, that time could be better spent on adding features to your web site which would prompt more people to return to your site and stay at your web site for a longer period of time. In conclusion, although spending lot of time on SEO and increasing your search engine rankings in the short run, the visitors you get from your SEO efforts will not be valuable as chances are they will not visit again. If you build your web sites for people, your traffic will grow and search engine rankings will rise naturally. Hence, the best way to build a successful web site is to build for people and allow your web site to naturally move up search engine rankings.

Search Engine Optimization is no rocket science

Introduction So you have completed your website, great! Now how are you going to attract visitors? If you do not let them know you're there, your visitors will never find find you. How are you going to sell products when users don't know that you exist? SEO will make your website noticeable on the internet, and this small guide will help you bring targeted visitors to your website. Optimize your website The most important part of your website is quality content. Search engines (such as google) will crawl your content and index it into a database. If your content does not match the product you are selling, you will not attract targeted visitors. It is therefore very important that you choose your (key)words very carefully. For instance, if you sell calculators on the internet, make sure you mention the words calculator, calc, math and more calculator related words on your website. However, be careful not to mention the words too often, or search engines might think your website is spam, which will result in a very low rank (search engine position) within the search results. Linkbuilding When more websites link to your site, the more attention you will get from search engines, which results in higher ranking. When you create and receive links from other websites to your website, make sure important keywords are used as anchor keywords in the hyperlink. If you sell calculators online, use a link such as; "buy calculator" instead of "click here". Target your audience Leave your link on website where your potential customers meet, for instance forums or discussion boards related to your website. Do not spam your website as this will be noticed by crawlers and will eventually result in a blacklist entry. Offline targeting Be sure to market your website offline as well. Advertise in local newspapers, tell everyone about your website, etc. Add a sitemap to your website When you want search engines to crawl your entire website, the best thing to do is adding a sitemap to your website. Make sure searchbots can read your website Searchbots can only read plain text.websites. No matter how beautiful your flash animation is, searchbots cannot read the content inside that animation. Therefore, try to avoid Flash animations on your website when there is content involved. Same story goes for JavaScript. Do NOT use frames Never use frames to design your website! Lots of search engines simply skip webpages with frames since they are a difficult to be seen apart from each other by visitors. For instance, if your framepage would consist of menu.html and content.html and your visitor would land on content.html, he would not have a menu to navigate through your website. Stay away from bad neighbourhoods and don't spam! Do not be tempted into leaving your link on abandonned guestbooks, forums or spam your link on every website you can find. Do not exchange links with spammy websites (such as pharmacy websites) either. The risk exists that google will classify your website as a spamsite and will block your website from any search results.

Could Time Warner be using Black Hat SEO to Help Search Rankings?

This is an exclusive story. Is it possible that MarkMonitor, Inc., who call themselves “a global leader in the fast-growing market for online corporate identity” has been secretly hiding links on behalf of TimeWarner? Is this being done on subdomains of timeinc.net in order to rank high in the search engines? You decide. MarkMonitor owns the domain name timeinc.net, a site with a homepage which re-directs to the main Time.com site. So it would seem they are running this site on behalf of TimeWarner. If you go to the timeinc site and view some of the source code of the pages, you will find error pages that have links below an image map at the bottom of the page, links which are hidden from viewers and added to increase the search engine ranking of other Time Warner properties. This link-hiding practice is often referred to as “Black Hat” SEO. An image map tells the browser how to display an image. That is it’s only purpose. However, some of the pages on timeinc.net have links hidden to viewers next to the image maps. If one views the source of sub domains such as img.timeinc.net or i.timeinc.net, it is apparent there are four links to other TimeWarner properties. Did MarkMonitor, Inc., a huge company and a true leader in “defending brand names” online buy this domain, redirect the traffic to Time.com and find places to hide links to other Time websites out of pure altruism? It’s possible, but hard to believe. It should be noted that there are very important subscription pages on other sub domains of timeinc. This is not a domain that was cast away and has no value for linking. If MarkMonitor purposefully hid links as it would seem, altruism towards Time seems an unlikely motive. There is an increasingly fine line with what is acceptable and what is not for search engine optimization. At ClickStream, we believe the last group that needs to employ sneaky techniques to rank high are fortune 500 companies. In essence, these companies are the ones that have whole “rings” of websites. Yet, search engines will ban individuals that create multiple sites for the purpose of linking to each other and creating a link circle. Time should be able to link in a circle with its various media companies. That may seem an unfair advantage, but they are separate entities that have the same parent company. What certainly seems unfair is for them to take further advantage of the circular linking by hiding links that only the search engines can see. The recent storm has just passed over the BMW being removed from the Google search engine pages. BMW’s German site was found using “doorway pages” to build traffic and rank for their site. Google was able to document that BMW’s German website used the search results to get a top ranking if people searched for “used car.” Searching for BMW Germany will bring no results. BMW.ge was well ranked but it dropped completely out of the Google index in a matter of 2 days.

Is Your Domain Name SEO Friendly?

When you first start an Internet business one of the first items on the list, after you've written your business model, is getting a domain name. In years past it wasn't as difficult to find a decent name for your site. Today however, it's not as easy to get your dot com name. The process of registering a name has improved substantially but the availability for descriptive names is far more difficult. Why is this a problem you may ask? It's more of a problem for small and home business sites than it is for larger companies. The reason is simple and I can sum it up in one word: money. Larger companies, especially public companies have the funding to advertise their new sites, therefore they don't really need to have names that reflect the type of business they are in. I can site a perfect example, Go Daddy.com, has absolutely nothing to do with the type of business Go Daddy is in. But being the largest register of domain names, GoDaddy can advertise on all media levels to get business including buying advertising time on the Super Bowl! If you are starting a home based business on the Internet, I'll bet that you won't be buying time on television not to mention next year's Super Bowl. Okay, where am I going with all of this? You are on a limited budget when you start your business and you must rely on free traffic to your site, because without traffic you have no business. This is what I described in my article on organic traffic a few weeks ago. In order to get substantial traffic to your site you'll need to have an optimized site. This all has to do with keywords and something called keyword density. You achieve this by having your most important keywords dispersed throughout your website and your domain name. (See I did come to the point of this article.) Most SEO, search engine optimization, programs first look at the domain name and your major keywords. They look to see if your domain name and site title have any commonality. If they do your site receives extra points in the SEO algorithm, (a logical step-by-step procedure for solving a mathematical problem in a finite number of steps, often involving repetition of the same basic operation.) I hope that I haven't lost you here because all of this is very important, especially to home based Internet business owners. Most SEO programs will constantly refer back to the domain name and those words which match the dominate keyword phrases that you have chosen. When your site is optimized, search engines will pick up your scent, so to speak, and you will have great placement and positioning on searches that have your keywords. All of this amounts to substantial traffic. I'm not an expert on SEO and I don't pretend to be but I've spent my share of time in attempting to understand it and how it effects my site. I can recommend two areas of my site that I think are beneficial to you: Web Site Design and Search Engine Optimization at http://www.homebusinessresearch.com There are a lot of submission services as well. Some of them are good and some of them are not so good. Try to optimize first.

The Importance of Anchor Text Keywords

While any webmaster knows that doing some link exchanges will bring more visitors on their site, few people know how to use the full potential of a link exchange campaign to boost their website popularity. One of the key elements that determines web page rankings is the number of high quality links pointing towards that page. Combined with the keyword density of that particular page, these factors will determine where your web page appears when a search is initiated. Let’s say you have a website on wood carving. Now, one of your pages is dedicated to wood carving tools, which is also the key phrase you optimized the page for. A good keyword density is not enough, however, and if you want to tank high you need to get as many incoming links pointing towards that specific page as possible. While links pointing towards your domain name are valuable, you actually need to get links pointing towards that particular page in order to get the best results. Anchor keywords The anchor text is the one that you can insert in an HTML code so that your link is actually a series of keywords or a keyword-rich phrase. The importance of anchor text keywords is high because it tells the search engines that the page the link is pointing at is focused on the topic described by the keywords. Here is how the HTML code for a link looks like: Keyword Rich Description In the case of the wood carving site example, the link for the specific tools page should look something like this: Wood Carving Tools The web browsers will only display the link anchor text, so the phrase “Wood Carving Tools” will become underlined and hyperlinked. Where to use anchor text? Everywhere! When you are doing link exchanges, when you are posting on blogs, forums or groups. When you are creating your website description, when you are sending articles to ezines and directories. For example, if you plan to send a few articles for submission to a directory, you should try to include keyword rich anchor text links in the resource box. By doing so, you ensure a much better chance for ranking high on particular keywords. Always remember to use a keyword rich phrase in links that allow HTML, instead of the classic http://www.yoursite.com. It also helps if you use variation in the keyword text links. When posting on blogs, for example, try to have your links point to different pages on your site, and for each page use the main page keyword in the anchor text. This is also true for article submissions. You should submit one article to as many directories as possible, but change the link and keyword anchor text once in a while. A great source for submitting articles is: o http://www.MyContentBuilder.com Article submission can be tedious, which is why you may want to consider an automatic article submitter. It will submit one article to over 30 directories in half an hour. To watch a video on how to accomplish this, go to: o http://1trac.com/dt/t/Article_Submitter_Video.php

A New Glimmer for SEO

As we know that a mediator always works to convince two sides and here Search Engine Optimization does the same work. It creates relation between customer and website. Same case happens in the technological field. This technology just work as a messenger, who informs the web site in which rank it uphold. And this rank will give by Search Engine Optimization. SEO Delhi is an extremely talented team of SEO Experts and Web Design Professionals based in New Delhi, India. There are other important factors too which determines the ranking with search engines termed as the architecture of the website, the visibility of the content, its underlying code and how natural site appears to the engines. SEO Delhi assists in Search Marketing and creating Strategic Framework for their websites and online assets which ensures successful accomplishment of projects in every respect. The SEO Services in Delhi are also in the form of contracts and companies do web promotion and Internet marketing activities for their clients. As we trust your money worth a lot. By its ranking the web design companies in Delhi have started search engine optimization or search engine marketing services as additional services. You can easily avail the services of the consultants at any time. There are maximum types of services through these consultancies like defining of keywords, writing of content on keyword basis, on page, off page optimization techniques and other internet marketing techniques. The quality traffic you will start getting from the same day we start SEO. You can outsource your website promotion work to different companies which are SEO Delhi experts. It is clear that your site needs to be optimized and maintained on a regular basis. You can utilize any of these SEO Delhi services according to your needs and budget. So in this case, it is desirable to hire SEO services for your web site. You should beware of black hat SEO techniques as it may affect your business in the long run. It generates new business, and it increases brand awareness. They need to work on relevant keywords. If you need to collect some information about SEO Delhi companies for your site promotion then e-fuzion is the best one for you. Search engine optimization is a process which is particularly used for ranking the web sites. The participative nature of the web can easily be recognized from the myriad of forums, Social Book marking sites, logs and Social Network sites that have emerged in a couple of years. The search engine searches the contents quality and quantity. It is not violate the rules of different article directories while submitting articles. Website design is too easy to maintain.

How to make a link page and outbound link structure?

This is a major question, which comes in mind of every SEO, link building company and webmaster's that what kind of link page should be on their site or what is the best way of giving outbound link. Every body need links and to get it one has to give back some thing in return unless your contents are so good that the site is voluntarily linked by others. To give back link you need some link page or some other way of giving outbound links. What method should be adopted for outbound links structuring. In my opinion you can adopt following :

1. The best way to give outbound link is to give links within the content page as it is most useful for users who read your site contents. This method of linking is natural and long lasting as search engines want that the pages should be made for users and not for the search engines
2. You can make 4 to 6 resources pages but each page should be on particular theme and object of the page should match the theme of your site. In such a way you will provide the users more related resources on same topic at one place. It will help you in making an authority page.
3. You can also adopt the traditional style which is used in research papers as well as books also where links are given at the end of the page referred to as more references and resources. It gives more information to the users about any particular topic thus enriching their knowledge more. There are many other ways of making link page but the most common is to have a long page with huge list of sites on one single page and linking each site with its title or optimized anchor text without having any relevance between the sites. Such pages never bring traffic rather we just make it only for search engines, which is no doubt a Spam. Google mentioned in its SEO guidelines "Make pages for users, not for search engines ". Search engines are well aware of such kind of link pages and are definitely to be treated by search engines as "Link Farm" and will be penalized.

So in order to have the maximum benefit along with increasing traffic and giving the best to your site users make relevant, authority based link resources which would be beneficial for both your site as well as for the users.

About the Author
The Article is written by Submit Shop Team specialized in link popularity building and link management. Visit http://www.submitshop.com for more information. See http://www.submitshop.com/link_popularity/ for more information on Submit Shop link building services.
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The Benefits of Article Submissions

Search engines, we all agree, are critical to the success or failure of your website or online venture. If the search engines don't find your business within the first page or two of search results, you're doomed to mediocrity at best, failure at worst. But most of the giant websites have millions of dollars of capital to throw at regular advertising campaigns; you couldn't advertise at a kindergarten football game, let alone the Superbowl. But there's another route for those of us with great ideas and work ethic, but little cash: directory submissions. These are sites that store free articles for sharing, contributed by website owners who get one critical item in return: a resource box with the contributor's link, formatted in the manner he or she prefers. And you simply give the article to the directory. Give A Little, Get A Lot Most people who hear about this for the first time are appalled. Give away articles? They're hard to write, time-consuming, and besides, you want them for yourself so you can have fresh content on your own site. But that's not the point. Fresh content and search-engine-optimized articles are helpful to a degree to be listed well on the search engines, but links back to your site and the amount of traffic you get are becoming increasingly important. Content today is much more important for keeping the customers that the search engines first send to your site. If you have good content already, you can gain the audience to enjoy it by donating articles. When you're listed in an article directory, three things happen: • The search engines pick it up as a quality inbound link; many directories are top-ranked on Google and other search engine sites. • Your website will be naturally indexed, which is a much better way of getting it into search engines than waiting for them to pick it up. • You'll gain traffic from the directory itself. All that from a single article submitted to one directory. Give A Lot, Get Even More If you want to rise in search engine rank more quickly, you can submit the same article to hundreds of article directories. Each directory, though, is time-consuming. It can take up to a half-hour with some systems to submit your article, and that's after you locate the directory and assess its quality. Many webmasters go to specialists instead of performing this task themselves. Article Submission companies and contractors will take your single article and submit it to dozens of websites by hand, resulting in hundreds of inbound links to your website that will be tracked by the search engines. The best news: these companies can submit your information faster and cheaper than you could imagine, freeing you to developing your website, serving your customers, and filling orders. Be careful who you choose, though. Many directory submissions services submit low-quality packages that article directories will reject, providing you with little or nothing for your money. Look for directory submissions companies that guarantee their work and who operate quickly. Then watch your rankings in Google and other vital search engines rise!

Improving Search Engine Rankings – Patience Is The Key

I have written before about the benefit of articles and how they provide one way links back to your website and therefore improve the importance of your website and thus its ranking in the search engine results. The articles you write have the chance of spreading slowly around the web and ending up within ezines or on other websites or blogs. All of which provide links back to your website. So once you have over thirty articles out there the links can grow exponentially. Just consider what can happen if you have one hundred articles published? Two hundred articles? The magic figure is said by some experts in this field to be 250 articles, it is then that this exponential growth in links and traffic to your site can be truly seen. I do not have personal experience of this yet as my own figure sits at 35 and this number is already having remarkable results as reported in a previous article. If you average 10 articles a month which is what my own aim is, then after 2 years you will have reached this magic figure of 250. At the same time your website will have aged a further two years which will also benefit it and it will be viewed as one of the more important web sites. Patience is the key element in promoting your website. If you want your site to climb up through the rankings then you must have patience. Do not be swayed into parting with money on the promise of instant high rankings. They can be achieved but will not be permanent and on Google in particular this is becoming increasingly more difficult to achieve as the algorithm becomes more complex. Why do you have to be patient? Google in particular requires a little patience. Google likes to see one way links pointing back to your site but will only count and use links after they have matured for some time. So your articles may not appear as links for about 2 months and then as they mature further they will assume more and more importance in the eyes of Google. Consequently you may have 100 recorded backlinks but another site with only 50 backlinks is still ranked higher. This is presumably due to your links being still young and not ‘fully matured’. Once they do so you will leap ahead. With Yahoo the situation is similar but the time delay is less. You should start to see these links appearing after possibly 2 – 3 weeks. MSN is the fastest of the search engines to pick up and recognise these links which may very well happen within days. Consequently you should see very nearly immediate effects in your ranking on MSN and then a few weeks later with Yahoo finally followed after 2 – 3 months your rapid rise through Google. Have patience and keep the articles flowing as you will ultimately see the rewards for this endeavour and the most important thing is that your rise in the rankings will not be short lived.

Getting Indexed, A Little Patience?

Newbie's and Expert Internet Marketers all have one thing in common: Trying to get their websites indexed through the top three major search engines quickly. For larger websites the task is even more daunting, and there are a few small but effective techniques that can assist in the indexing process. Patience is a virtue and in today's internet marketing world patience and planning is a key. Smaller one or two page websites, also known as sales pages, are the easiest and quickest to get indexed in the three major search engines almost anyone can generally succeed by just manually submitting through each search engines submission process. Websites with a considerable number of pages will often only immediately get their first page indexed which therefore requires small effective planning strategies and a little bit of patience to become completely indexed. Effective Key Planning Strategies: (1) Prior to submitting your websites to the search engines or establishing link partners which will cause the search engines to start indexing in your website. Start planning out the basic website structure so that search engines robots can easily flow through your website and index each page. (a) Have an sitemap linked from you main index page that thinks through out your website. (b) If possible, ensure that each page is linked together, not just back to the main index page. This is not possible depending on what type of website you have, the number of pages, or your website design and structure. But this has been a successful technique in the past. (c) Build and submit a Google Sitemap. (2) Test your websites design and structure using Google Sitemap Software such as SOFTplus GSiteCrawler (Freeware) that will try and index your entire website. If your unsuccessful building a index of your entire website, then further planning and design changes maybe in order to index your entire website. If the software can not index your entire website, how will the search engine robots index your entire website? (3) Instead of manually submitting your websites, submit your website through directories and establish link partnerships. This will improve how often your website is crawled by the search engines and how fast your website is indexed. Also, when establishing link partnership and directories higher the Google Page Rank, the quicker your website will be indexed and how often your website is crawled. (4) Lastly, Patience. The process the search engine will go through while indexing your website is: First, the search engine will have to find your website (Hence, establishing partnerships with high Google Page Rank), then crawling through your website and absorbing all the information contained, then ranking each individual page and finally your website will appear in the search engine result pages (SERPs).

Sitemap promotion: White hat methods for promoting your sitemap/website

Using a sitemap generator to make a sitemap for your website is a great decision. With a sitemap generator it makes the task of establishing fully functional and useful sitemap a breeze. What’s more with a sitemap generator, any changes to your website is usually updated without you doing it manually. This is a huge time saver and eliminates the tedium of doing this task manually. However, even if you have the best sitemap in the world it is not worth anything unless you religiously promote your sitemap and/or website. There are many ways to promote your website/sitemap and it ranges from the typical to the illegal. Of course, as a conscientious web master or business owner, only so-called white hat methods are in your arsenal of sitemap promotion tools and tactics. Below are some white hat methods that you can also incorporate in your own promotions plans: Visit online forums – You can use signature links or refer to your website whenever appropriate when you post replies in any forum. Of course, this should not be seen as an opportunity to spam online forums. Don’t construct replies that look like ads because it turns off forum members and may be used as a reason for you to get banned. Reply within context of the subject. Post comments in blogs – again, do not use the comments capabilities of a blog to spam people. Make real comments on the blogs and again reply within the context of the blog entry or previously posted comments and then introduce your website within reason. Establish a relationship with website owners – this method requires a lot of subtlety and careful handling. You can email the webmasters of websites you are interested in and maybe ask questions about their site. You can even ask where they acquired the information in the website. The idea here is quite simple – establish a relationship with the website owners/webmasters of websites that would benefit your own website. The ultimate goal here is to get some links Distribute content to industry portals – This is a great way of establishing your reputation as well as your website’s reputation as authorities in the field or sector in which you have dedicated your website. Join award programs and submit your website for consideration – By joining award programs, you will get links to your sites from their sites. There are some sites that even demand that you link to them. Take advantage of this unique opportunity to build up your reciprocal links. Submit the website to industry directories – submitting your website for inclusion in online directories especially those that cater to niche markets is a great way of promoting your website. Listing in directories is also a wonderful method for making the content on your website more easily reached and discovered by people. Post physical ads – by promoting your website through traditional means (billboards, flyers, and even merchandise) you get to reach audiences that may not frequent the internet that often but may be interested in what your website may be offering.

3 Things Search Engines Want To See - Using Links The Engines Will Like

Search engine companies are constantly changing their algorithms to keep their results up-to-date. Optimization used to be the primary factor search engines used to determine a website’s ranking. However, it currently makes up only about 10% of their total algorithms. What carries the most weight with search engines now is linking. Linking is the process of connecting to other sites that are relevant to your target market and that are highly ranked, and of getting them to connect to you. Google has, by far, the largest percentage of the search engine market, and they’re link-driven. The other search engines tend to follow Google’s lead, so the market is moving faster in that direction. 3 Tips for Building Smart LinksM When choosing which sites you want to link to, keep in mind what the search engines want to see: • Search engines are looking for organic results. According to Bruce Chapman of http://Linkateer.com, the number one search engine positioning firm on the web, “One of the things we try to do is make sure every single one of our links is pertinent to that particular type of business.” If your website sells makeup, a natural link would be to a site that gives makeup application techniques. An unnatural link would be to an actor’s fan club site. Says Chapman, “If it’s not natural, it’s going to be a problem.” • Search engines are looking for consistent results. More links aren’t necessarily better. In fact, getting too many links at once, such as by joining a link farm, can actually hurt your rankings. Gaining 20,000 links this month and 13 links next month is going to trip their filters and, for all your work, you’re going to find yourself dropping in the rankings. With links, the search engines are more concerned with quality than quantity. • Search engines are looking for one-way links. Reciprocal links are often just people exchanging links to mutually increase their link counts. The search engines have grown wise to this practice and adapted their algorithms. Says Chapman, “When one website wants to link to another website, that’s showing that the second website has got something of value… The one-way link is probably worth 20 times as much as a reciprocal link.” Achieving Natural Results It takes time to achieve good positioning in the search engines, especially with the more competitive keywords. Any attempts to trick the engines may work for a while; but they’re getting more and more sophisticated, and they’ll eventually catch up with you. Not only will your trick no longer work, but you may get blackballed or be penalized in your rankings. The best way to achieve high rankings is to give the search engines what they’re looking for—good fresh content and relevant links.

Top 5 most common mistakes with do-it-yourself SEO

I look at a lot of sites on a daily basis. There are a lot of common problems I see on sites. Some people may have tags set-up improperly or use tags that have no real purpose. I have compiled a list of the 5 top do-it-yourself SEO errors. It's safe to say that many do-it-yourselfers may have at least one of these errors on their sites. These should help you omit these often costly mistakes and pull you up in the ranks. 1) Keyword tag – A keyword tag is for keywords, but not for any keywords. You can’t just stuff this tag with keywords that your entire site is related to. The tags should reflect keywords only on that particular page; not the entire site and not every keyword you think your site might be searched on. Also, you should have no more then 20 words in the tag. You should not repeat any word more than 3 times. If you sell tickets, for example, don't write: Broadway tickets, circus tickets, hockey tickets, boxing tickets and so on. Do use Broadway, circus, hockey, boxing, tickets and so on. 2) Abstract tag – It is sometimes used as a replacement for or combined with a description tag. However, more and more people are using these to stuff keywords. Search engines like Google are interested in what is on the page. More specifically, what visitors can view. In my opinion, the abstract tag has no place on a site. 3) Description Tag – The whole point behind this tag is to describe what the “page” is about. Keywords related to the page should be implemented as well. The limit on words should be 20 – 25. I see many website owners stuffing this tag with keywords, or having a description that is entirely too lengthy. Stay within these guidelines and you will be fine. 4) Title tag – This, to me, is the most important tag. This is the first tag the search engine reads. It tells the search engine what the” page” is about. Don't put your web address here. Do not add your company name in the beginning of this tag either. It should not exceed 60 characters. 5) Content- If you notice, I have been commenting on relevancy to the “page”, not your overall site. Each page has it’s own keywords. Tag the title tag, description and keyword tags. All of these keywords should be the same. Add them to your content as well. Now your page should be fairly well optimized. Why do sites fall short? Simple, content is not optimized. Search engines are, for the most part, pretty basic. You type in a search term and it retrieves sites containing those terms while also taking a few other factors into account. So, if your site doesn’t have these terms, how will you be found? You won’t. Over do it with keywords and you will experience the same result, but for different reasons. Sometimes reading everything about SEO can be bad. Trying too many tricks, tips or methods is like too many cooks spoiling the soup. In the end they can do more bad than good. These are very basic rules that should be followed by all. In, doubt? Always consult or hire an SEO professional.

Google Ranking WITHOUT submitting to Google

A while back, I read an article that explained how to get a good google rating without ever submitting your site to their submission forms. Like you, I was kind of shocked by this statement so I decided to give it a try. In the beginning, I used to submit my site all the time to Google but soon realized the magnitude of my failure. Of course, it's a known fact that Google relies solely on your link popularity and content. Link Popularity? What that means is the amount of links (yousite.com) listed on other sites that are related to yours! The more sites that link to you, the greater your popularity! So again, Google depends on your link popularity! If you don't have a google rating (In other words, is your link found on google?) some sites WILL NOT link to yours. There are many sites that have a great google rating and have specific regulations to whom they will accept within their resource sections. They will specify that your site must be listed within Google and if they type in your site in the google search bar, your site should be listed within the top 5 sites. Here's The Theory: Of course you want all sites to link to you, especially the ones who already have a great google rating because that means that your site will be picked up by google. Some people only try to get links from those sites but just remember, we all had to start somewhere. My suggestion is to do as many link exchanges as possible and especially make sure that each site is specifically categorized by their content. You will get penalized for having one page full of links to sites that do not relate to each other. Another little "Timbit", try to keep your pages to 1-20 links within each page. Once you have 20 links, add a button to a (PAGE 2) and continue your resources that way. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Here's an example of our "Resource Section" http://www.smartads.info/resources You'll notice how each category has specific sites that get listed within them. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Ok, so I went a little off topic with respect to this article but you'll see how everything is connected together. Once google starts ranking your site, you don't want to leave any stone left un-turned. So back to getting a google rank without submitting your site. Once you start performing link exchanges with other sites, just keep on going and going and I promise that eventually, Google will start picking up some of your links on other sites. Once this starts to happen you're google rank will rise. So just keep doing what you're doing and let Google do it's own thing. When your ready and you're link popularity grows, then you can submit your site to Google and reap the rewards. So many companies do this process backwards and wonder why they don't get listed in Google. Or like what happened to me, Google lists your site right away but then in a couple of weeks, presto, your site is gone from their listing and your left confused as to why!

How do I get SSL Certificates for my website?

How can we process transactions securely on the web? Any safe transaction should happen between the customer and the web site in a manner that no one can read or intercept the transaction details. To enable this fast transaction SSL, other wise called as secure sockets layer is very useful. This program works through the encryption routines and programs that are found on the web host and browser. Many might ask “I am designing a website and how can I get SSL for my website?’ Once you know the basic meaning and facts related to SSL activate the SSL option and provide necessary information there like country/state and organization. Do not fill in anything in the tab SSL request or SSL certificate. Then go the action tab and choose create certification and click save. When you visit the SSL tab again you will find the certificate signing request (CSR) under SSL request. Using this CSR apply for an SSL certificate with companies like VeriSign, Geotrust, SSLGenie etc. Some companies might offer trial versions and always follow the instructions provided with the company’s web site. After getting the certificate copy it into the SSL certificate and then choose save under the actions tab. Now that one knows how to include the SSL in their website they should also know which form of SSL is best. Whether 128-bit SSL or 40-bit SSL? So what are they and which is the best SSL? When a transaction takes place between the customer and the website the level of encryption is decided by the browser, the customers OS and the SSL certificate? When a site uses low level encryption like 40 or 56 bits then any hacker using his brains and tools can break the security of the website. Thus the 128 bit SSL is preferred as it is a high level encryption. Hackers find it difficult to crack the code and enter the security zone with this high level encryption. Thus this 128 bit SSL is the best for an enhanced and secured transaction. Nowadays 128 bit encryption with an SGC (server-gated cryptography) enabled SSL certification is considered to the best fool proof SSL. It is unique as it protects the private keys and ensures anyone visiting the site irrespective of their OS have a fair and secured transaction. If the website deals with payments, collects personal data like tax ID, emails, birthdays etc or other bank or credit card details then a high level 128 bit or even more should be maintained to gain good will and trust among customers. They will feel safe and comfortable to have transaction with you and will be also feel safe about the details they have shared. Many have a doubt as to whether their browser is capable of using SSL certificates. Well as far as VeriSign, SSLGenie, Thawte is considered they work with almost all browsers. Thus 128 bit or more with SGC enabled SSL certificate is what can be safe and can be used for the website.

Internet marketing services- Patience for Long Term Ranking Results

If you keep a check on the online world, you must have come across the very famous word, Internet marketing services or more popularly known as SEO or Search Engine Optimisation. Born in 1995, SEO has come a long way since then and now you can find numerous companies offering Internet marketing services in UK. If we go by the trend, UK is the hottest destination for Internet marketing. Maximum companies or websites across the globe are turning towards the UK for getting their website optimised and to enjoy higher search engine rankings. Search engine marketing in UK has witnessed radical changes and marvellous improvements. The top website marketing company in UK claims to fetch you higher search engine rankings within a few months.

Internet marketing is a slow yet interesting process. It involves patience, research, knowledge, and innovation. Website marketing is basically divided into two parts; those are Organic SEO and In-Organic SEO. It is widely known that Organic SEO usually takes time to come into effect. Whereas, In-Organic SEO shows results faster and swifter. The only difference between the two is cost and flow of process.

Any UK based company offering Internet marketing services, will tell you before hand about the actual timing of your search engine optimisation campaign. Also you can see results in the search engine listings. A long and planned Internet marketing service is completely based on search engine marketing and it takes time. In short, patience is the name of the game. Try to go for the competitive website marketing company in UK, as they are the ones who will not just guide you but take your online business to new heights by boosting your business and increasing traffic to your website. They will even guide you in selecting the best search engine marketing techniques like Paid Inclusion and/or PPC services, traditional SEO, bidding, and many more.

Before beginning with your Internet marketing campaign, try to figure out optimisation time frame. Your website marketing plan is blindly dependent on a number of factors. This will streamline your Internet marketing process and you can enjoy higher rankings and more profound business. Website marketing companies offering Internet marketing services in UK even encourage you to go for Paid Inclusion or PPC bidding. This is proved that PPC shows fast and sooner results than traditional SEO. But it too has got its own limitations. You have to shell out heavy cash on regular basis and there is no guarantee that visitors will come to you instantly.

Some of the popular search engine marketing companies in UK work and offer SEO services differently. The biggest reason to use organic SEO instead of in-organic SEO is that it is a low-cost method to promote your website. Thus, we can say that practice patience while going for your SEO campaign with the chosen website marketing company UK. It may take some time to show results but it will be worth the long term results you reap.
For more information about Search Engine Optimisation services, visit::
http://www.brickblue.co.uk

Getting Listed In Search Engines

What exactly is search engine optimization? Search engine optimization is designing, writing, and coding (in HTML) your entire web site so that there is a good chance that your web pages will appear at the top of search engine queries for your selected keywords and key phrases. The majority of the search engine optimization specialist's time should be spent targeting the search engines that will give you the most traffic. The following search engines and directories are: AltaVista AOL Search Business.com FAST Search Google HotBot LookSmart Lycos MSN Search Netscape Search Open Directory Overture Yahoo The best time to request search engine optimization is before you design your web site. As your web site designer creates page templates for you to approve, you can have a search engine optimization specialist take a look at them and tell you which layout is best for optimum indexing. Once you have selected the best layout for your web site, then the search engine optimization specialist can tell your designer when and where to place your keywords and key phrases within your HTML tags. How can you tell a quality search engine optimization specialist from a scam artist? A search engine optimization specialist should be able to get your site indexed well for Google, Inktomi, and Yahoo. The 2 search engines and 1 directory differ in the way they index sites. Google does not use meta-tag content for relevancy. Inktomi currently uses meta-tags. And Yahoo is a directory. Ask how your site will be designed and tagged for each of these. If you don't get 3 different answers, then you should move on to a more experienced search engine optimization professional. If your web site has already been designed, a professional search engine optimization specialist will often recommend layout and design changes. He/She is not telling you that you have a bad-looking web site. He/She is telling you that the site's layout will not get indexed well for your targeted keywords and key phrases. For example, a site that has a triple frameset (on the top and on the side) is extremely difficult to get indexed well on search engines, even with a gateway page. However, a simple frameset can get indexed well in search engines, with or without a gateway page. A search engine optimization specialist can design or tell your web site designer how to lay out a simple frameset to get the best results. Search engine optimization and other marketing strategies (banner advertising, web copywriting, being listed in Yahoo, posting to discussion groups, etc.) are not substitutes for a web site with solid content and great layout. Search engine optimization is not a substitute for customer service, a good sales pitch, or a great product/service. It is not a substitute for a well-planned online and offline marketing plan. Search engine optimization is a means of helping your potential customers find your web site. It is a highly specialized marketing tool.