Writing For The Web: How Good Copy Becomes Bad Marketing

When it comes to writing websites, what is good for the search engines is often not good marketing.

Why? Because almost inevitably, when you write to please the search engines, you write about the features of your service. But you should be writing about the benefits for your customers.

This is a fundamental problem and one you have to take into account at every stage of creating the copy for your website. You have to achieve a balance between writing for people or writing for search engine robots. The balance will be subtly different for every business. You'll probably have to keep experimenting. It all depends really on how important search engine traffic will be to your organisation. First a quick recap on the basic issue of search engine copy.

Search engine optimisation (often called SEO) basically means making sure your website ranks highly with Google and other search engines. Google wants to give people the right, relevant information. It does this by reading the copy on your website.

If certain words are used frequently, Google will calculate that the site is relevant for that "keyword". When people search for that keyword, Google flags your site as one worthy of consideration.

So, when a copywriter creates his own website, he tries to use the word "copywriter" as frequently as possible.

It's no good just listing the word either. It needs to be in real sentences. What's more, it's much better to use the keyword at or near the start of a sentence. You also need the keyword in the main headline, in the first paragraph, and as often as possible thereafter.
So, you end up writing about you, the copywriter, and the copywriting that you can offer. Features of your service.

Where are your customers in all this? Any good copywriter, in fact even a complete beginner, knows that you need to turn the features of your service into benefits for the customer. It's just good marketing.

The copywriter should be explaining how he can increase sales, attract customers, save the client money, provide exceptional service and so on.

The same is likely to happen whatever business you're in. If you're a graphic designer, a client might come to you because they want you to create a professional image for their business.

But they don't search for "professional image", "design impact", or "creativity". They search for "graphic designer." So your copy has to keep mentioning "graphic designer" this, "graphic designer" that.

What's the solution? If you know an easy one, please share the secret. For most organisations and businesses, the answer is going to be a balance. You need to know how important Google searches are to you. If the answer is "not much" because visitors come from other sources – perhaps through a direct mail campaign, Internet advertising clicks, or because they are a regular customer and have you bookmarked – then your copy should weighted more towards good marketing, with less emphasis on search engine robots.

But if Google searches are everything to your organisation, then you'll have to play the game by their rules.

Carefully written copy can at least try to play both games. You can keep using keywords, but always bear in mind that you need to bring the focus back onto benefits for your customer.

It's not easy, and it can be a painstaking process. But that in essence, is what good web writing should be about: keeping one eye on the search engines and pleasing them when necessary, but always bringing it back to people, to customers, to benefits. Because that's good marketing.

Sorry, Dmoz is not Home - Please Leave a Message.

That’s exactly the message I feel I am getting every time I visit Dmoz.org to try and list another website into its directory. You visit the site, leave your directory submission (your message), and never hear from them! Yes, it takes a long time to have your website reviewed for submission and it gets you thinking if they are even home in the first place. I have had many questions and complaints about Dmoz and have tried to answer them as correctly as possible. But the common question is “when will they return my call?” For those of you who are new to the term “Dmoz”, it is the Open Directory Project which is the largest and most comprehensive human edited directory of the web. For your website to be accepted into Dmoz, it has to be reviewed by a human editor. If accepted, then your site is seen as a trusted source by search engines, especially Google. Combined with some SEO work, it will give you that extra boost within the rankings, however the only problem is that the editors take a long time to review the websites. If you take a look at how many volunteer editors they have (71,816 last time I checked), compared to the number of website submissions they receive (we’re talking hundreds and thousands of websites), then obviously it will take a long time for the editors to get around to yours. To add to that, theses editors work for free and each one is assigned to a certain category for reviewing websites. The worst case scenario, you have a new website that has just been submitted to a category with the least number of editors monitoring it, which explains the long waiting time (up to 2 years, if not longer). When Dmoz first started (1998), it took no longer than 6 weeks to have you website listed into their directories. With demand now running high, the wait is a lot longer and editors are a lot more selective. Never the less, there is no need to get frustrated as there are alternatives to gaining links from a combination of other sources that are just as effective as a link from Dmoz. For instance, you can submit your website to various directories such as Yahoo! and find many other resources on the web on ways to improve your link popularity. If you perform any search and look at the top five websites, you will notice that in most cases these websites do not have a Dmoz listing. This shows that some ethical SEO work and incoming relevant link building will get you those desired ranks. Having said all that, there is no need to wait for Dmoz to come around. All focus should be diverted on other ways to improve your search engine rankings. If you don’t hear from Dmoz, then there is no reason to get frustrated on their lack of efficiency, for your goals can be much easily attained through other sources. On the other hand, if you do hear from Dmoz, take it with a smile and be sure to make good use of their listing with some search engine optimisation for your website.

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.

The Three Basic Keys of Search Engine Optimisation

With search engine optimisation on the rise, there are many mind blowing theories that are circulating about what will get you high up in the search engines. From having your keywords in bold font, to having your text as close to the top of a page, along with the famous 3% - 7% keyword density rule, we can scrap them all since it comes down to three basic key points.

1. Keyword Selection

The most important point out of the three is keyword selection. If you end up selecting keywords that do not have any/few searches, then you are simply wasting time by optimising for them. There is no point in being ranked number one for a keyword when there are no searchers for that term. A good place to start is by using keyword research tools such as “Wordtracker”, “Overture Keyword Assistant” and “Keyword Discovery”, to find out what people are typing into search engines. Once you have found those terms, the next step is to work out the level of competition and effort it will take to get a reasonable rank for each term. The best way is to look at the number of competing pages in search engines for each keyword and how many incoming links the top ten websites have (“Marketleap link popularity checker” is a good tool for that). If you have the knowledge and time, you may want to go for the slightly more competitive keywords.

2. Good On-the-Page and Off-the-Page Structure

For on-the-page factors, making sure that there is a sufficient amount of text based content, title tags and a strong internal linking between all web pages, is a good start. Title tags and content should contain keywords provided that they are not “stuffed” into the text. For example, if your keyword is “dog supplies”, this sort of writing should be avoided:

“We base our business on dog supplies and have a great range of dog supplies. Check out our latest dog supplies today!”

A visitor will be immediately turned off from this sort of writing and will question the credibility of your site. Keywords should be written around the content, not the other way around.

Off-the-page factors relates to reducing code within your web pages (placing code into external files, such as JavaScript and Style Sheets) and having a website design where search engines can index all your content.

3. Incoming Links

Attaining incoming links to your website has become a more heavily relied upon factor in last couple of years. Each incoming link is seen by search engines as a vouch from another site. The more incoming relevant links you have, the more trusted your website becomes by search engines. This does not mean you can simply acquire a bunch of links from any site. Links need to relevant in the sense that the website linking to you has some sort of affiliation with your theme otherwise the links will not benefit you.

Provided you stick to the three basic key points of search engine optimisation, in time you will notice a stronger website presence in the search engines. Whist it can be done on your own if you have the knowledge and time, hiring an SEO agency is one avenue to success if you have the budget. Having said that, time should not be spared in taking advantage of the vast opportunities the internet can bring you and your business.

Important things you need to know about internet marketing

When it comes to setting your website apart amongst the competition, you need to know a few things. You can’t just expect to slap a website up on the net and have traffic run to you. If you really want the traffic, you will have to learn search engine optimization tactics to go along with your basic internet marketing knowledge. In today’s game, it’s not enough just to hope that traffic will turn up. The best websites are the ones who are going out and bringing in their own traffic. What is search engine optimization, or SEO as it’s called for short? It’s the process by which websites make their content more efficient. Search engines pick up on certain things, and if you are able to turn your website into a place full of those items, you will be on top of the search engine lists. For example, when someone types in a search phrase into Google or one of the other popular search engines, the results will come out as their rankings would suggest. Google ranks these pages based upon their relevance, popularity, and a host of other factors. SEO tactics can help you climb to the top of those rankings lists, so when people enter a search into the search engine, your site will come up on top. If you are a website owner and you don’t really know what you’re doing, then take heart. There are many companies out there who are willing to help you. They will take a look at your website and tell you with a great deal of accuracy what it would take in order to make your site more efficient. Maybe your content does not have as many keywords as it should? Maybe you are using duplicate content that is pushing you down in the ratings? Whatever the case, the internet marketing professionals can help you in this regard. The important thing to remember about search engine optimization is that the tactics are always changing. The search engines update their ranking systems all the time, so you need to be aware of the changes. You have to be adaptable and know exactly how to keep your site on top of the game if you want to have any hope of being successful. A good start to improving your website’s SEO efficiency is to have content that is filled with juicy keywords. This is something you can probably do on your own without too much trouble. That isn’t the only aspect of SEO that you have to keep in mind, though. By knowing all of the popular and useful search engine optimization techniques, you are giving your website a fighting chance. Otherwise, your website will have absolutely no chance. All of your competitors are out there making sure that they are getting as much traffic as they can pull in. If you don’t do this, then you are short changing the potential of your website.

Black Hat SEO: Taking The Shorter Route To Online Success

Higher search engine ranking is not achieved overnight. It takes considerable efforts and time to finally get a website to the top of search engine results. One of the most effective ways to help a website establish successful online presence and ranking is search engine optimisation or SEO.

Search engine optimisation; however, takes time to achieve results. Some web marketers are not open to the idea of waiting for months to achieve the search engine ranking they are aiming for. This is the reason why some of them decide to take the shorter route to high search engine ranking. They do this by using black hat SEO techniques.

Black Hat Search Engine Optimisation Techniques

Some websites copy content from other websites. The search engines are always in the look out for quality content. But writing content can be so laborious and some web marketers don’t want to go through this task. So instead of writing their own content, they just copy from other successful websites. This is a trick that triggers the red flag from the search engines. Oftentimes, it results to search engine penalty.

Another major factor that the search engines are looking for is keyword. A website that is highly optimised for a particular keyword will rank high on the search engines every time that keyword is searched for. Some web marketers want to get the short cut top ranking by using keywords excessively on the website’s pages. The trick is using invisible keywords (they use the same colour for the keywords’ font and the page’s background) so that the keywords will not be visible to the site visitors. Just like duplicate content, this trick is meant to do more harm than good to the website.

Search engine marketing resources never fail to mention about the importance of links. Truly, links play a crucial role in the online success of a website. A website with the most number of quality links ranks top on the search engine results.

Some web marketers participate in link farms or other link exchange programs to inflate their website’s incoming links. The fact is that the search engines are not only after the quantity of the links, they are after quality as well. Links from low quality websites don’t matter much. And worst, if the search engines found out about the “linking trick”, they will penalise the website.

Just like anything else, there is no shortcut way to online success. Top search engine ranking achieved through acceptable search engine optimisation strategies has long term benefits. Black hat SEO techniques will only give short term results and worst it can get a website banned on the search engines.

Google Page Ranking And The Value Of Links.

In today’s incarnation of the Internet search engine optimization or SEO is more important than webpage design skills. The best designed webpage has limited usefulness if no one visits it. A website is a product and a product that people don’t know about doesn’t sell. With the many search engines that are available it is important to know which are the most useful and how they are useful. Let’s look at Google.

Google uses a particular search algorithm that assigns a value to websites called PageRank that is one part of how it ranks pages. The PageRank value is determined by several things but the most important are the values derived from the ingoing and outgoing links in your page. Let’s look at that first.

The links in your website allow Google to navigate the pages on your site and index more of the content. Keep in mind that it is your pages that are ranked and not your site. You could conceivably have one page ranked higher than all of your others put together. This is the biggest reason to make sure that all of your pages have links into and out of them and that you never have dangling links or pages that can be linked to but not out of. This is why the navigation structure of your site is vitally important.

With that covered let’s look at the main factors used for PageRank. First of all a page on your site has to be indexed by Google to even have a PageRank. At that point the page has an intrinsic PageRank value. That page has links to your other pages. When one page links to another page it increases that page’s PageRank value without deceasing its own. It is almost like one page voting for another without penalizing itself. This is why you want to avoid any dangling links because although that page would have an increase in PegeRank it could not do the same for another page. With this in mind it is prudent to direct more links to your most important pages to increase its value. Then from that page the visitors to your site can link to the other pages.

The best strategy for increasing PageRank is to link pages to each other with a single link. By doing this you avoid splitting the value between multiple pages. However you want to make sure that all of your pages are linked together so that you can navigate your entire site from a single starting point.

Remember that in SEO you must learn as many aspects of it as possible as they are ever evolving.

SEO Copywriting for Online Success

Whether it is the print, electronic or cyber media, a good copy can dowonders for a marketing campaign. In this cyber age, the Internet is considered as the greatest means of communication between people around the globe. Web businesses also have realised the importance of content and are now regarding it as the 'king' of their websites.

In Search Engine Optimisation Services, good copywriting is a must for online success. An effective copy is the one that manages to grab attention, create interest, build desire and then lead to action (from users). The use of powerful and persuasive words to drive target audiences and generate sales has become the norm with websites nowadays.

Online business owners specially hire content writers to revamp the text matter on their websites, and make it more appealing to Internet surfers. This form of writing is known as SEO copywriting. The main purpose behind this service is reaching out to a target audience,which is comprised of your potential buyers.

The best part about writing for the Web is that it has no time or space constraint. News websites do have the urge to meet deadlines, but in general, almost all websites can simply go on and on, creating additional pages at will. However, to achieve SEO success, they do need to adhere to search engine guidelines even when writing text for web pages.

Being a virtual medium, the 'emotional connection' between buyer and sellers the minimum on the web. Therefore, it is necessary to establish that relationship with the help of the written word, keeping in mind the needs of the user as well as the dissimilarities between two different mindsets.

In simple terms, Copywriting for Search Engine Optimisation means re-writing the text on a website page in such a way that it appeals to a web surfer, along with being compatible to search engines. Working on this domain requires specialised skills,especially when it comes to judicious use of keywords. And, one should remember that a good web page content does not have to be flowery or laden with complex words. Instead, it has to be simple,easily comprehensible, and keyword rich.

Don't be content if your website is amazingly designed and well-structured,adorned with proper links and easily navigable. All your efforts will go down the drain if your content is not appealing enough, and doesn't manage to hold the user's attention. At the end of the day, the success of your Internet marketing campaign lies in bringing targeted traffic for the long term. Thus, put in extra efforts in building your site's content matter and see the difference it makes.

Profitable Key phrases

If you target the wrong key phrases you might as well give up and go home now......

Keywords are the first thing you need to consider when approaching the subject of internet marketing and search engine optimisation and if not properly selected will loose you copious amounts of targeted traffic.

I would hazard a guess that probably 99% of websites are not targeting the keywords that would be most profitable for them and so are losing thousands if not hundreds of thousands of pounds by ignoring this important part of Search Engine Optimisation.

Most businesses when asked “So how did you decide on the keywords you wanted to target” will say one of the following two:

1.“They are the keywords my competitors use so I used them”.
2.“Well it obvious they are the keywords I should use isn’t it”.

Do these comments sound familiar to you? To 99% of you they will and if that’s the case then you need to read on.

Keyword selection is an easy process but many people overlook it and target keywords that they would expect to be profitable and find out to their peril that they were not.

First of let me clear one thing up that not a lot of people seem to realise and that is that a keyword is individual, So for arguments sake the key phrase “great keyword” is different to the key phrase “keywords that are great”. This sounds strange I know but if you are optimising for a specific key phrase you need to keep your eye on that key phrase (this is important to remember).

There are now many tools that make the process of keyword selection very easy. One example of this is Yahoo marketing’s (formally known as overture) keyword tool that’s free to use and will quickly tell you all the different variations of the keywords you are targeting and exactly how popular they are.

I always recommend the following when deciding the best keywords for a campaign:

1. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes (what would you search for if you were looking for your product or service?).
2. Research your competition and see what they are doing but don’t just do what they are doing because they are.
3. Write down all of your suggestions and ideas for keywords (you will need them next)
4. Go to the Yahoo marketing web page and use their free keyword checking tool and in turn type in your key phrase suggestions.
5. Take note of all of the different combinations that are suggested to you and the amount of searches done on them this is where you normally find out that the key phrase you thought was profitable are not the most profitable on the list.
6. This is where you now decide to reselect your keywords unless you are in the 1%.

Only once you know what specific key phrases you are targeting can you start the job of search engine optimisation safe in the knowledge that you are not chasing a white elephant.

Increase your website Traffic

Anyone who owns a website wants it to be extremely popular with high amounts of traffic that converts to new business. This is the always the case whether its a local service like Andrew Hill Salon, a big company like WH Smith or a national charity such as the PCRF (Prostate Cancer Research Foundation). By developing websites everyday, we have a vast understanding of not only design, accessibility and usability for a website but more importantly, search engine optimisation. Search engine optimisation is a very competitive area with every web site wanting to come on the first page for particular key phrases. Companies want the number 1 spot in Google as well as Yahoo, MSN and AltaVista - the major players in the search engine world.

Animation Technologies focus their web site optimisation both on-site and off-site optimisation on the search engine Google, the reason being, 72.8% of online users use Google as their primary search engine. It is also the case that if you get website optimisation right in Google - gaining a high page rank - it is often the case that the other search engines will follow, even though each one has its own unique algorithm for ranking web sites.

To increase your website traffic takes not only excellent search engine optimisation but also a number of other factors which make up your website on the whole.

Learn about usability - Having a great looking website is useless if users cannot use the website and view the content.

Invest in a good design - Design is not the be all and end all of a website, it is one key aspect that will make a first impression on the user, so quality is important gaining the visitors trust.

Keep it up to date - Your website needs to look fresh, new and great. If the website has outdated news, broken links or hideous graphic animations, this will all deter users.

Topical News - A news feed/blog is a great way of not only keeping new and returning customers up to date about your industry/service, company information and popular news stories.

Create a useful website - Relevant content is king when it comes to increasing your traffic. Your website will not only be telling users about your company but tips that actually help users, thus users referring others to the website.

Manage your reputation - Responding to your readers comments is key to establishing your company as one that cares about what people say about you.

Make Accessible - Many web design companys focus purely on design, in partiuclar flash websites which may jump around the page or make all sorts of noises however, blind and deaf people still need to be able to use it. If they cannot use your website then you will not get their custom - thats potential business your ignoring.

Managed Link Strategies - The Page/Brin Effect

Improving your websites rankings in search engines requires an effective link strategy.

In the development period of Google's existence, its founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, were burning the midnight oil trying to discover a way to determine the importance of a web site.

The concept they arrived at is now known as link popularity.

The basic idea is simple: If web site "A" has a lot of other web sites linking to it, then all these llinking sites must think that web site "A" is important.

In other words, each incoming link to your web site can be considered as a vote. The more votes your web site achieves, the more importance Google, and other major search engines will give to it. This means that in the all seeing eyes of search engines your web site is more relevant if it has a lot of incoming links. So the more relevancy you can acquire for your web pages means higher search engine rankings (all major search engines appear to have adopted the Google model).

After your web site has been assessed for the number of incoming links (or backlinks), and the quality, see later, of those links, Google will assign a value, called Page Rank (PR), to the web pages on your web site. This is a numeric value between 0 and 10. Higher PR indicating more importance.

So, improving my web sites Google ranking is as simple as that?

Unfortunately the answer is NO! This is because the Google algorithm is a complex beast. There are over one hundred other things that Google check for, and there are different types of links. Each type carrying more or less relevancy.

So, the types of link are:

1) Outgoing: where your site links to another site. No use to you in terms of PR.

2) Reciprocal: where two sites exchange links, this now has less value than it used to have since a recent Google update, but is still effective on other search engines.

3) One way Incoming: A link to your site pure and simple, where your site does not link back. This is what you need to build PR. This is a vote for your site and is far more powerful than a reciprocal link.

What's in a name?

Now you know the type of link that's needed (how to get one-way incoming links will be discussed elsewhere) there is still more that will affect your PR. This concerns the link anchor text. Link anchor text is the visible part of a link, i.e., the text you click on.

Link anchor text in a link pointing to your home page should contain the main keyword that your home page is optimised for. However, if you have many links all with the same anchor text it looks, to Google, like spamming and may cause lesser significance being given to those links. Therefore, vary your anchor text.

As can be seen, generating a successful crop of links can be a time consuming process. And there are many pitfalls along the way.

Meta Tags Builder Tool - Creating Meta Tags Made Easy

The early stages of internet and the search engines have seen the power of Meta Tags in ranking a website on the top of the search engine results. Meta Tags refer to the keyword rich text inserted into an HTML page. It is visible to the search engine spiders yet remains hidden through a browser.

They are used to tell the search engine spiders about the content of a web page. It has a vital role in search engine optimisation. Because of these Web Page's Tags, websites can tell the search engine spiders exactly what their web page is all about. The three major Meta Tags are the Title, Description and the Keywords.

Are Meta Tags Still Important?

Although Meta Tags aren’t a requirement in optimizing a website, still they can make a difference in the ranking of websites on the search engines. There are still several search engines using Meta Tags as part of their algorithm. Because of this, it still pays off to have them on the pages of your website.

Other webmasters and web marketers quit the idea of creating them on their web pages due to the time and effort it requires. They worry on the stress and the time consumed creating the necessary Meta Tags for each web page – especially if there are over a hundred pages on the website.

Effortless Meta Tags Creation

Who said you need to consume a lot of your precious time in creating Meta Tags alone? With the birth of search engine optimisation tools, there is no need to stress out creating web page title, description and keywords. There are several search engine optimisation tools that help web marketers create descriptive tags less all the hard work.

Internet marketing tools like the Meta Tags Builder Tool can be a great start in creating Tags for all the pages of your website. There are still a lot of other tools available online. Smart search engine optimizers need not be worrying over Meta Tags creation since there are Meta Tags tools like the Meta Tags Builder to help them out.

Indeed, creating Meta Tags for your website is still your choice. You can forget about it and find other ways to optimise your website. But what have you got to lose? Who knows, you might be forgetting something that might be the key to your website’s higher ranking on the search engines?

Exploring Google Page Rank And Alexa Rank

So, you've heard a few things about SEO and now you are trying to learn some more about what SEO actually is and what your goals actually are. Well, your main two goals in SEO are to increase your websites position in the search engine results pages(SERP's) and increase website traffic. Google Pagerank represents how important your website is compared to all other websites and Alexa Rank is how many visitors your website gets in relation to all other websites on the Internet. You are aiming to get a high Google Pagerank (commonly refered to as PR) and a low Alexa Rank. What looking at these two measured elements does is give you some idea of how well, or how badly, your website is doing in comparison to all other websites. Lets explore these two rankings in a little more detail.

What is Google Page Rank?

The co-founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, describe Google Page Rank as a tool designed to rank a website that is listed in the Google search index. A Pagerank of a web page is given on a scale of 0-10. 0 is the lowest possible score for a website and conversely a 10 is the highest score possible. A high Pagerank is defined by the amount, importance(PageRank) and relevance of web pages that link to the web page in question. When a web page links to another web page, Google consider that to be a vote for the page in question and therefore of some importance. There is a formula associated to how PageRank is calculated but for the purposes of this article it is too indepth, but if you are interested in the theory behind PageRank (PR) then a quick search on Google will provide fruitful.

What is Alexa Rank?

The Alexa Rank is different to Google PR; Alexa rank websites based solely on traffic to the website. Alexa rank websites in descending order towards 0, where the most highly visited website on the Internet is given a rank of 0. At this point in time the top three ranked websites (most visitors) on Alexa are, 0 - Yahoo, 1 - Google and 2 - MySpace. According to Alexa these 3 websites get the most traffic on the Internet. Alexa Rankings vary from 1 to a billion. Every web site in the world is included in the Alexa Rank, so the scale on your Alexa ranking is constantly changing in relation to other websites on the Internet.

In Demand Search Engine Optimisation Tools

Tired of all the time and effort you consume for search engine optimisation? SEO need not be a painful burden on the shoulders of web marketers and search engine optimizers. With all the internet marketing tools available online, SEO became a less tricky task.

What are the latest SEO tools today? What’s hot and what’s in? Here is a list of the latest and in-demand search engine optimisation tools on the internet:

• Meta Tags Generator Tool
There are web marketers who believe that Meta Tags are insignificant. But the search engines think otherwise. The Meta Tags Generator Tool is a search engine optimisation tool that allows webmasters and web marketers create Meta Tags – including Meta Title, Meta Description and Meta Keywords – in a matter of seconds. With the Meta Tags Generator Tool, it will be a whole lot easier to include Meta Tags on the pages of your website.
• Sitemap Builder Tool
To ensure a complete spidering and indexing of your website, use a Sitemap. Creating a sitemap is made easy with the Sitemap Builder Tool. In just a few seconds, you will be able to create an optimized sitemap. This site optimisation tool is vital in ensuring your website of a better chance to rank well on the search engines.
• Link Building Tool
Find who the best link partners are with the Link Building Tool. The Link Building Tool is a web marketing tool that lets you determine whether a particular website is worth linking to or not. With the Link Building Tool, you won’t waste time on links that don’t give you enough benefits.
• Title Tag Checker Tool
What title tags do your competitor websites use? Know what’s going on with your competitor websites’ tags. The Title Tag Checker is an online tool that lets you check the title tags of your competitor website pages.

These search engine optimisation tools are meant to ease the burden of the whole search engine optimisation process. With these tools, search engine optimisation will be a whole lot easier. And ranking well on the search engines will be closer to reality as well.

Affiliate Programs And SEO

While good SEO skills will get your page noticed by search engines by themselves there other tricks to help increase their effectiveness. Affiliate programs can be a good way to increase your website’s own SEO attributes. There are different types of affiliate programs. An older one would be the old banner concept which predates pay-per-click. Google’s Adwords is a modern incarnation of this where by people can profit from Google’s pay-per-click business. Let’s look at some of these.

Not all affiliate programs have to be for profit. There are many people who are just looking to get traffic to their sites by cooperating with other sites. Just as a strong page on your website can help increase the rankings of your other pages rankings on affiliates’ sites can do the same. Don’t confuse affiliates with guest books or link pages. An affiliate is working with some kind of service or business to make a profit so it is a function of commerce. This will help with the search engines’ rankings. Search engines look for link pages and don’t give them a very high ranking so they wouldn’t help you very much. However since affiliate pages are used for commerce they are going to have a much stronger ranking. Affiliates can act as a team just like the pages on your site.

Another point to consider is that pages that are involved with affiliate programs are going to be set up well in order to profit from them. So this is analogous to strong members of a team making a colossal team effort. Enough strong pages driving traffic to your site is lie diverting a river to a drought stricken town.

Fortunately affiliate programs are easy to find so just keep in mind what kind you would be willing to do for your site. Don’t give yourself more work than you need to.

Choosing An SEO Consultant

While the most important thing in creating a webpage is the designer a consultant knowledgeable in SEO is even more important if you want to have it show up well in search engine rankings. An SEO consultant can mean the difference between a cool page that nobody sees and a cool page that everyone not only visits but talk about.

A good SEO consultant will not only know the tricks of the trade but also how to use them best. An SEO consultant is as much an artist as the web designer. Whereas the web designer knows all of the tricks of the trade in creating a masterpiece of the internet the SEO consultant is the promoter that makes sure people travel to see it.

When choosing an SEO consultant make sure to find one that is willing to not only work with your website designer, or you if you are doing your own website, but also understands your needs. Am SEO consultant is not there to diminish your website or interfere with its look. They are there to be sure that it is designed from the ground up to utilize as efficiently as possible all of their SEO tricks. An SEO consultant will blend their techniques invisibly with your website. In fact that is how they have to work. The best SEO consultant will not even leave a visible footprint. They must be like the wind. A divine wind to protect your website and breathe inspiration into it.

The most important factor is to make sure that your SEO consultant can work together with your website designer as to not impede their efforts. Do what you did when you chose your web designer. Tell the SEO consultant what you need. Give them a time frame on when you need their services to work. Let them know what your future goals are and find out what they can do for you.

Search Engine Optimisation

There are many ways to optimise your website and everyone has a different opinion on how to do it, but there's one thing everyone agrees on is the two pronged approach, onpage and offpage.

Today I am going to talk about on-page optimisation, the biggest mistake many people make is that they have their website built wait around for a few month and wonder why there's no traffic heading there way. The website should be built with optimisation in mind right from the start, it might look great having lots of Flash flying around your site (I personally don't think so) but without your keywords spread throughout your text the web bots are not going to find it.

I think it's important to have your title heading as an H1 and in bold, but only do it once on a page otherwise you could get penalised. The web bots/spiders read pages from top left to bottom right so I would also reinforce your title again by putting it next to the copyright logo.

There is always a discussion about Head and Meta tags, I firmly believe you must do this and definitely the Title as this does carry weight with Google.


The main ingredience for success in any business is hard work and this certainly applies to Search Engine Optimisation oh and throw in a whole lot of time for good measure!