10 Tips To Increase Your Search Engine Rankings

The Basics of Optimization

Many online sellers get frustrated with search engines regularly changing algorithms. But there are basic principles that haven’t changed through the years. Apply these tips to increase your rankings:

Tip 1—Don’t be too quick to change domain names. Google has an aging delay for any new domain—it can take up to a year for your keywords to start showing in the searches.

Tip 2—Optimize your site for your target audience, not the search engines. Always think about what impression your site gives your users—you’ll create a better site the engines will like.

Tip 3—Do KEYWORD RESEARCH extensively. Everything else revolves around the keyword phrases you choose, so it’s critical you choose the best ones. http://WordTracker.com and http://KeywordDiscovery.com are two information databases that show you what words people are searching for and suggest words you can use.

Tip 4—Design and categorize your site architecture and navigation based on your keyword research. Jill Whalen, founder of http://www.highrankings.com, says, “Your homepage should be optimized for the more general phrases…Your inner pages should be optimized for the more specific [ones].” If possible, use keyword phrases as your navigation words.

Tip 5—Program your site to be “crawler” friendly. Search engines send out “crawlers” to gather information from your site so they understand how to rank it.

• Create your links using HTML, not javascript. Crawlers can’t follow javascript and won’t be able to read your information.

• Don’t design your site in Flash—there’s nothing for the crawlers to read. If they can’t interpret the information, they can’t classify your site.

• Make sure your copy is HTML, not a graphic of a text. It may look like copy. But if you have a text graphic, all the crawlers will see is a blank page.

Tip 6—Label your internal text links and clickable image ALT attributes as descriptively as possible. Within the text links in your site, use the phrase that describes the page you’re clicking to. For image links, make sure those phrases are contained in the image’s code.

Tip 7—Write compelling copy for key pages of your site based on your chosen keyword phrases. Choose a few keyword phrases that apply to the particular page you’re writing and work those phrases into the copy.

Tip 8—Incorporate your keyword phrases into each page’s unique title tag. Title tags are given significant weight with search engines. The title tag is the information that shows up in the search engine results so it’s crucial that it be enticing, not just crammed with keywords.

Tip 9—Make sure your site is link-worthy. Search engines judge a site’s popularity by the number of links pointing to it. To make sure people will want to link to your site, you have to offer something worth linking to. Beyond your product or service, you need something that puts you over the top: an information service, a superior presentation, or great variety.

Tip 10—Don’t be married to any one keyword or phrase. Optimize for all the relevant phrases. Says Whalen, “If you can rank highly for a good portion of them, they’re going to add up to a lot more than just that one keyword phrase that you think is the good big money one.”

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.

Get The Most Out Of Your SEO Professional

Many businesses go through all kinds of steps before hiring a search engine optimization professional. Unfortunately, they often then sabotage that person from the outset.

Get The Most Out Of Your SEO Professional

As a person providing seo services, I can tell you there is one area that is almost always a point of conflict with clients. This area has to do with communication, particularly from the client to the person or business handling the seo campaign.

Many businesses sabotage their seo professional right from the start of the game. It all has to do with knowledge. A seo professional is very knowledgeable about the search engine ranking process. He or she can tell you oodles of information about algorithms, back links, inbound links, keyword density and other issues you probably are not particularly interested in. On the other hand, it is a mistake to assume your seo wizard is knowledgeable about your product or service area.

Any business has a secret bit of crucial knowledge locked away in the minds of a few individuals high up in the company. This knowledge is protected with great effort since it is deemed to be the key to success for the business. Although each business is different, this nugget usually has to do with why prospects purchase the product or service being offered by the business. If you do not provide this information to your seo professional, problems will arise.

Consider the following situation. A seo firm is retained by a client selling products. The seo rep asks all kinds of questions about the typical customer for the business, product lines and so on. From this, a keyword list is developed and the client is asked to review it and make any comments about any additions they can think of. The business reports no changes. A year down the line, the client has top rankings on dozens of high traffic keywords on Google, Yahoo and MSN, but sales are less than expected.

At this point, there is usually a serious meeting with the players to try to figure out what is going on. During the meeting, some little tidbit is mentioned that makes the seo professional groan. The tidbit is inevitably internal business information regarding why prospects purchase from the business.

In our example above, the business sold products in the active lifestyle industry. Top rankings were obtained on all the relevant subjects. Sales were crap. During the serious, serious meeting, it was leaked that 8 out of 10 purchasers asked for the product to be gift wrapped! ARRRRRGGGG! The seo campaign was tailored to people interested in active lifestyles, not people that were looking to buy gifts for such people. Our sales were terrible because the listings were appearing in front of the wrong audience!

Yes, this really happened. Fortunately, keyword modifications were made and the site rebounded in the rankings after a few months. Whereas the site previously converted at 1 in 1,000, it now converts at 1 in 30. The next meeting was much more informal. In fact, there were plenty of beverages and I took the next day off.

If you are going to retain someone to handle your seo efforts, or any marketing for you, do not hold back information. Understanding who and why people buy is a pivotal part of developing a keyword list for a seo campaign.

What You Should Expect From A SEO Professional

For many businesses, search engine optimization is a confusing subject. To get the most out of it, you need to define the role of the person or business handling the seo.

What You Should Expect From A SEO Professional

Speaking as someone who provides search engine optimization services, I can tell you there is a lot of confusion regarding the role of a seo professional. Much of this results from the acronyms and phrases used in the field. Businesses will pick them up and throw them around without really knowing what they mean. Even worse, many businesses do not know what the really want or even that they should be asking the question.

A seo professional can fill a number of roles for a business. The simplest situation is one in which the business simply wants the seo wizard to crank up the rankings. This sounds obvious, but rarely is the case. Instead, the business is really looking for improved rankings and a little more.

It never fails to occur. A client just wants you to move them up in the rankings. You come to an agreement on price, suggest some changes to the site and then head off to build links, etc. A week later, the client is calling with questions on conversions, purchasing banner ads and so on. Next week, they call with questions about pay-per-click and so on. This is all fine, but the hand holding can be very distracting and frustrating.

When retaining a person or business to handle your search engine optimization efforts, it is important to step back and think about what you really need. Are you looking just for top rankings or do you want insight into your site? Are you, in fact, willing to take some advice, particularly if it is critical? Clarifying this with the seo person from the outset makes things run much smoother and keeps feelings from being ruffled.

Some companies believe they are retaining a person to simply get them high in the rankings. Others believe they are retaining a person to get them high in the rankings and advise them on their products, site, etc. The only correct answer is what you agree to when the pen is put to paper at the outset of the agreement. As a person on the seo side, I only ask that you be clear in indicating what you want from the outset.

Content is Not King

It may be Queen, but it is definitely not King and I'll tell you why. I'm really tired of hearing the virtues of content when all of the search engines put more value on off-site influences. If content really were king and you had ten sites that were all on the same subject, well written and optimized, how would the search engines determine which site was most relevant? One of those sites is going to have to be first and one of those sites is going to have to be tenth. Well, Google found an answer for this and that is off-site influences, specifically link popularity - sites linking to your site. Each site linking to you is a "vote" for your site saying, "this site is about so and so."

This off-site influence is so strong that sites can rank extremely well for terms that don't even exist in the site's copy. If you search "miserable failure" on Google the #1 site is Biography of President George Bush. If you search the copy on the homepage you'll find that the term "miserable failure" does not even exist on the page. If content is king how can a site rank #1 for a term that doesn't even exist on the page? Isn't this telling us that content really isn't king and that link popularity is really the reigning power?

I have a site that I put up for my mom's book all about chastity, sex and relationships. The whole book is available to read online either on html pages or pdfs. The content is relevant and beautifully written. Is is #1 for chastity in any of the search engines? No. Why? Because it lacks link popularity.

Content is not King and probably never will be. It definitely helps, but it will never give you the weight in search engines that link popularity does now.

Why You Should Blog!

I have been blogging for just over two months now. Many of my mentoring students have been asking my advice on blogging. I have so far hesitated to teach much about blogging, because it’s not something I feel I “know” yet. I feel much more comfortable teaching about things I know.

Well… I took a look at Alexa today and noticed that this blog almost hit the top 10,000 most visited sites on the Internet today. I have been seeing success with many of the methods that are unique to blog promotion. I felt it was time to write a post about blog promotion… BUT… WAIT! I haven’t even explained why I have this blog thing. I can’t really jump into getting traffic to your blog without explaining why I have a blog and why you should have one too; now can I?

Let’s go back to my history. I “made it” online without many of the tools you see me offering today. I had no products. I had no copywriting ability. My search engine ranking data was my key to my original success on the Internet. I would simply create high ranking web-sites for some market and sell the traffic from those sites directly to those who did have copywriiting ability and products. Obviously I no longer recommend that. Having your own product and copywriting ability are both multipliers to knowing how to get traffic. Now-a-days I focus on all three aspects of your Internet business and recommend that you do the same.

With that said… don’t underestimate the traffic business. Consider this. Who is the richest man in the world? Right. Bill Gates. He sells software. Software is a good business! Consider this though. Who are the 3 leading sites on the Internet? Go check Alexa if you don’t know. OK; don’t check. I’ll just tell you:

1. Yahoo

2. Google

3. MSN (Microsoft)

Now take a look at that third one. That’s the company that Bill Gates (the richest man in the world; remember?) started. Now he’s messing around on the Internet in the #3 spot.

Now; let’s take a jump here. What do those three sites sell? Ok; take a minute on this one. There will be a test.

That’s right. They sell traffic (or they mostly sell traffic… Yahoo and MSN are a tiny bit more diverse than that). Now isn’t that interesting… The richest man in the world… who go that way by selling software… now wants to sell traffic.

OK; that was a diversion. We’ll come back to that later. What I wanted to tell you about was my experience selling traffic (which is still the largest part of my business). I made a mistake. I sold traffic anonymously under corporate names. None of my traffic customers know who I am. They just buy traffic from XYZ Corporation because it converts to sales for them. XYZ Corporation has no personality. In fact, it’s fully automated and most of my customers seem to like it that way.

I tried to change that a couple of years ago. I started sending them emails teaching how they could get the most out of my traffic service. I was too late. They didn’t know me and they didn’t want to hear from me.

Then I tried one last attempt (I’m glad I did) by offering them a special on traffic that month. I think I did a two for one deal or something like that. Over 25% of my customers bought a new campaign that day. I made over $60,000 in one day with that one email. I thought that was cool! I still do. I can write a single email and make thousands of dollars in a single day. I think a lot of marketers like that.

The power of your customer list is incredible! If you can convert 2% of strangers into customers with a sales page, you can convert 25% of your existing customers into customers of another product with that same sales page. That’s powerful!

I tried it with another product. It was a good product. It was mine. It was the search engine research itself that lead to the traffic those customers were buying. In effect, I was offering to teach them how to generate the same traffic that I was selling to them. It flopped miserably. No-one bought. I tried several other products. Nothing. Why?

Some of the responses told me right away. Even though I was writing under the company name, they didn’t know me. I’ll repeat that. They didn’t know me. They knew my company. They knew that my company delivered great converting traffic, but they simply didn’t know me. An endorsement of one company by another isn’t very powerful. It isn’t nearly as powerful as an endorsement by an individual.

So, I went on to do the Freedom Events. You know how they went. Based on the endorsement of a few well-known Internet marketers, they sold out. Lesson learned. To get that 25% number, you need one of the following:

1. To be marketing to your customers as a company and selling a special offer on the product of your company that your customers already know about.

2. To be marketing to your customers as a person and selling a special offer on any product that you personally endorse… and have never given a bad endorsement on a product to your customers before.

I wanted to do the latter with my own customers… not those of another Internet marketer.

What is the best way to do that? As I look around, a blog is the absolute perfect vehicle for that. As I sell products (and cross-promote them on the owner’s pages), I also promote this blog. I do it very early in the process. It is mentioned on the owner’s page and is also mentioned in the very first email most people get after purchasing one of my products.

They buy the product from a stranger, but I introduce myself as the creator of that product very early by pointing them (you) at this blog.

Then, I don’t hide the blog behind some corporate image. You do buy my products from a corporation, but do you even know the name of that corporation? Who cares what it is called? I want you to get to know me. That’s the purpose of this blog.

Now some folks are finding this blog before they purchase one of my products. That’s OK too. Some people buy a product based on the sales page. Some buy because they know the author never produces junk. Some have a combination of those reasons.

OK; so… yes… you should have a blog. I suggest that you create your blog between your 3rd and 4th product in your primary market. That’s when I created this blog. That is also when you want to start cross-promoting your 3 or 4 products on their owner’s pages.

Here are some other things that I think are important:

1. Register your name for the domain for your blog.

2. Put your name at the top, not some cutesy blog name.

3. Share of yourself. Do not post to your blog like you are a customer service rep answering the phone for a large company… never revealing anything of yourself… only the corporate script. Chat with your customers like they are dear friends. Don’t give out your home address or phone number, but within the context of the blog… what are you afraid of? Let your blog readers get to know you.

4. Post often. People can get into the habit of doing something daily or hourly very easily. It is much more difficult to get into a weekly or monthly habit. Post at least daily so your blog readers can get into a daily habit of reading what you have to say.

5. Don’t worry about giving away secrets of your products. That’s one reason I only sell software, video and mentoring products right now. It’s simply not possible to accidently give away too much in text on your blog. Software and video are both more robust mediums than text. I can explain in words all day long how to do something… it will still be useful to buy the software to automate that task and/or buy the video to actually see how it all works.

6. Get a subcribe link up on your blog (and all of your content sites). Some people will want to follow your blog, but won’t remember. You need to give them a way to allow you to send them reminders when you post. This will dramatically increase your number of repeat visitors over time.

OK; I think that answers the question about why I have a blog and why you should too… and how you should set it up. Now, I can jump into the specific ways to get traffic to a blog that only exist for blogs… not other types of sites. I’ll do that in a future post.

For now, go register your name and get Wordpress installed on that domain. Get your subscribe link up. Write an article and submit it to your blog… and then submit it via Artemis Pro with your blog mentioned in the resource box of your article. That’s how I started just a little over two months ago and as of today… I’m almost in the top 10,000 most visited sites on the Internet. See if you can beat me in the next couple of months.

What’s A Blog And Why Should I Have One? - Using Blogs To Generate Business

Most everyone on the internet has, at some point, run across blogs. Blogs are simply internet journals recording whatever happens to be on a writer’s mind at a given moment. Typically written in an informal tone, blogs read as though the writer is having a friendly conversation with their readers. Though blogs have exploded in popularity, few online retailers understand that having a blog can be a very effective way to drive sales for their e-businesses.

Getting Started

The easiest way to start a blog is with a free commercial service, like http://Blogger.com or http://BlogSpot.com. All you have to do is just set up an account and start blogging. To create a blog that sits on your website, you can go to http://SixApart.com and choose from several software options.

It takes time to build a loyal base of readers, but you can start guiding traffic to your site by linking with relevant blogs. Go to http://Technorati.com and find blogs whose content ties in with yours. Link only to blogs with content that’s useful and entertaining to your customers. Request they look at your blog and consider linking back to you.

For your product sales site, you don’t have to blog about your product itself. Blog about things related to your product. If you sell camping gear, blog about the country’s top camp sites, your hiking trip in the Appalachians, or the best time of year to visit Yellowstone. According to Anthony Perry, of http://BlogAds.com, “You can make your customers feel empowered if you inform them to make their own decisions, as opposed to just beating them over the head, saying, ‘This is a great product! You should buy it!’”

3 Benefits of Blogging

In addition to educating your viewers, your blog provides you with several advantages:

1. The familiar tone of blogging creates a window for buyers to see there’s a real person behind your site. The internet’s an impersonal selling medium, but the personal nature of blogs creates an element of customer trust and loyalty to your brand.

2. By sharing your valuable knowledge, you’re giving your customers a reason both to stay and to return. It’s a proven fact that the more time a user spends on a site, the more likely they are to purchase something. The more your readers return for your expertise, the more you increase your sales.

3. Get feedback on your products, your site, and your customer service. Let your users leave comments, and find out what changes they’d like to see or what products they’d like you to carry. Says Perry, “Blogging’s a tool that lets you communicate with your customer base in a way that’s far more intimate than a monthly e-newsletter.”