Link Exchanges and Search Engine Rankings

Optimizing Your Website For Google

2007-10-16T10:06:00.000-10:00

This is a funny but informative review of what it takes to optimize your website for Google:

http://www.meangene.com/google/design_for_google.html

Keywords, Content and Links

2007-09-18T15:27:00.000-10:00

For many novices to search engine optimization keyword usage is a mystery if not an overlooked skill. Understanding how to select and use keywords is a core skill in successful SEO. To master keyword usage, SEMs should focus on three things: Keyword Research, Content Development and Link Popularity.

KEYWORD RESEARCH
In its simplest form, keyword research is the process of reviewing the major SE histories to discover the volume searches for specific keywords. The first stage of this process is understanding what keywords are actually searched. For example, if you are selling cell phones it would be nice to to know whether more users are searching "mobile phone" or "cell phone" or camera phone". More importantly, if certain keywords represent higher profit sales for your business (e.g., camera phones are more profitable), then this should be accounted for, as well.

The KW research process actually becomes rather more complex however, because like most commodities that involve supply demand it is important to find YOUR niche. Let me explain... Unless you have an "unlimited" budget, you will be hard-pressed to compete with other cell phone sales organizations to get top rankings. So at some point you will need to find a "beach head" -- a narrow focus that you can attack to begin gaining traction. For example, you might find that "2 megapixel camera phone" is new and therefore has fewer competitors. This may be an appropriate way to find a market for the right product.

These same concepts apply to any category of product or service.

CONTENT DEVELOPMENT
Understanding the intricacies of content development requires a more detailed explanation than will be offered here. However, it is worth noting how important content development is to success. That is, SEMs should consider integrating blogs, wikis, forums or other tools to incorporate more content.

The key here is to develop a content strategy that is grounded in relevancy. Do not add a blog and fill it with junk and keyword stuffings. Why? Because even if your site does get good rankings, your prospective customers will find junk on your website. You will have zero credibility. So add useful content or don't add anything at all.

And, if you are operating a database related site, consider opening up SOME of your DB to the public. This will give the SEs a whole lot more content to crawl. You can find creative ways to provide limited access to database content, which will present a bigger picture of your website to the SEs and give your prospective clients a bit of "bait".

LINK POPULARITY
Finally, developing relevant, inbound links to your site is key. Again, there are many different ways to do this. This could include publishing articles for redistribution, developing a highly useful tool that others in your industry will point to, developing a strong affiliate program, etc. You need to look at your business and find the right option.

Submit Articles to Gain One Way Links

2007-08-06T09:05:00.000-10:00

Yes, this is a link exchange service. Yes, we do advocate the use of automated reciprocal link exchanges. But, that being said, it is important to have a well-rounded link popularity strategy, which includes garnering one-way links back to your website.

There are many techniques to gathering one-way links, including affiliate programs, developing widget type tools for others to imbed in to their websites, etc. But, the easiest and one of the most popular ways to gain one-way links is to write good content and publish your articles to an article directory.

Using an article directory is pretty straight forward. You right a high-quality article on a subject matter that you have some expertise in. Publish your article in one or more directories and include your link in the article's signature. Don't forget to use appropriate keyword anchor text in and around your link.

There are several sites where you can submit articles including:

Article Dashboard - a large, multi-topic directory.

Ezine Articles - claims to have more than 60,000 authors contributing articles.

SEO Article Exchange - Search engine marketing related content.

Staying Current on SEO

2007-07-12T12:01:00.000-10:00

The universe of search engine optimization is constantly changing. So, unless you are going to hire an SEO professional, it would be wise to stay abreast of the ongoing changes in the SEO community and the tools available to aid in your pursuit of rankings.

To that end, below is a list of useful search engine forums. It is a good idea to register for one or more of them, read regular updates and participate in the discussions.

SEO Chat - A free service with articles, news and tips for SEO.

The Unofficial Google SEO Forum - a free and open forum dedicated to Google SEO techniques.

Search Engine Roundtable - a blog maintained by RustyBrick, a well-known web design and SEO firm.

Search Engine Watch - a guide to searching at Internet search engines and search engine registration and ranking issues.

How To Increase Link Popularity For Your Website

2007-06-18T13:57:00.000-10:00

By David Fishman

One of the benefits of one way links is that you won't have to worry anymore about linking back to bad neighborhoods. There are many different ways in getting one way links, you could join a forum and post your link, write articles and include your link in the bio area or submit your website to directories.

These links are the most beneficial and also can be the hardest to obtain are one way links. Links from search engines or directories are a form of a non-reciprocal linking. Link Directories are categorized links and descriptions, so it makes it easier for someone to find an appropriate link. Linking is an ongoing process. Linking is an important job that any webmasters need to do in order to get their web site noticed by internet users.

To really get your website ranked you need to write articles, this helps you in two ways, it promotes your websites and gives you a link back to your site, and as other webmasters download your article your link will find its way onto other websites. Listen everyone hates to write, but writing articles and distributing them among articles sites really pays off. You can write about anything from dogs, to computers, to personal training, to web hosting, heck you can even write about writing. The bottom line is, articles are a valuable source of "relevant" back links to your site. There are so many things to write about you just need to think hard enough and get inspiration. You might need to research the topic a little but by writing the article it will help build your traffic.

If your content is really good, then the visitors will realize its value and they will link to your site, offering the good information to visitors is a great way of having them return to your site. The end result of a search engine is to give relevant, excellent search results to all.

The quality of the links, so called Page Rank, has also become a primary factor in the search engines. The Page Rank is based on the number and quality of inbound links pointing to a page. Although page rank is a small factor in the search engine rankings on Google results, many webmasters are not too educated and all they look for is page rank. If you want to swap links with a site that has a higher page rank it might be difficult to do if your page rank is low. When you hear other webmasters talk about page rank all this means is the ranking that Google places on your site which shows the how popular your site is. The Google tool bar will let you see the page rank for any site. Page rank is just an indicator of popularity it doesn't mean you are getting traffic to your site.

It may take some time, but the traffic is what linking is all about. Of course you want to take this traffic and turn it into sales. Every webmaster's goal is to have thousands of visitors every day. And the best way to receive targeted traffic is through search engines. There are many ways to increase traffic, most webmaster only use the online promotional methods but if you are serious about your business you need to use offline and online methods to get the word out.

That's the reason link popularity is so necessary. Link Popularity is a measure of the number of sites of quality and relevance that point to your website. Link Popularity can make the difference between your sites showing up on the first page in search results.

Source: Submit Articles at ArticlesBase.com

SEO: Marketing and Technology

2007-05-25T13:14:00.000-10:00

By Michael Taus
Managing Director, Aquo Interactive

This is a tale of two cities -- no make that universes. In one universe, you have traditional marketers, whose purpose in life it is to create content shaped to a customer's needs and behaviors. In the other universe, you have programmers, whose existence is dedicated to building efficient, flexible and reliable platforms for delivering that very content.

This is not a new tale. Anyone who has worked in a technology environment has probably observed the clash of marketing and product development. But today, the setting has changed. Today, the "rise of search" has compelled these two groups to cooperate at an ever-increasing depth and frequency. Search engine optimization or search marketing has become central to the success of both groups and, therefore, has become the a new fertile ground for breeding success (and waging war).

The world of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be quite a mystery to your average marketer. More often than not, search marketing consultants are vague about the techniques they employ. Often, this is for a good reason. After all, how many traditional marketers are equipped to understand the SEO implications of a simple website decision like using Flash or graphics.

And, while programmers have a deep understanding of the technology distinctions -- say, client-side versus server side scripting -- they are rarely concerned with the nature and quality of the content displayed.

Fortunately for both groups, the SEM community has a new bible of sorts at its disposal. Search Engine Optimization with PHP (and the soon to be released ASP version) is designed to be a bridge between these two communities. The book is a collaboration between Jaimie Sirovich, a search marketing consultant, and Christian Darie, a software engineer.

It seems unlikely that an experienced marketer will learn much about marketing. Nor will a good programmer learn much about programming. But with this book, each group has the opportunity to learn about the other's area of expertise.

So, who should read this book? Well, if you are a search marketing consultant, you probably (hopefully) are quite familiar with the concepts covered. You may benefit from the fairly comprehensive coverage of systems or foreign language SEO. But in general, if you've been at this for a while, you will most of this book to be light reading.

Overachieving programmers, will certainly have more to benefit here. This is especially true in areas such as site planning, content relocation and inadvertent black hat mishaps.

Marketers will benefit the most from this reading. This is true even if they avoid all the sample code and acronyms. Ultimately, marketers are responsible for the search-engine rankings of their sites. And therefore, having a solid, yet high-level, understanding of SEO is critical to their success. It also helps to ensure that there is less feuding and more collaboration.

Tracking Your SEO Results with Google Analytics

2007-05-14T10:33:00.000-10:00

In 2005, Google acquired Urchin's popular web analytics technology and has since re-branded as Google Analytics. The service has become a popular choice among search engine marketers (SEM) who want better insight in to the conversion rates of their various campaigns. Last week, Google released a new version of Analytics and it is worth using for two reasons. First, the service is pretty decent -- offering a slew of data views in a pretty user-friendly interface. Second, the service is free -- a price that is tough to beat.

While the interface remains boring, there have been some updates to the dashboard and some of the reporting features. Google has attempted to the interface more powerful for advanced users, yet simple to beginners. Unfortunately, while the service is pretty-looking and feature rich, in general the data views are about the same as you'd see in any other web stats service.

There are several new features that users will find useful, including:

Email reporting
Cleaner graphs
Customizable dashboards for each viewer type (e.g., marketer, webmaster, etc.)

Although this is not a revolution in the way users will see their website stats, it is an evolution. And, because it is free, it is solid choice that webmasters and web designers should consider using, if they prefer instead to invest directly in internet marketing and link popularity.

How Much Link Building Should You Do?

2007-04-30T09:51:00.000-10:00

Link building is an effective tool for jump starting your SEO campaign. By developing links from other popular and relevant sites, you provide the search engines an "invitation" that your site is open for business.

However, there does reach a point at which you've done enough link building. Through this article, you will be provided with some pointers so that you can determine when you've done enough effective link building to your Internet based business website.

Generally speaking, the more inbound links that you have to your website, the higher your website will be ranked in different search engine results. Therefore, the first and most important factor that you need to keep in mind when trying to determine whether or not you've done enough link building is an examination of whether or not your own website has reached the search engine result ranking that you desire. Before you make a decision as to when you've done enough link building, you need to keep in mind the benefits of link building.

One more thing to consider when it comes to link building and making a decision as to whether you've done enough link building is to consider relevancy. When all is said and done, you must have what might best be determined to be quality inbound links. In this regard, you need to have inbound links from relevant sites, from sites that bear some relationship to your own website. Merely placing a bunch of inbound links with generic link farms will not necessarily serve your interests in either the short or the long term. If you use a link exchange like BigLinx, be certain to customize your permission settings and screen your link partners for relevancy.

As you pull together an inbound link building and enhancement program, you will want to establish goals in regard to the volume of traffic increase that you would like to have at your website. Finally, when it comes to reaching the point where you feel that you've done enough link building, you will want to consider whether or not you've realized an appropriate increase in traffic to your website. Once you've reached this market and you have achieved your ranking goal, you can slow down on your link building program.

Keep in mind that your site can suffer dramatically if you "turn off" link campaigns, so it is important to maintain the link structures that you have established. And in time you likely will want to return to link building even after you've achieved and accomplished what you set out to do through your initial link building plan. Over time, inbound links can become inactive, websites on which they are located can become defunct. Thus, it is important to revisit link building again over time.

SEO - Do You Need Reciprocal Link Manager Software?

2007-03-19T10:47:00.000-10:00

by Chris Angus

An examination of reciprocal links software and whether deploying such software on your website can be part of a good SEO strategy.

Reciprocal links are one of the most cost effective forms of web advertising. It is also cost effective because it you don’t have to pay a cent for it. However the problem is that checking to see whether or not all of your link exchange partners are still linked to you can become a very tedious chore. Reciprocal links may be free but the entire endeavor ends up costing you in the man-hours it takes to go through every single reciprocal link on your site to see if it is still working! This is time that could be spent promoting or developing your web site in other ways so reciprocal link manager software might just be a good idea.

There are almost a hundred practical benefits to using this link software to trade links and monitor their functionality. One drawback is that the best of these types of reciprocal manager links are written in PHP/MySQL which handle unlimited tasks and data to do with your traded links. Although it sounds complex, most web hosts provide PHP and MySQL and usually programs like this are easily downloaded and up and running within fifteen minutes.

A really good reciprocal manager program can organize the look of your links on your site by creating professional looking HTML pages that make it easier for search engines spiders to crawl your links and index them. The best programs will list the links in a neat arrangement. Really good reciprocal link manager programs can also make these pages match the design of your website as well as display the link's title in the browser bar thus once again making your pages more search engine friendly than ever.

Also if a partner decides to trade links with you this amazing software can run all of your link directories together so that he or she has the option of submitting links to your other sites as well which can be another great convenience for the busy webmaster.

Christopher Angus is a SEO and Website Marketer. He can be contacted at: Sales (at) Brilliantseo.com Copywriter

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

Search Engine Ranking Tools

2007-02-19T18:32:00.000-10:00

Perhaps, you are a small business owner using your website to sell products or find qualified leads. By nature, you are a do-it-yourself kind of person, so you are orchestrating your own search marketing campaign. The good news is with time and persistence your website should begin paying dividends shortly. The bad news, you've now got yet another full time job.

Yes, search marketing is a complex blend of art and science. Pushing your web site to the top rankings requires a lot of work. And, there is no easy road mpa to follow because every site represents a different set of opportunities and challenges.

Hopefully, you've done the basics:

You have spent a fair amount of time researching your "keyword cloud" - finding highly-relevant keywords with good search volume;
You've signed up for Google and Yahoo pay-per-click campaigns -- setting your bids low initially and tracking results;
You've initiated a link trading or link exchange strategy to help your site's link popularity develop;
You may have already integrated a blog or other content management system in to your site, so you can post your thoughts and articles from others on relevant topics; and
If you are really diligent, you may have already started posting articles for others to repurpose.

So, you are doing all this work. But how do you know whether you are getting good results? For that matter, how do you measure results?

The true measure of success is difficult to capture. Of course, you can check the search engines to see what rank your site is for a given keyword. While that is useful, it does little to give you a big picture view of whether your efforts have converted in to any progress.

So, here's a list of a few tools that I like to use to help track the big picture:

Google's Webmaster Tool provides status information of your site as it actually exists within the Google search engine. Information includes, a list of indexed pages, lists of external sites linking to individual pages on your site as well as a number of index, query and crawl stats.

Use this PageRank Checker to see what your site's PR is across a number of Google's servers.

urlTrends (http://www.urltrends.com/) offers a nice wide view of your web site through a variety of sources. In addition to providing all the basics like Google PageRank and inbound link information, urlTrends provides historical trand graphs of many key data points. The service is free and there is an upgrade option that will track your results more regularly and send you the results.

iWebTool's Backlink Checker (http://www.iwebtool.com/) lets you see which sites are linking to you and provides the PageRank information, as well. Total links are not provided, so you cannot gather any objective data here. But, you can visually glance at the quality of sites ranking to you pretty easily.

SEOmoz (http://www.seomoz.org/) has a handful of tools. But the best tool in the bunch is the Page Strength tool that displays some common results, but also includes links in Technorati, del.icio.us and other cool tools.

WebmasterEyes (http://www.webmastereyes.com/) lets you see your site as if you were wearing special "Google Vision" goggles. Go to the urlTrends homepage and type in URL, hit submit and suddenly you will see your site with Google PR built right into your site. In fact, every link within your website will display the corresponding PR for the destination page. This is a handy way to understand which pages on your site are actually beginning to develop search engine credibility. Do a "link:" search of your most popular pages and you might find that the link popularity of those pages just happens to b higher than the poorer performing pages.

iWebTools's (http://www.iwebtool.com/) tool for "predicting" your Google PageRank. The site expressly disclaims any accuracy. Nevertheless, it is another objective algorithm to monitor your sites momentum.

Writing & Submitting Articles -The Greatest Internet Marketing Strategy To Gain Targeted Traffic & One Way Back Links

2007-02-08T20:52:00.000-10:00

by Dean Shainin

Are you writing and submitting articles with the idea of marketing your internet business?

Discover how writing and submitting articles is now one of the most effective ways for marketing your website.

Are you using this internet marketing strategy?

If not, you may be leaving thousands of dollars of extra profits on the table by not utilizing this strategy.

Many webmasters are using this method to gain thousands of one way back links and on topic targeted traffic to their niche websites.

This is one of the many reasons writing and submitting original quality content articles is now the latest internet marketing buzz.

The two most effective techniques that you can combine today to really power a successful website with targeted traffic are:

1. Writing and Submitting Quality Content Articles

2. One Way Back Links

You already know that right?

Are you writing articles and submitting them using effective article submission services such as ArticleMarketer & SubmitYourArticle?

Many internet marketing pro's have been writing articles and submitting articles for several years using these services to help automate the process.

Submitting articles by hand can be a daunting task to say the least. After a month or two most article marketers realize this fact and find an article submission service to meet their needs.

I've gained well over 100,000 one way back links to niche sites from Google alone. This could not have been accomplished by hand without spending time submitting articles 24/7 around the clock.

When you know the value of submitting original quality content articles and how using the right keywords in your articles will drive on topic targeted traffic to your websites from the search engines, you start to see the light.

There are advantages and disadvantages with ArticleMarketer and SubmitYourArticle. Only you can decide which service is best for your article marketing efforts. I use both article submission services to utilize the advantages of each service most effectively.

So why don't all internet marketers write and submit articles for their internet marketing strategy?

The simple answer is that it can take time to write articles, submit them and get targeted traffic to your websites.

Many marketers want to "get rich quick" and make the mistake of purchasing so called "targeted hits" to their sites. They soon realize that their efforts are both a waste of time and money.

Another reason is that writing articles reminds us of school research papers, essays and reports that are a deep negative anchor in the subconscious mind.

Did you enjoy writing when you were in school?

If your answer is yes, you have an advantage over the 95% of internet marketers that want to make money online. Imagine how much opportunity there is for you because of knowing this simple fact.

The other 5% are taking advantage of this internet marketing strategy and getting targeted traffic to their websites writing and submitting articles.

Why do you think webmasters want fresh, quality, original keyword rich content?

The website owner can have an article with keywords that relate to their website content and gain massive on topic targeted traffic.

One way back links are key to helping your websites page rank when indexed by the search engines.

4 Simple Yet Effective Steps To Gain One Way Back Links and Targeted Traffic Writing and Submitting Articles

1. Write articles with quality original content, keyword/phrase rich articles, with links to your website in your resource box.

2. Build a website or web page with targeted keyword/phrase rich original article content for the targeted traffic that originates from your articles that you submit using the top submission services.

3. Make sure to use high quality descriptive keywords in the anchor text when you insert your URL using html. This helps your article to get picked up by the search engines.

4. Try not to sell anything in your resource box at the end of your article. You simply want people to visit your site from the link within the resource box.

Internet marketers that incorporate Google Adsense and or Affiliate Marketing with writing and submitting articles are making money hand over fist using this effective internet marketing strategy.

4 Effective Tips To Get Started Writing and Submitting Articles

1. Keyword Research. Find popular niches and keywords/phrases, using a keyword selector and suggestion tool.

2. Writing Articles. Write original quality content articles with keywords from your niche research.

3. Build Quality Content Sites. Build an original quality article content site incorporated with Google Adsense and or Affliliate Marketing products and services that are related to the niche of the articles you submit.

4. Research an article submission service that will fit your budget and that will be effective for your type of article marketing efforts.

Are you going to take advantage of the greatest internet marketing strategy online today writing and submitting articles?

Do whatever it takes to get started writing and submitting original articles.

For building long term residual targeted traffic and one way back links, there's very little you can do that will give you near the same effective results online today.

Dean Shainin is a well known author that has effectively used ArticleMarketer and SubmitYourArticle to gain well over 100,000 one way back links from Google alone and residual targeted traffic from the top search engines.

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

Targeting Your SEO to the Right Demographic

2006-11-20T20:16:00.000-10:00

“How can I target the demographic that I am most interested in reaching?” The answer to that question is rather difficult.

Leave it to Microsoft to give us the tools that just might possibly answer this question. I highly recommend that you try out the AdCenter Lab suite of tools. These tools are designed to give keyword and demographic data to help with the set up of your AdCenter PPC campaign. While they are not always entirely accurate, they provide a good basis to work from. Make sure that you are using the Internet Explorer browser, or they will not work.

Search Funnels show which keywords searchers use before and after a search. For example: 3.79% of surfers search for hotel after doing a search for bed and breakfast.

Forecasting Search Volume Seasonality will help predict the demand for a keyword throughout the entire year.

I searched for vacation packages and you can see that the query rises in January and drops in September. (Click on the image for a larger view). The drawback is that there are not many words added to this tool yet. I tried a search adding snowboard, ski, rafting, and whitewater, and did not get any results for those terms. My suggestion is to also try Google Trends.

Content Categorization Engine: Search engines are putting more emphasis on categories. It is extremely important to see what the search engine thinks your site is about. Pay-per-click campaigns are also checking the landing page for the keywords that are being bid upon. If the landing page is not on topic to the word being bid, then the cost for that click is higher. I put a website for a chamber of commerce into the tool. The results are exactly what you would want those for a chamber to be all about.

Demographics Prediction is the tool to target the question at the top of the article. It will predict a customer’s age, gender, and other demographic information based on search behavior. You can type in your top keywords and determine what type of client is looking for your product.

Example: “vacation package” is generally a female between the age of 25 and 34.

As with any tool, use the data carefully. While we don’t recommend basing your entire marketing strategy around the results, you find some valuable information to keep in mind when planning your campaigns.

Lou White - Blizzard Internet Marketing, Inc.

Qualities of a good site

2006-09-19T13:13:00.000-10:00


Matt Cutts answers Google questions: - Does Sitemaps depend on pageviews? - What are the top things to do in SEO? - How does Google decide to use a DMOZ snippet versus the description from a meta tag? - Should I use bold or strong tags?

Root Keywords Are Key To SEO Efforts

2006-08-24T08:27:00.000-10:00

Whether you are just starting out with search engine optimization or an old pro, keyword research is the foundation upon which top rankings are built and root keywords are the most important.

Keywords, keywords, keywords – the term used so often in search engine optimization that it can get a bit overwhelming at times. What exactly are keywords? How do I find them? How do I use them? Why is the term spelled keywords instead of key words? Ah, there are so many questions we can go into. Of course, we should talk about something far more important.

The key to keyword research is focusing on the key word. How is that for a sentence? Okay, now for something understandable. When identifying terms you wish to use in the optimization effort for your site, you must look to the base word of the area you are researching. That probably is not much better, so here is an example.

Assume I am researching the keywords for an online internet marketing company, to wit, the site promoted with this article. Should I type in "online internet marketing" into my favorite research tool? No! By doing so, I limit myself to finding only those keywords that contain these three words. Taking this approach, I would even miss the basic term "internet marketing." Obviously, I have not focused on the root word of my research.

Returning to my research tool, I should go ahead and find all the words for "internet marketing", right? No! Doing so will return more keyword phrases, but I am still limiting myself to only those phrases that contain the two words. In this case, I will miss out on phrases related to "internet advertising" or "online marketing" and so on. By taking this approach, I have followed the seo herd and missed out on some juicy opportunities.

The best approach to the above scenario is to research two words first – "internet" and "marketing". Do them separately and then work your way into the various combination of words that will appear. These are your root words. Bow before them. Treat them nicely. Research them and you might just find some massive traffic with low competition, the stuff of dreams!

There is a tendency in seo to by into the hype of going niche. Yes, certain situations definitely call for focusing on a very defined niche. When doing your keyword research, however, always start with the root words. They will lead you to the niche you can make money in.

Halstatt Pires is with Marketing Titan - providing internet marketing services.

Article Source: Halstatt Pires

The History of SEO

2006-07-11T11:00:00.000-10:00

Early search engines

Webmasters and content providers began optimizing sites for search engines in the mid-1990s, as the first search engines were cataloging the early Web. Initially, all a webmaster needed to do was submit a site to the various engines which would run spiders, programs to "crawl" the site, and store the collected data. The default search-bracket was to scan an entire web page for so-called related search words, so a page with many different words matched more searches, and a web page containing a dictionary-type listing would match almost all searches, limited only by unique names. The search engines then sorted the information by topic, and served results based on pages they had crawled. As the number of documents online kept growing, and more webmasters realized the value of organic search listings, some popular search engines began to sort their listings so they could display the most relevant pages first. This was the start of a friction between search engine and webmasters that continues to this day.

At first search engines were guided by the webmasters themselves. Early versions of search algorithms relied on webmaster-provided information such as category and keyword meta tags, or index files in engines like ALIWEB. Meta-tags provided a guide to each page's content. When some webmasters began to abuse meta tags, causing their pages to rank for irrelevant searches, search engines abandoned their consideration of meta tags and instead developed more complex ranking algorithms, taking into account factors that elevated a limited number of words (anti-dictionary) and were more diverse, including:

Text within the title tag

Domain name

URL directories and file names

HTML tags: headings, emphasized (italicized) and strongly emphasized (bold) text

Term frequency, both in the document and globally, often misunderstood and mistakenly referred to as Keyword density

Keyword proximity

Keyword adjacency

Keyword sequence

Alt attributes for images

Text within NOFRAMES tags

Content development

Pringle, et al. (Pringle et al., 1998) [1], also defined a number of attributes within the HTML source of a page which were often manipulated by web content providers attempting to rank well in search engines. But by relying so extensively on factors that were still within the webmasters' exclusive control, search engines continued to suffer from abuse and ranking manipulation. In order to provide better results to their users, search engines had to adapt to ensure their SERPs showed the most relevant search results, rather than useless pages stuffed with numerous keywords by unscrupulous webmasters using a bait-and-switch lure to display unrelated web pages. This led to the rise of a new kind of search engine.

Development of more sophisticated ranking algorithms

Google was started by two PhD students at Stanford University, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and brought a new concept to evaluating web pages. This concept, called PageRank, has been important to the Google algorithm from the start [2]. PageRank relies heavily on incoming links and uses the logic that each link to a page is a vote for that page's value. The more incoming links a page had the more "worthy" it is. The value of each incoming link itself varies directly based on the PageRank of the page it comes from and inversely on the number of outgoing links on that page.

With help from PageRank technology, Google proved to be very good at serving relevant search results. Google quickly became the most popular and successful search engine. Because PageRank measured an off-site factor, Google felt it would be more difficult to manipulate than on-page factors.

However, webmasters had already developed link building tools and schemes to influence the Inktomi search engine. These methods proved to be equally applicable to Google's algorithm. Many sites focused on exchanging, buying, and selling links on a massive scale. PageRank's reliance on the link as a vote of confidence in a page's value was undermined as many webmasters sought to garner links purely to influence Google into sending them more traffic, irrespective of whether the link was useful to human site visitors.

Further complicating the situation, the default search-bracket was still to scan an entire web page for so-called related search-words, and a web page containing a dictionary-type listing would still match almost all searches (except special names) at an even higher priority given by link-rank. Dictionary pages and link schemes could severely skew search results.

It was time for Google — and other search engines — to look at a wider range of off-site factors. There were other reasons to develop more intelligent algorithms. The Internet was reaching a vast population of non-technical users who were often unable to use advanced querying techniques to reach the information they were seeking and the sheer volume and complexity of the indexed data was vastly different from that of the early days. Search engines had to develop predictive, semantic, linguistic and heuristic algorithms. Around the same time as the work that led to Google, IBM had begun work on the Clever Project [3], and Jon Kleinberg was developing the HITS algorithm.

A proxy for the PageRank metric is still displayed in the Google Toolbar, though the displayed value is rounded to be an integer, and the data updated infrequently, so it is likely to be outdated. For these reasons, and the fact that PageRank is only one of more than 100 "signals" that Google considers in ranking pages, experienced SEOs recommend ignoring the displayed PageRank.

Today, most search engines keep their methods and ranking algorithms secret, to compete for finding the most valuable search-results and to deter spam pages from clogging those results. A search engine may use hundreds of factors in ranking the listings on its SERPs; the factors themselves and the weight each carries may change continually. Algorithms can differ widely: a web page that ranks #1 in a particular search engine could rank #200 in another search engine.

Google, Yahoo and Microsoft do not disclose the algorithms they use to rank pages. Some SEOs have carried out controlled experiments to gauge the effects of different approaches to search optimization. Based on these experiments, often shared through online forums and blogs, professional SEOs form a consensus on what methods work best.

SEOs widely agree that the top signals that influence a page's rankings include:

Keywords in the title tag.

Keywords in links pointing to the page.

Keywords appearing in visible text.

Link popularity (PageRank for Google) of the page.

In addition, there are many other signals that can affect a page's ranking. And, the standards are changing daily. Stay tuned.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "SEO".

What Google Said When You Weren't Listening

2006-06-23T11:37:00.000-10:00

By Kim Roach (c) 2006

Google wants to create quality search engine results just as badly as you want to acquire high search engine rankings. Fortunately for us, Google provides web masters with plenty of guidelines and tips for building a Google-Friendly site.

Unfortunately, many web masters simply aren't listening. Most web masters seem to be pulling tips and strategies from almost every source but Google itself. However, Google has some of the most beneficial SEO tips to be found online.

Below are just a few of the questions that you can find answered directly by Google.

Q. Does Google index dynamic pages?

A. Yes. Google indexes dynamically generated pages. This includes pages with the following file extensions: .asp, .php, and pages with question marks in their URLs. However, these pages can cause problems for the Googlebot and may be ignored.

Fortunately, there is a solution. If you feel that your dynamically generated pages are being ignored, you may want to consider creating static copies of those pages for the Googlebot. Keep in mind, if you choose to do this, be sure to include a robots.txt file that disallows the dynamic pages so that Google doesn't see those pages as duplicate content.

Q. Does Google index sites that use ASP?

A. Yes. Google is able to index most types of pages and files with very few exceptions. This includes pdf, asp, jsp, html, shtml, xml, doc, xls, ppt, rtf, wks, lwp, wri, swf, cfm, and php. This is not a complete list, but it gives a good overview.

Q. Does Google index sites that use Macromedia Flash?

A. Yes. Google indexes pages that use Macromedia Flash. However, Google may have problems indexing Flash pages. If you are concerned that your Flash content is inhibiting Google's ability to crawl your site, you may want to consider creating HTML copies of those Flash pages. As always, you will need to include a robots.txt file that disallows the Flash pages so that Google does not recognize those pages as duplicate content.

Q. How do I add my site to Google's search results?

A. According to Google, inclusion in Google's search results is free and easy. They also state that it is unnecessary to submit your site to Google. Google uses software known as "spiders" to crawl the web on a regular basis and find sites to add to the index.

When a spider misses a site, it is often because of one of the following reasons:

The site is not well connected with other sites through an inbound linking structure.

The site launched after Google's most recent crawl was completed.

Poor web site design makes it difficult for Google to effectively crawl your content.

The site was temporarily unavailable at the time of crawling or an error was received. You can use Google Sitemaps to see if the Google crawlers received errors when trying to crawl your site.

Q. How can I get my web site into Google's Mobile index?

A. Google Mobile offers Google Web Search, Local Search, and Image Search for web sites that are configured for mobile devices. Google adds new sites to their mobile Web index every time they crawl the Web.

To let Google know about your mobile site, it is best to submit a Mobile Sitemap. To help ensure that Google's mobile crawlers can crawl and index your site, you should:

Use well-formed markup

Validate your markup

Use the right DOCTYPE and Content-Type for the markup language that you are using.

Q. Will participation in Adsense or Adwords affect my listing in Google's free search results.

A. Google's advertising programs are independent of their search results. Participation in an advertising program will have no effect on your organic search engine rankings.

Q. Why does my site have a PageRank of zero?

A. Yes. Google has an answer for this as well. According to Google, a page may be assigned a rank of zero if Google crawls very few sites that link to that particular site. In addition to this, pages that have recently been added to the Google index may also show a PageRank of zero. This is simply because they haven't been crawled by Googlebot yet and haven't been ranked yet.

The key is to be patient. A page's PageRank score may increase naturally with further crawls.

Q. My URL changed. How can I get Google to index my new site?

A. Google cannot manually change your URL in the search results. However, there are steps you can take to ensure a smooth transition.

First, you can redirect visitors to your new site. To do this, simply use an HTTP 301 (permanent) redirect. This ensures that Google's crawler will discover your new URL.

To preserve your rank, you will need to tell others who link to your site about your change of address. To find a portion of the sites that link to yours, you can go to the Google search engine and type in: site:www.mydomain.com . To obtain a comprehensive list of links that point to your page, perform a Google search on your URL in quotes: "www.mydomain.com".

Q. How often does Google crawl the web?

A. Google's spiders crawl the web on a regular basis to rebuild their index. Crawls are based on a number of factors, including Pagerank, links to a page, and a web site's structure. This is just a small list. There are a variety of factors that can affect the crawl frequency of individual sites.

Q. How do I create a Google friendly site?

A. To help Google find, index, and rank your site, it is suggested that you follow their Webmaster Guidelines.

Here are some of the general guidelines that Google offers to web masters:

Have other relevant sites link to yours.

Submit a sitemap.

Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo. For a complete listing of web directories, go to StrongestLinks.com.

Make sure each and every page is reachable from at least one static text link.

Offer your visitors a site with links that point to the most important parts of your site. If your sitemap is larger than 100 links, you may want to break the site map into separate pages.

Keep the links on any given page to a reasonable number (less than 100).

Check for broken links and correct HTML.

Create a useful site that is full of information-rich content. Your pages should be written in a way that clearly and accurately describes your content.

Make sure that your TITLE and ALT tags are descriptive and accurate.

Use a text browser such as Lynx to examine your web site. Most search engine spiders see your site in much the same way as Lynx would.

Allow search bots to crawl your sites without session Ids or arguments that track their path through the site.

Make use of the robots.txt file which tells crawlers which directories they can or cannot crawl.

Q. How can I report a site that is spamming the Google search results?

A. Google is constantly working to improve the quality of their search results. Therefore, they have implemented a program that allows web searchers to report spam that they find within the search engine results. These Spam Reports are submitted directly to Google engineers and are used to devise long-term solutions to fight spam.

However, before you submit a site as being spam, Google highly suggests that you take a look at their webmaster guidelines to determine if sites are acceptable or not.

http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html

Q. Why are sites blocked from the Google index?

A. Sites may be blocked from the Google index if they do not meet certain quality standards. Google does not comment on the individual reason for pages being removed. However, they do reveal that certain actions such as cloaking, writing text that can be seen by search engines but not by users, or setting up pages/links with the sole purpose of fooling the search engines may result in removal from the index.

If you receive a notification that your site violates Google's quality guidelines, you can correct your site to meet their guidelines and then request reinclusion.

So there you have it, some of the many tips that Google is handing out for free. If you want to obtain high search engine rankings for the long-term, Google actually provides some very good advice.

About the Author
Kim Roach is a staff writer and editor for the SiteProNews and SEO-News newsletters. You can contact Kim at kim@seo-news.com.

SEO and Content Development

2006-06-08T10:26:00.000-10:00

Content development is the process of researching, writing, gathering, organizing, and editing information for publication on web sites. Web site content may consist of prose, graphics, pictures, recordings, movies or other media assets that could be distributed by a hypertext transfer protocol server, and viewed by a web browser.

Content developers and web developers

When the World Wide Web began, web developers either generated content themselves, or took existing documents and coded them into hypertext markup language (HTML). In time, the field of web site development came to encompass many technologies, so it became difficult for web site developers to maintain so many different skills. Content developers are specialized web site developers who have mastered content generation skills. They can integrate content into new or existing web sites, but they may not have skills such as script language programming, database programming and graphic design.

Content developers may also be search engine optimization specialists, or Internet marketing professionals.

Search engine optimization specialists commonly submit content to Article Directories to build their website's authority on any given topic. Most Article Directories allow visitors to republish submitted content with the agreement that all links are maintained. This has become a method of Search Engine Optimization for many websites today. If written according to SEO copywriting rules, the submitted content will bring benefits to the publisher (free SEO-friendly content for a webpage) as well as to the author (a hyperlink pointing to his/her website, placed on a SEO-friendly webpage).

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "SEO".

Optimizing the Right Keywords

2006-05-26T12:34:00.000-10:00

Keywords are the fundamental building blocks of successful search engine marketing. If you don't get them right you will find that everything you expect to follow simply will not. Targeting the right keywords is everything and is the most necessary ingredient to online success for your business.

Does this sound like online marketing 101? A foolishly simplistic bit of advice. Perhaps, but consider this: Nearly everyone, professional and amateur is basing their selection and purchase of keywords on data that couldn't be more distorted if it were being viewed through a funhouse mirror.

Take a few moments to read on and set yourself apart from the vast majority of online marketers who don't understand and thereby misuse the results supplied by the two most basic keyword selection tools. The assumption about Overture's STST and Wordtrackers's KSS is that the results they give, while different are somehow straightforward and require no interpretation. Given that these tools are nearly all we have to bring keyword choices into focus and make intelligent decisions in the midst of rising keyword pay-per-click costs and increasingly keen competition.

The key to reading the tealeaves lies in an attempt to answer, with hard numbers, the following question.

Why are the keyword search query numbers supplied by Overture's search term suggestion tool (STST) so incredibly different than those supplied by Wordtracker's keyword selection service (KSS)?

The answer to this question will precipitate a change in the way you evaluate keywords and thereby how well they work for you. The short answer is that Overture and Wordtracker are different types of businesses. Let's explore.

Overture's STST is a tool which was designed to help users buy keywords. And it may go without saying but it needs to be said, Overture is helping you to buy keywords from Overture.

Wordtrackers purpose is a tool to help users in their selection of keywords which will help your optimization efforts. And to help you decide which to buy elsewhere.

So Overture makes its money as the keyword retailer whereas worktracker makes it's money being sort of the Consumer Reports of keywords.

Overture succeeds when it convinces you that there are a lot of searches for what you are selling. They make their money when you buy in to their data and purchase keywords from them. Wordtracker succeeds when it convinces you that you have made keyword decisions based on the realest and most accurate data available. They are fee based and their profits hinge on the accuracy of the data they provide.

Different types of businesses, indeed.

Decoding the data.

Take for instance the search team "keyword," Overture's STST show there were 180,468 searches for the 30-day period ending the last day of December. When you divide this number by 30 (days), you get an average of 6,016 combined searches per day for the term "keyword".

I'd like to buy that keyword if I was going to get 6016 sentient beings looking at my site every day. Therein lies the reason for Overture returning this particular take on the facts. It's not that their numbers are inflated, it's just that they aren't properly deflated. In a moment you'll read how, once adjusted, these numbers are pretty low.

Adjustment number 1. Artificial searches.

You're going to want to take these out of the number. Overture's STST numbers include automated bid optimizers, position and ranking monitors, page popularity analyzers. These will never buy anything from your site. As far as you're concerned any hit generated by automated software should be disregarded. This group also includes page-popularity checkers, pay-per-click bid optimizers or any other machine generated monitor or tabulator that queries an engine for a "pet" keyword .

When these automated faux hit generators are done pumping up the numbers on Overture they go over to MSN, an Overture partner, and do the same thing. Overture adds another hit. In Overtures defense, there is no way for them to differentiate between a hit from a person or an automated one. Like I said, they haven't inflated their numbers.

As you can see search term query tabulations are swelled significantly by these automated queries.

There are other aspects that contribute to these artificially high numbers. We continue with our adjustments.

Adjustment number 2- Duplicate Searches

Overture's viability as an advertising medium for online businesses hinges on the fact that they provide lts to "tens of thousands of Web sites" which include AltaVista, Yahoo, MSN Search, HotBot, and AllTheWeb and many more. They purport to reach 80% of active U.S. Internet users.

Similar to their high numbers this fact, taken out of context sounds great to potential advertisers. But it's part of the same hype cycle that has their numbers so high.

According to Overture itself, statistics on searches are compiled from Overtures partner search engines. This furthers the distortion of query counts. Here's how.

When, for instance, a visitor conducts a search on AltaVista, there are really two searches being conducted. One at AltaVista and one that lists the Sponsored Matches supplied by Overtures pay-per-click engine.

It's not possible to know the exact degree of the distortion of query counts as a result of this but what can certainly be gleaned is that one person often generates multiple hits when doing a single search.

If that user seeks additional results and tries his search on another engine which happens to be a partner of Overture there will be more hits still calculated by Overture. Google counts only searches that were done "on-site" and eliminates duplicate searches in their count query. If Overture did the same, their numbers would be further adjusted downward, or as I've said properly deflated.

Adjustment number 3- Plurals and Singulars

Overture combines the plural and singular in compling their query count.

They combine not upper case and lower case results as well. These factors apply upward pressure to their numbers as well.

Ok. So Overture is providing using some fuzzy numbers. What can you do to get a clearer picture?

Using Meta-Engines is a better way to calculate queries. You can get numbers which don't include artificial and duplicate queries by using Composite engines like Metacrawler and Dogpile.

Auto-bots aren't pointed at these composite engines because there's nothing to be gained by doing so. Ergo Searches conducted on Meta engines are more likely do be done by sentient beings.

Meta Engines do not offer pay-per-click options. And they do not "add-url's" so they do not attract bot traffic.

Meta Engines don't have duplicate searches in their query counts either. This is because their results are compiled from a single source and not combined from many partner sites.

Using Meta Engines helps get your numbers down into a more realistic area but there are problems that occur there too. For instance keyword spam.

This involves using cgi-scripting to manipulate the Metaspy metacrawler voyeur.

By conducting searches at set intervals, spammers try to inflate the importance of certain search terms to artificially increase the value terms related to their business.

A Word about Plural, singular, upper and lower case searches.

SEO's have to decide how they are going to deal with this issue. There are costs and benefits to combining query search numbers in different scenarios.

Sometimes the difference between singular and plural as far as meaning are slight and the words can be treated as the same. There combining results makes sense. Other times you have a different situation. Take for example the words "tap, taps, Tap, and TAP" Look at the results on Overture for the search term "tap" All of the following were found in the top ten sponsored listings.

Machine threading taps,
Tap / Rap support software
Beer taps
Tap Dancing
TAP A Stock
TAP Terminal Phone Numbers

These have nothing in common obviously, but this is the sort of imprecision that results from combining singular, plural, uppercase and lowercase keywords.

Sharpening up the fuzzy numbers and achieving proper deflation of the Overture keyword query counts.

Overture's STST shows 180,468 searches were conducted. This includedes the combined count of the search terms keyword, keywords, Keywords, KEYWORD and KEYWORDS - the combined total of all singular, plural, capitalized, upper and lower-case searches.

Then Divided by 30 you get 6,016 searches per day that meet this criteria.

Really though, they receive just 40-60 per day total

Here's how we did the deflating -

Fact: Overture's STST suggests a combined average of 6,016 page views took place between Overture and its major partners.

Fact: Each of these results pages lists between 10 and 40 URLs with descriptions.

Factor in Zipf's Law which states that traffic for any keyword on a search engine will be in proportion with its popularity rank.

Factor in how the title and description affect a user's likelihood to click on a Web site.

Factor Penn State University's findings that 55% of users check out one search result only, and 80% stop after looking at three results.

Factor in known elements leading to an estimated, but educated, conclusion as such...

Also consider that Wordtracker's Web site appears in the top-ten of Overture's results throughout their partner sites, this would suggest they would be getting about 10% of the total click-throughs from all major engines, pay-per-clicks, and directories.

This would be about 602 visitors per day.

But Wordtracker is currently ranked 1-10 on just around 25% of the major engines, directories and pay-per-click portals for the search term, keyword(s)... Calculate the estimate...

Ergo, the Wordtracker site should expect roughly 25% of this predicted click-through traffic, which is 150 visitors per day.

So when you compare the calculated estimate to the known facts…

Wordtracker receives 10-15 visitors per day for the search term keyword(s) Overtures STST overestimates this by a factor of ten.

Wordtracker estimates they receive 25% of the total traffic. This indicates that the total traffic is about 40-60 per day.

Wordtracker's service returns very different data.

Using the same search term(s) keyword(s), we pulled a result from the Wordtracker database (on January 13, 2004) that predicts searches per day conducted throughout the
major engines, directories and pay-per-clicks on the Internet.

The results were...

keyword - 93 searches (lower case, singular)
Keyword - 39 searches (Capitalized, singular)
keywords - 187 searches (lower case, plural)
Keywords - 184 searches (Capitalized, plural)
KEYWORD - 115 searches (UPPER case, singular)
Total Predicted Daily Searches for all Engines = 618

This number - 618 - Wordtracker took directly from results taken from Meta-engines, Metacrawler and Dogpile to get rid of results distortion.

Wordtracker further adjusted the number downward by filtering out keyword spam. Keyword spam is filtered out by finding search terms that are being searched at intervals too regular be coming from people.

If the searches are too regular they are assumed to be artificially generated and taken out before arriving at the final number - 618.

Considering even such dependent variables such as position, title, and description, we would predict a website to receive about 10% of the total traffic due to top-ten placement, targeted title and relevant link-description.

And finally, we should expect no better than 25% of that total traffic, due to the fact that Wordtracker has top-ten placement in only 25% of the relevant engines.

So the calculations show...

618 x 10% = 61.8 x 25% = approx 15 visits per day.

This jibes much more closely with Wordtracker's actual 10-15 per day average number of visits generated by the 5 variations of the search term keyword across all of the major engines.

Now what do you do? Who's numbers do you like?

It depends of course on what you're using them for. Are you trying to ascertain the relative popularity of a item or topic? Overture can help you with that and it's free. It paints a good broad brush picture of relative position between terms.

Take this example:

58,312 home insurance
57,315 home owner insurance
233,854 auto insurance
570,337 car insurance

You can learn that searches on car insurance are ten times more common than searches on home owner insurance. Plenty of information on relative position and popularity…

But... Don't go thinking that this search on car insurance represents some 570,337 possible customers.

Remember, Overture showed us 6016 hits per day for the term keyword. Wordtracker is getting 15 visitors. Do the math and figure out if the 15 visitors per day is worth the cost of the keyword.

Overture's pitch is appealing, but it's dangerous for you to believe. As I've just demonstrated their numbers are not properly adjusted to be useful. What you need is the most accurate information to make the most informed possible choice about keyword selection and purchase. That's what Wordtracker provides, accurate information about keywords.

This article was based on Demystifying The Radically Different Keyword Results Provided By Overture and Wordtracker ...because your online success depends on getting accurate keyword counts!

by Robin Nobles

Trying to crack the Search Engine Algorithms.

2006-05-08T10:48:00.001-10:00

Are you too focused on trying to crack the code?

It's very common for SEO's to focus too much on trying to figure out a search engines algorithm. They believe if they can crack the algo of Google for instance their page will be get a better rank.

Maybe, maybe not. But here's why I think this isn't the best mindset.

1. Things change.
These algorithms are changed from time to time. They are maintained and managed by humans who will flip a switch eventually and your crack will no longer be effective. You're chasing smoke.

2. Search Engines aren't your customers.
They aren't going to buy your products. Write your pages and content for the people whom you serve. People whom you want for customers.

3. Google has some number of factors that influence a sites rank, people usually think it's around 100. Spending a huge amount of time cracking the Algorithm is to focus on only one or two of a hundred factors. It's like going on a blind date, spending two hours picking out a pair of shoes meanwhile you have spinach in your teeth.

Take a different tack.

Isn't the real goal to achieve top rankings that remain high and translate into business and customers?

Don't lose the forest for the trees. If traffic doesn't turn into sales then what is the point? You're kissing your sister. You've spent all your time and energy making sure Google's algorithms like your site, and your users needs haven't been properly addressed.

5 ways to Achieve Top rankings without Chasing Algorithms.

1. Stop focusing on the Search engines. They aren't your audience. Write for your audience. In the longer term this will add value to your site that will translate to indelible traffic.

2. Remember the basics. Always use your main keyword phrase in your title tag. Use META description and keyword tags, link text, heading tags, and the like.

3. Each page should have it's own unique tags and be focused on a keyword. One per page.

4. Write your content well. Content and Context are crucial. Keep it new. Keep it coming. Always remember to be mindful of your keyword phrase, synonyms, related words and surrounding text. Try using ThemeMaster if you need help with this. It's a great program.

5. On Page and Off page factors are important. Focusing on one at the expense of the other will end up hurting you. Find the balance. On-page factors to consider are your tags, body text, prominence, relevance, and the like. Off-page factors include link popularity and link reputation (what those inbound links "say" about your Web page when they link to you).

Is search engine research important? Yes. It's critical.
By way of an example: Earlier this year pages began falling in Gooogle's ranking and SEO's everywhere were trying to figure out how to preserve their hard won rankings.

Doing our research, we learned that it was a compliancy issue. With a pretty simple solution.
Make sure you use a DOCTYPE tag and an ISO statement at the top of every Web page.

For example:
If you didn't know about this compliancy issue you could have waste a lot of time trying to chase the algorithms and end up doing more harm than good.

Keep doing your research and stay current on the search industry.

In conclusion.

If you spend 100 hours cracking the Google's algorithm that may translate into x number of visitors per day. In those same 100 hours you could have written unique, high quality content for many sites that generates more overall traffic. Put people above search engines and you'll increase your traffic.

This article was based on Chasing the Search Engines' Algorithms. . . Should you or shouldn't you? By Robin Nobles

Growing Your Online Business

2006-04-22T11:27:00.000-10:00

Marketing Times, an SMEI publication, recently posted an article entitled Generating Business Online which covers a variety of concepts to help entrepreneurs grow an Internet-based business. The topics covered include developing an online marketing plan, tips on website design, content development and search engine optimization.

The complete article is avalable on publisher's website and can be downloaded by clicking here.

How to Create Free, High-Quality Backlinks

2006-04-19T21:04:00.000-10:00

By Jeremy Hoover

Building links and backlinks is part of marketing your site. But the truth is--if all you do is context-less links, the search engines will eventually downgrade your site in their engines.

This is how you should create backlinks:

1. Write articles (with a live hyperlink to your site in your resource box) and submit to at least 3 directories, including EzineArticles.com. This will create backlinks at at least 3 sites. Then, approach webmasters and website owners about posting your article on their website. Make a list of the top sites in your industry and work down, contacting five per day. Many won't be interested, but those who are can really help you. Not only will you get another backlink to your site, but you might also build a strategic business relationship.

2. Comment at blogs--but make sure you are commenting with quality information. Do not blog-spam! Most blogs will let you leave a link to your website when you comment on their blog. This will also generate backlinks to your site when the search engines spider these blogs.

3. Post in forums. But follow the same advice as above--don't just post "Nice comment," or spam the forum with something dumb. Focus on answering questions with quality information or asking good, quality questions. You can get a sense for these by reading the forum a bit first before you start posting.

All three methods create backlinks for you because you can leave your website link (live and hyperlinked) in each case. This also creates passive traffic for you. Since your focus is on posting/writing quality info (adding value), people will be attracted to you as a marketer of interest and link through to your website.

Who knows? Maybe they'll even buy from you....

Change your life and business for the better at Success University. Jeremy will help you.

Read more of Jeremy's marketing tips at his blog.

Over 125 (Legitimate) Link Building Strategies

2006-04-12T18:44:00.000-10:00

by Robin Nobles, Eric Ward, and John Alexander

In search engine optimization, “off page” factors have become more and more important as they relate to rankings. In particular, solid link popularity can literally make or break a site with the search engines.

Before we go any further, what is “link popularity”? In very simplistic terms, link popularity refers to the number and quality of the incoming links that are pointing to your site. These other sites consider your site important enough to link to. So, in the engine’s view, your site is considered important as well. What is meant by “link popularity” can get much more complex, which is discussed further in this article.

However, one of the most difficult areas of SEO is building link popularity. Why? Because the engines don’t want “artificially created” (or useless) links, so there are no easy ways to build link popularity. The days of link farms and huge link exchange programs are over. Try those strategies now and you can easily find yourself booted out of an engine.

Rather, the engines want links from authoritative sites, or links from sites that share the same focus as your site.

But besides the link popularity you gain by getting an authoritative site to link to you, you also gain additional visibility for your Web site. So, when working on building link popularity, don’t forget those two basic reasons for requesting links.

The Purpose of this Article

Because building link popularity is one of the most difficult and time consuming aspects of search engine marketing, we decided to join forces with each other and with other search engine optimizers to create a list of legitimate ways you can build link popularity for your site.

When looking through this list, you may find strategies that are subject to abuse. If you use them as recommended in this article, you will have no problems. Abuse them, and you’re treading in potentially dangerous waters.

Stephen Baker with Fast said one of the most memorable statements I’ve heard as it relates to what the engines like or don’t like to see. He said:

“Our position is pretty straight forward...it's not the technique that we are concerned about, it's the intention.”

So, always keep that statement in mind when you consider linking or any other strategies for your Web site. Analyze your intentions, and if you wouldn’t mind an engine knowing what you’re doing, your intentions are okay.

Now that we’ve gotten the preliminaries out of the way, let's get down to business: learning ways to increase the link popularity of our sites. To write this article, we went to professional search engine optimizers for their ideas. After each strategy, we briefly attributed it to the SEO who sent it to us, and then we provided a list of all contributors along with their companies and URL’s at the end of the article.

Keep in mind that these strategies aren’t in any particular order. Also, keep in mind that though it isn’t always stated explicitly, we’re always referring to “related” and “important” or “authoritative” sites as our targets.

Start with the Basics:

Before you begin link seeking, you might want to read the article, “A Linking-Campaign Primer”: http://www.ericward.com/articles/primer.html. (Eric Ward, President, NetPOST and URLwire)

This is by far the oldest and best-known method of improving link popularity. Basically you e-mail or contact the Webmaster of a site that is complementary but generally not competitive to your own. You ask them to link to your site while outlining the benefits of doing so. You would generally offer to link back to them in exchange for this courtesy. Be sure you have developed genuine content on your Web site of interest to the trading partner. Explain the advantages to them and to their visitors by providing a link to your content. Tell them where the link on your site will be or set the link up in advance with the stipulation that you'll be glad to leave it there if they'll add a link to you in kind. Take the time to look over their site and then suggest where a link to you might be appropriate. Most importantly, personalize your e-mails! You must distinguish yourself from all the spam they receive daily. If the link is particularly important to you, call them personally or write them a letter or send a fax to show them you're serious. (Brent Winters of First Place Software)

Here's the simple means to find those good links. Go to the major search engines. Search for your target keywords. Look at the pages that appear in the top results. Now visit those pages and ask the site owners if they will link to you. Not everyone will, especially sites that are extremely competitive with you. However, there will be non-competitive sites that will link to you -- especially if you offer to link back. Why is this system good? By searching for your target keywords, you'll find the pages that the search engines themselves are telling you are good, as evidenced by the fact that they rank well. Hence, links from these pages are more important -- and important for the terms you are interested in -- than links from other pages. (Danny Sullivan with Search Engine Watch)

When asking for a link:

ALWAYS have a link already put on your own site BEFORE you ask for a link in return and give the location of the link. It's harder to say no if you can provide the URL of where their link is.

ALWAYS give them the exact link text to use, even going so far as to put it in HTML so they can just cut/paste it onto their page.

MAKE SURE they actually have a links page!

GIVE THEM as much information as needed in order to make it easy for them to link to you. If they have a big site that's divided into sections, give them the exact URL of where your site would fit in. Then, provide the HTML for the link to your site. (Robin Nobles of Search Engine Workshops, Online Search Engine Marketing Courses, and the TNT-Guides for Successful Web Sites.

Use voice instead of e-mail to reciprocate and try contacting people by voice instead of e-mail. More people are inclined to respond to your request when you introduce yourself by phone and let them know that you were visiting their site. Ask permission to link to their site. In return, you might state that a link back is appreciated but not required. Assuming they say yes, then you simply link up to them and confirm by e-mail once you have confirmed. Warm personal voice contact goes a lot further than a cold e-mail or even a warm e-mail letter. (John Alexander with Search Engine Workshops, TNT-Guides for Successful Web Sites, and Beyond-SEO .

Pre-qualify the people you solicit for reciprocal links. They must have links from other sites like yours, and they must have the ability to make changes to their own site. If they don’t respond to your solicitation, at most send ONE second request. Otherwise move on and take their site off of yours. Send a thank you note if they give you a reciprocal link. (Gary Woods with Beautiful Santa Barbara Real Estate)

Search for sites that rank high for search terms that are important to you, then look through the search results for sites that do not compete with you. These sites should be high on your list of link targets. Piggy back on their high ranking. (Eric Ward, President, NetPOST and URLwire)

Check the link popularity of your competitors, and find out who are linking to them. Contact those Web sites, and ask them to link to you in return for a reciprocal link. (Robin Nobles of Search Engine Workshops, Online Search Engine Marketing Courses, and the TNT-Guides for Successful Web Sites.

Search the sites of the people who have linked to you for other possible link partners. (Gary Woods with Beautiful Santa Barbara Real Estate)

Find URLs that are currently linking to one or more of your pages and ask the appropriate Webmaster if they might also find value in other pages on your site (that you might suggest). (Mike Adams, the Email Doctor)

Manually search for Web sites that have the same theme as your Web site. When requesting a link, make sure to highlight what your site has to offer their visitors and why they should link to it. A compelling case will increase your success. (Becky Thompson with Inter@ctivate Inc.)

Review any Web site to which you want to link *before* writing to its Webmaster asking for a link. Like all SEO, do it manually. Automating the task is asking for trouble, especially if you haven't reviewed the site before asking for the link. (Gil Sery with Search Engine Optimization Pros)

If someone says they can not or do not wish to link to your site, I would still ask their permission to link to them. Instead of sending them a confirmation, try sending them a pleasant thank you for permission to link to their Web site. Don’t be surprised if they DO link back. (John Alexander with Search Engine Workshops, TNT-Guides for Successful Web Sites, and Beyond-SEO .

If you've moved your site and you're asking those who have linked to you to change to your new URL, give them as much information as possible. I have over 300 pages on my personal site, but I still have people who will write and tell me to change their link to: http://www.mynewwebsite.com. Yet, they don't tell me their old URL (so I can easily do a search), and they don't tell me which of those 300 pages their link exists on. Do I have the time to dig through those 300 pages to find their old link? (Robin Nobles of Search Engine Workshops, Online Search Engine Marketing Courses, and the TNT-Guides for Successful Web Sites.

Sample Link Exchange Letter

Be very clear with your request for reciprocal linking. After you have thoroughly researched a potential site to ensure they are appropriate and actually do have links to other sites, consider the following:

Start with a very brief description of your site's content and how it relates to their site.

Provide the exact URL of their page you think the link would be most beneficial. Show them that you've actually visited the site and given some thought to the link.

Finally, give the HTML code for the link so the Webmaster can cut and paste it directly into his page code. That gives you some control over the link placement and lets you include your keywords into the link text. (Terry Plank with Search Engine Marketing Consultants)

Take care in crafting your reciprocal links letter. Make sure it's the best it can be before sending it out. Remember, you're asking for a favor (a mutually beneficial favor, but a favor nonetheless), so be polite and respectful in your letter. Otherwise, you'll get nowhere fast. (Gil Sery with Search Engine Optimization Pros)

Create a “Link Exchange Letter,” requesting a link exchange with your site, to each of the sites you have noted in your list. Make sure you’ve come up with at least 50 good quality content, non-competitive sites with a decent PageRank score of their own to e-mail. (Chris Genge with 1st on the List Promotion Inc.)

Example of a Link Exchange Letter from Eric Ward:

Hi
, my name is Eric Ward.

Regarding your AdoptionSolutions.com site at http://www.adoptionsolutions.com/

This month I'm helping the Hallmark Channel (cable TV) announce their new Web site about adoption. The site is the companion site for their real-life TV series "Adoption Stories," which premiers this month (June).

Details about the site are below. Please feel free to feature or link to this new content in any way you feel appropriate.

By chance is your adoption news section at http://www.adoptionsolutions.com/general/adopt_topics.htm a good fit for it?

Also, if you have any questions or need anything feel free to contact me at eric@ericward.com or (865) 637-2438.

I'm a real person, not a link request bot :) :)

Best wishes,

Eric Ward
on behalf of The Hallmark Channel
Hallmark Channel Site Announcement
----------------------------------
Hallmark Channel Adoption Stories http://www.hallmarkchannel.com/adoption/

Launched in conjunction with this month's premier of the original series about adoption on The Hallmark cable TV Channel. The Web version of Hallmark Channel's series about adoption seeks user input to help end the myths surrounding the adoption process. Share your experiences of an adoption and help others understand the process, the pitfalls and the rewards. Every week, follow the stories of real people as they seek to enrich their lives and fulfill their dreams through adoption. Go online and you can help end the myths surrounding the adoption process.

(End of sample letter)

The above example is for a non-reciprocal link request, and it resulted in a link being obtained for my client. It could be changed easily to make it a reciprocal link request by adding one sentence that says where you gave them a link. (Eric Ward, President, NetPOST and URLwire)

What Should you Put on Link Pages?

Create a link page on your Web site that gives other Web sites permission to link to yours. Make it very easy for them to include you by providing cut and paste HTML code. Incorporate your keyphrases into the linking code. Create small banners or buttons for this purpose as well. (Nancy Nelson with Search by Design)

Put a description under each link on your links page. You don't want the search engines thinking of you as a link farm. (Gil Sery with Search Engine Optimization Pros)

Complete Linking Strategies:

Complete Strategy #1:

Here is my list, in order of tactical importance:

First, build a content rich site, narrow in scope [say half a dozen high potential keywords, with a smattering of lessor important but still related kw's].

Then, contact other sites that have the same scope as yours does, and ask for a reciprocal link [after you have already linked to them, of course!]. If you build a site that is content rich, informative, and above all else has unique content, then all your peers will beat a path to your door, asking you for a link!

Get your site listed at Yahoo [yes, it does force you to yank out your wallet, but it IS one of the best links you can get]. Do the research necessary to find the most appropriate category [which is where the Link Relevancy comes from], and get that title and description optimized!

Get into the ODP. Do the same research as you did at Yahoo for the best category.

Find out which of the thousands of specialty SE's and directories that your site is a good fit for, and submit to them.

After you are done with 1 - 5, build another content rich site, and on this one, concentrate on your next batch of kw's. Cross link the home pages. Repeat.

Even though blogging is all the rage these days, I think it will go the way of link farms in the not-too-distant future, especially if/when the SE's determine that it is just another case of spamming. We are staying away from it, and concentrating on the 6 tactics above.

Of much less importance is cross linking within each of your individual sites. I have gotten away from heavy cross linking, relying instead on good site maps [which addresses spiderability, not link pop]. (Rocky Rawstern with 7th Wave)

Complete Strategy #2:

Like Links:

Step 1: Identify useful linkages. If you're a Web developer, break your clients (or willing contacts from the industry) into relevant linked groups: e.g. realtors, travel and tourism, technology companies.

Step 2: category-page.html. Build a link list for each group (one for realtors, one for travel and tourism, etc.), plain html, listing a keyword-relevant title for each description which links to the site for each client, with one or two paragraphs about the site. Example:

"Travel accommodations and resorts in Australia"

Save this page as say, travel-sites.html, and perhaps to remember where it lives easily, and make it easily updateable, save it in a directory like www.yourclientsite.com/accommodations/travel-sites.html

Step 3: Make each of the pages different within each site.

Now apply your site template for each site in the list, to that raw html page, (in other words cut and paste the list into a blank version of one of your existing pages for each site and save it as /accommodations/travel-sites.html) so that you have different look, feel and byte size, for each of the pages built, in line with the look of each site. This will stop most SE's viewing pages as duplicate content when in fact what you're validly doing is provided useful related links to other resources on the Web.

Step 4: Make a site-map.html. Build a site map within every site in the above list, if you haven't already. In each site, have the site map linking to every internal page, set out like the one above, with at least a one paragraph description of what is on the page, with relevant keywords, which is also useful to humans. Hyperlink the main keyword/phrase to the pages within your site. Also include a link to the above link page (/accommodations/travel-sites.html) which lists all the other related sites. Save the site map as something like site-map.html.

Step 5: Make a link to the site map from each home page.

On your home (index/default) page include a link to the site-map.html page.

Step 6: Submit to search engines. Submit your home page to major SE's if it hasn't been submitted in a while. So now you have a link to a site map on your home page, with that site map listing one paragraph descriptions and hyperlinks to all the pages in your site, including your new accommodations/travel-sites.html (which now looks just like the rest of your pages in the site).

This simple 6-step process is a popularity and relevancy boost for ALL the sites you have on the travel-sites.html list. Firstly, from the home page on each site, SE spiders and humans now have access to relevant descriptive links to all pages in your site and other related sites. They have the addition of some useful "related resource" information within the site content using the travel-sites.html page. And most importantly, they have "x" more relevant sites as incoming links. If all the sites are full of valid and unique topic-related content, you've built a nice little interlinked network of sites for very little effort. And with a resubmission to the major SE's of this new content, you should see some increased results within 3 months when checking link relevancy. (Carl Watney with Unearthed)

Complete Strategy #3:

Begin a Link Exchange Campaign to create high quality content, high PageRank links to your site by utilizing the following steps, in order:

1. Create a links or resources page on your site

2. Establish a list of at least 50 related but non-competing, high quality content sites with a high Google PageRank that you would like to exchange links with by doing the following:

Download Google toolbar (http://toolbar.google.com) to be able to establish PageRank grading for the sites that come up in the following search results

Do searches on Google for:

- terms that will show search results displaying sites that relate to your own site, but are not direct competitors

Check out these sites, one by one, beginning with the ones listed first in the search results, for quality content, non-competitiveness, and Web master’s e-mail address, and note down in a list the sites that meet these criterion, recording as well the site’s title and description from the homepage source code

- terms that will show search results displaying sites that directly compete with your own site

- terms that will show search results displaying sites that directly compete with your own site

Beginning with the ones listed first in the Google search results, check out each site with a linking tool (e.g. of tool, go to http://chatologica.com.) Click on Web Site Popularity Check at the bottom of the page to establish what sites link to theirs, and make a list of these linking sites. Then check out each of these sites that are linked to your direct competitor for quality content, non-competitiveness, and Web master’s e-mail address, and note down on the same list you began in b., the sites that meet these criterion, recording as well the site’s title and description from the homepage source code. (Chris Genge with 1st on the List Promotion Inc.)

Who Should You Target?

Inktomi's link analysis program policy is that sites that link to its relevant topic category page on Yahoo! receive improved hub factor rankings because of Yahoo!'s popularity. A reciprocal link with Yahoo! is even more beneficial. Get your site listed with Yahoo!; it is easier today than before with the Business Express option. (Detlev Johnson with The Ascendant Group)

While you're at it, link back to the search engines. Does it help? I don't know. But what if it does? What if the search engines check if your site leads back to them? What if they give 1% boost if you do? Would 1% matter if everyone else had 99% relevancy and you got an extra 1%? Hmmm, something to ponder. I always link every important site back to the major search engines and directories as a little thank you gesture. (Michael Campbell with Internet Marketing Secrets)

Get a link in an appropriate category from an About.com Guidesite. The popularity of About and the extent of their quality links positions the network as a mandatory stop in a marketing campaign. Also, make sure to thoroughly annotate links on your Web site with targeted keyword phrases. This will aid Google and other engines in their partial indexing. (Marshall Simmonds of About.com)

Your homepage is not the only part of your site that you can get links for. If you offer an online newsletter, there are directories just for newsletters you can get links from. If your site has multimedia files, there are multimedia search engines you can submit to. If you have other files, like .pdf files or even image files, there are search engines you can get links from. (Eric Ward, President, NetPOST and URLwire)

Go to Google and search for "submit a link" AND "put your keyword phrase here." You'll be shown a list of sites that have link pages on them in your keyword area, and some of them may be worth writing to. "Submit a URL," "add a URL," etc., will work too. (Elbert Flores of Position Research)

Think in terms of related fields as opposed to actual competition. Are there any organizations or associations connected with your industry? What about educational establishments? Publications? News sites? (Robin Nobles of Search Engine Workshops, Online Search Engine Marketing Courses, and the TNT-Guides for Successful Web Sites.

How many links do you need pointing to your site? More than your competition. :) (Stephen Mahaney of Planet Ocean)

Find as many themed directories to submit to as possible. Make sure the directory is already in Google, has a good PR, and doesn’t use dynamic script in the address. Think about your theme. If you are a marketing firm, look for marketing directories/hubs/portals/vortals, do the same for business to business or b2b. If you are niched or focused on one aspect of marketing, then also look to that for your directories. You can probably stretch it to advertising directories. Be creative but stick with your theme. Once you are listed, it’s good to have a page on your site that you use to feed the spiders: a “Where we can be found on the Web” page. Link directly to the page you can be found on. (Debra Paynter with Promotion Strategies)

Ask your upstream or downstream suppliers to link to you and you to them. If you are a wholesaler, you don't sell to the public, only to retailers. List your top 10 retailers as a reward to them. Same with retailers, link to your main wholesalers, unless they have to remain a secret for some reason. Advertising agencies and printing shops can link to their customers and vice versa. (Michael Campbell with Internet Marketing Secrets)

Paying for a link at Overture.com (formerly GoTo.com) that is not in the top five in the search results is, in most cases, a waste. Results of six and lower are not made available to the Overture partner sites, which collectively have millions more users than Overture does alone. Like AOL, for example. If the cost increase is just a few cents, get in the top five, and your site could be found across all of Overture's partner sites rather than only at Overture.com. (Eric Ward, President, NetPOST and URLwire)

Download Google's Toolbar (http://toolbar.google.com) to ensure that inbound links are from decent sites, with a minimum of 3 out of 10 on the toolbar. (Dixon Jones with Receptional)

Link quality simply means how well positioned are the pages that link to you. There are also boosts and penalties involved. If you are linked to by a spammy link farm, you get a penalty. If you are linked to by a directory like Yahoo, LookSmart, or Dmoz you get a boost. What about the hundreds of free directories? Yes, they all help. In my Vault, I list about 80 search resources. Dozens of them are directories. Take a few days and MANUALLY submit your site to every directory that will take it. I was surprised to find several directories for my own city. Regional directories can often supply plenty of incoming links. Every relevant link helps. (Michael Campbell with Internet Marketing Secrets)

Go after authoritative sites. Look for vertical engines and directories in your topic areas. Look for popular sites. One or two authoritative sites linking back to you will do you more good than 1,000 irrelevant links. Visit Search Engine Guide and Beaucoup for a listing of vertical engines and directories. (Robin Nobles of Search Engine Workshops, Online Search Engine Marketing Courses, and the TNT-Guides for Successful Web Sites.

Work on building rapport with other Webmasters. By building up a “working rapport” with other local Webmasters or affiliates, there are lots of ways that you can mutually benefit by trading links with several similarly themed sites, which are non-competing. Once you start working with other Webmasters, it's surprising what synergies may develop. Remember to give your very best to your fellow Webmasters as these relationships are win/win. (John Alexander with Search Engine Workshops, TNT-Guides for Successful Web Sites, and Beyond-SEO .

I am not a fan of reciprocal links unless they are complimentary. Portals and directories will naturally work better. My logic with outbound links is, “You have already lost the client for today, Dixon, so get a better product tomorrow.”) (Dixon Jones with Receptional)

Become a Content Provider:

The bottom line is the easiest most obvious answer. It's also the toughest to do. Give people a reason to link to you. Think about it. Sites get linked to for a reason: usually if they provide the most information or the best resources on a particular topic. Is there any reason WHY people should link to your site? How is your content? Even if you are not a writer, ask the writers if you can use their stuff. The answer is usually yes. The writer gets a link from you. And you get great content. Now people will start linking to you. (Michael Campbell with Internet Marketing Secrets)

We all want to get on the top ranking sites listed in Google with few, if any outbound links. But what if they don’t have a links program in place? Here’s one way to get yourself linked from these choice sites. The top sites in a keyword category often don’t have a links program, but they do have an e-zine or content library on their site. So... Write a 300-500 word article on a topic of real interest to their target market and submit it to the Webmaster, as well as to other e-zines reaching the same target audience. Include in your article sig file (or credit box) your site link and an enticing description. In other words, give the site owner something they can use that delivers real value to their constituents. By providing them with an asset, you’re reaching them in a new way that goes beyond a simple link request. A couple of notes:

Don’t market in your article. Deliver real value instead.

Before writing anything, subscribe to their e-zine first or go through their site content. Fill any gap you see - create something new that they don’t already have on file

Market in your sig file only – and be sure to include your full site URL! (Scott Smith)

Become an "expert" in your particular field and write related articles. Market those articles to online content providers. Be sure to include your byline at the end of your article, including your name, company name, and URL's, and make sure to use appropriate keyword-containing link text. Visit this URL for a list of places that accept articles: http://www.coachmaria.com/articles/articlebanks.html (Robin Nobles of Search Engine Workshops, Online Search Engine Marketing Courses, and the TNT-Guides for Successful Web Sites.

I am hopeful that http://www.marketing-strategy.info is a good idea for link building – giving up “brand” in favor of white labeling. How does white labeling work? If you have a good product or content but a weak brand, then why not give up the brand altogether and concentrate on your content? Focus on why a human would follow the link that the other site has made for you – a compelling reason. That will usually come down to superior content. MarketLeap.com allows you to “brand” their stuff with your logo, but it involves a link to do it. (Dixon Jones with Receptional)

Write a testimonial for a product or service that you particularly like in your topic area. Many companies will put testimonials throughout their site, with links back to the company providing the testimonial. (Robin Nobles of Search Engine Workshops, Online Search Engine Marketing Courses, and the TNT-Guides for Successful Web Sites.

A very effective strategy to gain quality links as well as traffic is to license content from your site for free in exchange for a link back to you. For example, we encourage anyone to post individual articles or the entire MarketPosition newsletter on their own Web sites so long as they properly credit us for the material and link back to http://www.webposition.com/ or http://www.marketposition.com/. (Brent Winters of First Place Software)

If you're asking someone for a testimonial, tell the Webmaster to whom you're writing that you're willing to put a link to their site under their testimonial if they're willing to reciprocate. That way, everyone wins. Actually you win twice! First, because you have a good testimonial for your product/service and second, you've increased your link popularity -- all with one link! Make sure that the link under the testimonial opens in a new browser window so that you don't lose that visitor to the linked site. (Gil Sery with Search Engine Optimization Pros)

Create teaser articles. See if you can get the first third of the article listed on their site with a keyword rich text link leading back to your site where they can find the rest of the article. Be sure you get the bio with an additional link to your homepage as well. (Debra Paynter with Promotion Strategies)

Offer something for free (such as a downloadable report), and then ask for a link back to your site if the person finds value in the free item. This works because you're giving away something of value, and when people find it valuable, they're likely to reciprocate. (Mike Adams, the Email Doctor)

Spend time building valuable content on your site through different keyword windows. As you do, more and more people will begin linking to your site, as they're linking to your valuable content. (Robin Nobles of Search Engine Workshops, Online Search Engine Marketing Courses, and the TNT-Guides for Successful Web Sites.

Offer yourself as an expert. Contact editors and writers and let them know you are available to be used as a source in exchange for a link and always push for the bio. (Debra Paynter with Promotion Strategies)

Have an easy way for people to link back to an article or content if they like it. Example: an icon that generates the HTML code they can copy and insert into their own HTML pages. (Mike Adams, the Email Doctor)

A sure fire way to increase link popularity is to have a high quality newsletter or article section on your site. If you have good content on your site, people will want to link to you to provide their visitors useful information. You can take this approach a step further by offering your article or newsletter to other sites with the condition that they link back to your site. This is especially good when you can get a high quality site to use your linked story on their site. (Chris Churchill with NetMechanic)

Use emotional content to give people a reason to link to you. A site built on a single theme may often benefit from using content which employs:

unique theme-related information which appeals to the emotions

original and appropriate humor

content of extremely useful nature (references materials)

original cartoon work

animation that appeals to the senses or tells a short story

something with an uncommon emotional element

Web sites that employ emotional elements often find that other sites with a similar theme will automatically link up to them just because of that emotional appeal. (John Alexander with Search Engine Workshops, TNT-Guides for Successful Web Sites, and Beyond-SEO .

Leave your Links Everywhere!

Host your own affiliate program on your own server. Sure it takes more work: you have to set it up, administer it and pay out the affiliate checks. However, if you use an affiliate service, such as Commission Junction, the links point to the affiliate service and get redirected to your site. If you host your own affiliate program, all those affiliate links point directly to you. You can find affiliate programs, some of which may be free at The CGI Resource Index (http://cgi.resourceindex.com/Programs_and_Scripts/Perl/
Website_Promotion/Affiliate_Programs/). (Bill Gentry with Look Sharp Designs)

Look for linking opportunities within discussion lists related to your site’s topic, but do so carefully. Try YahooGroups, which has thousands of topical discussion groups on almost any topic. I often send short posts to appropriate lists with links for my clients’ sites, and if you do so properly, it is very effective. (Eric Ward, President, NetPOST and URLwire)

Anywhere you can leave your link, do it: in chat rooms, guest books, etc. You would be surprised at where your link turns up on search engines when you start doing this. And if the SE has found it, then it adds to your link popularity. (Don Hammond at DonOmite.com)

Now that Google indexes the content of newsgroups, if you post to related newsgroups, be sure to use a signature line with your link and appropriate link text. (Robin Nobles of Search Engine Workshops, Online Search Engine Marketing Courses, and the TNT-Guides for Successful Web Sites.

Ask a question (FAQ) and include a link. Post questions on forums that allow links. Post into the newsgroups. Include an e-mail tail tag. Put it on your T-shirt. Include it as a sticker with each shipped order. Tattoo it on your forehead. Tell your mom. Get a vanity license plate...etc etc etc :-) (Michael Campbell with Internet Marketing Secrets)

The number one way I've built link popularity is by offering a good information product or service, establishing a good conversion on the site, and then getting super affiliates. I've found that getting super affiliates multiplies the number of regular affiliates I'm able to get. All of this leads to hundreds of inbound links. It takes a very disciplined approach, but one I've found very effective. (Jon Keel with Improved Results)

The last remaining major free directory is The Netscape Open Directory. What most folks don’t realize is that you can have multiple links to your site’s content as long as that content is a match for the category you are submitting to. (Eric Ward, President, NetPOST and URLwire)

I'm surprised at how many people don't have their link in their signature line of their e-mail. (Don Hammond at DonOmite.com)

Be Creative and Visible!

One of our most successful methods for increasing link popularity is to offer “awards” (a gif that links back to our site). We create a strong incentive for the awardee to place the award on their site because the awardee perceives a benefit – he gets to tell the world that another site recognized his site as a quality site. One way we do this at NetMechanic is to offer “Star Performer” awards to Web sites that get 4 or more stars on their site when they run our validator tool over their site. This tells people visiting the awardee’s site, that the award-winning site is a professional site run by individuals interested in quality assurance and providing a good visitor experience. Remember to make it easy for awardees to place the award gif on their site. Have the snippet of code available so all they have to do is cut and paste it into their Web page. Even if your site doesn’t support an award, offer visitors a gif to put on their site. You’d be surprised how many people are willing to do something like this for a site they like. (Chris Churchill with NetMechanic)

Build a stand alone search engine or directory. Add your own sites, your clients’ sites, your affiliate sites, your own sites that are affiliates for others, etc. It's a great way to legitimately build link popularity for all your sites, even if they are unrelated. Some programs will even allow you to supplement your results with ODP. You can find search engine and directory programs at The CGI Resource Index (http://cgi.resourceindex.com/Programs_and_Scripts/Perl/Link_
Indexing_Scripts/) and The PHP Resource Index (http://php.resourceindex.com/Complete_Scripts/Link_Management
/Directories and_Portals/). You can also build a stand-alone themed search engine or directory, with a link to your own site. (Bill Gentry with Look Sharp Designs)

If someone wants to interview you for an article in your related field, say YES immediately! That person will list your qualifications with a link back to your site as part of your introduction. Plus, you’ll get added visibility and credibility for your Web site and online business. (Robin Nobles of Search Engine Workshops, Online Search Engine Marketing Courses, and the TNT-Guides for Successful Web Sites.

Although joining a banner exchange program would probably not improve your link popularity, you can improve your link popularity by starting your own banner exchange service. The concept of these services is that people sign up and agree to add special links to your Web site. Your server will then display banner ads on their pages. In exchange, you agree to automatically display a certain number of their banners on your own site and other Web sites within your banner exchange network. (Brent Winters of First Place Software)

If you have your own server, or if you can work out a deal with your ISP for extra IP addresses, register URLs and point them to the extra IP addresses and do the same thing described above. URL registration has gotten so inexpensive these days that cost should not even be a consideration.(Ron Gotcher with GotcherLaw.com)

If you offer a contest or sweepstakes on your site, you can get free links to it from the many contest and sweepstakes directories on the Web. (Eric Ward, President, NetPOST and URLwire)

Offer a small discount to anyone who agrees to post a graphic pointing to your site on theirs. Anyone who goes through that link will get a discount off your goods or services, and you'll get added link popularity. (Robin Nobles of Search Engine Workshops, Online Search Engine Marketing Courses, and the TNT-Guides for Successful Web Sites.

I have found that it is hard to handle the “mechanics” of building link popularity pages. It is very time consuming to add the links to a client’s site and follow up by sending an e-mail to the site that you would like a link back from. So I have developed a dynamic database link system whereby the client can add the link, logo, and description on their own without having to know any code. We also created for them the template e-mail that they can send to the other site’s Webmaster. This saves the client money and enables them to take over this function instead of me having to handle this task. (Steve Wilson with Worldsites.network) (Author’s Note: Make sure that the template e-mail is personalized for each recipient in some way.)

Host a Top Site. Top Sites can work for almost any topic. A Top Site is run by a cgi program. There are several ways to configure the program, but most rank by the amount of incoming traffic a site sends. Here's how it works. A site signs up for a Top Site. They add your link or button with their top site id in the link on their site. The link points to your Top Site via the cgi program. The referring site gets credit for the visitor. The more visitors that site sends, the better it ranks. An added benefit is that all the outgoing links from your Top Site go through your cgi-bin and are redirected to the site. So if you are worried about sharing too much PageRank (which I wouldn't worry about myself), you won't be sharing it by using a Top Site. You can find Top Site programs, some of which may be free at The PHP Resource Index (http://php.resourceindex.com/Complete_Scripts/Website_
Promotion/Top_Sites/) and The CGI Resource Index (http://cgi.resourceindex.com/Programs_and_Scripts/Perl/
Website_Promotion/Top_Sites/). You can also use the Top Site to generate some advertising revenue. Peruse other categories at the above sites to find advertising programs. (Bill Gentry with Look Sharp Designs)

Do you have a members-only Web site? Offer site owners free membership if they link to you. (Scott Smith)

Host your own Web Ring. All the links on every Web ring banner point to your site and redirect to member sites, your site if you host it. You can find Web Ring programs at The PHP Resource Index (http://php.resourceindex.com/Complete_Scripts/Website
_Promotion/Web_Rings/) and The CGI Resource Index (http://cgi.resourceindex.com/Programs_and_Scripts/Perl/
Website_Promotion/Web_Rings/). However, don't join a Web ring for link popularity purposes as all the links point to the ring server and redirect to member sites. However, they can be useful for building traffic. (Bill Gentry with Look Sharp Designs)

Do you have a discussion board? Invite other related sites to link to it. (Scott Smith)

If you give away something on your site, don't forget to try and get a listing from the sites that list sites that give stuff away, such as The Free Site (http://www.thefreesite.com). (Bill Gentry with Look Sharp Designs)

Write a review of a Web site, then tell the site owner it's theirs to post in exchange for a link. (Scott Smith)

If an established and respected writer, like Robin Nobles, asks you for a contribution for an article he or she is writing, always say yes (if you have the knowledge)! Established writers get published in a lot of places that you can't. The writers will always give you credit and may give you a link in the article as well. (Bill Gentry with Look Sharp Designs)

Especially for B2B Sites:

A few suggestions to increase external link popularity to B2B sites:

- incorporate the requirement to link to your site in all contracts with:

- resellers
- partners
- subcontractors
- vendors

Remember to ask them to put the link on a page that is accessible to search engine robots (not behind password control). It should appear on a page already showing up in results. (Barbara Coll with WebMamma.com)

Submit technical papers to Web sites that are either interested in the subject or offer technical papers for a fee (like bitpipe.com). (Barbara Coll with WebMamma.com)

Increase the amount of case study, technical studies (i.e. non-product or sell oriented) material on your Web site and point industry editors to it as fodder for their articles. (Barbara Coll with WebMamma.com)

Apply to awards programs. For example: -> Windows & .NET Magazines Reader's Choice Awards. Any company who sells technology products is eligible to nominate their product(s) using the form at the link below. Top 100 Winners published in September, but deadline for nominations is April 5th. Entry is free. http://www.winnetmag.com/mediakit/editorial/Readers-Choice
-Form.doc (Barbara Coll with WebMamma.com)

Make sure that all employee speaking engagements at tradeshows, etc. are listed in the online brochure for the show and ask for a live link back to your site. (Barbara Coll with WebMamma.com)

Submit your site to all online industry and general business directories you can find. Consider paying for a few. For example, www.business.com, www.allbusiness.com, www.yellowpages.com, www.dmoz.org. (Barbara Coll with WebMamma.com)

Implement small money (or large if you have it) buys on Pay-per-click engines like Overture.com and FindWhat.com. (Barbara Coll with WebMamma.com)

Pay to have your home page spidered by search engine robots for search databases like Inktomi (through www.positiontech.com) and Lycos. Make sure that page is well optimized before you start. (Barbara Coll with WebMamma.com)

Why not hire a summer student to go looking for places to submit your site and to clean up (verify accuracy) of current links. To find all sites currently pointing to your site, go to Google and enter link:www.domainname.com. Keep in mind that 'link farms,' a whole page of only links, do nothing to increase your link popularity. (Barbara Coll with WebMamma.com)

Off the Net Ideas:

Make News! Draft a brief press release about something newsworthy at your company. It can be the announcement of a new location, landing a big new contract, speaking at a prestigious conference, or even just announcing a new hire. Then fax or e-mail your press release to all relevant newspapers, to the attention of the Business Editor. You can do a free search at www.gebbieinc.com for the contact information of the newspapers in your region and/or industry. Most newspapers today have a companion Web site and your article will often end up online, adding another new link to your site each time a press release is published. (Susan J. O’Neil with @Web Site Publicity, Inc.)

Write letters to the editor of your local newspaper(s). Just make sure you aren't saying nasty controversial things! Many newspapers are mirrored online nowadays. (Don Hammond at DonOmite.com)

If you belong to professional organizations, your local Chamber of Commerce, etc., see if they will give you a link. (Bill Gentry with Look Sharp Designs)

Contact your local radio and television stations and offer your expert knowledge as a source. This may get you a link on their site. If you get the gig – get the link. (Debra Paynter with Promotion Strategies)

Set aside a certain amount of money to use to join associations within your industry. Make sure they have a good site with great PR and that they list links to their members sites. See if they accept articles, teaser articles, or are interested in using you as a source in exchange for additional links. (Debra Paynter with Promotion Strategies)

Put your URL on your stationary, business cards, off-the-Web advertising, invoices, statements, print publications, T-shirts, promotional items, anywhere you can think of. The more times that people see your URL or business name, the better chance you’ll have at their remembering and recognizing your site and eventually visiting. (Robin Nobles of Search Engine Workshops, Online Search Engine Marketing Courses, and the TNT-Guides for Successful Web Sites.

Keep Track of What You’re Doing:

Research your competition. During the process, open a spreadsheet and start making lists from the information you find. The standards include: general directories, themed directories, link partnerships to explore, and the biggie – PR or public relations. I consider PR as all the oddball links your competition gets, either an actual Press Release you find listed on a Web site, an article they’ve written that’s placed or a quote with a link back to your domain. Look at your main keywords during this research and the top competitors for each. It’s not just who is linking to them but the relationships and patterns you see developed. This information is invaluable in structuring your link popularity campaign. (Debra Paynter with Promotion Strategies)

Create a spreadsheet and detail who you've contacted, when and the results. Or if you have a contact database (ACT!, Access, FileMaker Pro, etc.), use that contact's "notes" field to keep a record of this information. (Gil Sery with Search Engine Optimization Pros)

Open a spreadsheet for general directories (themed directories or link partners – whatever you are working on). At the top of the page in copy/paste form, list in order the pertinent information that directories look for in a submission. Have all that information ready ahead of time to make the process run quick and easy. In one column list the URL of the site, in another list the category you are submitting to, the next list the page you are submitting, then a column for the date you submitted and one for the date you are accepted. This information will help you to know where you’ve been and where you are going. An additional tip I like to follow is to come up with 3-5 variations of a title with the most crucial keyword phrase included. I then rotate these variations of the title, with each submission. You say the same thing but in more than one manner. I also create at least two descriptions, a long and a short form and I am sure to maximize the use of keywords in submissions. You want these to sell in that you want click-thrus and you want them keyword rich for search. (Debra Paynter with Promotion Strategies)

Check out the affirmative replies for a link exchange, and make sure they have uploaded a link back to your site from theirs. If they haven’t, politely e-mail them and notify them of it, with your thanks. (Chris Genge with 1st on the List Promotion Inc.)

A few weeks after you’ve received the reciprocal link, check the people who have linked to you to make sure they’re still linked. (Sites change policies and go 404, no dead weight and no free riders) (Gary Woods with Beautiful Santa Barbara Real Estate)

Monitor your site on a monthly basis utilizing a linking tool to ensure that all the links are still in place. If they’re not, e-mail the site politely, mentioning same and asking them to reinstate the link. If they don’t, remove your link to them from your resource page. (Chris Genge with 1st on the List Promotion Inc.)

Link Checking Services and Information:

Check your link popularity at Link Popularity Check.com, which will give your link popularity for Lycos/Fast, AltaVista, and MSN. The service, which is provided by First Place Software, will even send you a weekly or monthly report showing your link popularity in those engines. (Brent Winters of First Place Software)

You can also check your link popularity at LinkPopularity.com to learn your link pop for Google, HotBot, and AltaVista. (Robin Nobles of Search Engine Workshops, Online Search Engine Marketing Courses, and the TNT-Guides for Successful Web Sites.

Visit LinkPromotion.com for a step-by-step walk through of how to increase your link popularity. (Robin Nobles of Search Engine Workshops, Online Search Engine Marketing Courses, and the TNT-Guides for Successful Web Sites.

Software or Services:

Use Links Manager, which is a service that allows you to set up a links page on your own site and have others submit their sites to you. You approve all new links and have full control over them. This service does NOT find you links -- it simply helps you set up an automated system for adding new links to your Web site and keeps track of reciprocal links pointing back to you. (Robin Nobles of Search Engine Workshops, Online Search Engine Marketing Courses, and the TNT-Guides for Successful Web Sites.

Hire a high school student part time to hunt for related links for you. Give that person very specific instructions. If the student is going to send out e-mail on your behalf, craft the e-mail very carefully yourself, and make sure the student includes all of the pertinent information to make the request appear to be personally sent and not a blanket e-mail. (Robin Nobles of Search Engine Workshops, Online Search Engine Marketing Courses, and the TNT-Guides for Successful Web Sites.

You can use a free service like TrackEngine (http://www.trackengine.com) and your favorite search engine to create a free link tracking alert service that sends you email any time a search engine finds a new link to your site, or your competitors. (Eric Ward, President, NetPOST and URLwire)

Use the "linked" facility at Spyonit.com (http://www.spyonit.com/Home) to be automatically notified whenever anyone else on the Web links to your Web site! (Nancy Nelson with Search by Design)

Things to Avoid

Don't participate in link popularity farms. Don't participate in programs that send out e-mails soliciting people to swap links (link spamming). Never place a link on your own site for the sole purpose of trading link popularity. Only place links that are valuable to your readers. Never try to get low-integrity Web sites to link to you. The link will actually hurt your site, not help it. (Mike Adams, the Email Doctor)

Create your link directory to be tightly themed. DO NOT include directory listings unless they match the themes or subjects of your Web site. (David Notestine of Cyber-Robotics)

Tell people to LINK OFF. Yes, it's really odd. Turns out my marketing site was also known for wicker furniture and adult chat among other things. Huh? Yes, a couple of sites thought it would be a good idea to link to me, just because I do well in the search engines. The problem was their links didn't make sense as they were totally off topic. We both ended up getting penalized. Usually you cannot make people remove incoming links, unless they are infringing on some kind of patent. But if you kindly explain that what they are doing is actually giving their site a penalty and hurting their findability, the links come down pretty fast. What they are doing is building the reputation of my page with what they say in their outgoing links. If what the links say do not match the topic of my page, the search engine gives the page containing the link a penalty. Simply put: Reputation is what a page is known for. What incoming links say the page is about. Topic is what the page is really about. The actual content of a page. The Reputation must match the Topic. (Michael Campbell with Internet Marketing Secrets)

Be careful about who YOU link to. Stay out of "bad neighborhoods." Don’t submit to FFA (Free for All) sites or join link exchange programs or farms. Using bulk submission programs won’t increase your link popularity either. (Robin Nobles of Search Engine Workshops, Online Search Engine Marketing Courses, and the TNT-Guides for Successful Web Sites.

Never send out a "blanket" e-mail to hundreds of sites asking for a reciprocal link. Make each e-mail personal. Mention something that you like on their site. Give the URL for their links page. Discuss one of their products. Ask them a question. Do ANYTHING to make it clear that this is a personal request and not a mass-generated e-mail. (Robin Nobles of Search Engine Workshops, Online Search Engine Marketing Courses, and the TNT-Guides for Successful Web Sites.

Don’t solicit sites that have their reciprocal links pages so deep in the site it’s difficult to find. If you have trouble finding the pages, so will the spiders. (Gary Woods with Beautiful Santa Barbara Real Estate)

Don’t apply to sites that have hundreds of links on one page. Just like with the search engines, “If you’re not in the Top 10, you’re Cyber-Road Kill” (quote from Ginette Degner of Search Engine Services) (Gary Woods with Beautiful Santa Barbara Real Estate)

Keep your link directories clean of 404s or dead links. (David Notestine of Cyber-Robotics)

Don’t solicit sites that have nothing to do with your business. (Gary Woods with Beautiful Santa Barbara Real Estate)

Extra Tips and Notes:

Make link popularity building a part of your overall search engine marketing efforts. Spend a little time every week trying to find a few more links. You'll be surprised at the snowball effect that link popularity building has. You'll work hard on it for a while, and then all of a sudden, everyone else will be writing to YOU to ask YOU to link to THEM! (Robin Nobles of Search Engine Workshops, Online Search Engine Marketing Courses, and the TNT-Guides for Successful Web Sites.

Google uses PageRank. You can either be a hub or an authority. Decide which one you want a particular page to be and stick with it. Don't mince types with Google. Hubs have many links and are ranked by backwards clicks. Meaning that every time someone hits their back button - to find more sites - you actually score points. Hallway pages or directories are good examples of hubs, especially if you link to them with authority pages. Authority pages contain relatively few links - the fewer the better in my opinion - and are rated according to forward clicks. Authority pages are not likely to be found with backward crawling and most often lead to pages with many links.... hubs. Gateway information pages are good examples of authority pages, especially when you link them to hubs or catalog style sites. Hubs lead to authorities, which lead to hubs, which lead to authorities. Repeat the process as often as desired. (Michael Campbell with Internet Marketing Secrets)

Most search engines index only content in the top two levels of your site. They have no idea that links exist beyond the secondary level simply because they don't search beyond the secondary level. Let's say you have links built to your site from other sites. If these links exist beyond the spiders' allowable depth of travel, they will NEVER be counted. In other words, if you have 5,000 links pointing at your site, but all of them exist on pages beyond the second directory level, a search engine will determine that your site has zero links. This doesn’t mean those 5,000 links are useless. Quite the contrary. It just shows that you don’t need to obsess over links from a search engine perspective. Links are their own virtue whether a search engine knows about them or not. (Eric Ward, President, NetPOST and URLwire)

I do not employ (as a general rule) a linking strategy designed for search engines, rather for REAL traffic. The SE bonus is great, but it’s better to think of the quality of the link as a vehicle to get a human to your site, not a spider. The search engines will then find your links stronger than your competitors’, because they are! (Dixon Jones with Receptional)

How long did someone spend on your site before clicking back to the search engine? If the person didn't come back it means - to the search engine - that the person found what they were looking for. Your site is given a boost in rankings because people who visit your page don't come back to the search engine for more links. One way to achieve temporal brownie points is by creating and controlling two levels of links. It's much like the hub and authority example I mentioned earlier. Search engine links to an authority page with only one link on it, which in turn leads to a directory style page. From the directory page, the visitor finds plenty of links on their search topic and there's no need to hit the back button to the search engine. (Michael Campbell with Internet Marketing Secrets)

Remember that with Google and Fast at least, link popularity is based on individual pages, not on the site as a whole. So, use that to your advantage or at least take it into consideration when appropriate. (Robin Nobles of Search Engine Workshops, Online Search Engine Marketing Courses, and the TNT-Guides for Successful Web Sites.

Don't think in terms of building "link popularity." What you are really doing is building traffic by exchanging links with similar sites and sites that offer products and services that are complimentary to yours. Link popularity is an added benefit. If you are focused on "link popularity," you may miss some great opportunities to build traffic. (Bill Gentry with Look Sharp Designs)

Host your links page on your own domain for maximum effectiveness. If you have several domains, you can use the same or similar links page on each domain if they're related in topic. You may want to have a different opening paragraph, or different content here and there. But, if you have several related domains, be sure to link them together and use the power of the combined link popularity. (Robin Nobles of Search Engine Workshops, Online Search Engine Marketing Courses, and the TNT-Guides for Successful Web Sites.

PageRank is not the only way to factor link popularity into ranking algorithms. It is only one way. For example, Teoma uses a variation of hub and authority to factor link popularity into its ranking algorithm. Basically, a hub is a site with many outgoing links, while an authority is a site many incoming links. So, while you may read many articles about how to manage PageRank and what you should and shouldn't do (varying opinions, of course), remember that PageRank is not the end all, be all method to calculate link popularity. There are many other methods. (Bill Gentry with Look Sharp Designs)

Spend less time working on your overall, global link popularity, and focus more on building up strong connections in the natural "community" of sites that share a similar focus to your own. (Chris Sherman of Search Engine Watch and SearchDay)

For a Power Point presentation on hyperlink strategies, visit http://www.dixonjones.com and click on Speaking at the top of the page. The picture at this URL is worth noting: http://www.dixonjones.com/talks/linking/index_files/slide
0004.htm. The trick is to develop links in the top right of the picture and avoid links in the bottom left. (Dixon Jones with Receptional)

Keep current with the latest linking techniques by reading The Link Mensch column at http://www.ericward.com/. (Eric Ward, President, NetPOST and URLwire)

In Closing . . .

Ask yourselves the following questions:

Are the sites that link to you in your same field? Pursue "theme analysis" not only for your site but also for your linking partners. It's not only a consistent theme for you so a search engine knows what you are about, it's also vital that the people who link to you are in the general "community" related to your theme.

Are the sites that link to you, linked to in turn by others in the same field or theme area? The more "popular" your friends are, the more "popular" you are.

Do you have some "high quality" sites linking to you that are "authorities" or experts in your field, your subject area? Remember, the search engines know everything about the sites linking to you, and if they are authoritative sources in your field and they link to you, then you are likely a valuable source of information and highly relevant to the keyword phrases that characterize your site.

Finally, are all your pages optimized for relevant keyword phrases and linked back and forth within your site? This will flesh out the theme of your site. When your "friends" are doing the same, you all become a strong "community of authorities" encouraging the search engine to present you to their searchers. (Terry Plank with Search Engine Marketing Consultants)

Thanks to our Contributors

A special thanks to each of the contributors to this article. We appreciate your willingness to share your strategies with the search engine marketing industry.

These contributors are listed in alphabetical order.

Mike Adams is the 'Email Doctor' and operates an e-mail marketing Web site, Email Doctor, that offers free reports, e-mail marketing strategies and regular articles.

John Alexander is a professional Internet Consultant, SEO and educator who has taught his results-oriented, SEO strategies to other Internet consultants and Webmasters from over 80 different countries around the world. John owns and operates Beyond-SEO.com. He teaches The Ultimate SEO Mastery Workshop in LIVE onsite trainings through Search Engine Workshops, and he's the Co-Author of "The Totally Non-Technical Guides to Having a Successful Web Site."

Michael Campbell is the author of Nothing but Net and Clickin’ it Rich, highly successful e-books about how to become successful on the Internet. He is a well-known Internet marketer who publishes a newsletter called Internet Marketing Secrets.

Chris Churchill is the Director of Web Development and Search Engine Marketing at NetMechanic, Inc.. Chris is also the subject matter expert for Search Engine Power Pack, NetMechanic's comprehensive search engine optimization package.

Terry Dean is an Internet Marketing Reviewer for NetBreakThroughs.com.

Elbert Flores is a search engine optimization expert with Position Research out of San Diego, CA.

Chris Genge is President of 1st on the List Promotion Inc., a search engine optimization firm located in British Columbia, Canada.

Bill Gentry has been a professional Web designer since 1999 and a Search Engine Optimization and Online Marketing specialist with Look Sharp Designs since February 2000. He is also the head software reviewer, an instructor, and a chat moderator with Search Engine Workshops.

Ron Gotcher, of the Gotcher Law Group, is an immigration lawyer located in Los Angeles, CA.

Don Hammond operates a full service Web site design, construction, and search engine positioning firm that specializes in Cold Fusion, SQL, Flash, and Miva Script.

Detlev Johnson is a search engine consultant with The Ascendant Group, a search engine marketing company specializing in optimization strategies, implementation guidance, and tracking for your in-house or outsourced search engine optimization campaign.

Dixon Jones is the managing director of British-based Internet marketing agency, Receptional, and was the first fully paid up member of the World Association of Internet Marketing. His business career started in 1989, writing and running murder mystery evenings for clients from American Airlines to Zeneca. Enron still owes him money. In 1996 this business went onto the Web and the site immediately took on a life of its own developing into a profitable company in its own right. In 1999 Dixon teamed up with Dr. David Smith, previously of Cranfield University, to provide Internet marketing expertise to a range of blue chip companies.

Jon Keel of Improved Results, "Helping Businesses Improve Results Through Performance-Based Online Marketing," is also an authority on the pay-per-click search engines.

Barbara Coll is Owner of WebMamma, a search engine optimization firm.

Stephen Mahaney is the Editor and Publisher of Search Engine News, a publication of Planet Ocean, a leading source of information for the search engine industry. He is also a well-known and respected Internet marketer.

Nancy Nelson is the founder of Search-by-Design, a full service Internet marketing firm focused on keeping your online marketing presence optimized for your target market. She is also a chat moderator for Search Engine Workshops.

Robin Nobles is the Co-Director of Training of Search Engine Workshops with John Alexander. They teach 2-day beginner, 3-day advanced, and 5-day all-inclusive "hands on" search engine marketing workshops in locations across the globe. She also teaches online search engine marketing courses, and she’s a member of Wordtracker’s official question support team. Robin has two books on the market: Maximize Web Site Traffic and Web Site Analysis and Reporting, and she and John Alexander are writing a series of e-books called, "The Totally Non-Technical Guide to Having a Successful Web Site.

David Notestine is President of Cyber-Robotics and the creator of Zeus Internet Marketing Robot.

Susan J. O’Neil is the founder and C.E.O. of @Web Site Publicity, Inc., an integrated search marketing firm. She is the co-author of Maximize Web Site Traffic with Robin Nobles.

With a strong focus on research, Debra Paynter is an expert in the field on online Website optimization and promotions. Her specialties include both site development and promotional linking in order to draw targeted traffic. Visit Promotion Strategies for more information.

Terry Plank is the Owner of Search Engine Marketing Consultation.

Rocky Rawstern is the Senior Analyst with 7thWave, a search engine optimization company, and Webmaster & Editor of Nanotech-Now.

Gil Sery is the President and Chief Search Engine Optimizer of Search Engine Optimization Pros, “your one-stop specialists for search engine optimization, placement, and marketing.”

Chris Sherman is Associate Editor of Search Engine Watch and Editor of SearchDay, a daily newsletter for the search engine industry.

Marshall Simmonds is Director of Search at About.com.

Danny Sullivan is editor of SearchEngineWatch.com, a widely recognized site that provides authoritative information about search engines. Free tips can be found at http://searchenginewatch.com, and members have access to extended articles and information, including how search engines make use of link analysis.

Becky Thompson is an Online Marketing Strategist with Inter@ctivate Inc. Our technical, creative and marketing services include design and programming, search engine positioning, online marketing and promotions, database and email programs and an array of traditional offline communications such as collateral development and media relations that contribute to fully integrated marketing programs.

Eric Ward, President, NetPOST and URLwire: Eric founded the Web's first service for linking and announcing Web sites back in 1994, and he still offers those services today. His client list is a who's who of online brands. Ward is best known as the person behind the linking campaigns for Amazon.com Books, The Link Exchange, Microsoft.com, Rodney Dangerfield, Warner Bros, The Discovery Channel, the AMA, PBS, and The Weather Channel. His linking services won the 1995 Tenagra Award For Internet Marketing Excellence, and no other linking service has won it since. Eric also writes the “Link Mensch” column, and has been a speaker for iWORLD, Fawcette, and Cnet conferences.

Carl Watney works for Unearthed®, a small business based in Brisbane, Australia, specializing in search engine marketing, content management systems and building online relevancy of SME commercial sites. They believe in the power of community on the Web and are happy to share ideas from previous successes and failures ;-) to help grow this boundless market so that professionals build the industry and give us all a good name.

Steve Wilson is a search engine optimization expert with the Worldsites.network, San Antonio's "Be Found on Web" Experts.

Brent Winters is the President of First Place Software, maker of WebPosition Gold, the first software product to both track your rankings on the search engines and to help you improve those rankings.

Gary Woods is the Owner of Beautiful Santa Barbara Real Estate and Chat Moderator for Search Engine Workshops.

This article was written and compiled by Robin Nobles, Eric Ward, and John Alexander. Their individual bios are found above. They own the copyright of the article itself, but the individual contributors retain the copyright of their own individual tips.

You may post this article on your Web site as long as you keep it in its entirety and keep the contributor and bio section intact. Or, you can post the first 1000 words or so at your own site, and then link to the complete article here. For more information, contact Robin Nobles.

© Copyright 2005 Robin Nobles, Eric Ward, and John Alexander. All rights reserved.

This Article is Available in E-Book Format

A special thanks to Butch Pujol and Heather Colman with Digital Page Author Software and Service The dynamite e-book for the "131 (Legitimate) Link Popularity Building Strategies," along with all the graphics, was created by Digital Page Author Software and Service, and we thank them for the amount of time and professionalism they put into this project.

We couldn't be more pleased or proud of the results, and we highly recommend their services to anyone. You can purchase the software and create your own e-books, or let Heather do her magic and credit the e-book for you. Butch and Heather, you took a drab HTML page and created a work of art, and we thank you!

Robin Nobles, Eric Ward, and John Alexander, co-authors of "131 (Legitimate) Link Popularity Building Strategies," as well as the many other contributors to the project.

This work is licensed
under a Creative Commons License.

5 Steps to a Perfectly Optimized Web Page

2006-03-29T12:51:00.000-10:00

There is so much talk out there about what the ‘perfect’ web page looks like. In this article we give you tips on what we consider perfectly optimized as well as tips on helping turn the page into a great conversion tool.

Step one – Know who you are targeting
As with any marketing campaign the first step in optimizing ANY web page is to know your target audience. Is your site B2B (business to business) or B2C (business to consumer). This is important because this not only affects the tone of your site, but also the keywords you chose.

It is imperative that you nail who your target is before you do anything else because if you don’t it doesn’t matter how big your site is, or how many pages you have. If you don’t write to the right crowd you aren’t going to get too much business.

The best thing is to write down who you think the target is. Be as detailed as possible. For example, your target may be a 30-45 year old female, in middle management, who drives a mini-van and takes her 3 kids to school before she goes to work. She makes $45,000 per year and has a bachelors degree in finance. This is the type of detail you need. You should be able to picture this person in your mind. Not just the abstract idea of her, but a physical look as well. the better you can picture them in your mind the more successful you will be.

Once you know who you target is the next step is choosing keywords.

Step two – Choosing the right keywords

This may be the most difficult part of your journey, especially if you don’t fit the target profile. That is, picking the keywords they will use to find your site.

You can start by using free tools like Yahoo!s keyword suggestion tool. It gives you a good place to start picking keywords.

Start with a phrase you know your site is about (i.e. if you sell widgets, then simply put “widgets” in the search box). The tool will then not only spit out other related words, but also the search volumes associated with each for the previous month.

A word of caution however: Sometimes, depending on when you use the tool, the search volumes are from a couple months ago. So if your product is seasonal based, the numbers may actually be lower or higher than represented.

Don’t be afraid to get a few hundred words to start. Remember, right now you are just gathering ideas – phrases that could drive traffic to your site. They aren’t all necessarily being used by your target customer.

You can also go to Google’s Adwords site and perform the above steps. Start with a phrase or two which describe your site or product and use Google’s suggestion tool to help expand your list.

At this point you want as many phrases on your list as possible. Don’t worry, you will cull the list pretty quickly.

Once you have a huge list of words, the next place to go is a site like Wordtracker, which has a keyword analysis tool. This tool can be used for a one time fee, or if it’s something you might want to return to you can purchase a subscription. It is a fairly simple tool to use and will give you a good idea of just how likely your site will be able to compete for a phrase.

A warning about Wordtracker: The software uses search volumes from some fairly minor sites such as Dogpile, so the estimates could be a little skewed. But again, unless you deal with an SEO firm that has their own proprietary software, this is about your best alternative.

Also remember as you are culling your words, don’t just focus on the competitive factors. These won’t account for your target audience. Therefore you need to have that picture in your mind of the target as you are selecting phrases that they might use. If you are unsure, you could always as for help from friends and family that fit the target profile.

A good rule of thumb would be to chose about one phrase per page. That doesn’t mean that you will only have one page per phrase, but it gives you a good target. So if your site is 300 pages, consider having a list of 300 phrases.

Step 3 – Write your pages

Now that you have your keywords its time to write, or re-write, your content to make them more appealing to the target audience, inserting the key phrases you’ve selected whenever possible.

Keep in mind that you don’t want to over do it. Also now is a good time to ensure you have proper keyword density’s and page length.

I recommend pages that are 400-500 words long. If they are a little longer or shorter that is fine, however if they are approaching 1000 words or more you should split them up, trying to hit that 400-500 word limit.

On this 400-500 word page you should have 2 or 3 occurrences of a key phrase, and you want to limit the key phrases used to 2 or 3. In other words you could have between 4 and 9 occurrences of all your key phrases per page. This should provide you with optimal keyword density.

Above all, make sure the pages are readable. Don’t optimize for optimization’s sake. If only one key phrase applies to the page, then only use one.

Step 4 – Optimize your Pages

This can be done in conjunction with the writing. In fact it should be done at then to save time. I purposely made this a separate step so that I could outline the finer points of optimization.

Provided that you are following the guidelines found in step 3, your pages should already have good keyword density, now is the time to improve that optimization by adding optimized meta tags and if appropriate, some image alt tags.

First is to write the meta description tag. While many engines will index thousands of characters in your description, I recommend no more than a couple hundred characters. That is about how long this paragraph is.

The meta description should be a readable sentence or two with the same keywords that you wrote the page for. In other words, the same phrases should appear in the meta description as the body. They should also appear as near to the front of the tag as possible however don’t sacrifice readability for this. If the tag doesn’t make sense with them at the front, then reorganize until they do make sense. Be sure to use proper punctuation as well.

Also preferred but not mandatory is a meta keywords tag. While none of the major engines use this tag, other smaller ones, and some specialty engines do use the meta keywords tag. If your target uses one of these engines then it makes sense to have that tag in place.

Also, with the keywords tag there is a lot of debate over using commas or not. Personally I do not use commas. I just combine the phrases and remove duplicate words. For example, if the page is about blue widgets, yellow widgets and red widgets then the keywords tag could be: “blue yellow red widgets.”

Common sense should be used when deciding if you will use image alt tags as well. If your keywords match the image and you can make a compelling image description, then do it. Otherwise don’t.

Step 5 – Write a compelling title tag

I purposely left this as a separate step from meta tags because this is the most important part of your optimization program. Again, it can be done at the same time as the previous two steps, but it’s importance can not be over-emphasized.

This is because the title tag is the tag which is displayed in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page). It is the link that people click on, and also the tag which is generally read by the visitor before they decide to visit.

Therefore, if your title tag isn’t compelling, it doesn’t matter how well optimized your page is, it may not get that click.

For this step, you need to look at your competition to determine what they are doing. Perform a search to see what is compelling about their listing? Is there one that stands out? If so what are they doing? For example, if on every other site the keyword is the first phrase on the title, then consider moving your keyword in to the second or third phrase.

This is because, as you will notice, engines like Google bold the search term in the title and snippets or description. One way to make your title stand out is to have the term in a different position than the competition. That way the bolding stands out like this:

key phrase in title tag
key phrase in title tag
title tag with key phrase
key phrase in title tag

Notice how the third one stands out from the rest?

I can not emphasize enough how important that title tag is. As I said, it is the “hook” to get visitors to your site. If the title is ineffective, then it won’t get clicked which means you don’t get the opportunity to woo that client.

Summary

As you can see, optimizing a page has less to do with optimal keyword density and more to do with knowing who it is that will be using that page.

If you don’t know who your target audience is you will never be able to properly optimize your pages. Sure you can optimize it for whatever keywords you choose, but if they aren’t the words that your customer will search for, what’s the point?

In the end, the more you know who your customer is, the better you will be in all your online ventures, from introduction of your product or service, to closing the sale. It is up to you to cater to them, and not force them into a more generic mold. This is because todays web searchers are much more savvy and willing to browse more if a site doesn’t appeal to them.

Written by: Rob Sullivan

How Important is ALT Text In Search Engine Optimization?

2006-03-11T12:55:00.000-10:00

By Robin Nobles

For years, search engine optimizers have included their important keyword phrases in ALT text for images, feeling confident that many of the search engines considered the contents of ALT text when determining relevancy.

The big question is, has this changed?

Yes . . .

None of the Major Engines Considers ALT Text When Determining Relevancy

According to research by expert SEO researcher Jerry West of WebMarketingNow and Search Engine Academy, at the present time, none of the “Big Three” search engines (Google, Yahoo!, nor MSN ), considers ALT text when determining relevancy.

West explains, “Over the last six months, we have seen a trend on our testing servers that shows that using ALT text for SEO purposes has not only diminished, but adversely affects the rankings in the SERPs. It is clear that search engines continue to catch up to 'SEO tricks' that are intended to improve search engine ranking while damaging the visitor experience. The American Disabilities Act (ADA) has strict guidelines as to what your site needs to contain in order to be ADA compliant. I guarantee you, they do not look favorably at ALT text that has been keyword stuffed.

“Have you ever witnessed a visually impaired individual use the Web? With a device which reads aloud the contents of a Web page, the impaired individual will be inundated with what I refer to as, ALT Text Spam. Sometimes the reader is stuck on one graphic for more than 40 seconds reading all of the keywords that have been stuffed.

“According to a Google engineer, what you should do is create an ALT tag that is relevant to the picture, so it gives the user a good experience, including the visually impaired. The ALT text is indexed, but it is down graded in the algorithm. The reason?

"'We see ALT text as relevant as the Keyword Meta tag,’ said the Google engineer. That should say it all as Google has never used the Keyword Meta tag due to the high spam rate.

"How do we test? I have outlined our testing methodology below," continues West.

"Our Testing Setup:

We have four servers (Two Apache servers, one Windows, one Sun Solaris);
Each server is located in a different part of the United States;
Each test sever has 16 test domains;
Domains are matched in pairs for A/B testing;
All domains are "dot com"; no testing is done with other extensions for the algorithms;
The 8 pairs are configured as follows: 3 pages, 8 pages, 25 pages, 50 pages, 100 pages, 150 pages, 300 pages, 500 pages;
When performing testing, one of the domains in the pair is tested while the other remains constant;
Due to varying issues within the algorithms, it takes approximately six weeks to see consistent numbers in order to formulate accurate conclusions."

What Does This Mean to SEOs?

Search engine optimizers no longer need to use keyword phrases in the ALT text of images on their Web pages.

However, let’s look at a smarter approach.

I’ve been recommending to my online and offline SEO students for a long time that they needed to use ALT text in the manner in which it was designed to be used by the W3C: to describe the image. Then, they can include the keyword phrase in one or two images on the page, if appropriate.

Continuing with that strategy is still viable. The major engines don’t consider the contents of ALT text now, but that doesn’t mean they won’t six months from now. Always remembering the “basics” is one of the best strategies to follow.

Other ALT Text Tips . . .

Remember that the purpose of ALT text is to describe the image for the benefit of those who surf the Web with images turned off and for those who have the contents of Web pages read out loud to them. The WC3 highly recommends that Web site owners use ALT text to describe images.
Use your keyword phrase in one or two instances of ALT text on the page – no more. Use moderation in everything you do in search engine optimization.
Don’t use text that is non-relevant to the image. Don't keyword stuff. Jerry West adds, “Give the visitor information that is worthwhile, especially for the visually impaired.”
“Consider using a description below the graphic. Based on recent test results, this is read often,” states West.

West continues, "Basically, remember to be compliant, not just with the W3C, but also with the ADA. It all comes down to intent. If your intent is to fool the search engine into giving you a higher ranking, you are performing 'grey or black hat' strategies. Stay on the right side of the path and the engines will bless you.J"

Remember . . . ALT text is Just One “Piece of the Pie”

Relevancy and ranking are determined by over 100 different factors. ALT text was just one piece of that pie, a sliver at that.

Don’t ever focus on just one piece of the pie. Always remember the basics – the SEO foundation – and make sure it’s solid.

If you know you’re weak in one or two areas, you know you'll have to beef up on other pieces of the SEO pie.

We’ll talk more about the “SEO pie” in future articles.

Robin Nobles teaches 2-, 3-, and 5-day hands-on search engine marketing workshops in locations across the globe as well as online SEO training courses. They have recently launched localized SEO training centers through Search Engine Academy .

For more information about Jerry West and his research, visit his Web site and consider signing up for his newsletter. It comes out every week and is backed by solid research.

Click here to go back to the index of search engine marketing articles

This work is licensed
under a Creative Commons License.

Improved Search Engine Placement for your Website

2006-02-28T13:08:00.000-10:00

Improve your search engine ranking with this approach to search engine placement from UK search engine consultant NCS

Introduction:

In this article we assume you want to improve the number and quality of visitors to your web site through improved search engine placement. You may be setting up a site or have one already.

As a search engine consultant dealing with a wide range of businesses, we have developed an approach to search engine placement in the US and internationally to produce improved search engine ranking for even the smaller business cost-effectively.

The Basics – Search Engines

There are several types of search engines but for simplicity we shall consider 3 main categories:

Search engines: The classic search engines examine your pages and record the words and phrases you actually use in their databanks. The engines then search against these databanks for the particular search term requested. Examples include Google, Yahoo and MSN. The detailed content of your site is very important in ensuring these engines will point users to you.
Directories: These are like a telephone directory - your site is categorized, possibly by a human being or on the strength of what you tell them, into a classification. People search in that class or cell for your type of service. The best known one is DMOZ which is also used by many search engines. Others include Amfibi, BigFunWeb and Best of the Web The detailed content of your site is much less important in ensuring directories will point users to you.
Pay per click (PPC): With these you bid for profile on a single keyword or phrase. You then usually pay the bid amount for any user who clicks on the link to your site. The content of your site is not directly used although it may be assessed for relevance by the engine to ensure meaningful results are returned to searchers. Overture, which was purchased by Yahoo, was the originator of PPC, although Google's Adwords is a larger an more popular PPC site.

Some other points of note:

There is a lot of co-operation between different types of engine. For example, searching a directory may produce results from a pay for click engine as ‘sponsored sites’ (read ‘adverts’), the directory itself, then backup searches from a traditional search engine.
Many engines now require admin fees (sometimes annual) for placement of your web site. Even with free engines, it can make sense to pay for quicker registration – historically it can take months to appear in some engines.
Different engines should be selected for different national markets - and there are local and niche market specialists too.
The classic search engines mostly have different algorithms for assessing and ranking your site. They are being constantly refined and improved but generally give more profile to:
- Pages which use the search term at least once (preferably more) and which best reflect the subject matter in their view
- Pages which have been selected by other (relevant) websites as good ones to link to. The more relevant sites that link to you the better as it ‘implies’ your page is likely to be more appropriate to this enquiry than one which few people have thought it worth linking to.
  (N.B. Relevant sites are those that may, for example, share some theme with your site – e.g. a widget manufacturer linking to a widget retailer would be highly relevant)
Search engines do not like people trying to fool them into giving a page a top search engine ranking which does not fairly represent the content visible to normal viewers. Playing tricks like this (spamming) can and does get sites banned.

Our Approach for Improved Search Engine Placement

1. Understand the objectives of the site, its target market and main content:

Who are the target visitors?
What would they be coming to the site for?
What would they be likely to use as search phrases?

2. Target the most effective keywords and phrases.

It is absolutely vital to target the most productive keywords and phrases.

Research real internet searches using keyword tools from Overture and Google to help select the words and phrases the target individuals are actually using to find the client’s product or service. These are sometimes surprisingly different and more varied than originally expected.

Also assess the number and quality of competitor pages in your geographic area or worldwide (if relevant) competing for these same searches. This helps us select the search phrases that should yield you the best return. Ideally you want high volume keywords with low numbers of other sites using them. If you are a local or regional business, consider adding those keywords to your phrases, as well. For example, instead of "computer consultant" try "los angeles computer consultant".

On existing sites, the site logs should be examined to reveal the search terms currently being used to successfully find the site and to identify those that, by their absence, seem to be failing.

3. Build the target key words and phrases into your site text and page coding.

Your text needs to put across your message and help attract the search engines. Many sites have text which reads well but contains few significant keywords. Both are required.

Many businesses understandably want to write the text themselves. However, this is arguably a specialised area, requiring creative sales writing, search engine knowledge and time away from the urgent priorities of a busy office. You may find you do not have the time or skills to do this internally to the levels required - and projects sometime stall because of this. (N.B. NCS can help with internet copy writing to get the job done smoothly and effectively.)

4. Ensure the site design allows search engines to see your web page optimization.

Some site designs actually prevent access from search engines when even a small amount of work could correct this. Common problems include frames, certain types of scripts, presenting text copy in a graphic. Use a search engine spider simulator to see what your website looks like to a search engine.

5. Search engine submission.

Good manual submission across a range of search engines and directories will help you improve your search engine placement and visitor traffic:

Medium and relevant minor engines can produce visitors themselves, and
The links from them to your site will contribute to your link popularity and improve your ranking with the main search engines like Google.

Some simple guidelines are:

Decide your budget. If affordable search engine ranking is important, keep to the free or low cost engines. Some will still register you even if they apparently only offer fee based submission (but some will not). N.B. Engines can take a long time to process your ‘free’ submission.
Don’t submit until you have done your web page optimization and at least one link exchange system in place.
Focus on the major engines and vertically specialized web directories. Research the directories and sites that you are linking with using a search engine ranking toolbar.
Do not use mass market software for search engine placement.
Your submission to DMOZ and other directories should be handled with extra care as the description and categorisation of the site will directly affect your results. Try to redraft your description and title for each new submission, but continue to use your primary keyword phrases. If you do a lot link exchanges and site submissions alternate keywords.
Pay for click engines can be a very cost-effective way of building rapid traffic whilst your classic search engine ranking builds up. Judgement and active management are often required to yield the best results as intuitive use can produce few results or lead to paying well over the odds for much sought after keywords.

6. Post launch web site promotion and marketing for your business.

If you do not follow up the launch with supporting web site promotion and marketing, you will lose ground to your competitors who do.

Building the number of links from other sites is an important part of web page optimization longer term - links should be encouraged with text built about keywords appropriate to the target page. Link building can lead to improved search engine ranking / placement as well as direct business gained. Use link exchange systems that provide a high-level of filtering and customization. Link exchanges that try a one-size-fits-all approach generate link pages that are easily recognizable by the major seearch engines and can be filtered out.

Regular monitoring of your site traffic and search engine ranking is important to help keep your site productive. This should identify search engines and keywords which are producing less traffic than expected and where more work is required to improve your ranking, perhaps following competitors' improved web page optimisation.

Summary

Improved search engine placement comes from careful selection of keywords for your UK or other markets and good web page optimisation
Affordable search engine ranking is still possible even for small businesses
Link building is an important part of getting your improved search engine ranking

Click here for our article ‘Myths about optimisation of search positions on the internet’ which debunks some commonly held views on search engine optimisation.

Click here for our services page on web site optimisation and promotion.

Net Commerce Solutions
Improved search engine placement with UK search engine consultant NCS

Note for Webmasters: All our articles are copyright to NCS but may be copied and published in part or in whole on your websites on a non-profit basis as long as they are credited to NCS and have an appropriate link to our website. e.g. 'Click here for more articles by NCS - UK web designers, search engine and internet marketing company'

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.

Yahoo! Directory: Should You Pay the $300?

2006-02-05T13:42:00.000-10:00

One question we get all the time is whether it is worth it to pay $300 to submit a website into the Yahoo Directory.

The answer is that it depends. If you have a very small e-commerce store, for example, with little margin for error in your marketing decisions, the $300 may not be worth it. Chances are you won't see a measurable impact in sales from the listing (even in terms of possible search engine ranking improvements).

If your online store or business website does enough business to allow some discretionary spending in marketing activities that don't have to provide immediate or measurable impact, I would pay the $300. It's just a good link. I would pay $25/month for a highly valued link. In this case, you are just paying that upfront.

Google has several trusted sources such as Yahoo! Directory and DMOZ (The Open Directory Project). Since these directories are edited by human editors, the descriptions, and more importantly, the keywords used in these descriptions, help Google decide what the relevant keywords are to your business. Of course, that has the potential to impact your rankings.

In a nutshell, figure out what your online marketing budget is and allocate some percentage of that towards long term search engine ranking improvements. If that number comes out to $500 or more, then start with a solid link exchange system and an express submission in the Yahoo directory. On top of that, spend an hour or two week adding new content to your website and another hour or two enhancing your link popularity with highly relevant websites. Over time, you will see siginificant imrpovements in your sites rankings.

3 Steps to Building an Effective Web Site for Your Business

2006-01-23T12:22:00.000-10:00

Improving your website's link popularity and search engine rankings is key to attracting users to your website. But what happens when they arrive? Have you built a professional website that helps to ensure that users can find what they need and feel confident that you are a trusted reliable source?

The article below, from Electron Web, presents the basic concepts to consider whether you are building, assessing or upgrading your company's web site.

Does your website deliver?

Many businesses, both large and small, are disappointed with the results they get from their web site. Although they get site visitors and even generate sales or leads, they haven't managed to extract their site's real potential.

The reason is often a failure to:

understand the wide variety of prospects that may visit their site;
understand how to meet the varying needs of these prospects; and
invest the time and the effort needed to make the site successful.

Make your site doesn't have to be complicated. And, there is no need for magic. All that's needed is the:

willingness to understand your user population;
the ability apply some common business sense; and
a small dose of creativity.

In this article, we will identify some of the key things you can do to create and manage your web site to help you grow your business.

3 Steps to Building an Effective Web Site for Your Business

Before You Start : Know Where You Are Heading

You need to decide why you want a web site and what you really want to achieve.

I would suggest that a good reason is NOT - 'because my competitors have them' or 'so we can put it on our business cards'. This makes for very expensive business cards.

Some good reasons may include:

To attract sales leads from new customers;
To sell directly to new and/or existing customers;
To enhance the customer experience and service for your clients;
To provide new and relevant information about you and your products to potential customers and business partners;
To improve your products and services by obtaining feedback from customers;
To help recruit employees;
To reduce the cost of sales;
To improve your businesses efficiency;
To lower your marketing costs;
To expand your marketing reach; and
To increase your profitabilty.

You Know Your Target : Plan Your Execution

The Internet and your web site is just another channel to your target audience. You may already be doing taking similar steps in your current sales and marketing process. Now, you just need to translate this to the new medium.

Planning your website is a critical component of your overall marketing strategy. Now more than ever, consumers are researching purchases and shopping online. While key business decision makers are sourcing product and services using the Internet. To develop your Internet marketing strategy, you need to carefully define answers to the following questions:

Who is your target? How can you segment your online audience to better understand their needs?
What is your primary message? Not 'what are you selling?'. What value do offer?
How can you begin to form a trusted relationship with your customer?
What are you willing to promise? Will you deliver?
What marketing channels match your sales mission?

The answers to each of these questions will depend on your product or service and your company's "personality". These are critical to your site's development and how effective you wil be about converting visitors in to interested customers. Develop your strategy together with your web design company so you can better understand user behavior and the technical requirements of search engine optimization. And working closely with your designer means your designer can better understand your customer and his or her needs.

All this may seem like a lot. But, if you know your customers and work closely with a professional web design company, you will develop an you can develop a marketing presence that will pay dividends to your business and enhance your customer relationships.

Experienced web development and Internet marketing specialists can help youdevelop a coherent plan and execute on that vision. Moreover, you will increase your chances of early success and, also reduce your costs - mistakes and wasted efforts are time consuming and unnecessarily eat in to your marketing budget.

Creating Your Website : How do I Pick the Right Web Designer?

For the do-it-yourself small business owners, the good news is that there are a lot of tools that will help you build your own site. But, keep in mind building a site that delivers requires significant time and expereince.

Larger businesses may consider hiring a full time developer to design, build and manage their site. However, except for the smallest of companies (measured in revenue potential and not necessarily employees), outsoucing your online marketing makes sense. There are far too many skill sets, including technical, design and maketing, to trust any one person. Use a company that has a good balance of web design, technical know-how and Internet marketing skill to ensure your site looks good and performs.

TIP: Think of your web site as an extension of your business. Just like your busines, your web site should not remain static. Your proucts and services change, as does your industry. Use your website to continually update the world. Not only is it good business practice, regularly adding fresh content to your site will -- over time -- improve your rankings in the search engines that generate your site visitors. A content management system or an integrated blogging tool makes it easy for you to update your content easily and without the aid of a web designer.

Your Site is Complete. Now What?

So, your site is live and you are pleased with the results. Great! Now all you need to do is find and attract pre-qualified prospects. But how?

To learn more about attracting the right customer to your web site, read this article about Search Engine Marketing.

Final Thoughts

Like doing your own taxes, developing your company's online potential can be a daunting task. Like your accountant, to increase your success online and grow your business, find an expert that you trust and can work with for years to come.

Michael Taus
Managing Director

Electron Web
Professional Web Design and Internet Marketing Company

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.

How SEO Works: The Basics

2006-01-04T13:00:00.000-10:00

This is an extremely brief introduction to SEO. It aims to inform you what SEO is, but not to teach you how to become an SEO expert. Much of the SEO process is just hard work and learning from your errors.

If you do your own SEO you will still likely want to chat in SEO forums and read books on the topic before starting. Many of the print books can go quickly out of date, but if you ask around there will likely be at least a couple good guides which are commonly recommended.

What is SEO?

SEO is the art or science of gaining top search engine placement for relevant keyword phrases through making search engines believe your site is more relevant than your competition’s websites.

What are Keywords?

Keywords are terms or (more often) phrases you would expect someone to search for to find your website. With SEO you pick your keywords and create pages focused on them. You can only focus each page on a specific keyword phrase or few specific keywords. One of the best tricks to SEO is to gain traffic using many pages focused on specific terms vice focusing on broad single word terms. Specific terms are usually easier to rank well for and often have a higher conversion rate (since a longer query is often associated with greater searcher intent).

Using the Correct Domain Name

Acquiring links is important to rank well for competitive terms. When possible you want the links pointing at you to use your keywords in them. Other sites (especially directories) are more inclined to link to you with your keywords in the link text if they are also in your official site name or domain name. It is usually a good idea to use your keywords in your domain name when possible.

SEO Feedback Time Frame

When you search a search engine you are not searching the web. You are searching their cache of the web. It takes search engines some finite amount of time to find and properly index new links and pages.

If you are new to SEO (or are just beginning to do SEO on your website) it may take up to six months or more to gain a top ranking for a competitive phrase. If you work hard enough you can usually rank well for less competitive phrases in as little as a couple months.

Gaining Top Rankings can take a Long Time

Some of your biggest competitors have likely been around for a long time and have many links built up over time. You can view their links by:

Searching Yahoo! for linkdomain:www.CompetingWebsite.com ;
Searching Google for link:www.CompetingWebsite.com ;
Yahoo! usually shows more links to your site than Google does, and each search engine will likely show some links the other is not showing;
Search engines know of and evaluate many more links than they show using a backlink check. Even though all links do not display, checking backlink can help you estimate the popularity of a site.

How to Build Links

Register your site in major directories such as the Yahoo! Directory and DMOZ. I also register my clients websites in many of the smaller directories and niche specific directories. Search engines often do not count links that go through redirects, so before spending money on a listing you will want to check if the directories provide static links. Business.com and the Yahoo! Directory are two directories which provide static links and show tracking URLs in the status bar when you hover over the links. Most other directories that show tracking URLs do not provide links that are evaluated by search engines.
Write press releases and articles and syndicate them on other sites. Link back to your site (using your keywords when possible) in the article signature block.
Ask friends, product manufacturers, product distributors, and other business partners to link to your site.
Sponsor sites and get them to link to you.
Buy advertising from related websites.