AdSense and SEO resource

Why Start A Blog?

I knew about blogging and blogs for years before I actually started my first blog... So this begs the question... "Why did it take me over 4 years to start my 1st blog?"

Well, why would I want a blog? After all, blogs are just for geeks, self opinionated left or right wing zealots pushing some obscure political agenda, teenage school kids waffling on about their zits and boyfriends or technical journals full of terms and jargon only a rocket scientist could understand.

And I never bothered with blogs or the development of the "blogosphere" again.

Then something changed the way I viewed blogging about July 2004. I was introduced to using a blog as a tool for SEO - Search Engine Optimization. In the crudest form it was almost spamming, but done properly, it will get your website pages spidered almost immediately and indexed in less than a week.

Blog and Ping

The crude method involved first setting up both a blogger (.blogspot) blog and a free myYahoo page. You add the RSS or Atom link from your blog to your myYahoo page, so that your blog feeds into your myYahoo website.

You then write a page into your blog with links to webpages that you want Google and Yahoo to find and index. After posting your new blog entry, you then ping your myYahoo page to tell it that there's a new entry at your blog. Then you go to Yahoo, open your myYahoo page, and the blog headline should be there.

The assumption is that Yahoo would spider all feeds going into it's myYahoo pages and because Google owns Blogger.com they would spider all new blog entries at Blogger.com ... and in fact this is indeed what happens. Start a blog, add entry's to it every day, and in less than a week it will be spidered as soon almost as you post to it. But you must post daily.

***********************************************************
Russell Savige is the owner of SEO-easy SEO-easy publishes the latest Search Engine Optimization techniques as they become available.
***********************************************************

The days of basing a successful link building strategy on link quantity and anchor text alone may be numbered. The link popularity theories behind PageRank and Hilltop remain important, but major search engines are continually adding new elements to their link algorithms to improve search relevance. One of these new elements is the concept of visual page segmentation which was recently proposed in a paper entitled "Block-level Link Analysis," by Deng Cai, Xaiofei He, Ji-Rong Wen and Wei-Ying, available online at http://research.microsoft.com/research/pubs/view.aspx?tr_id=690.

How VIPS Works

The paper introduces VIsion-based Page Segmentation (VIPS), which begins with the premise that current link popularity algorithms are faulty in that they consider each page on the World Wide Web as a single node. Different "blocks" on a page however often have different semantics; for instance, a block on the left side of the page might contain a general navigational menu or text link advertisements, whereas the block on the right side of the page might contain an informational article or links to other Web sites about a certain topic. When VIPS is applied, these blocks can be separated by a computer with a vision-based program. Each block can then be considered as the fundamental unit of analysis, rather than the entire page. When a link is scored in terms of its block, the link"s contextual relevance can be interpreted more intelligently by search engines.

What VIPS Means for Search Engine Optimization

In the near future major search engines such as Google, Yahoo! Web Search and MSN Search will likely integrate some form of visual page segmentation into their search algorithms. A successful search engine optimization strategy should incorporate knowledge of block-level analysis to ensure that the effects of a link building campaign will be maximized. But how exactly does a concept like VIPS affect search engine optimization? Two consequences in particular should make every SEO take pause.

Devaluation of Links from Certain Blocks

VIPS will allow search engines to differentiate between links from the content block and links from other blocks such as text advertisement blocks or footer blocks. As such, algorithms could easily weight links from each block differently.

A link from the content block could be considered as more likely to be a true recommendation than a link from a text link advertisement block. Search engines may therefore give extra weight to in-content links while devaluing links that appear to be advertisements. Sites that rent links through link networks usually do place them in a block above, below or to the side of the content block. When VIPS is implemented, there is a risk that many rented advertisement links could be devalued.

Improved Contextual Analysis

The theme in which your link is placed also will be more important than ever before. Many search engine optimizers have voiced their opinion that "anchor text is everything"; that is, the theme of a page linking to a Web site does not parse link relevance, but only the anchor text of the link does.

With block-level analysis, search engines will be able to recognize the theme of any given block more easily. This should have the effect of boosting the link relevance for links from tightly-themed content blocks, while devaluing links that are in a block with no apparent theme.

Links That Will Always Soar

A search engine optimizer need not fear the effects of VIsion-based Page Segmentation. Although VIPS will probably devalue certain types of links that are favored by many SEOs, it will concurrently increase the value of themed, in-context links.

I have always stressed the value of legitimate links from directories, articles and press releases. These types of links are placed in a content block and are also tightly themed (that is, your target keywords will be near your link).Webmasters who actively build these types of links will benefit from long term rankings even when new twists such as VIPS are added into the algorithmic mix. In fact, these algorithmic improvements should improve search relevance and neutralize some of the spammier link building methods. And that's something we should all be happy about.

Andy Hagans is a search engine optimization consultant who specializes in link building and risk management. Visit http://www.andyhagans.com for more information. Mr. Hagans also maintains The Link Building Knowledge Base at http://www.linkbuilding.info to help other webmasters.

10 Ways To Promote Your Web Site While Doing Non Business Tasks.

1. Have a bumper sticker printed up with your web site address and other business information. Place it on the bumper of your car. People will see it when you're driving.

2. Have some t-shirts made with your web site address and other business information. Your family or friends could wear them almost anywhere.

3. Have some ball caps made with your web site address and other business information. Wear them to keep the sun out of your eyes and promote your business at the same time.

4. Have some business cards printed up with your web site address and other business information. Pass them out to people you meet or that might be interested in your business.

5. Have a magnetic sign made with your web site address and other business information. Place it on your car door or roof when you are traveling.

6. Have some flyers printed out with your web site address and other business information. Keep a few with you to hang on bulletin boards you see.

7. Have some jackets printed with your web site address and other business information. Give them away to family and friends. When it's too cold for t-shirts, you can wear jackets.

8. Have some duffle bags made with your web site address and other business information. Give them to family and friends as gifts or use them when you travel.

9. Have some pens imprinted with your web site address and other business information. When you are done filling out your check or signing receipts leave it there for the next person to use or keep.

10. Have some mugs imprinted with your web site address and other business information. Use them when you have company or give them away to friends and family as gifts.

About the author:

Rojo Sunsen is a specialized bounty hunter who prefers to work quietly/confidentially for the benefit of her clients.

Getting traffic to your site is expensive? I bet you know that.

It is difficult for a newbie to pay 20 to 50 cents per click on pay per click search engines.

If you decide to advertise in ezines, you have to lay down up to $50 per classified ad and $125 for a solo ad.

That's quite expensive if you're getting started.

And the traffic that you receive from these paid advertising sources will continue till you make payments. Once you stop paying, your traffic counter is back to zero.

You don't get recurring continuous flow of targeted traffic.

That's a HUGE disadvantage. Paid advertising sources are a gold mine if your site is converting well and if your profit margins are high.

If not, you have to find another way out.

Now what to do ? That's a BIG question. But the solution is simple. Here YOU Go...

STEP 1 - Write quality articles of around 600 words in your niche.

STEP 2 - Include your resource box that contains a link to your website below every article.

STEP 3 - Create a viral ebook that includes 50 to 100 articles.

STEP 4 - Now you've to include these 6 simple but powerful steps in your ebook to spread it like a non-stop virus.

1. Give free resell rights to your ebook. Allow everyone to sell your ebook for whatever price they wish.

2. Give free distribution rights to your ebook. Allow everyone to distribute your ebook for free to their optin-list.

3. Allow everyone to post their ads in your ebook using an ebook branding tool. This will motivate them to pass your ebook as they will receive traffic to their site.

4. Include a ‘tell a friend’ script in your ebook. Tell your ebook readers to pass your ebook to their 3 friends or relatives using your 'tell a friend' script.

If the do this, give them a high quality gift.

This will motivate them to pass your ebook for free to their friends.

5. If you have your own affiliate program, make sure that you motivate your readers to signup under your affiliate program and allow them to include their affiliate link in the ebook.

6. Tell your readers that they are free to post your articles on their website or publish them in their ezines or newsletters, only if they keep your resource box intact.

It is as simple as that. Make sure you include all these steps in your ebook and make it absolutely VIRAL.

STEP 5 - Start spreading your ebook. Give it for FREE to your subscribers. Make sure you do your best to promote this ebook.

Once your ebook starts spreading...

1. You will receive quality affiliates who will promote your product.

2. Incoming links to your site from your articles posted on hundreds of websites.

3. Free traffic from ezines where your articles get published.

4. Increase in links will increase your search engine traffic.

5. People will work for you. They will continue spreading your ebook for free and some of them will sell it.

6. As your ebook spreads, your traffic, affiliates, incoming links and search engine ranking will keep on increasing.

7. You will also receive tons of traffic from the links in your ebook.

Now read this article again and again, and cash-in on one of the greatest viral marketing tactic that I have shown YOU.

Murtuza Abbas specializes in creating simple “Profit Pulling Minisites”.

Create amazing Minisites in 3 Hours or Less. Grab your FREE $147 'Minisite Creation Pack' & learn how to start an internet business today...

http://www.7DaysToEarn.com

What a great time of year! It's a time to be thankful for what we have and enjoy all the festivities that mark a renewal of our hope and faith in the "system" that will carry us toward a bright new year.

Right? So if this is such a wonderful season, how come so many of us wind up in Yucksville? It may have something to do with losing our rational map about the time we made the turn at the Grotto of the Great Pumpkin. Let's see if there isn't something we can do to help brighten up this holiday season just a bit.

1. Focus the real reasons we're celebrating.

It doesn't make any difference if we're celebrating Thanksgiving, Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice, Boxing Day or New Year's Day - there is a special significance attached to every holiday. When things start to get out of hand, just take a perspective break to think about why we're observing this special event.

2. Plan ahead.

There are only 24 hours in a day and we need to sleep sometime. By doing just a little planning (and in general, sticking with the plan), we won't be trying to accomplish everything at the last minute. Be sure to include plenty of leisure time just for you and your family or friends so you can step back and enjoy the season together.

3. Budget wisely.

It's not very relaxing to think about having to spend the next year paying off the debts you've accumulated in the spirit of over-zealous giving. Put together a logical budget and stick with it. The basic rule of thumb is "If you ain't got it, don't spend it!"

4. Help others.

It's the season for giving - and the most precious gift we have is ourselves. Find a way to help those less fortunate. Volunteering our services is a great way to take our minds off of the loneliness some of us may experience at this time of year.

5. Don't over-indulge.

Too much of a good thing - food, beverages, spending, celebrating - may be fun at the time but it can also produce moderate to severe consequences. Use a common sense approach to the festivities this season. Position yourself so you will be able to truly enjoy the weeks and months that follow.

About The Author

Gene, through NuPathz.com, provides an easy reading self-help blog, articles, quotations, thoughts and links along with affordable books and materials written to help folks find the road to a more enjoyable lifestyle, to pass on some of life's "secrets for survival" in a chaotic world & offer a few smiles along the way. It's a down-to-earth, simple approach to discovering a better life. You can visit Gene at his website.

gene@nupathz.com

Every webmaster knows that the free search engines are a major source of traffic.

They also know that applying all the SEO techniques in the world will not in itself get their web pages spidered, indexed and listed. Yes, sure, a "perfect" page, once indexed and listed will surely rank high for its keywords but unless it is found by the spiders, it is pretty useless.

It is no secret that the process of a web page being found by the spiders can be helped by placing links to that web site on other web sites (e.g. by doing a links exchange with other web sites, by putting one's URL in one's signature file when posting on a forum, by writing and submitting articles for free distribution and placing one's URL in the author's resource block etc.) All of this will surely work but it can take months before anything happens. The webmaster has no option but to be patient and wait...and wait...and wait.

Now there is something very easy and very effective one can do to speed up this process. Actually, using this method, will get a web page indexed and listed in less than 48 hours. And the whole process is controlled by the webmaster. It is easy, fast in terms of setting it all up and what's more it is free!

Here is what one does:

• Go to http://www.blogger.com and sign up for a new account (free - they even host the blog on their server at no cost)
• Give your blog a name.
• Navigate to 'Settings' and then choose 'Site Feed'
• Check that the 'Publish Site Feed' option is set to 'Yes'
• Copy the 'Site Feed URL' to the clip board (you can paste is some where .. you're going to use it when you've set up your my.yahoo account)
• Save your changes
• Navigate to 'Posting' and create your first entry.
• What should you write? Anything, actually - your words do not make that much of a difference. What is important is that you add the URL of each page you want listed to the blog. Remember to add them as live links (to enable all the spiders to follow them!)

  Mmm, you don't know how to do a live link? Here is an example. Just copy the HTML code

  link to Perfect Party Ideas

  Replace the URL with your URL and the description ("link to Perfect Party Ideas" with your own.

  As a suggestion, why not make your blog a log of this experiment?

• Publish your blog by hitting the 'Publish' button.

• Now you have to go to http://www.yahoo.com and open a My Yahoo! account. Just follow Yahoo's very clear instructions.
• Click on the 'Add Content' button.
• Click the ' Add RSS by URL' link.
• Paste the 'Site Feed URL' you've copied earlier in the 'URL' field and
• hit 'Add'

Mmm, you don't know what a news feed is? I've written a document explaining it all. You can read it here.

• Last step: go to http://www.pingomatic.com
• Enter your blog's name and URL (similar to mine: http://www.perfect-party-ideas.blogspot.com)
• Select all the services to ping (of which My Yahoo! is one) and click the 'Submit Pings' button.
• Navigate back to your My Yahoo! account and refresh your browser.
• Scroll to the bottom of the page where you'll see your blog's feed appearing.

Now for a bit of excitement. Start watching your web site's stat's to see how quickly the spiders find their way to your web site. You could even throw a free stats counter on your blog and watch the spiders visiting your blog.

Next step: Play "blog-and-ping" every day or so. More often if you have the time! Whenever you feel like it, add another posting to your blog. Remember to throw in some links to specific pages on your web site.

Let me know how successful you were - leave a comment in my blog or use my Contact Us page on my web site.

Here's to your success!

Kind Regards
Anne-Marie
P.S. If this article had any value to you (and I'm sure it did ;-) ), why not read more hot tips in my blog?

Anne-Marie Killer is a mother of two teenagers and a toddler. She is the webmaster and owner of Perfect Party Ideas, Read her blog where she documents the process of setting up Perfect Party Ideas.

Optimizing web pages for high rankings in the search engines involved two main processes. Firstly there is the on-page factors which include what keywords you place where on the page itself. The second, and more important process is getting the off-page factors right - incoming links.

This article explores mainly the on-page factors. As the competition for a keyword phrase increases, off-page factors become more important to good rankings and these often mask the effects of on-page factors making it impossible to see what on-page factors are important. For this reason, I am going to look at a high ranking page with low levels of competition in Google.

First, let's consider what we mean by competition.

There are two ways to look at competition in Google. There is the competition a page has when you type the phrase with quotes, and the competition when you type the words without quotes. The number of results returned by Google in each case is YOUR competition.

The main differences between these two types of search are as follows:

Search with Quotes - this returns only those pages that have been "optimized" for the exact phrase.

Search without Quotes - this returns all pages that have been "optimized" for the words making up the phrase.

e.g. (in simple terms)

a) If you search Google for

alsatian dog

Google returns 41,000 competing pages.

b) If you search Google for

"alsatian dog"

Google returns 6,390 competing pages.

In (a) above, there are 41,000 pages that refer to alsatian AND dog, but not necessarily to alsatian dog.

In (b) above, there are 6,390 pages that refer to the exact phrase alsatian dog.

Now, if you want to rank well for the term "alsatian dog" on Google, you only have to compete with 6,390 other pages for this exact term.

However, there are 41,000 - 6,390 = 34,610 other pages that are related to this search, and might still beat you if Google sees them as more relevant than your page.

We have discussed before the importance of link reputation and PR in ranking. It is possible for a high PR page to rank well for a term like alsatian dog, even if it does not have the exact phrase on the page.

This fact clouds the issue somewhat, and so although I recommend searching with quotes to find the real competition, I also recommend that you look at the top few results in Google (as searched without quotes) to determine how important those "partial match" pages are.

A quick search at:

http://www.prsearch.net/

for alsatian dog, shows me that the top pages for this search without quotes have a low PR (0-3) and many of those pages have 0 incoming links.

The same search at PRSearch.net using quotes around the phrase show very similar results. The competing pages for the exact term have low PR and low incoming links.

This phrase should be easy to target and get top rankings if done properly.

A word of warning: Because the PR reported on the Google toolbar is out of date (see earlier), you cannot be 100% sure of the PR of the pages, even using a site like PRSearch. They will use the same formula that the toolbar uses, and so will be equally out of date. Only Google knows the exact PR it is using in its ranking for any one page.

A second check I often do is to check what the PR of the homepage of the site that is ranking well, as this gives me an indication of how important the site as a whole is. For the phrase alsatian dog (with or without quotes), the top page is:

http://www.castleofspirits.com/stories02/alsatian.html

The homepage

http://www.castleofspirits.com

has a PR of 6 - quite an important site.

However, there is no link to the alsatian page on the homepage, so the PR 6 homepage wont directly help towards the high ranking of the alsatian dog web page.

Doing a backward links check on Google does not help since there are no backlinks listed for this top ranking page.

OK, putting on my detective hat, I see a link at the bottom of the Alsatian page called "March 02 Ghost Stories". There is another link to "Ghost Story Page".

Clicking on the link to Ghost Story Page, I am taken to a PR 5 page:

http://www.castleofspirits.com/storypg.html

where I find a link to March 2002 Ghost Stories. Clicking that link takes me to a PR 3 page:

http://www.castleofspirits.com/stories02/mch2002.html

And on this page I find a link to Ghostly Alsatian dog.

So, the top ranking alsatian dog page has one link I know of from a PR 3 page. I might assume that this site also has a sitemap (although I cannot find one) where it contains a second link to the alsatian dog page. That means a total of 2 links, both internal.

I can assume from this that the alsatian page with a PR 2 is probably the correct PR, and the page itself has very few incoming links. I am confident that if I targeted the phrase alsatian dog, I would easily get a top ranking.

The phrase alsatian dog is therefore an EASY phrase to target.

As a final check I went to the searchguild difficulty tool mentioned in section 6 of this newsletter and typed my phrase into that. The Search Guild rates this term as EASY.

With relatively few off-page factors contributing to the high ranking of this page, I can only assume that the on-page factors are what makes this page stand out from the rest and rank at number 1 on Google.

There are a variety of tools available for calculating density, but I use a tool I wrote for myself and is not available for purchase.

Running this URL through my tool tells me a lot of useful information.

Density of the phrase "alsatian dog" on the page is 0.49%

The keyword is found ONCE in the title (11.11%), and TWICE in the main text on the page (a density of just 0.34%).

The keyword is not found in any header or meta tag!

As a second check I always look at what I call the partial density. That is the sum of the densities of all words that make up the phrase.

e.g. the phrase "alsatian dog" is made up of two words - alsatian AND dog. I look at the density of alsatian, and the density of dog, and combine the two densities.

This is useful because it tells me the density on the page of the words that make up the phrase (remember it is possible to rank well without the exact phrase on the page) - a kind of simplified page reputation.

The partial density of this page is 3.09%, made up of 7 occurrences of alsatian, and 12 occurrences of dog. This page is obviously about alsatians and dogs!

Let's look at the prominence of this phrase on the page. First an explanation of what prominence means.

Prominence is a measure of where on the page a word exists.

A prominence of 100 would mean it was the first word on the page.

A prominence of 1 would indicate it was the last word on the page.

A prominence of 50% would indicate it was the middle word on the page.

If the phrase was the first word (100% prominence) and the last word (1% prominence) on the page, the average prominence on the page would be about 50%. That means the keywords are well spread out on the page. As prominence increases, the keyword is found higher up the page, as it decreases, it is found lower down the page.

For analysis of top ranking pages, I look at not only the average prominence of ALL occurrences of the phrase on my page

i.e. how the keywords are spaced out on the page,

but also the prominence of the first occurrence on the page.

i.e. how close to the start of the document is the phrase first found?

The prominence of the first occurrence of the phrase alsatian dog is 99.67%. That means it is almost the first phrase on the page (only the word ghost comes before it).

The average prominence of the whole page for this term is 62.62%. That means that the keywords are distributed more in the upper portion of the page. Haven't I always told you that it was important to get your main keyword in the top one-third of the page?.

This page is a good one to study. It shows a top ranking page for a low competitive keyword phrase. Because of the low competition, incoming links and PR are less important (though if you have both, you could dominate this phrase), while on-page factors will make or break the ranking.

Even though the exact phrase is only found 3 times on the page, the fact that the phrase is in the title of the document and in the body text seems to be enough. This low density is backed up by using the words that make up the phrase several times on the page. Google will be in no doubt what this page is about.

A final help to the ranking of this page is the filename. Notice that part of the keyword phrase is found in the filename - alsatian.html

*****************************************************
Andy Williams is author of the free, ezSEO
internet marketing newsletter, offering subscribers up-to-date
information on all aspects of internet marketing.
*****************************************************

Are shades of grey SEO really Black Hat SEO?

Black hat SEO is a strategy which gets a web page or entire site banned from a search engine.

A shade of grey is when you use a black hat strategy but your site has not been banned yet. Remember the acronym for YET: You're Entitled Too!

There are many different opinions on the subject of Search Engine Optimization. Many folks will deliver advice which will work to get you top 10 rankings but what is really the difference between Black Hat SEO and White Hat SEO?

There has been many good attempts to define Black Hat SEO. All are relevant and an example can be found at http://www.blackhatseo.com. The site contains a page of example Black Hat SEO and a directory of not recommended products and services.

But is there more to it than just keyword stuffing, hidden text and spamming image alt tags?

If you read the the Webmaster guidelines at Google: http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html, you'll notice that sneaky Redirection pages are not welcome. (This does not include the 301 redirect.)

What are Sneaky Redirection Pages?

Sneaky redirection pages are set up in in groups of 10 or 20. They all target similar and related keywords or phrases. The only links on these pages are links to other pages in the same family creating a false sense of related linking.

They do not contain content that any human would be interested in. These pages show up high in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS). When you click on one of these pages from a search engine result, you will be redirected to another page. (Usually a high pressure sales page.)

Is this misleading? You bet. Why? Because the page you click on from the serps is not the page you actually get to read.

Can Sneaky Redirects be considered as a Black Hat SEO tactic?

I think so. The reason being is that if your page is discovered, it does get banned. These pages are smart when it comes to getting a higher search engine position but they will vanish if another marketer reports your page.

What SEO Strategy Should You Use?

All SEO strategies have value. I think that the focus of attention should be to avoid Black Hat SEO if your intention is to keep your site from being banned.

Visit SEO forums and use the ideas that you feel comfortable with. There are many SEO forums out there. Here is one to get you started: http://www.searchguild.com

Be aware of search engine guidelines. If you read conflicting information, or if the tactic does not feel 100% OK, maybe the tactic should be placed on the back burner or even avoided forever.

The author, Ed Zivkovic is based on the Gold Coast in Australia. Ed writes and publishes home business and webmaster articles at http://www.ezau.com and enjoys going to http://www.gold-coast-beaches.com.

I just wanted to share a little Search Engine Optimization experiment I ran to confirm the theory that Google likes content rich sitemap pages rather than just a bunch of links pointing to different pages on your site. I also wanted to look at a way of funnelling Google page rank to all the internal pages on my site as quickly as possible

I have heard from a few search engine optimization companies that sitemaps are good ways of helping search engine spiders find all the pages on your site but have you every thought that using good quality sitemaps can also help your internal pages attain a very high Google page rank very quickly

I was reading a Search Engine Optimization article about how Google likes pages with good quality relevant content and how they wanted to serve this quality content to their surfers. I decided to run a little experiment with sitemaps. I build two types of sitemap, one with just links to my article pages and the other with the same links but these links were also surrounded with relevant search engine optimized content.

Sitemap without search engine optimized content

http://search.freefind.com/find.html?id=85113844&m=0&p=0

Sitemap with search engine optimized content

http://www.search-engine-optimization-review.com/seo-sitemap-11.html

I created content rich sitemap with a neat bit of sitemap generating software that generates pages by using the title and description of your internal pages.

http://www.search-engine-optimization-review.com/sitemap.html

I started an aggressive reciprocal link campaign and my index page shot up to a PR 5 within 60 days.

http://www.search-engine-optimization-review.com Google page rank 5

Both types of sitemap pages gained a PR 4 but the funny thing was the pages that were linked from my content rich sitemap pages gained a PR3 but the sitemap pages with just text links to my internal pages were only a PR 1.

Six months after creating these sitemap pages the article pages linked from the content rich sitemap pages had attained a PR 5 but the article pages linked from sitemap pages that had just text links with no content had attained at the very best a PR 2.

I have come the conclusion that Google does like quality search engine optimized content rich pages and using these sitemap pages to funnel Google page rank to your important internal pages is a wise thing to do.

My advice is to build your sitemap pages with content surrounding the links to all your internal pages so they are only two clicks away from your home page.

Example Home page - Good content sitemap page - internal pages

If you have a lot of sitemap pages (I had over 20 with 100 links per page) create links from your home page using text links. For example instead of creating a link like Sitemap and sitemap2, sitemap3 etc Use keyword links to your sitemap pages like

Seo l Seo firm l Seo company l Seo New York l etc

One last thing, use RSS to feed up to date relevant content to your pages to keep the search engine coming back to gobble up your web sites pages.

Check out my spider page.

http://www.search-engine-optimization-review.com/cgi-bin/spider/spyderview.cgi

This software tells you when and where the search engines have visited your site

Keith Mallinson is author of the free, SEO Review internet marketing newsletter, offering subscribers up-to-date information on all aspects of search engine optimization and internet marketing. His search engine optimization website offers unique, no BS information, for free

Want to drive more targeted traffic to your web site?

Want to do it for free?

If you answered "yes" you're in for a treat. Use the search engine optimization and ranking techniques in this article and you will be well on your way to a front page listing in the major search engines.

Up until now, you've been led to believe that search engine optimization and search engine ranking strategies were something better left to an expert. But that's not true. Any serious marketer can and should learn the simple search engine optimization and ranking techniques that can get his site listed on the first page of the search engines.

Before I begin I want to point out that search engine optimization and ranking strategies fall into two catagories. On page factors and off page factors.

On page factors you have a lot of control over. Things like content, good keywords, and the proper use of anchor text.

Off page factors, like page rank, you'll have less control over. But it's important that you exercise as much control as you can over the off page factors as well. These will be discussed in another article.

To get your search engine optimization and ranking strategies right you will need some tools. Some free, some payed. But regardless, if you want your site listed in the top ten results you need these tools.

Search Engine Optimization and Ranking - Tools of the Trade

To begin with, I'm not a big believer in throwing money after unnecessary tools or ebooks. After all, if you bought all the tools some gurus recommend it could easily run into hundreds and even thousands of dollars. So rest assurred, what I recommend are the bare essentials of what you will need to get it right.

The first tool you need is free. At least for now. It's the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool. You can find it at http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

You will use this tool for your keyword research. Let's say you plan to build a site on dog grooming. Type dog grooming in the suggestion box, click the arrow, and a list of related keywords come up. It also tells you how many searches were conducted on Overture and it's related sites for the past month. This is valuable information as it tells you which keywords are worth persuing and which don't get enough searches to be worthwhile. You will want to print out or create a file to store these keywords on your computer because you're not finished with them yet.

The next tool you need is Wordtracker. Although it's not free, it is one of the most valuable tools in your arsenal. This tool is not expensive as you can order it for short time frames. Twenty four hours usually runs about $7.00 U.S.

Wordtracker takes your keyword research to the next level. For instance:

find all keywords that bear any relation to your business

tells you how popular the keywords really are in multiple search engines

shows you your chance of making the top ten

shows you the number of times the keyword or phrase has appeared in the data base

shows mispellings on searches that you can capitalize on

shows the number of competing sites

prints out a complete list of selected keywords with KEI analysis, count, hits in 24 hours, and number of competing sites.

This valuable tool will save you countless hours of trial and error trying to find the best keywords and phrases to land you in the top ten.

I once built a site based solely on results from the Overture suggestion tool. To my dismay I had few visitors. When I checked the keywords and phrases with Wordtracker, I found a completly differnt story. Wordtracker showed much lower figures for the keywords I was using from Overture. When I revamped the site using Wordtrackers results I found the search results to be much more accurate.

So use the Overture suggestion tool to get a preliminary set of keywords, then, check them with Wordtracker to identify the best keywords and phrases to build your site around.

Build Your Site Around Search Engine Optimization and Ranking Techniques

When I built my first site I used a cheap software program I purchased from my local office supply store. Needless to say, it was never listed in the search engines. I had little control over the appearance and more than likely it did what it wanted, not what I wanted. So if you intend to build a serious web site to get traffic and make money, stay away from them. I currently use NoteTab Pro. it's relatively easy to use and gives you a lot of flexibility. Plus it's relatively inexpensive.

If you are looking for a less expensive way to go I recommend Notetab light. Download a free copy here http://www.notetab.com. Although not as flexible and easy to use as NoteTab Pro, it will get the job done.

Search Engine Optimization and Ranking Power Points

You've researched and selected your keywords and phrases. Where do you use them for the best search engine optimization and ranking?

Power Point #1.This is one of the best secrets I can give you. Consider each page of your site to be a doorway into your site. Therefore optimize one keyword or keyword phrase for each page of your site. Many people try to cram multiple keywords into a page. This only confuses the search engines and hurts your rankings.

Power Point#2. Keep your site keywords and pages focused on a common theme. For example: If you have a site about dog grooming, Every page on the site should relate to dog grooming. If you were to ad a page about training your pet snake it wouldn't fit the theme. So keep all your pages tightly focused on the overall theme of your site. Getting off theme will hurt your rankings.

Power Point #3.Content is king. Give the searh engines what they want and they will give you what you want. A good listing. What they want are highly relevant sites for their search customers with good, valuable content. Methods to trick the search engines are abundant. But when they catch up with you, you'll be penalized or worse, possibly banned. You don't want that.

Power point #4. Sprinkle your secondary keywords and phrases throughout your content. When you researched your keywords you came up with a list of primary words and phrases to optimize your pages. You should also have an additional 50 - 100 keywords and phrases that I will call secondary keywords. If you sprinkle these throughout your page it will give you a big boost in the search engines. You'll be amazed at how many visitors you will recieve from these secondary keyword searches.

Where To Use Your Primary Keywords To Get The Most Impact For Your Search Engine Optimization and Ranking Efforts

Keyword placement, density and proximity are the most important factors when it comes to on page search engine optimization and ranking strategies.

Domain name: Although unproven, some search engine optimization experts recommend your site domain name be your primary keyword or phrase. If I can get a domain with my primary keyword fine. If not, i just try to get a good related name. If you do get a domain with your primary phrase, be sure to seperate the individual words with hyphens. Some search engine optimization experts are now saying that Google can read the keywords even if they are not seperated. I prefer to play it safe and use hyphens. For example: doggrooming.com would be dog-grooming.com. Done this way the search engines can read the individual words.

Page title. It's best to use your keyword or phrase once in the title of your page. Try to keep it short. Google uses a weighting factor based on the number of words in the title. The more words you use, the less weight each word has. A word of caution here. Don't just use your keyword phrase. Google will likely consider this spamming and penalize you. Using the same keyword more than once is worth testing, but many experts believe it can hurt your rankings. Try to come up with a good title as this is what your prospects will see on the search engines.

The discription: Again, don't over use your keyword in your discription. Once or twice is enough. Some search engines will use your discription in their listings so try to develop one that will make the searcher want to click on it.

Heading tags: Header tags are the HTML tags used to make text bigger. Typically they are used for headlines and sub heads. Some search engines use them to determine what a page is about. So try to use your keyword or phrase in your header tags.

Anchor text: This is the text used in a link. When you are linking from one page on your site to another make sure you use your keywords in the link. A good example is your home page. Most people simply put the link as "home." Instead use website promotion strategies home. Get the idea.

Body copy: Try to use your keyword as often as you can in your body copy without sounding repetitive or being obvious. If it doesn't sound right, it's probably to much. Work it in wherever it fits. There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to keyword density. Most experts agree that around 7% density is a good figure to shoot for. Avoid continuously repeating the keyword every two or three words. This is considered spamming.

Alt text: This is text used in place of images for those with text only browsers. It also pops up when you hold your mouse over an image. Because search engine spiders can't read graphics, the alt text tells the spiders what the graphic is. So discribe the graphic but include your keyword.

URL's: When using URL's to link your pages together be sure to use your keywords in the link. Just as in the case of domain names, use hyphens to seperate the words so the spiders can read them.

We've covered a lot in this article. I've given you information that cost me a small fortune to acquire. We covered the tools and editors you will need to do the job right. I gave you power points that most search engine optimization experts don't want you to know. Then we looked at the on page factors you can control to maximize your search engine optimization and ranking efforts. Keep in mind, this is only half of the equation. There are still off page factors that have a major impact on your search engine optimization strategies.

Guy Ray is a copywriter and certified search engine optimization specialist who specializes in website promotion and online marketing strategies. Are you getting all the traffic you need? Click here now! http://www.website-promotion-strategies.com

Search Engine Optimization, optimizing your website for it to be visible in the search results of a search engine's query or in a search result of a directory.

Basically, SEO is a marketing strategy for your site. To be included in the top ten search results of an impressive search engine/directory guarantees a return of investment. Search Engine Optimization can be viewed as a new form of publicity for a website which secures definite visitors and targeted traffic for your site.

There are various Search Engines in the net today. The top rated search engine is Google. It is a prestige and good practice of SEO to be included in the top ten list search result of Google.

Google and other search engines use a crawler to search for the site most relevant to a certain category or field. Google's crawler is called a spider. It is a bot designed to crawl websites for keywords and site linkings. It has developed their Googlebot to be pretty efficient and fast.

Directory and Search Engines

Directory and Search Engines are two different entities. But to the average user, the look and feel is the same. But for a website owner interested in optimizing their website, it is important to distinguish between the two.

Whereas the search engine uses bots to crawl websites, Directories are searchable databases of websites that are categorized, reviewed and ranked by humans.

Yahoo is the most popular Directory listing on the web. Another important directory is the ODP or Open Directory Project. One emerging Search Engine is the MSN Search, you can watch out for its launching soon.

Once, website submission was a good way for your site to be visible on a search results rank of a directory. But website submissions for some directory listings may require fees and does not even guarantee a high ranking in the search results. It may take them long to approve the submission and the visibility of the site in the search ranking will still be dependent upon the keywords and site links. A good marketing practice for your site is just to optimize it. Optimizing your site may require extensive research on relevant keywords to be used in your site, optimizing the content, and A site can be optimized for search engine/directory listing through many ways. It can be with the use of keywords in the title and description fields of your Meta tag and through site linking. A search engine's crawler uses these leads generated by a user's query to look for the most pertinent site related to the query. So a good practice of SEO is to custom tailor your sites's content and reflect this on the keywords visible on your site. SEO is not only dependent on the keywords your site has. The freshness of the contents also counts. It is advisable from time to time to change the look and feel of your site.

Gina Marie Capatar is the head writer for Isnare Outsourcing Services . She does freelance Content writing jobs and Technical Writing Jobs. You may see some of her sample works at the Isnare Outsourcing Services Portfolio .

Blogging software is really a simple Content Management System (CMS) that easily adds new pages and integrates them into your site's navigational structure and linkage.

Blogs and blog posts are naturally search engine friendly because they are text-rich, link-rich, frequently-updated webpages that use stylesheets or CSS, and have very little extraneous HTML.

Optimizing a blog is very similar to optimizing a website, and optimizing a blog post similar to optimizing a web page.

But depending on the blogging service or software you use, the results may look somewhat different.

If you follow some simple rules for search engine optimization, your blog can rank much higher than static website pages in the search engine results pages.

Here are the most important rules to follow to get your posts listed for keywords of your choice.

1. Use your primary keyword in your blog domain

Whether you purchase a separate domain (recommended) for your blog, or host it on a blogging service or a subdomain of your own site, try to ensure that your URL contains the primary keyword you want to optimize for.

For example, if you want your blog to get found for the keyword "rss" get a domain with the keyword "rss", or use the keyword in a subdomain as in

http://ebizwhiz-publishing.com/rssnews

Getting a domain name with your own name might make for good branding, especially if yours is a personal blog.

But if you're doing it for business and want the targeted traffic to flow your way, keywords in the domain or subdomain are a move in the right direction.

2. Use your primary key phrase in your blog header tags and the title of your posts

If your primary key phrase is "business blogging" make sure that the word business, or blogging, or both, appear in your blog headers (the H1 or H2 tags) as well as the title of each of your posts.

Most blogging software will take the keywords in your post title and put them into the file name of the permalink posts it creates.

For example, if you have a blog on Blogger and title your post "Search Engine Optimization For Blogs", Blogger will automatically create a page with your post and name the file "search-engine-optimization-for-blogs.html" or something similar.

With other server-side software like Wordpress and Movable Type, you may require the mod_rewrite command to save the title of your entries as a permalink.

3. Use your secondary keywords in the body of your post

If you want to get listed for secondary keywords use them infrequently in the body of your post and pepper your blog titles or links with them appropriately.

Don't overdo this or your posts will end up sounding unnatural and spammy to readers.

4. Use your keywords in the anchor text of links

Keyword in links have more importance than simple text.

Use your primary and secondary keywords in the anchor text of links when linking to other blog posts or to other pages on your main site.

Link keywords where they naturally appear in the body text, but again, don't overdo it, or you'll end up with spammy looking pages.

5. Make sure search engines can spider your blog easily

Set up your blog so that the side navigation bar is present on all pages.

Make sure your archives and previous posts are accessible from all pages of your blog so they get spidered easily.

6. Get backlinks from other blogs or websites

Links pointing to your blog or posts are essential to build pagerank and make your blog rank higher in the search engine listings.

I've seen many people recommend Blogrolling as one method of building links to your blog.

BlogRolling is a one-stop linklist manager for your blog or journal. But all this service actually does is give you a bit of javascript code that "calls" the links.

As far as search engine rankings go, this method of linking is of little use, because spiders can't read external javascript code.

Instead I recommend that you focus your linking efforts on the methods here.

Submitting to Blog Search Engines and Directories:

Submitting your blog and RSS feed to blog search engines and directories is essential for getting high-quality links back to your blog.

Here is the best list I've found of places to submit your feed or blog.

Best Blog Directory And RSS Submission Sites

Link Exchanges:

Many similarly-themed blogs are often willing to exchange links with other blogs and form richly interlinked networks or communities. Link exchanges with other blogs are easy to implement with most blogging software.

Trackbacks:

You can also get links back to your blog using trackbacks. One of the disadvantages of using Blogger is that it does not automatically create trackback urls that others can use to link back to your posts.

Haloscan is a free service that will automatically add comments and trackbacks to your Blogger blog.

But if trackbacks are an important component of your linking strategy, I would advise using another software or system that adds this feature automatically.

Comments:

You can also get back links to your blog by posting legitimate comments in response to posts on other blogs.

7. Update frequently

There's no better food for search engine spiders than fresh content.

Post and update your blog frequently using all the rules outlined above and there's no reason why your blog will not get you top rankings in a short period of time.

8. Stay put

Once you create your blog, try to stick to the same domain and blog host or system for as long as you continue to publish.

You could end up losing a lot of your traffic, your readers and all your search engine listings if you decide to move.

For more ways of building traffic to your blog, read the article "How To Build Traffic To Your Blog."

Priya Shah publishes an internet marketing ezine by day and doubles as a Blog Maniac by night. Blog Brandz is the legitimate offspring of her affair with the blogosphere.

Keywords aren't just some words that allow search engines, like Google, to find your web site. They are also key elements for creating attractive language to use in your marketing or advertising material. For instance places such as: brochures, business cards, flyers, and ads. Keywords can also fit well into speaking engagements scripts or audiotapes scripts as well as audience handouts.

It is important to create a keyword list for each product or service you have. The keyword list might even change slightly if there are various groups or audiences for that product or service.

For simplicity, I have omitted the word service and for the word product to reflect both.

Creating your keyword list can begin after you have clearly identified the buyer or audience for a particular product or service. You will need to know as much about the buyer's demographic and charactertics as possible. I also recommend including their descriptive qualities and personalities. Here is a list to kick start your brainstorming process:

- Communicative
- Competent
- Dedicated
- Enthusiastic
- Expert
- Hardworking
- Improved
- Positive
- Negative
- Professional
- Relationship-driven
- Self-confident
- Successful
- Tranquil
- Spiritual
- Understanding
- Socially conscious
- Early adaptor
- Later buyer
- Has to see it to believe it
- Guarantee a must.

The list of keywords will describe the product and target the specific quality you have isolated as most important to those buyers. No grabbing out of midair. Take the time and research, this will help you save money and reduce costly marketing experiences.

You can complete your research with any combination of methods. Here are eight methods to help you build from:

- Brainstorming
- Yellow Pages or other indexes for services or products.
- Reviewing your company literature already created
- Checking out the competitor's literature
- Surveying key customers
- Searching through trade publications (articles and ads), and contacting them or visiting their web site looking for their buyer statistics/demographics.
- Use a general dictionary and thesaurus
- Use a specialized dictionary like the, Flip Dictionary.

You can use resources like the yellow pages or other catalogue-type indexes listing grouping to discover keywords your product or service would be listed under.

Let's move through an example. If you were selling a professional development product - you could be in any one of the following professions: professional speaker, life, business, or executive coach, consultant or trainer. Your buyer or audience is somewhat successful you're your product will help them add additional success. Here is a list of keywords that could describe their characteristics or qualities:

- Able to motivate others
- Clearheaded
- Clear-sighted
- Committed to achieving excellence
- Demands excellence
- Full of character
- Has good judgment
- Has a wonderful stress-free life already
- Highly perceptive
- Lives up to her or her potential
- Life-long learner
- Sts high standards for themselves
- Stays on track
- Strives for perfection
- Strives to excel
- Takes the initiative
- Motivated to achieve

Okay, good start. Now, let's begin to put all this together. Let's zoom in on one of these: strives to excel. Let's narrow down further to one word: excel.

Look up the word excel in a synonym finder, thesaurus or my preference, the Flip Dictionary and you find the following keywords that you can add to your keyword list: best, better, exceed, outclass, outdo, out rival, outstrip, shine, star, superior, surpass, take the cake, transcend, dominate, tower above, be head and shoulders above, stand out in the crowd, hold sway, lead, take the lead, lead the pack.

The list can go on, however, will stop here because the point is made.

After this, you could let your fingers travel through the thesaurus and then add those words.

Alternatively, you could continue your list by visiting a few of your competitor's web sites and see what keywords they use. You do this by visiting their home page, right clicking the mouse on the page, and select "view source." In the HTML code look for "keywords." These are the keywords they use for the search engines to find them.

You will want to specifically focus on the competitor web sites that appear in first ten spots on one or two major search engines, like Google.

Next, select another method from your list of resources and continue until you feel you have enough right words.

After completing your list, you will want to review and place the keywords in priority order as best possible and eliminate any words that might be misleading. If you market globally, make sure none of the keywords mean something offensive in their language.

Catherine Franz, a Certified Professional Marketing & Writing Coach, specializes in product development, Internet writing and marketing, nonfiction, training. Newsletters and articles available at: http://www.abundancecenter.com

We all want to get our websites high up in the search enignes but how do you do it? One thing you shouldn't bother doing is submit your site to any search engines. Not Google, not Yahoo!, not AltaVista. Sound a bit strange? Read on...

Submitting to all the search engines

Submitting your website to every search engine is an incredibly time-consuming process. There are hundreds and hundreds of them out there - no doubt, you've come across the companies who'll submit your website to 1000 search engines for you.

Search engine professionals know that the vast majority of these search engines have a very low usage rate and will drive hardly any traffic your way. In fact, it's only a handful of search engines that drive the majority of traffic from search engines to websites.

The major search engines

Some of the most important search engines, probably accounting for over 90% of the search engine market, are:

- Google
- Yahoo! (released earlier this year)
- MSN
- Teoma
- Fast
- AltaVista

Don't submit to these search engines

"But there's only six of them - why on earth not!?" Well, aside from saving time and a bit of money (some require a submission fee), quite simply there's no need. Allow me to explain...

Search engines crawl the web every few weeks (or months) looking for websites to index. Here's how it works:

- Search engines start at one website with a large number of outbound links (usually a directory)

- They follow every link they come across, indexing each page they arrive at

- Once a page has been indexed they follow all the links from that page

- And so on until there are no more links to follow

- Unless today is your very first day on the Internet, you might have heard that inbound links into a website are extremely important in establishing its search engine ranking.

If a search engine can't find you by itself through crawling the web, then your website doesn't have any inbound links. If so, you'll never achieve a decent search engine ranking so what's the point in registering?

Getting incoming links quickly

So, how do you get incoming links? Well, this is a vast topic which I won't be discussing now, but if you want to get a few good links quickly then there is a solution: web directories. If your website is listed in the Yahoo! directory (http://dir.yahoo.com, not the same as Yahoo! search) and the Open Directory (http://www.dmoz.org, used by Google) all the search engines should find you within two to three months.

There are plenty of other directories you should get listed in too. Global, local and industry-specific directories abound on the Internet. To find them run a search for 'web directory' on your favorite search engine. The directories that come up highest in the search rankings will probably generate the most traffic. You can also check the directories of directories listed at the end of this article.

Another even quicker solution is webmaster forums. Search engines love forums because they include so much fresh content. Most have an area where you're allowed to enter your URL to get feedback from other webmasters. http://www.webmasterforumlist.com has a list of webmsater forums - sign up to them all and get posting!

Long term strategy

Search engine optimisation is a long term strategy. You'll be successful if you:

- Structure your pages correctly by positioning your keywords in effective places

- Build a great site with unique content that other websites will want to link

Register with as many web directories as possible and then concentrate your efforts on these two things. Within a few months you'll start to see success.

Directories of directories:

- http://dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Searching/Directories/
- http://www.searchenginecolossus.com/
- http://www.seo-lab.com/directory-articles/best-free-directories.php
- http://www.isedb.com/html/Web_Directories/
- http://www.directory-pages.com/

This article was written by Trenton Moss. He's crazy about web usability and accessibility - so crazy that he went and started his own web usability and accessibility consultancy ( Webcredible - http://www.webcredible.co.uk ) to help make the Internet a better place for everyone.

1. Using Hidden Links to increase subscribers or for a contest. Place a not so easy to find link in your copy and then ask people to find it. Give them a prize or freebie for finding it. Or you can give them the ebook after they find the link and click on it. By burring it inside the material, they will definitely need to read it carefully in order to find it.

2. Have unique information? Start a member-only web site or ezine. Tell subscribers what they will receive for joining. Offer free memberships in exchange for something you want.

3. Use viral marketing by increasing awareness about your product or service on discussion boards or blogs? Exchange your product or service with others who mentioned you on specific boards or blogs. You will need to track all these, so you will want to keep it simple.

4. Help others set up an instant article directory. Offer your articles to be posted on their web site. This works well for others who do not write. It also creates links and increases search engine status for both of you.

5. Create a book web site. You can do this in lieu of offering a free ebook. Market it as a free web book. The term is seldom used and builds curiosity. Design the web pages with a title page, table of contents, chapters, etc. Then place your ad or banner for your product or service on the top and bottom of every page.

Catherine Franz, a Certified Professional Coach, specializes in infoproduct development. Newsletters and additional articles available: http://www.abundancecenter.com blog: http://abundance.blogs.com/inthelight

Submitting your website to the main search engines should be handled with care. Do it right, and the rewards can be great.

Webmaster Beware- Submitting your website to the major search engines too often can get your website banned completely from those all important major search engines, like Google, MSN, Yahoo and Alta Vista.

Let's face it, everyone wants the coveted top position in their respective category on all the major search engines. Getting there requires a lot of tweaking of your meta tags, reciprocal linking to sites with high page ranks, and of course submitting your site to the search engines, either manually or utilizing a service to do it for you.

Submitting your site manually is a long a tedious operation, often requiring more time than you had planned on spending just to submit to 30 or less search engines. Submitting your site manually is not recommended.

Using a free service to submit your site is the next option you have for getting your site to the internet. The only problem with this method is that you get listed on only a few engines and, you sacrifice your email address to spam gods and become a part of the millions of poor souls who can never get any rest from the nasty spam vermin that will prey on you for the rest of your natural born life. In addition, it becomes very hard to track how often you have submitted your site to the search engines in the first place.

Using a qualified submission service is the most obvious choice here. There are a lot of services out there with offers like "Submit your site to 500,000 search engines and directories for only $39.95", the real problem with this is there are not even remotely close 500,000 qualified search engines out there, so that means that 99% of your submissions are going to what is know as FFA (Free-for-All) directories. These are NOT where you want to be, besides the fact that you are now in the dreaded worldwide spammers database, your site is listed on directories that get little or no respectable traffic and you have been taken for $39.95. These types of submission services are a dime a dozen on the internet and you should steer clear of any such ridiculous offers or claims.

The reputable companies will give you a clear and concise description of their services. They will break it down for you with information like as follows:

? Which engines they specifically submit to.

? A written guarantee not to share your personal information.

? Make no outrageous claims to submission to hundreds of thousands of engines.

? They will disclose all of they're contact information so that you may contact them by phone or other means.

? They will provide you with a detailed report via email on your submission results, including who your site was submitted to and the disposition of your submission.

If you want a proper submission for your website, you are going to have to pay for it. There are too many quality submission services to list in this article but we have a good list you can review on our website at BullMarketer.com. Look under the "Weblinks" directory, under search engine submission. We have a high Google page rank, quality traffic, and lots of link back to our site and I can promise you it all started with the use of a quality submission service.

Good luck with your life, love, health, and of course, your website submission.

Derek Arnold is the President of BullMarketer.com, a webmaster resource site offering many tools for webmasters, marketers, and designers. Also has over 18 years of experience in the marketing and advertising fields. Homepage: BullMarketer.com

Unlike Search Engines, the process of review of directory submission is carried out manually, by “Experts”. They also have stringent rules and guidelines for listing your site. You may ask why; but these rules are there to ensure good directory submission and effective review procedures. It helps the editor to evaluate a site and decide whether to accept or reject it. All these combined results in a great deal of scrutiny being carried out before your site gets listed on directories.

But you can easily make your submissions an instant success with most of the directories. All you need to do is pay a little attention to the details you provide for Directory Submission. Your little efforts will be richly rewarded.

Here are few Golden rules you should always follow before beginning Directory Submission.

Before You Begin Directory Submission

Before you begin directory submission, make you have taken note of the following:

• Do not submit a mirror page; most directories don’t accept mirror pages.
• Do not submit any “Under construction” pages.
• Always submit the top-level domain of your site.
For example: The correct URL to submit for my site is www.submit2please.com. Do not add index.html or any sub domains.
• Check all your links. Broken links are a sign poor site management which may not go down well with the directories.

Chose the most appropriate Category for your site

Web directories are sorted by topic and editors frequently take great pride in ensuring that everything stays well categorized. So, put up your website in the right category. The search engines look at the various links that are on the page on which you are listed. This can lead to better rankings.

Tip: To find appropriate categories for a site, you can go to Dmoz.org and type in the product/service keyword. You can also search for your rival site and check out the category under which they are submitted.

Pay attention to the description and use of key words

The most common restriction forced by directories is on the size of your description and keywords. The trick is to come up with such a description for your site that can conveniently fit into 100, 150, 200, and 250 characters length. Do all this before you get down to the real job of directory submission. The reason for keeping four lengths of description is that you never know which one will be accepted in which directory. Remember that you may not be able to pen down everything about your site, so write what is unique and relevant. Avoid using a sales pitch and/or promotional language. Try and be informative and friendly.

Here are few more points you should always bear in mind while writing a description for directory submission:

• Do not repeat your title or site URL in the description.
• Do not use all caps; use mixed case.
• Use complete sentences.
• Do not say the word site or website, as in “this site offers”
• Do not use any hype like “the best” or “excellent.”
• Fit your main keyword phrases in but do not repeat them.

Once you have taken care of all these, you have over come the most difficult part of directory submission. The same should be followed for keywords. When it comes to directory submission, all you need to do is to pick up the most appropriate one and hit enter.

Tip: This is what I call an ideal description for my site Submit2Please.com, “We submit Web Sites, Articles, Blogs, Press Releases, Scripts and RSS Feeds to Search Engine Friendly Directories. The directory submission is carried out manually by trained in-house directory submission experts.”

Site Title

Pay attention to your site title. You should ideally not use any URL and key words in it, until and unless they are absolutely necessary to describe your site. Remember, be precise and straight forward!

Tip: You should identify at least 3-4 titles for your site and rotate them during Directory Submission. In this way you can get the maximum optimization benefit for your site through Directory Submission.

All the above mentioned “Golden Rules” stand good for most directories on the internet including Dmoz.org. Thus, by exercise necessary caution before directory submission, you can save a lot of precious time and energy. With the right advice and steps, directory submission may be the most significant thing you will ever do for your website.

Article Source: http://activeauthors.com

About Author Rahul Rungta is a professional Internet Marketer & Manager of Submit2Please.com offering affordable www.submit2please.com/> Directory Submission Services. To know more about his services, please click on the above link.

You published your site, now you just sit by the phone with a notepad as the orders pour in, right? Well, weeks go by and nothing happens. What's wrong?

Oops, you forgot to submit to search engines. No problem, you go onto Google, Yahoo, MSN, perhaps a couple more, and after some hassle with the usual red tape you get yourself submitted. Surely the orders will pour in now?

Or will they?

Let me illustrate the problem for you with an example.

Let's say you are considering buying a new home theatre system this year. You want to do a bit of research so that you don't get ripped off. How would you go about it?

Of course, you'd use a search engine. You might type in "audio visual suppliers melbourne" (assuming you live in Melbourne). Let's say the search returns 30 thousand results, ten per page.

How many pages will you look at? One, maybe two? In other words, if your business is not within the top 20 in your category, it might as well not exist. So, the big question is, how do you get into the top twenty?

The search engines use complex mathematical formulae (algorithms) to determine the ranking of sites. To make matters worse, the algorithms are different for each engine, and secret. However, in general terms the engines look at only two factors: relevance and popularity.

Relevance means simply how relevant is your website to the search the customer is conducting (ie. To the keywords they typed in). The search engines make money by selling advertising space, and their prices depend on traffic they can generate; the traffic in turn is a direct result of how relevant the search results are for people visiting the engine's site.

Relevance is influenced by:

• How early the keywords appear on the page, are they in headings, meta tags, titles, picture names? (Keyword prominence)
• How often are the keywords used? (Keyword frequency)
• What's the proportion of keywords to the page's word count? (Keyword weight)
• How close are the keywords to each other? (Proximity)

Of course, the ultimate in keyword prominence is when it appears in your domain name (remember fastweightlossdiet.net?).

Now, you probably gathered that it's next to impossible to optimise a page for more than one sequence of keywords. However, your customers might actually search for you under dozens (if not hundreds) of keywords. How can you possibly hope to capture this traffic?

Well, the solution lies in creating so-called doorway pages. Once you've done your research and you have a list of keywords your prospects are using, you need to create a separate page for each keyword, and then optimise it for this particular keyword or keyword sequence. When the prospect clicks on the doorway page's link it takes them straight to your site.

Now, once you've covered relevance, it's time to consider popularity. It is judged by two factors:

• How many other websites (preferably related) link to yours?
• How long does an average visitor stay on your site before getting out?

There are several strategies you can use to get other sites to link to yours. Start by linking to good-ranking sites in your category, then email them saying you just linked to them and ask politely to link back to you. Visit guestbooks of related sites and sign your entry with your URL (URL is www + your domain name) - this automatically creates a link. Research link farms (free-for-all link areas).

To increase the time an average visitor spends on your site, there is only one effective way: having interesting and compelling content on it!

A word of caution about search engine optimisation - as the Net grows, it takes longer and longer to wait from making changes on your site to seeing your rankings actually go up; currently 3 months seem to be the norm, and you probably need to allow a year to achieve a decent ranking in a popular category. Also, once achieved it needs to be constantly maintained, as the algorithms change all the time and your competitors don't sleep!

Search engine optimisation is a very significant time commitment that is not realistic for a majority of busy business people. Once again, the only solution is to hire someone to do it for you. Prices range from $500 to $10,000; on-going maintenance $50 - $150 per month. They depend on the number of keywords and doorway pages, and the keywords popularity (it's harder to get into the top of ten in a keyword category with millions of businesses competing, such as "weight loss", than it is for a niche category such as "natural diet recipes").

Make sure you get a guarantee on results, so that when they don't achieve the agreed ranking for you at least you get your money back.

Darius Mikolajewski is Director of Allwelt International, an Australian Internet Marketing Company, and author of books and articles about internet marketing as well as weight loss and nutrition. For more information visit http://www.allwelt.com

1) Title Tag - The title tag is the most powerful on-site SEO technique you have, so use it creatively! What you place in the title tag should only be one thing, the exact keyword you used for the web page that you are trying to optimize. Every single web page should have it's own title tag.

2) ALT Tags - ALT tags were meant to be for text browsers because the images didn't show in text browsers and the ATL tags would tell the visitor what it's about. You should put your main keyword(s) in the ALT tags, but don't over do it because you could get dropped in the results or even worse banned for life!

3) Link Popularity - Link popularity is the most powerful SEO tool out of all them. Most search engines don't even consider web sites if there is not at least one or two links pointing to the web site. Having another site(s) link to your web site is important when it comes to getting your site a good ranking. Your keywords should be in the links you get and keep the keywords short. When you receive requests for a link exchange, check the site out before linking with them, check for spam (Repeat keywords, hidden text, etc.).

4) Keyword Density - This is also vital and should be used with research. You should use the keyword(s) once in the title tag, once in the heading tag, once in bold text, and get the density between 5% to 20% (Don't over do it!). Also use your keyword(s) both low and high on the web page, keyword(s) should be in the first sentence and in the last one.

5) Page Size - Your web page's speed is important to your visitors and the search engines. Why? Because the robots will be able to spider your web page faster and easier. Try your best to keep your web page over 5k and under 15k in size.

6) Rich Theme - Search engines are looking at themes more and more. Build content (Articles, FAQ, tips, etc.) much as possible and keep the web pages around 200 to 500 words. Create content that's related to your market and link them out to other related content on your site. Try to get 200 web pages or more.

7) Web Site Design - This is also important, if you want to get indexed! Text content should out weigh the HTML content. The pages should validate and be usable in all of today's leading edge browsers. Stay away from flash and Java Script, search engines dislike them both a lot.

8) Insite Cross Linking - This will help you get all of your web pages indexed by the search engines. Your web pages should be no more than three clicks away from the home page. Link to topic related quality content across your site. This will also help build you a better theme through out your web site. On every page you should link back to your home page and your main service(s).

Matt Colyer is the owner of the Superior Webmaster. He also is a php, CGI and ASP developer.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is on every webmaster's mind these days. Achieving a favorable ranking for the right keywords can mean a steady stream of targeted traffic to your site, and all for free - that's hard to beat. The key to high search engine rankings is structuring your website correctly, including plenty of content that is relevant to your keywords, and making sure your website is spider-friendly. You can use this checklist to make sure all of your Web pages can be found, indexed and ranked correctly:

Your website is themed.  Your site deals with an identifiable theme which is obvious from the text on the home page and reinforced by all the other pages on your site. In other words, all the individual Web pages relate to each other and deal with various aspects of some central theme. The text on your home page should state clearly what that theme is and what your website is about, and the other pages should reinforce that.

Your Web pages have enough high quality, relevant content.  Spiders come to your website looking for content. If a page doesn't have much content, or the content doesn't appear closely related to the page's title and your website's theme, the page probably won't be indexed or if it is indexed it won't rank well. Search engines love quality content and lots of it - content is what Web searchers are looking for and search engines try to provide.

Your website's navigational structure is relatively flat.  You don't want important pages to be too "deep" within your website, meaning it takes several clicks to get there from the home page. Search engines typically index the home page first, then gradually index other pages on a site over time. Many spiders are programmed to only go three layers deep - if some of your important content is buried deeper than that, it may never be found and indexed at all.

You've created a unique "Title" tag for each page.  The title is one of the most important aspects of any Web page from an SEO standpoint, especially for Google (which is the most important search engine to optimize for). Don't use a generic title for all your pages, use the keywords your targeting for that page and keep it brief but descriptive.

You use the "Description" meta tag.  Contains a highly descriptive sentence about the content and purpose of your page, and contains your most important keyword phrase early in the sentence. Not all of the search engines will display this "canned" description when they list the page in search results, but many of them will, so it's worth getting it right.

You use the "Keywords" meta tag.  As with the meta tag description, not every search engine will use the keywords meta tag. But some will use it and none will penalize you for having it. Also, having a short list of the keywords you're targeting will help you write appropriate content for each page. The keyword tage should contain your targeted keyword phrase and common variations, common misspellings and related terms. Make sure your keywords relate closely to the page content and tie into the overall theme of your site.

Your keywords are included in the visible page content, preferably high up on the page.  You have to achieve a balance here - you want to include keyword phrases (and variations) a number of times within your text, but not so many times that you appear to be guilty of "keyword stuffing". The trick is to work the keywords into the text so that it reads as naturally as possible for your site visitors. Remember, you can incorporate keywords into any Web page element that is potentially viewable by site visitors - header text, link text and titles, table captions, the "Alt" attribute of the image tag, the "title" attribute of the link tag, etc.

Every page of your website can be reached by search engine spiders.  This is critical - if your pages can't be found, they can't be indexed and included in search results, let alone rank well. Search engines use spiders to explore your website and index the pages, so every page must be accessible by following text links. If pages require a password to view, are generated by a script in response to a query, or have a long and complicated URL, spiders may not be able to read them. You need to have simple text links to the pages you want indexed.

You've included a site map.  Unless your site is very small, it's a good idea to create a site map with text links that you link to the site map from your home page. In addition to a link, include descriptive text for containing the relevant keywords for each page.

You link to your most important pages from other pages on your site.  Internal links help determine page rank since they show which pages of your site are most important. The more links you have to have to a page, relative to other pages on your site, the more importance search engines will assign to it.

You use keywords in your link text.  When you create a text link to another page on your site, use that page's targeted keywords as the text for the link (inside the anchor tags that create the link). Make it as descriptive as possible. For example, a link that says "Premium Customized Widgets" is much better than one that says simply "Product Page", and indicates to search engine spiders what that linked page is about.

Your site doesn't use frames.  If possible, don't use frames on any page you want to get indexed by search engines. If you feel you simply must use frames for a page, then also make use of the "noframes" HTML tags to provide alternative text that spiders can read (and make that text descriptive rather than just a notice that "This site uses frames etc. etc.").

You don't use automatic page redirects.  Don't make any pages automatically redirect the visitor to another page (the exception is a page you've deleted for good - in which case you should use a "301 redirect", a permanent redirect which is acceptable to search engines).

Your important content is in plain text and not contained in images.  Search engine spiders can't "read" content in JPEG, GIF, or PNG files. If you really feel that using an image rather than text is crucial to your design, at least put the same text in the image's "Alt" tag (or in the "title" tag if you're using the image as a hyperlink).

Your important content is not contained in Flash files.  Flash is a wonderful technology, but unfortunately spiders don't have the required "plugin" to view Flash files. As a result, Flash content is mostly inaccessible to search engine spiders. Some can find and follow hyperlinks within the Flash file, but unless those links lead to pages with readable HTML content this won't help you much. Don't create all-Flash pages for any content you want to get indexed - instead, put that content in the HTML portion of the page.

Links and keywords are not hidden inside JavaScript code.  If your links use JavaScript to direct the user to the appropriate page (for instance, a drop-down list) or important content is contained within JavaScript code (when it's displayed dynamically using DHTML, for instance) search engine spiders won't be able to "see" it. You can, however, use the "noscript" HTML tags to provide an alternative that can be read by spiders.

You've optimized every important page of your website individually.  Don't stop at your home page. Take the trouble to optimize any page which has a reasonable chance of being indexed by the major search engines, targeting appropriate keywords for each. If you face a lot of competition it may be nearly impossible to get a top ranking for your home page, but you can still get a lot of search engine traffic to your site from other pages which are focused on very specific keyword phrases.

You didn't duplicate content.  Each page of your site should have unique content that distinguishes it from every other page on your site. Duplicating content or having pages that are only slightly different might be seen as "search engine spamming" (trying to manipulate search engine results).

You provide linking instructions for those who want to link to your site.  Somewhere on your site state your policies about other people linking to your site and provide the wording you'd like them to use in their link. You want to encourage other people to link to your site, preferably using link text and a description that reflect the keywords for that page. For their convenience provide the ready-made HTML code for the link - not everyone will use it, but most often they will use your preferred text as a courtesy as long as it is truly descriptive of your site and doesn't contain "marketing hype".

You provide linking instructions for those who want to link to your site.  Somewhere on your site state your policies about other people linking to your site and provide the wording you'd like them to use in their link. You want to encourage other people to link to your site, preferably using link text and a description that reflect the keywords for that page. For their convenience provide the ready-made HTML code for the link - not everyone will use it, but many will use your preferred text as a courtesy as long as it doesn't contain "marketing hype".

Important hyperlinks are plain text links and not image links or image maps.  Text links are better from an SEO standpoint than image links, as spiders can't read text from an image file. If you feel you really must use a graphic as a link, at least include a text description which (including the relevant keywords) by using the "title" attribute of the link tag.

Your website is free of coding errors and broken links.  HTML coding errors and non-working links can keep search engine spiders from correctly reading and indexing your pages. For that reason, it's a good idea to use a Web page validation utility to check your HTML code to make sure it's error-free.

Jane McLain is a Web developer and SEO specialist and the webmaster of EClaunchsite.com, an online resource center for netrepreneurs with tools and information to help you plan, build, launch and grow your e-business.

When I first began attempting to make money on the internet, I fell into the trap of advertising my website with "get rich quick" promoters and products, thinking I'd get my money back immediately with their allegedly wonderful services. After wasting hundreds of dollars on marketing, I decided to take another route: I tried pay-per-click search engines and other conventional-but-expensive means of generating traffic.

I never really saw any conrete results, but I continued plugging away. I talked to business owners, researched different methods, and spent even more money... until I found a few methods that worked for me and have consistantly worked to give my websites exposure. I wrote this article to give readers like you the opportunity to skip the learning curve and move to where I am now. This article will dispell the biggest misconception about marketing and will also give you information about the most effective method to build your online business.

The most common misconception about Internet marketing is that you have to pay an exorbitant amount of money just to get traffic to your website and a steady stream of customers buying your products. This isn't true. Pay-per-click search engines have their merits and e-commerce marketing companies can sometimes be effective, but they can also be very expensive, often driving you too far into debt to recover before you see any profits. This is precisely why less than 3% of people who begin Internet businesses actually ever see a return on their investment. In this article, I will explain why this isn't necessary--and how you can skip this learning phase and begin using inexpensive and free tools to begin putting money in your pocket immediately.

While there are many free and inexpensive methods to effectively market your business and put money into your pocket, I am going to focus on the absolute best, fastest, most profitable, and most recommended method among "gurus" and Internet millionaires: creating your own ezine.

You can begin today by signing up with an autoresponding email address, where you can send opt-in subscribers to be added to your mailing list. I would suggest using http://www.getresponse.com because it can handle the biggest loads. You can open an account for free, but I would suggest eventually upgrading to a PRO membership. This autoresponder is by far the most effective Internet marketing tool and after you see how it works, you will want to reap its full potential.

After you take some time to explore and understand your getresponse account, you can begin writing the first article of your ezine. Take some time to review your site and your products. Make sure your ezine article properly reflects what you're marketing--and make sure you have at least one link to every product you talk about in the issue. Give some general advice, but use persuasive sales language. Entice your potential customers, but do not stretch the truth too much; you want to gain as many TARGETED subscribers as possible. Remember: these people are opting-in to your mailing list because they WANT TO BUY YOUR PRODUCTS. When you have finished your first article, load it into your getresponse account.

Now you are ready to begin marketing your ezine. The best and fastest method of gaining subscribers in my opinion is starting a campaign at http://www.leadfactory.com. Leadfactory will work with you on a pay-per-subscriber basis to help you create a mailing list of PEOPLE WHO WANT TO BUY YOUR PRODUCTS. If you work with Leadfactory, make absolute certain that the ad for your ezine and product is 100% accurate. Remember: you're paying for subscribers, so you want ones that want to buy your products. I personally would suggest buying subscribers from Leadfactory to begin with, but if you want to go the completely free route, you can begin by signing up for the free trial version of Push Button Leads at http://www.pushbuttonleads.com. You can use this product for free for two weeks and then decide whether or not the amount of subscribers you get is worth the $20/mo. fee.

You are now ready to begin increasing the your ezine's exposure. This requires MASSIVE ACTION and a lot of patience. You can begin by creating a boilerplate ad for your ezine that includes information about your products. Make the ad only a paragraph long and use some persuasive sales language. You will then need to submit your ezine to ezine directories and ezine announcement lists. You can begin by going to google and typing in "ezine directories." Begin submitting your subscription information (whateveryournameis@getresponse.com) along with your ad and any other information the site asks for. Do this to as many ezine directories as you can find. I would suggest submitting to a minimum of 50. This will seriously increase your exposure by putting your ad on all of the top ezine directories on google.

Next, go to Yahoo.com and sign up for an account if you don't have one already. Use Yahoo to find ezine announcement lists and promotion groups. Yahoo has about 100 of these groups on their website and some of them have a significant amount of subscribers. To sign up for these groups, send a blank email to the group email list or the group admin. You should immediately receive an email back, asking you to subscribe. Subscribe to them - and do this to as many promotional lists and groups as you can find. Once you're in the group, post your ad along with the address of your ezine whateveryournameis@getresponse.com and the address of your site (if they allow it). This technique can win you between 50-500 subscribers each week. Make sure you use it to your advantage by signing up for as many group as possible.

At this point, you have gone further than most internet business owners ever get. Take some time off, relax, and watch your mailing list fill up with subscribers.

Make sure you continue to send out new ezine issues every week or every other week to let your customers know you've got new deals on your website.

Isaiah Hull publishes Work At Home Right Now, a fresh and informative newsletter about making money on the internet and using proven methods to increase your site's traffic and profitability. If you're looking for time-saving and money-saving tools, as well as honest business advice, come by and subscribe at http://www.workathomerightnow.net