Search engines DO penalize for duplicate content. But it isn’t as simple as using the words “duplicate content” because there are “acceptable uses” and “unacceptable uses”.

Now, some of the sellers of Replicated sites will tell you that there is nothing to be concerned about. They quote a Google official who stated that “honest” website owners did not need to be concerned about duplicate content. They try to use this as a means of justifying the sale of multiple copies of identical sites.

Here’s the problem – the buyer of a replicated website may be an honest person trying to earn an honest buck. But the person who sold them a replicated site without warning them about the real issues with duplicate content is NOT honest. And their dishonesty means the buyer will get the blame, and the consequences!

Google and other search engines penalize duplicate content to prevent three situations:

1.Something called “scraping”, where someone uses a computer to spider the web and actually duplicate website content from the ground up. They may actually replicate your entire site. This is a violation of copyrights, so Google bans sites that do this, giving the search engine traffic to the site that is the oldest.

2.Precisely to prevent people from using replicated sites. You see, a replicated site does not just have identical content, it has identical EVERYTHING. Filenames, page tags, colors, layout, content, everything! Top to bottom the page code is identical. And when Google talks about not having to worry too much about duplicate content, this is NOT what they are telling you not to worry about. This is EXACTLY what they are trying to prevent! This is a shortcut, it provides nothing new to the information archives online, and they will penalize you and ban the site, if they even index it in the first place. Anyone who has used one will confirm this (except those who are selling them, who insist on touting them as a shortcut that will take all the work out of it). I actually sell some of these, but they have FULL instructions for customizing them, and I NEVER tell a client that they are not work because they ARE.

3.Use of unaltered PLR articles for lazy site content. Again, they add nothing new to the substance of the web, except copyright confusion.

So, what are the legitimate uses of duplicate content that Google IS telling you not to worry about?

1.Printer friendly and standard site pages for the same item.
2.Similar product listings on two different sites that you own that overlap in content.
3.Reprinting items that you have the rights to reprint with author credits.
4.The odd duplicated page in your site that happens for unusual reasons.
5.A replicated site that has been well customized, so that it has “value added” features on each page. This DOES add something new to the information online.
6.Honest reasons for duplicate content, or honest mistakes in having duplicate content. This is not the same as deliberate use of duplicate content, which replicate sites are classed as.

So, when they tell you to go ahead and buy their site and upload it and don’t worry about duplicate content, they are lying. And yes, there is no other conclusion but that they are doing so knowingly, because they have heard the complaints, and seen it first hand.

It is NOT dishonest to sell a replicated site, but to do so while telling you that it will work without problems IS dishonest. Replicated Sites require a systematic and consistent step-by-step process to take them from duplicate, to completely original. It CAN be done, and in less time that it would take you to build the site from scratch, BUT, you really need instructions to do it, and you need to know which things matter. You can find more details on that at http://www.tiredofhype.com/.

Taking the lazy way out won’t help you earn money, it will just kill your chances of earning. So if your intent is to upload a site that will work to earn you money over the long term, then you’ll want to avoid the duplicate content trap, and get started right.

Written by Laura Wheeler, mom to eight, and owner of Tired of Hype - http://www.tiredofhype.com, where you can find a wide variety of honest business resources and quality tested resale rights items. Laura is an experienced web designer with many corporate and small business clients, and a specialist in shoestring startup business issues.

Search Engine Optimization is critical for the success of a website. Ignoring search engines and how they apply their rules can result in significant loss of traffic for your website. Plenty of words have been written about what to do for search engine optimization, but not that many words have been written about what mistakes to avoid when it comes to Search Engine Optimization. This article will show a few of the biggest mistakes to avoid when it comes to SEO.

1) Duplicate Content

Do not build websites that only offer duplicate content. Make sure your website has unique character and content. If you use content that has already been published on other websites make sure to add additional pieces to make it look more unique. In general your website should have at least 60% unique content to pass the duplicate content filter. The more unique content the better the site will be off.

2) Outgoing links

A single page should not carry too many outgoing links to other websites. The danger is pretty high that a website is considered a link farm if too many outgoing links are present. If all a website has to offer are outgoing links search engines might not see any value in that website and therefore give it a low ranking or even remove it from the index completely. A safe number is to have 10 or less outgoing links per page to avoid any problems (this is a "rather safe than sorry" approach).

3) Search Engine Submission Services

Do not use one of those search engine submission services that promises to register your site with thousands of search engines. This is considered search engine spamming and will result in penalty. If you do want to submit your website to search engines - do it manually. Even better - just link to your site from another one that is already frequently spidered and indexed by search engines. The search bots will then find your website anyway.

Mr. Christoph Puetz is a successful entrepreneur and also an international book author. Websites of Christoph Puetz can be found at The Breast Pump Store and at Highlands Ranch Colorado.

On November 16th, 2003, Google commenced an update (the Florida update) which had a catastrophic effect for a very large number of websites and, in the process, turned search engine optimization upside down. It is common to give alphabetical names to Google’s updates in the very same way that names are given to hurricanes, and this one became known as "Florida".

In a nutshell, a vast number of pages, many of which had ranked at or near the top of the results for a very long time, suddenly disappeared from the results altogether.

To so many on the Internet, Google has become the omnipotent "hand of God" and it’s sickening! Why are so many people falling into the trap of optimizing their website’s to cater to Google’s ever-changing algorithms? I refuse to play that game! I personally could care less about my search engine rankings. I never have. My search engine rankings go up and down like a yo-yo! They have for years. Yet, I’m still able to comfortably support myself and my family.

If you only remember one thing from this article, remember this: DO NOT DEPEND SOLELY ON SEARCH ENGINES FOR YOUR TRAFFIC! Find alternative ways to attract traffic to your website. If you’re fortunate enough to achieve a high search engine ranking, consider it a bonus. But DO NOT MAKE THE SEARCH ENGINES A PRIORITY!

Why? Because when you stop to consider that Google, DMOZ and Yahoo! has millions and millions of pages in their directories, you’d really have a better chance of winning the lottery, than getting high enough in the results pages where it’s going to make a significant difference in your traffic.

In fact, I receive a very tiny percentage of my traffic from the search engines.

So, where’s my traffic coming from? Well, the vast majority of it comes from the dozens of articles I’ve written that have been picked up and published on popular websites. I also get traffic via word of mouth, newsletters that my articles are published in, and a few other secret methods that I use.

Yes, like Colonel Sanders, I too have a secret recipe!

And if all of the search engines disappeared tomorrow, I’d be just fine, because I’m a marketing man. I know how to market myself and my service. I was lucky enough to be born a "baby boomer." That means I had the honor and privilege of personally seeing first-hand, some of the greatest copywriting in history. I took lots of notes and learned my lessons well.

Back then, mailorder was the Internet of its time, and boy was there marketing talent everywhere! You should really do yourself a favor sometime and go to the library and read the old mailorder books. Some great titles to look for include, "How To Get Rich In Mail Order," by Melvin Powers, "Money In Your MailBox," by L. Perry Wilbur, "How To Make A Fortune In Mail Order," by Al Stern and "Building A Mail Order Business," by William A. Cohen .

You’ll come away a lot smarter and you’ll discover some ingenious ways to market your website, besides the search engines.

Will somebody wake up DMOZ? I hear they’re sleeping on the job. DMOZ (The Open Directory Project) is another prime example of why you shouldn’t depend on search engines or directories. I’ve heard and read countless horror stories about DMOZ taking 9 months to a year or more to add new sites to their directory, and in many cases not adding perfectly qualified sites at all. I’ve also heard their directory is not kept up to date, because the editors can’t keep up with the workload.

In addition, it’s been widely reported that they don’t respond to e-mails, don’t inform you if and when you’re site is rejected, and that some of the editors are rude and arrogant.

Who cares how much weight Google places on being listed in DMOZ? You don’t have to put up with that nonsense! Find alternative ways to attract traffic to your website.

Yahooooooooooooooooo! I want you to read what it says on the info page for submitting to Yahoo! Express:

"We established Yahoo! Express as part of a suite of services that Yahoo! has created to service small business needs. Through Yahoo! Express, we can ensure that sites suggested by merchants such as yourself are viewed and evaluated in a timely manner by Yahoo!’s editorial staff.

Your payment and participation in Yahoo! Express guarantees that within seven business days a member of Yahoo!’s editorial staff will look at your site and consider it for inclusion in the Yahoo! directory.

Please keep in mind that payment does not automatically guarantee inclusion in the directory, site placement, or site commentary. As with all sites suggested to us, final judgement remains solely with Yahoo! editors. Yahoo! Express Guarantees All Yahoo! Express submissions will be evaluated within seven business days. You will receive an email response within seven business days, stating whether your entry is accepted or declined. (If your entry is denied, you will be told why.) The Cost of Yahoo! Express Yahoo! Express requires a US $299.00 non-refundable, recurring annual fee per submission, or US $600.00 non-refundable, recurring annual fee for submissions offering adult content and/or services. Yahoo! Express does not guarantee a listing in the Yahoo! directory, nor does it guarantee the type of placement or description that your site will receive if accepted. Please read our Yahoo! Express Terms of Service to review the terms and conditions of Yahoo! Express."

Are you kidding me? What a bunch of crap! Why, why, why would anyone want to just hand over their money to Yahoo! that way, without any type of guarantee?

I’ve just given you shining examples of the arrogance and total lack of respect Google, DMOZ and Yahoo! has for the very people they depend on to keep them in business.

I say we show them the same kind of respect they show us. Get out of the Google trap, let DMOZ nap, and don’t accept Yahoo’s crap!

Remember: DO NOT DEPEND SOLELY ON SEARCH ENGINES FOR YOUR TRAFFIC! Find alternative ways to attract traffic to your website. If you’re fortunate enough to achieve a high search engine ranking, consider it a bonus. But DO NOT MAKE THE SEARCH ENGINES A PRIORITY!

About The Author

Dean Phillips is an Internet marketing expert, writer, publisher and entrepreneur. Questions? Comments? Dean can be reached at mailto: dean@lets-make-money.net.

Website: http://www.lets-make-money.net

If you have ever created a site targeted for a non-US English audience that uses International English, you’ve likely encountered at least one of several frustrating events. These can include many things, but most directly are the well intended, yet ill-informed visitors who complain about “spelling errors” via email or comment form on your website. The fact is that many countries, including – but not limited to – Canada, Australia, and the UK, use International English spelling, which includes such changes as “humour”, “colour”, “generalise”, and “jewellery”. This leads many people from the US to believe that there are spelling errors throughout the site.

While many web designers simply ignore these messages as being sent for the right reason but without the right knowledge, this may not be the wisest decision. Remember that when you create your website, you are trying to make it as available to visitors as possible, and this includes its search-ability using search engines and web directories. Remember that people searching the internet for a web site won’t try a number of different spellings for their search. They will use the spelling they feel is correct. Therefore, if you are creating a site about labelling systems, it is important to recognize that the US spelling of the word is “labeling” and that many of your prospective clients may spell it that way.

Of course, even more difficult than making sure that your web design is suitable for all international forms of spelling is to make sure that you’ve covered your sit for words that are commonly misspelled. Though some search engines – such as Google – does list sites for keywords as they are spelt, they also make alternative spelling suggestions at the top of the page. Nevertheless, if your site does include those misspelled words in its content, then it will be among the sites initially listed, and you won’t miss the chance to attract visitors who spell your keywords incorrectly.

They key to solving all of these problems is to look into your keywords and make sure that you’ve embedded all variants and misspellings in your web design’s text.

Since keyword tags are no longer usable for the vast majority of search engines, it is vital that you use the keywords within your content to have them properly indexed and to gain your high search engine ranking. This means that as you design your web content, you will need to include not only your primary keywords the way that you would prefer to spell them, but also all international variants and common misspellings.

Naturally, this is not exactly the most elegant way to work, since no web designer really wants to riddle his or her content with different spellings for the same word, both accurate and inaccurate. Furthermore, some readers may look at a webpage that includes multiple spellings for the same word and leave since they may feel that your site is unprofessional and poorly edited – there is no reason for the visitor to know that you have done this intentionally.

There are a few solutions to this dilemma. The first is to create a separate content page for each spelling variation for the word. This means that you will need to create entirely original content for each of these pages – since your site will be considered SPAM if it contains too many identical pages – and each page will need to cater to its own spelling. If you have the time and the inclination, that is perfect.

You may also choose to leave a note on your site to explain to the readers that you have deliberately used alternate and incorrect spellings of certain terms on your site for search engine optimization purposes. This will often appease readers that would otherwise go squirrelly at the site of the many variations.

Another solution can be to simply use the most important variations, instead of all of the variations. This way, you’ve covered the vast majority of your potential visitors, and you can hope that the rest will have the spelling picked up by the search engine used.

One of the more pleasant tricks, that is often utilized by experienced web designers is to use your keyword spellings of choice, and then use alt tags for your images which contain all of the other variations that you wish to include. Some engines – specifically Google – will index such tags and help you to make your site much more pleasant to read, while still catering to the variants.

Copyright 2006 Mark Nenadic

Mark Nenadic

Mark is the director and face behind FifteenDegrees-North http://www.15dn.com, where you will find articles and resources to help with SEO, marketing and Web design.

Google’s recent “Jagger” update alarmed many companies and website owners who lost its high search engine rankings. Jagger has resulted chaos for Google search results across significant industries. Companies are in dilemma concerning this update for the future natural engine marketing.

Jagger is one of the most significant updates from a major search engine. Following the first round of Jagger update, thousands of websites that formerly received an abundance of traffic from Google’s search results are no longer ranking.

So, do we have to consider that this is just a beginning of a review that has put many companies in danger zone? What about the fine websites that got swept off after Jagger rolled out? The search engines have no compulsion to provide rankings that will drag in free website traffic. After-all, Search engines are businesses whose target is to boost revenue through paid advertising and Pay Per Click (PPC). Natural search is a considerable component of a search engine’s value; however, it doesn’t generate earnings for them.

It seems to be a pre-planned update that happen just right before the holidays. Probably, this result that companies who recently lost rankings and resulting traffic will strive hard and pay significantly for Pay Per Click ads this holidays to cover up their lost natural search engine traffic.

As this update is not yet fully accomplished, websites still got a chance in its hands to getting back into the Google index. Site owners should plan for long term search engine optimization targets.

Keep in mind that search engines frequently alter and bring up to date their ranking algorithms. To sustain top positions, site owners are recommended to hire professional and SEO strategies.

Its time, for website owners to revise and dress up to strive for their website’s top. Only this way the can retain traffic to their respective websites.

To read related articles please visit:
http://web-content-writing.blogapot.com or
http://seoservices-website-promotion.blogspot.com

Paras Yadav is freelance website area content and article writer since two years. Please visit http://web-content-writing.blogapot.com or http://seoservices-website-promotion.blogspot.com to find more enlightening and free-reprint articles.

According to the dictionary, the definition of the word "overture" is as follows:

"An opening or initiating move toward negotiations, a new relationship, an agreement, etc.; a formal or informal proposal or offer."

Hmmmmmmmm…very interesting definition–especially that part about "a new relationship."

I think pay-per-click giant Overture should look up the definition of their own company name, because they appear to be breaching their "relationship" with their customers big time!

Here are the most common complaints:

So, why hasn’t Overture done anything about the complaints? Because, and I’m going to as blunt as I possibly can here– they don’t care about you. They only care about your money! Arrogance and greed seems to be the common thread that bonds the major search engines.

But you have only yourselves to blame. That’s exactly what happens when you "place all of your eggs into one arrogant search engine basket!"

When you’re totally dependent on someone and they know you’re totally dependent on them, more often than not, they’ll put the screws to you. That’s exactly what you see happening with Google, Yahoo and Overture. They’re screwing you over big time!

I received some very interesting e-mails in response to my article, "Googles Trap, DMOZ’s Nap, And Yahoo!’s Crap." The writer of one of the e-mails wanted to know if I was afraid of being penalized by the search engines, because of my criticism’s of them.

Penalize me how? How can you penalize someone who neither benefits from nor is dependent on your service? I don’t depend on the search engines! I don’t benefit from them! I never have. I get almost no traffic from the search engines. For example, so far this morning I’ve received over 300 unique visits to my website. Out of that total, none came from the search engines–not a single one!

My traffic comes from the dozens of articles I’ve written, like this one that have been picked up and published on popular websites all over the Internet. I also get traffic via word of mouth, newsletters and ezines that my articles are published in, and a few other secret methods that I use.

That’s the kind independence and power you give yourself, when you’re not totally dependent on any one entity. Find alternative ways to attract traffic to your website. Here are a few suggestions:

Ezines, newsletters, forums, online magazines, sponsor listings on other websites, exchanging links.

Here are a few offline suggestions:

Magazines, direct mail, shopper newspapers, cable television, radio, flyers, hospital newsletters, card decks, trade journals and directories, bulletin boards, tabloid newspapers.

Here’s what the writer of another e-mail I received had to say:

"Wow! What a pleasure to read your article, Googles Trap, DMOZ’s Nap, And Yahoo!’s Crap. Boy, I’ve been complaining about this type of scenario for at least a year. I will also include Overture with the terrible trio. Overture has recently, with the long standing pay per click program, decided that all your keyword phrases will be broad matched. The reason they gave was that it was too time consuming for the user to manage their listings. Well, they forgot to mention that they will also receive more money because of the change.

Also, they say that you can enter words in quotations or negative words against your keyword phrase so that you receive the correct response. In other words, your keyword phrase will not show up when those negative words are searched for. Well, do you know how time consuming the negative word process is? And, there’s no way you can muster up all of the possible negative words that could be searched for so that your listing will not appear. Absolute CRAP, to term your expression.

The terrible trio you mention in your article plus Overture have gradually swung towards "God" like service providers. They have the power and the user is very much at effect.

Well, that’s my 5 cents worth. After saying all of the above I am a user of these services but have been working for a long time now finding other ways and means of marketing and promotion so that all of our eggs are not in the one basket. I have, in the main, been exchanging links with other websites plus placing relatively inexpensive ads on websites that have similar services to ours."

I love getting e-mails like that! That tells me that some of you are finally starting to "get it."

Give yourself the power! Claim your independence! Find alternative ways to attract traffic to your website. If you do that, one day you’ll realize you really don’t need the search engines after all. I guarantee it!

About The Author

Dean Phillips is an Internet marketing expert, writer, publisher and entrepreneur. Questions? Comments? Dean can be reached at mailto: dean@lets-make-money.net

Visit his website at: http://www.lets-make-money.net

You find yourself in the need to add content to your website. You know that search engines like useful sites, sites that change periodically and add more value for visitors. So how can you add content to your site without having to write it yourself? Well, one answer to this question is provided by hiring someone to do the writing for you. You find a writer and pay him/her to generate content for your website. This is an alternative you should always consider, because it is good to have some unique content in your site, content that visitors will not find somewhere else. If you cannot generate some unique content yourself, then you should find someone to do it for you. There are ghost writers, people who write articles for you, and don’t include their name as the article authors but your name.

There are also articles you can get free of charge to include in your site. These are free reprint articles, and you find them at article directory sites. Article directories are organized in categories, so you can easily find which are the articles on subjects appropriate for your website. If you’re wondering where these articles come from, the answer is quite simple: people write them, either to promote their website, brand or name, and post them at the article directory sites. These articles can be used in websites without asking for permission from the writer, provided you keep the resource box and byline intact. You should read the Publisher Guidelines in the article directory of your choice to know the exact rules you should follow to use the articles. At most directories you can subscribe to ezine notifications or rss feeds to be notified when new articles are posted in the categories you need.

You can also add dynamic content to your website from RSS feeds. There are many sites offering syndicated content in the form of RSS Feeds, and there are also RSS feeds directories where you can search for feeds on given categories. Just do a search for “rss feeds directory” at a search engine, and you will get plenty of results.

It is a good idea to have a mix of unique content and free content in your site.

As you see, there are several alternatives to finding fresh content for your website. Some of them are free, some of them are paid. Which ones you will use depends on your budget, your website theme and your preference.

Sergio Roth is the owner of http://www.articlesengine.com, an articles directory where you can get free content for your website.

I recently watched the movie "How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days" and thought it was quite funny. The movie is about a girl who is going to write an article on the Top 10 Mistakes women make in relationships. Women make these mistakes and them ask themselves why the man has suddenly ditched them. It got me thinking. I see websites make the same mistakes over and over again and then ask why they have lost their rankings. Why they have been banned from Google. So here we are! How To Lose Google In 10 Days. May not happen in 10 days but you get the point.

1. Doorway Pages - Doorway Pages are pages that have been written specifically for the search engines and not for humans. Doorway pages focus on keyword phrase and not quality content. Then these pages want you to click here to go to the page written for humans.

Quoted from Google "Google does not encourage the use of automatically generated pages that are designed for search engines instead of users. We want to point users to useful content pages, not to doorways or splash screens."

Notice that Google specifically mentions that they want their users to go to useful content pages. Content is key with search engine optimization! Google also mentions this again on the Webmaster Guideline Pages and states "Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content."

2. Broken Links and Incorrect HTML Coding - We see alot of incorrect coding with Yahoo Stores. Many owners will put head, body, and html tags in the caption field of their store. This is a HUGE mistake. The Yahoo Store already has these tags in place and by placing these tags in your caption field you are creating duplicate tags. This can cause the search engines to be easily confused and not index your page correctly or can cause the search engines to skip the page entirely. We also see a META tag placed in the body section instead of the head section and this can cause the search engine spider to ignore the tag. This will reduce your relevancy and ranking.

There are several programs out there that will assist you with checking your site for these common errors.

3. Using Dynamic Pages Instead of Static - If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a "?" character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few.

4. Hidden Text or Hidden Links - The use of hidden text or small text that is unreadable to the eye looks very deceptive to the search engines. Anything deceptive will get you banned quickly. Recently a friend of mine attended an Ebay Event and they told her to get listed higher in Google write your text in the same color as your background. WRONG! This will get you banned quickly. Do not ever follow this advice. Write good content for your customers. They will see the difference.

5. Not Having A Sitemap - Although this will not get you banned, it certainly can hurt your rankings. A Sitemap will allow the search engines to find all of the pages within your website quickly and easily.

Having a difficult time with your site map? Try Google Sitemap! It’s free!

With Google Sitemaps you get:

1. Better crawl coverage to help people find more of your web pages
2. Fresher search results
3. A smarter crawl because you can provide specific information about all your web pages, such as when a page was last modified or how frequently a page changes

http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps

6. Duplicate Content - Again this is a deceptive practice. Google wants to show unique results in the top 10. If you have 50 competitors using the same information on each and every page, only 1 of you will get listed. But take the time to create unique content for your pages and you will be moving up the search engines in no time! This is mentioned twice in the Google Webmaster Guidelines. Quoting Google again, "Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content."

7. Participating in Link Schemes - Exchanging links WAS a great way to have your site found by the search engines. However, this was taken advantage of severely by link farms. Don’t get involved with link farms and link schemes. Focus on getting nonreciprocal links for your website. Directories are an easy way to accomplish this. Also write articles and include your website link in your article. Submit your article to several different article directories such as Goarticles.com

8. Using Images Instead of Text - Search engines can not read images. Although those buttons look great, they do nothing for you. Using buttons for your navigation will only hurt you. You can use text and have your site look great too! Use the button images as backgrounds and place the text on top of them.

9. Not Using Correct Title or Alt tags - Again google is looking for quality and descriptive content that is relevant to your page. Let me repeat an important part of that statement….relevant to your page. Let’s say that right now the number 1 search term is Joe Smith and you try to add Joe Smith to your Title Tag and Alt Tags on a page that is about Tiffany Jones. Will this work? No. It needs to be relevant.

10. Trying to Deceive the Search Engines - This can be done a number of ways. Of which one of them is called "Spamming the Search Engines". Basically over repeating keywords. Remember always that you are writing for the humans and not the search engine bots.

Write clear information and give your readers (and the search engines) good quality content.

If you think about it, keeping your Google rankings is alot like keeping a relationship.

You need to be honest and sincere
No cheating allowed
Be thoughtful and informative without nagging and repeating yourself
A relationship takes time to develop…it doesn’t happen overnight
You have to always work on your relationship.
You MUST have patience

Interesting.

Shawna Fennell is the owner of 1 Choice 4 YStore. A company dedicated to helping Online Stores. Please visit http://store.1choice4ystore.com For free advice and tips on SEO, Marketing, Design, and much more. You can also sign up for daily tips at http://blog.1choice4ystore.com

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve received more e-mails in response to my article, "Google’s Trap, DMOZ’s Nap, And Yahoo!’s Crap," than any other article I’ve ever written. And that’s saying a lot because, I’ve written close to forty articles.

Most of the e-mails are very supportive and appreciate of the fact that I’m going after Google and the other large search engines, by telling it like it is.

Now even though I appreciate your e-mails and support, I need to make one thing perfectly clear. For the record, I AM NOT GOING AFTER GOOGLE!

Is Google a greedy, self-serving entity? Yes! Yes, they are. But lots of entities are greedy and self-serving. For that matter, so are a lot of people. The fact of the matter is, I happen to like certain things about Google. I think they’re a fine search engine, and they perform a very valuable and much needed service.

No, my articles are not directed at Google per se. My articles are directed at the tens of thousands of Google zombies who blindly follow and applaud Google’s every move and whim, like rats following the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

This also includes a good portion of the media, which also seems to be caught up in the bright lights of Google–not unlike a deer frozen by the headlights of an oncoming car.

Zombies, wake up! Google is a search engine–period! Nothing more, nothing less. And I will not exaggerate their existence or importance!

They are not a god or some sort of deity. They are a search engine–that’s all.

And even though I’ve already said it in several different articles, I’m going to say it again. All of that money you’re spending on search engine optimization, so that you can play in Google’s sandbox is going to be all for naught.

Because other websites that haven’t done any search engine optimization whatsoever are already starting to rank ahead of you in Google’s results pages.

Yet, you keep spending your money, and beating your brains out trying to figure out Google’s algorithms. And just when you think you’ve got it figured out, Google decides to take its ball and go home. Zombies, wake up! You’re playing a game you can’t win!

Didn’t November 16, 2003 teach you anything? It’s never wise to put all of your eggs into one search engine basket. I mean, forget about the "Florida Update." What if by some strange chance, Google goes offline for a day–for a week?

Think it can’t happen? Think again. Nobody thought last summers crippling east coast blackout could ever happen either, but it did happen, and it turned about to be the biggest blackout in recent U.S. history.

Nothing and no one is infallible. So, zombies, wake up and do yourself a favor. Do the smart thing, and develop other ways to promote your website.

About The Author

Dean Phillips is an Internet marketing expert, writer, publisher and entrepreneur. Questions? Comments? Dean can be reached at mailto: dean@lets-make-money.net.

Visit his website at: http://www.lets-make-money.net

The art to successfully increase the rank of your website is a true science with no overnight solution. Some people believe you have to pay to be listed in the top of the search results. This is not true for the majority of search engines. The websites listed on the top are listed there because they are ranked higher and more relevant to a particular keyword search, by that search engine, than the websites listed below.

There are however separate areas for advertisers such as Google AdWords and Yahoo Sponsorship Ads that you can pay for, but the main search area is normally free to be listed and one can increase their page rank by effectively performing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for their website.

One thing you must understand is that it takes time to find what works for your site. If you make a change, you’ll have to wait until it has been indexed in each search engine in order for you to effectively assess if the change has positively or negatively affected your page rank.

Below are ten steps to follow in order to increase your page rank in the major search engines. If these are followed, you will be sure to increase your rank. For help or more information on increasing your page rank, contact Hudson Horizons today.

• Be Legitimate – Most search engines analyze your website to determine if you are trying to manipulate their engine in any way. Do not do this. I repeat, do not do this. Be legitimate about your search engine optimization otherwise you will be penalized and your page rank will decrease, no doubt about it. The following Search Engine Optimization tactics should be avoided at all costs.

Do NOT do the following:

• Keyword Stuffing
• Hidden Text
• Cloaking
• Doorway Pages
• Redirects
• Duplicate Sites
• Interlinking

Click here to automated your Google and Yahoo Sitemaps today.

Hudson Horizons is an e-business product, solution and marketing company specializing in designing and developing highly sophisticated customized websites, web-based software applications and providing e-marketing services for our clientele.

At Hudson Horizons, our vision and ultimate ambition as a company is to always strive to be "The New Light for e-Business" by offering new, innovative and extremely competitive products and services to our customers that provide better ways to run and operate your business online.