Google returns more search results then any other search engine. Clearly if you can get a Top Ranking in Google you will drive highly targeted traffic to your web page.

1 - Keyword Rich Content

You want to create a Web Page with keyword Rich content, A Good rule of thumb is use a 3 to 5 Percent Keyword Density. If you have 300 Words on your Web, Your keyword phrase should appear 9 to 15 times.

2 - Search Engine Friendly Title

Your Keyword Phrase should appear once in your Title. Your Title should appear as close to the top of your page as possible. Your Title should be enclosed in H1 Tags. Your Title should also appear in the title Meta Tag. As the first line under the head tag.

3 - Search Engine Friendly Description

Your Keyword Phrase should appear at least once in your description. Your Description should accurately reflect the page contents. Your Description should appear in the Description Meta Tag. Your Description Meta Tag should mimic text found somewhere in the first or possibly 2nd paragraph in your Web Page

4 - Unique

You want your Title and Description to be Unique for Each Web Page on your web Site. You want your content to be unique for each web page on your web site. If you use OPC (Other Peoples Content) do something to make your page unique. Add a paragraph before telling why you used the content. Add a paragraph or 2 with useful tips on how to use the content. Add a Tip or 2 of your own.

5 - Related pages

Google doesn’t want your web page to be the only Ship in the ocean. Google will look at other pages on your web site and see if they are related. If you have 20 Web Pages talking about home decorating and only 1 web page talking about nuclear physics Google won’t list your nuclear physics page very high no matter how well you do the other steps

6 - Google Sitemap

Create and submit a Google Sitemap

7 - Back Links

Back Links are sites that link to you without you linking to them. Here are some good methods to get backlinks

1. Submit Articles
2. Post to Newsgroups
3. Post to Forums
4. Add Comments to a Blog
5. Give Testimonials
6. Buy Text Ads
7. Circular Linking
8. Ask for them

About The Author:
Mike Makler has been Marketing Online Since 2001 When he Built an Organization of over 100,000 Members

Get Mike’s Newsletter:
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More Articles by Mike:
http://ewguru.com/tips

Permission Based E_Mail Marketing Methods
http://ewguru.com/hbiz/amazingoffer.html

Copyright © 2005-2006 Mike Makler the Coolest Guy in the Universe

For the first few months after Yahoo decided to go their own way with natural search (and MSN decided to get serious about the search business), the search results provided by those two could only be described as bizarre. Enough time has now passed that the dust has somewhat settled and there are three main (from a traffic standpoint) sites for quality natural searches.

The term "natural search" is to distinguish true searches, as opposed to paid advertisements which appear in the search results for many search engines these days. I guess you can’t really fault the search engine companies from wanting to make some money (actually, BIG money) selling ad space, but the debate over the virtues of natural search versus paid advertising search is something that could take up a very large book and still have no clear resolution…much like arguments revolving around religion or politics.

Like most people that have been working as online home business entrepreneurs for a few years, I was strongly conditioned to the need to "feed the 800 pound gorilla" of the search engine world. Basically, "if Google didn’t love you", it was very difficult to get any meaningful natural search traffic to your website. Since Google was actually the search engine that was serving up the results for most of the popular search portals, if Google didn’t look kindly upon your site and rank you well, you would not be ranked well for most of the high traffic search sites on the Internet.

However, the search landscape changed dramatically early in 2004 and things have been very fluid and interesting since that time. Its not that Google has stumbled, or become ineffective as a search vehicle, its just that major players like Yahoo and Microsoft (via MSN) have decided to make a major thrust into the search business.

Having been firmly conditioned (since shortly after 1998) that Google was the "supreme deity of search engines", I took the highly publicized search entries of Yahoo and MSN with more than the proverbial "grain of salt".

Throughout a very recent two month period, one of my websites occupied the #5 position on Google, Yahoo, and MSN for a very popular and important (at least in my line of business) three word search term. This situation provided an opportunity to measure the current popularity of each of these three search providers.

If asked "before the fact", I would have guessed that Google would still be the overwhelming #1 search choice and that Yahoo and MSN would be distant #2 and #3 choices. Therefore, I was somewhat surprised by the results that were tabulated during this recent 60 day period.

For the period in question, the search popularity results were as follows:

Google: 34%

Yahoo: 31%

MSN: 20%

All others: 15%

Granted, the above results are for a single search term over a particular 60 day time period, but the results clearly show that Yahoo and MSN are already important players in the search business.

Webmasters that stick to the old ways and focus entirely on Google are missing out on a lot of search traffic these days if they are not also well ranked by Yahoo and MSN.

Kirk Bannerman operates a successful home based business and coaches others seeking to start their own home based business. Visit his website at Legitimate Home Based Business for more details.

Tired of getting irrelevant search results when you type in a generic term in the search engine box? Gone are the days when search engines throw up a couple of million results for a search string. Google has pioneered the Personalized Search feature which keeps a record of searches conducted by you and provides you results based on your past searches. So for example, if you are searching for ‘public schools’ and have searched for ‘Kansas’ before, the first few search results will show you ‘Public Schools in Kansas’. This intelligent search logic helps in reducing the huge number of search results and is most likely to provide you relevant searches at the shortest possible time.

The personalized search option has been in beta phase for some time before joining the ranks of regular features at Google. You can now access it via any of your Google service accounts (such as Gmail, Adwords or another other service) and choose the option from the Manage Account page. The personalized feature is currently available for users of Google.com and thirty nine other Google domains which might include services or regional domains. Personalization of search will also increase the number of searches done via Google as users would prefer to cross check results of searches at Google even if they are using another search engine. This feature is sure to drive up the search volumes at Google.

The personalized feature has been appreciated by many users and the ease of managing this service is also one of the reasons why users are opting for it readily. You can deactivate this feature at any time by either putting it on hold or by deleting the personalization option. Google removes your entire bookmark list if you decide to opt out of this service. A higher level of security for access to personalization feature is another enhancement at Google.

The personalization service however, does have a few issues which might result in incorrect results or might result in not being able to find the bookmarked link. One of the main issues comes up when you want to refer to a news item from Google news and save it as a bookmark. Since news articles at Google are not maintained beyond 30 days, the link is not going to be available for your viewing after the period lapses. However, you can be rest assured that someone somewhere in Google Labs is working frantically to sort this issue at the earliest!

The book marking feature of Google Personalized feature has been compared with Yahoo’s MyWeb feature and the response has been in Yahoo’s favour. Yahoo MyWeb allows you to save complete text information on a site whereas Google allows you to save the title, URL and notes only. This reduces the available content which a search engine can search through thus weakening the power of the search which may not show all relevant searches. Improvement on this feature is likely to have a direct impact on the number of users who sign up for this service.

If you are an avid Google user and swear by the results thrown up by the search engine, the personalization service is something you must try out. Not only does it promise to save time by reviewing irrelevant results, it also helps you get an edge over your peers in being better read and well informed.

carcasherdotcom seocontest is providing google ranking results.

Having a Google Sitemap just got better! Not only does the search engine company check your sitemap, but now they give you feedback! The new feature was quickly noticed by many users of the service recently as a way for Google to alert the webmaster about possible problem pages that they have had trouble indexing.

I had the wonderful experience of getting to know this service first hand when I logged in to Google Sitemaps to check on the status of one of my many sitemaps. Along side of the address for the sitemap, there was a link with the anchor text “verify”. This helps Google to know that you are the actual webmaster for that site and is a wonderful addition for security.

Once you are verified (which is a simple process of creating a page on your root directory that they will see) you are able to see the stats for the site index. Often times, you won’t see anything in the stats area, but if you have recently updated, redesigned, or deleted certain pages that Google has in its index, you have a good chance of seeing something there. Google will tell you about possible errors in the indexing process such as pages that are not showing, or pages that they can’t see.

You might already be familiar with the new Google Sitemap Program, but if you aren’t here’s a quick synopsis. The Sitemaps program is a new offering from the Google family and is currently in beta testing.

The goal of the program is to allow Google to see the complete sitemap or a sitemap of frequently changing pages. This is extremely helpful if you have links that can’t be reached by the Googlebot when it’s indexing your page due to things like Java script menus and such. The codes on a page that prevent the bot from viewing your site ultimately hinder you in the search engines.

So using the XML standard coding language, which is easy to understand once you get the hang of it, you create a log of the various pages on your site and tell Google some attributes about it such as the overall priority of the page, how frequently you alter the content, when the page was updated last, and of course its location.

This will give Google the overall picture of the layout of your site and does help in getting the pages indexed for greater relevancy. There are protocols for the creation of the sitemap so it’s best to read all the information completely at the Google Sitemaps website at http://www.google.com/webmasters/

John Wooton
Author and Creator - The SEO Journal Blog
Step by step tips on effectively mastering the search engine war
http://seojournal05.blogspot.com/

Content Management Systems and search engine optimization (SEO) used to be mutually exclusive terms. But the SEO community has been driving the developers of Content Management Systems to integrate more SEO-friendly methodology within their systems.

Content Management Systems (CMS) are a hot topic right now with many corporate websites are turning to these systems to handle thousands of pages of dynamic data that they need to update regularly. Content Management Systems allow information to be added, edited or deleted automatically over the entire website. This can save hundreds of hours in manual updates. Pages of content are generated on the fly using a template driven system.

When Content Management Systems were first developed, most had little regard for the requirements of search engine optimization. For some Content Management Systems this still holds true. Most CMS’s, however, now have workarounds to accommodate those wanting to perform search engine optimization on their websites. The workarounds in the Content Management Systems involve two areas: writing search engine friendly URL’s and creating individualized title and meta tags per page.

Writing Search Engine Friendly URL’s

Some search engines (SE’s) and directories like Google and Yahoo! can now read dynamic URL’s but there are still a fair amount which can’t or can only partially read them. The SE’s like to see pages that have unique content per page and may limit the number of variable strings (i.e. ?, =. &) in a URL to assure unique content.

By using a web server module called Mod_Rewrite it is possible to remove the stop characters from the URL string, thus making it more SE-friendly. To do this you will need to add a rule to the .htaccess file. For more information, see the following article on the Apache website: http://httpd.apache.org/docs-2.0/mod/mod_rewrite.html

Creating Individualized Title and Meta Tags

Some Content Management Systems such the latest release from Hot Banana Software boast full integration with SEO performance such as offering Conversion Tracking tool, Robots.txt and Meta Tag Management. Other CMS’s such as PostNuke.com is struggling to catch up and offer workarounds to make their system more flexible and SE-friendly.

PostNuke.com says that their next version (.8 release at this writing) will be fully SEO compliant. Until then, they recommend the pnMeta module, which will give control over the title, keyword and description tags over an individual page. Dynamically generated meta tag information, however, is not recommended. For more information see: http://www.miragelab.com/News+article-sid-19.phtml

What Does CMS Mean For SEO’s?

Search engine optimization experts and others using SEO techniques will need to work closely with Webmasters and developers who use Content Management Systems on their web properties. This collaborative effort is necessary to insure that URL’s are SE-friendly and that unique title and meta tags are severed up for each optimized page. A large website with tons of valuable content, should rank well in the search engines according to the SE’s guidelines and the CMS technology would do well not to inhibit this, but rather would do well to promote good search engine rankings for large websites.

Copyright © 2004 SEO Resource Search Engine Marketing Specialists

Kevin Kantola is the CEO of SEO Resource, a California search engine optimization company, and has published many articles over the past 20 years.

Everyone wants a successful web site, one that pops up on Google. To get there you need an Internet Marketing Professional or a SEO expert.

If few years back someone would say I am a SEO graduate and want some work, you would have just got rid of him but nowadays there is a growing trend of SEO graduates being recognized accepted by the industry. What has caused this steer and what is the reason behind this, let’s have a look at it.

First of all, who are SEO graduates?

That’s the main question, any new businessman who does not have an in depth knowledge of E-commerce would ask. Well SEO graduates can be anyone from Internet designers, marketers, and advertising departments to all of them rolled into one. So from this it can be seen that it is not so tough to become an SEO expert. Well as far as my experience goes, it does take some time to learn the methods and tricks to top the Search Engines but its way easier then any other job on earth. All though you may require lot of time and tries but it’s what makes this profession interesting, its vulnerability. Since everything depends on the algorithms of search engines, you can never be assured that you will get the results you expect. Being said that, this is all about trial and error method. Some may speculate this, but in my opinion, it’s the truth.

Secondly, why are SEO and SEO expert required for my business?

Well, this is a most important thing you should consider before starting any of the businesses. SEO works your site to the top of search engines. This will bring you immense amount of traffic to your site which may be providing ‘x’ products and services, as in any business, its all about your visibility, the more your are on top in search rankings , more your are visible and hence successful in business.

Internet marketers who are SEO experts can earn unlimited amounts of money quickly and easily since they can not only come up with a business idea, but they can execute each step along the way. This makes them the most important part of any organizations success provided that organization is e-commerce related which most of the organizations nowadays are. It is not easy to hire one of this web guru’s; their time is usually booked up months ahead of time. They usually charge huge amounts of money for their skill, and rightly so. After all, what is a top spot on Yahoo worth anyway?

At last, all things being said and done, I would add that it is a relatively new concept where a specialist - the SEO - forces a web page to the top of search results. The typical SEO will take hours to find the right keywords, carefully placing them into web copy for maximum search results.

Internet marketing professional Zane Durant said, "I have to work on some of our clients web sites every day to keep up with their competition. To be on top today your SEO must tweak things constantly, updating keywords, adding pages, news, etc. If you do that, you can guarantee a top position on search engines."

I completely agree to his point, as it’s new and unique concept, its demand in new generation would be more. It is good to see that finally the internet marketing era has come to this age. More and more seminars and conferences are being held worldwide regarding this new field of expertisation. Even the colleges have recognised this new trend and have slowly but steadily accepting this new field of expertise. With lot of sites coming up day by day and competition and market share becoming more and more important, this Internet Marketing experts , with all their expertise and time, with affirmation of top results, stand by you to make your business success.

Author is owner of RealWebTalk.com - A Webmaster Discussion Community and works as part time SEO. His succesfull ventures include Indexrated Directory & Sc2 Links Directory. For more SEO, Web Hosting, Web designing and Adverting & Marketing articles, visit Real Web Talk or actively participate in the ongoing disucssions.

Does Creating a Google Site Map and Telling Google About it get your Work at Home Business Web Page Indexed Faster? Google Visited My Home Based Business Web Page the Same Day I Uploaded my Site Map. It stands to reason anything you can do make it easier for Google to Index your Work at Home Business Online Business get a Google Ranking. For sure if you don’t get indexed you won’t get ranked.

To show you how serious Google is about using Sitemaps. Google Sitemaps now come with an extra added bonus. After you upload your Sitemap to Google and they crawl your site Google will actually tell you any problems it encountered with your web page and suggestions on how to fix them.

In Order to take advantage of this New feature the first thing you need to do is create a Google Sitemap

Creating a Google Sitemap is really easy very briefly here is all you need to do

1. Create a free Google Sitemap Accounts
   google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login
2. Create a Free Google Sitemap only at www.sitemapspal.com or you can follow Google’s instructions and create a Text Sitemap: www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/other.html
3. Upload your Sitemap to your web page
4. Login to your Google Sitemap account and tell Google the URL of your Sitemap

After you have created and uploaded your Google Sitemap all you need to do is be patient for about 24 Hours (sometimes less) until Google Crawls your web page. After Google Crawls your web page you will see a verify link next to your Sitemap name. Click the link and Google will instruct you to create a blank file and place it on your Web Page, Once you have done that Google will tell you any problems it encountered crawling your Page. Now fix the problems tell Google to recrawl your page and your are done

About The Author:
Mike Makler has been Marketing Online Since 2001 When he Built an Organization of over 100,000 Members

Get Mike’s Newsletter:
http://ewguru.com/newsletter

More Articles by Mike:
http://ewguru.com/tips

Permission Based E_Mail Marketing Methods
http://ewguru.com/hbiz/amazingoffer.html

Copyright © 2005-2006 Mike Makler the Coolest Guy in the Universe

There are many websites that fail to target their required traffic, even if they’ve had some search engine optimisation work done. One of the main causes for this is simply because the website isn’t search engine friendly. This is a basic essential that needs to be incorporated into the design of all websites at the outset – think of it as the foundation to establishing your search engine optimisation strategy.

This article aims to highlight the areas a web designer should think about and incorporate into their design for maximum search engine effectiveness:

1. Search Engine Friendly Pages

It is important that when you design your website you not only bear in mind what your website requirements are, but also what the requirements are for search engines. Best way to approach this is to remember that search engines don’t really care about how nice or complicated your graphics or flash movies are, or how snazzy your javascript is. Instead search engines look at the code behind your page. Therefore if you want to impress a search engine, then your code needs to be nice and easy to read. Now from this I don’t mean adding ‘comment’ tags and breaking the lines of code up with spaces, but to ensure that the elements the search engine is interested in, i.e. Title tag, Description tag, Keyword tag (these days only some search engines really use the keyword tag), Alt tag, are readable near the beginning of the code. Search Engines don’t like wadding through lines and lines of javascript to get to the core areas that can help you page’s ranking. Therefore careful planning and positioning of your page elements is required.

TIPS:
- If you’re using table for laying out your page then make them simple and not too complex.
- Avoid using frames.
- If you need javascripts for navigation purposes, then use smaller scripts to call up the bulk of the javascript from a different file.
- Think twice on how to use graphics – make them relevant to your content and use the Alt tag for all images.
- Position the main content of the page before the images, or at least with the images nested between the text.

2. Keywords

Having good keywords is one of the most important areas to consider when designing a website/webpage.

One of the best tools for this is Wordtracker (www.wordtracker.com), which allows you to identify good competitive keywords for your pages.

In general the range of keywords associated to your pages can be very extensive therefore for good concentration and prominence of keywords it is advisable to carefully select the top 10-15 keywords. You can always export the results to Excel and try out other competitive keywords if the ones you selected initially do not produce any noticeable benefits.

TOP TIP:
Wordtracker offer a one day subscription to their service from which you can squeeze nearly 2 ? days worth of use! Here’s how – Sign-up for the service on the evening of Day 1 (the service will be available almost immediately so you can start searching for your competitive keywords straight away). You will also be able to use the service for the whole of Day 2 and strangely for the whole of Day 3! Enough time to get some good keywords for a lot of pages!

3. Content

Many search engines look at the main body of the page and identify keywords and phrases that are used within the text.

TIP:
Use competitive keywords relevant to the purpose of the page within the main body of the page. Always try and ensure that the keywords are prominent within the text body, i.e. they appear near the beginning of the page, they are defined using the ‘heading’ tag, they are typefaced in bold, or they are used as hyperlinks.

4. Page Title

This is arguably one of the most important areas of a page and needs special attention to ensure that a good title is selected. Similar to many other areas of designing a search engine friendly page, the Page Title should also have a good keyword which describes the page content. To keep within the limits of many search engines the number of words for the Title shouldn’t exceed nine.

5. Page Description

Another important area to work on for good ranking is the Page Description. This is the text found under the META Description tag and is displayed to users in the search results. Again, it is a good idea to pay attention to the use of good keywords when writing the description, which should be short (not more than 20-25 words) and sells your page before the user has even opened it!

6. Graphics

We’ve covered the use of graphics briefly above, emphasising the importance of using an Alt tag containing the relevant keyword(s). Although the use of images can be nice and very appealing to a website, it is also important to bear in mind that they shouldn’t overpower the textual content of your page. As a general rule of thumb it is best to stick to a 70/30 ratio (70 text/30 images).

7. Site Map

A Site Map is a fantastic way for search engines to find all your juicy pages on your website. There are many free Site Map tools available on the web that’ll create your site map instantly.

8. Navigation Links

Navigation links to other pages on your website should be nice and easy. There are some engines which find it difficult to navigate through to the other pages on your website if the nav bar is too complicated, e.g. complicated pop-ups, use of flash, etc. Therefore if your site does have complicated navigation then it’s always a good idea to implement simple text based hyperlinks to your common pages at the bottom of every page on your website.

Following the basic suggestions above will help lay the foundation to apply further good search engine optimisation advice which will make the difference in your overall search engine ranking.

This finer area of SEO is beyond the realm of this document and will require further investment based on individual needs.

Arif Hanid
Internet Marketing Manager for Ambleton Computing.
Professionals in bespoke Internet Developement and Marketing.

arif_hanid@ambleton.com
www.ambleton.co.uk

World’s major SEO companies

Google, AOL, Info Space, Yahoo, Askewest, MSN, AltaVista, Lycos, AllTheWeb, Netscape, Looksmart, Go/ InfoSeek, Overture, NBCi/Snap, Kanoodle, IX Quick, Northern Light, Excite, DMOZ, WiseNut, Teoma, Hog Search, MetaCrawler, Dogpile Web Search Eureka, EuroPages, Free Find, Go.com, Mirago, Nerd World, Northern Light, Open Directory Project, OpenText, Planet Search, Scoot, Starting Point, UK Directory, Webtop, Yellow Web

SEO an Overview

The objective of Search Engine Optimization is to increase web visitor counts by ranking very high in the results of searches using the most appropriate keywords describing the content of your site. This relative ranking is often viewed as a struggle to best use a few keywords, instead of a struggle to out-do your competition. If you search on your target keywords, you will see the leading site in the rankings. All you need to do is to be better than that number one site. This page suggests ways to optimize and improve search engine results with ranking and placement advice, placement hints, tips, and clues to improve your search engine keywords relative to existing leaders. After all, better keyword ranking is your real objective.

It is not enough to simply add META tags and do search engine submission of your site to a million search engine indexes and directories. The first placement step in obtaining significant web visitor counts is to seek first-page search engine results. An early step is to build a great content-rich site. One of the last steps is the proper submission of your great site to the search engine or directory. In the middle is a step that is VITAL if you want to obtain front-page results, and most sites skim past this step because it is forgotten or too complex, but without competent Search Engine Optimization you are destined to be search engine fodder.

There are no Search Engine Optimization secrets — just ranking and placement methodologies to follow in order to beat your competition in obtaining a high ranking for desired search keywords. This site targets improving search engine rankings by using a "follow the leader" approach to keyword selection and page wording. Once you know what keywords and search engine marketing services (not spam) worked for the "leaders", you can "beat the leader" and do even better! Proper Search Engine Optimization requires that you beat your competition, so knowing the keywords and criterion used by your competition is the most important first step. It will become obvious that good ranking excludes keyword spamming the search engine, and that with the careful selection of your keywords that you will fare well for a little effort. Bruceclay.com offers help, hints, and tips for improving search engine results via a specific search engine keywords placement methodology.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the science of search as it relates to marketing on the web. It is mostly technical in nature, combining programming with business, persuasion, sales, and a love for competitive puzzle solving into a written form capable of maintaining desired revenue goals while achieving high rankings in the organic sections of search engine results pages. It is not just technical, nor copywriting, nor links, nor just search engine submission, but an intricate blend of over a hundred variables into the fabric of a website. It is difficult to accomplish without a formal proven methodology and strong proprietary tools. We offer you a tutorial on all of that and more on these pages…

Before you start, you should understand that top 10 rankings with every single major search engine and directory can be obtained, although very few sites can get there and the effort is often beyond reason. Note: URL ranking results change week-to-week due to competition, so maintaining a top ranking requires constant keywords monitoring and information rework. Search Engine Optimization never rests, much like your competition.

The key information on this page includes how to prepare both you and your site for the search engines, choosing the right keywords, how to analyze your competition, what is submission and how is it best accomplished, when to monitor your ranking, instructions for performing an analysis of your site results, complete with tools and aids. This site covers all basic and advanced strategies and the common mistakes to avoid.

The overall SEO involves:

• Attracting prospects to a web site

• that is properly designed to encourage visitors to browse like Web Site Design

• leads the visitor to a completed transaction by offering products easily and without undue complexity like Web Site Navigation

• Addresses concerns (perceived risks) that can scare off the potential buyer if left unanswered like risk avoidance.

The overall SEO involves

• Attracting prospects to a web site

• That is properly designed to encourage visitors to browse like Web Site Design

• Leads the visitor to a completed transaction by offering products easily and without undue complexity like Web Site Navigation

• Addresses concerns (perceived risks) that can scare off the potential buyer if left unanswered like risk avoidance.

SEO Case Study • Do you have any intent to sell your product yourself?

• Do you have any intent to sell this product through a traditional retail channel?

• Have you decided to sell this product via the Web?

• Determine What You Have To Sell

• Determine Who Already Needs What You Have To Sell

• Determine What They Will Pay For What You Have To Sell

SEO Guidelines –

• Obtain A Domain Name And Site Host

• Search Engine Marketing Through Links

• Search Engine Marketing Through Public Relations

• Search Engine Marketing Through Banners and Print Media

• Search Engine Marketing Through Strategic Relationships And Reciprocal Links

• Search Engine Marketing Through Email Discussion Groups And News Groups

• Search Engine Marketing Through A Bulk Email Program (Careful!)

• Measure Progress And Change Only One Thing At A Time

• Proceed to Search Engine Placement Tactics and Tools Page

Develop A Website Using These Principles:

Before submission you must have prepared your site for search engine placement. If your site is not prepared for top ranking then a submission service can only give you many, many poor rankings.

Consider techniques for counting visitors and have a demographics collection process (newsletter registration or perhaps a Guest Book or equivalent) for capturing visitor name and email information.

1. It must showcase the need that your product addresses (public interest)

2. It must showcase the solution that you are offering.

3. It must provide instant gratification (for information and access to the solution).

4. It must provide appropriate and timely information (in images and words) to allow the visitor to make a decision. Help them to decide that your product meets their needs.

5. Allow the visitor to buy your product (or, if a service, allow them to contact you).

6. Allow for easy information requests if questions arise anytime, day or night. Always respond promptly!

7. Consider techniques for counting visitors and have a demographics collection process (newsletter registration or perhaps a Guest Book or equivalent) for capturing visitor name and email information.

8. Change the site often (at least once per week) to give users a reason to visit again and again.

9. Consider offering a "gift" to visitors (free is best, perhaps a contest) to have them tell their friends to visit your site. Word of mouth is a powerful tool. We have our own "tell-two-friends" referral script on our site.

10. Have the site be "High Class". Curb appeal is important in determining if you want surfers to stop and visit. Opinions will be formed early about whether the customer wants to do business with you. Plan improvements.(Regardless of what you may think, every site on the Web is under construction all of the time). Make sure that your web site design does not violate any taboos.

11. Design for the masses. Do not use exceptionally advanced technology unless that is your product. The Web is still connected to a lot of slow computers, and many do not operate on the latest Netscape or Internet Explorer products. Keep it simple and still meet your web site design and promotion goals. The toys must be appropriate to the mission of your web site.

12. Write the text and "storyboard" your site much like creating a good product specification. Use a word processor to lay-out all of your pages. Make sure that the flow is simple for the novice Internet user. Try to keep the body content each Web page to one to two 8½ x 11 sheets of paper, or if heavy information, minimize graphics and limit the size to no more than six pages. Focus on making the message clear. Creativity, and how quickly the page loads, is more important than the use of extra artwork for the sake of "cute". And when this is done, call a Marketing Consultant first, definitely before you call a web page designer. Message and Placement sell on the web.

13. It is important to consider some aspects of eCommerce: web-based commerce with a human touch is very effective in most cases, especially with 60% to 70% of all shopping carts being abandoned. Do not design around human contact if it increases the ability to sell your products. Factor it into your design. While this may be against the Amazon.com hands-off model, some firms like Face Time Communications are integrating AOL Instant Massager with their website eCommerce applications to answer last minute questions. Reports are that buy decisions increase six-fold if questions are answered. Customer Service is evolving, and it is alive and well on the web.

14. Double check the site architectural concepts.

15. There are obviously "things" that a Web architect must know. Much of this is contained in this site and many others linked to this site below. You still need to have a minds-eye image of what is possible before you spend too much money doing it. We recommend that for optimal search engine placement that you start by reviewing this site once, and then on the second pass spend more time on the Web by "surfing" my links and those linked from our links.

16. For all sites that you identify, go to their website and visit their home page. Choose the browser option to view their Home Page HTML source (this might be a complex process). Scan these sites for search engine placement keywords and terms to make sure that your list is as complete.

17. Marketing is everything. It brings potential buyers to your door. But proper design is vital, because without effective design the buyers who see your home page will leave before it finishes loading. The average home page loads in 48 seconds at 28.8, and the average visitor stays at a home page for 35 seconds, obviously many leave before the page finishes loading. We can learn from this.

18. Create/Design the site by taking content and art, mixing it with navigation and style, testing it on family and friends, and always listen to comments, grunts, pregnant pauses, and blank stares. Specific advice on development of a page is at our Quality Site Criteria page and we suggest that you visit it now, before you code your first Web page! Try not to copy a page layout from another site. Use your own words, ideas, and artwork whenever possible, making sure that the message in the image matches your text. Make sure that the visitor knows what you are saying/selling at all times.

19. Carefully consider the use of database tools, visual tools, and java tools. These are areas receiving a lot of interest, and technology work, and they might be right for your site. Carefully consider your options since some could adversely affect search engine placement.

20. Use the smallest graphics that you can to relay your message. It is estimated that 20% of all Web users surf the Web without graphics enabled! But always have graphics if it helps sell your product. Don’t add graphics just to be neat — an animated mail box is really not something to add to a commercial site.

Follow these rules (mandatory for Free Site Listings)

• Make sure the site is rated for Family Viewing (keep it clean).

• Be courteous to other authors at all times — respect their copyrights, trademarks, and intellectual property.

• Make sure the site is NOT a multi-level marketing site, a network marketing site, or a get rich quick site (although some MLM sites can get into the free lists if they are not moderated).

• Make sure the site is NOT graphically overburdened. Minimize the use of CAPITAL letters, large fonts, and extensive graphics, especially animation.

• Make sure the site Home Page loads quickly and informs the visitor what you have to offer them right up front. If using sounds, use MIDI files whenever possible instead or WAV files, and default to off unless sounds are short. Be careful, some browsers crash with sound enabled.

• If you entice visitors with a FREE OFFER or CONTEST, make sure you explain how to obtain the gift or prize in an obvious manner. (FREE is good, but contests usually don’t work and there may be legal problems).

• Always choose to communicate information rather than to display wiz-bang nifty technical skills. These gadgets are a no-no to many free sites even if mandatory for some award sites. Animation, although exciting to see sometimes, is a real distraction on most pages and actually decreases sales. Avoid it unless there is a purpose.

• If you are going to be selling a service or product, take the time to establish a merchant account and accept credit cards. The good news is that this is easily implemented with or without a store. The bad news is that it takes effort to set it up. It is strongly suggested that you visit our page on e-commerce considerations and follow those instructions carefully!

Search Engine Placement through Search Engines, Links, and Awards Before submission you must have prepared your site for search engine placement. If your site is not prepared for top ranking then a submission service can only give you many, many poor rankings.

There are many Web businesses offering to list your site with search engines or directories for FREE for a few sites, and for a small fee for other sites. The key is that over time, the categories change, the registration format changes, and there is a great difference between being submitted and being registered. At present, there is a 25% mortality rate for search engine sites every few months, and those that survive do so by upgrading categories and registration formats.

Search engine placement requires some homework. Before making this commitment, make a written note with the below information:

1. Your Web address (URL) in the form of http://www.yoursite.com

2. Your email address in the form of yourname@yoursite.com

3. The title of your Home Page in the form of "your site -products for (need}"

4. A 40 character product description

5. A ten to twelve word site description (your site TITLE probably)

6. A twenty-five word site description

7. A forty word site description (keep in your paste buffer). Consider using this text at the top of the displayed area on your home page.

8. A list of sixteen to twenty words best describing criteria that a prospective visitor would use in a search engine to find your site

9. A complete list of keywords (up to 1000 characters) sequenced with the most important first (possibly from your HTML Keywords line)

Mahesh Ugale Web Developer/Search Engine Optimizer

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the act of making ones website content more search engine friendly to make it rank higher. Netzland specializes in the optimization of websites in competitive markets. We will research your keywords and optimize your site based on the most searched keywords in your industry and drive relevant traffic to your site via the major search engines and directories.

Every webmaster would like to see his/her website to be the number 1 search result returned in search engines. A number 1 spot in Google pretty much guarantees loads of traffic to a website which can then materialize in high revenue for the website owner.

To reach that number 1 spot search engine optimization (SEO) is the tool webmasters have to use in almost every case. Several books have been written covering search engine optimization. Hundreds of websites cover the topic and give loads of advice. There is so much information about this topic - it’s almost impossible to digest. Webmasters have all they need available at their hands at any time and also share the knowledge. Google (as an example) changes the rules all the time and missing out on these things can mean that a website drops down to the bottom of the search results delivered on any given search. The hunt for the best search engine optimization results is on 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

As with anything there will always be people who go a step too far. Search Engine Optimization is no exception. You’ve got the Black Hats who do use every legal or illegal trick to increase their website’s search engine ranking and you have the so called White Hats who play by the rules and only use legitimate SEO tools and tricks. And then you have people who just over-do it. They build their websites completely optimized for the search engines but seem to forget about the user in the end. These websites are stuffed with keywords and phrases all over. Navigation and presentation of content is optimized for the search engine but they seem to completely forget about the human factor. Yes, driving traffic to the website from search engines is great. But what if the site is difficult to navigate for the visitor because it is optimized for a search engine and not for usability? A website not meeting the needs of humans is set up to fail.

Having the number 1 spot in a search engine will not materialize in higher profits and revenue if the site does not meet basics requirements for humans to a) navigate the site properly and b) to be able discover what they are looking for in an easy way. Articles stuffed with the same keywords over and over again are hard to read and the information the user is looking for is difficult to extract. Links to sub-pages covered under keywords over and over again will make it difficult to even get to the information the user is looking for. The user experience will be disappointing and will lead to the user moving on to other sites that are able to deliver information in an appropriate way. There are other webmasters who are able to achieve high search engine rankings and still offer satisfying experiences for users on their websites?

So, if you are a webmaster - will you optimize your websites for search engines or for the user?

About the Author

Christoph Puetz is a successful entrepreneur and international book author. Examples of his search engine optimization work can be found at Web Hosting Tutorials, Highlands Ranch and at Credit Repair.

The article can be published by anyone as long as the resource box (About the Author) is posted on the website including the links. These links must be clickable.