Currently the holy-grail of internet marketing is search engine optimisation (ranking high in the organic or natural results of search engines for popular keywords related to your business, market sector, or products). Closely followed by Pay Per Click Advertising (sponsored results). Not knowing what search engines to concentrate on can lead to much wasted time, effort and money.

Below are the latest search engine usage stats for the UK:

Google: 32%
Yahoo!: 26%
AOL: 19%
MSN: 17%
Ask Jeeves: 2%

Well as you can see Google, Yahoo, AOL and MSN should be the main focus of any search marketing campaign, but are these figures accurate?

Google, Yahoo, AOL, Ask Jeeves and MSN make up the heavy weight division of search, with the highest market share held between them (around 98% of all UK based search queries). But Google provide search results to AOL and Yahoo provide Wandadoo’s results? Knowing this information changes the above results significantly.

True UK Search Engine Usage Statistics:

Google: 51%
Yahoo!: 26%
MSN: 17%
Ask Jeeves: 2%

Google now has over half of the market share and should be the main focus of any search marketing strategy. Combine these figures with the fact that 80% of products purchased online derived from a search engine. You can say out of every ten items sold online, Google was the starting point for four of them. Ignoring this information would be a very bad idea for any business looking to use the internet to increase turnover.

The Future of Search

Search has become a multi-billion pound industry that is constantly changing. Which is hardly surprising when you consider each person using a search engine is estimated to be earning them £50 per year from sponsored clicks and ad serving.

Competition to be the number one provider of search is tough but open to any company able to provide better results than the current champion. Searchers will use the best tool for the job careless of who is providing it. Currently 51% of people feel Google is providing the best results and choose to use their service. But for how long?

You don’t have to look back very far to see the internet without a Google. Which means the current situation of one search provider dominating the entire industry will probably change with time. With companies like Microsoft, Google and Yahoo each pushing the industry forward at great speed. The top spot of search will probably be a forever changing affair.

From this article you know where to concentrate your search marketing campaign but it will pay dividends to keep a keen eye on this ever changing medium.

James Anderson is an Internet Marketing Consult working for Podium Solutions Web Design Manchester. Podium Solutions is also the company responsible for the trolleytech eCommerce Solution. Please include this short bio and links when reproducing the article, many thanks.

The recent patent application filed by Google details numerous items the search engine uses to rank web pages. The specific application is summarized as:

“A method for scoring a document, comprising: identifying a document; obtaining one or more types of history data associated with the document; and generating a score for the document based on the one or more types of history data.”

The patent application sheds significant light for those pursuing search engine optimization with Google. Patent applications can be difficult to understand, so following are highlights that you should consider for your SEO efforts.

Update Your Site

Updating your site is important when it comes to maximizing your rankings on Google. In addition to the manipulation of keyword density and meta tags, the patent application reveals that Google places significant value on how often your content is updated. The more often you update, the timely and relevant your site will appear to Google. In turn, this leads to higher rankings.

To appease mighty Google, consider the following plan of action:

1. Update pages frequently,

2. Add new pages to your site,

3. Interlink the new pages with others on your site, and

4. Add new pages on a weekly basis instead of all at once.

When Google returns to the site, you want to make sure that there is new content. The high rankings of blog sites are evidence of this approach.

Google’s Looking at Your Domain

In a new twist, Google claims that it analyzes the number of years of domain registration as part of the ranking process. The application suggests that domains that are registered for longer periods of time are given more value because such a commitment shows the site is not a fly-by-night jump page. It is recommended that you extend all domain registrations for as long as possible as part of your search engine optimization efforts. It is difficult to tell how much the registration process impacts the ranking process, but every little bit helps.

Google claims that it also digs deeper into domain names to evaluate the legitimacy of the site. Factors in the evaluation include the web host and the “who is” information. According to the patent application, Google maintains a database of hosts that facilitate spamming of the Google search engine. While such hosts are not detailed in the application, pray to God that you are not using one. You should evaluate your host if your optimization efforts are not producing results.

If your search engine optimization efforts for Google are failing, the patent application may provide answers. Talk about a perfect E-book!

Halstatt Pires is with http://www.marketingtitan.com - an Internet marketing and advertising company comprised of a search engine optimization specialist providing meta tag optimization services and Internet marketing consultant providing internet marketing solutions through integrated design and programming services.

Depending on your site’s subject matter, you might even be able to start earning a significant income purely from the popularity of your site. For example, if you have a site on jokes you might be able to get a substantial amount of traffic, but you’re unlikely to earn a huge income.

On the other hand, if you have a top ranking site on Google for the keyword phrase “web hosting”, you’ll be able to earn at least $1-2 million (probably more like $3-4 million) per year from that site alone. However, to get into the top 10 in Google for the phrase “web hosting” is extremely difficult, you would need to be a search engine pro to do it - even then, it might take you two years to get there with a team of 5 people working around the clock.

A profitable site will be based on a good keyword phrase, a good topic (or subject material) and be different enough to stand out from the competition. If you can combine these elements successfully you’ll increase you chances of turning a profit from your site.

Keep in mind that there are a number of niche areas where there is not so much competition but still the opportunity to make a decent profit. There are hundreds of such areas where you have the potential to earn $500-2000 per month. We’ll talk about keyword research and finding profitable niche areas in later issues, but for now, let’s look at the basics of how to get a site to the top of the search engines.

I’m going to focus on SEO for Google because it’s the largest (and the best) search engine which will generate the most traffic, especially if you can master all of the right optimization methods. Google has a very complicated system for determining which sites make it to the top of the search engine. There are many factors involved and there is no precise formula. A further consideration is that Google often changes its formula so you can’t rely on it being the same from month to month. However, there are a few key factors which are unlikely to change dramatically:

Keywords phrases should be one of the most important considerations when you are optimizing your site (remember that for each page of the site you should concentrate on one or two keyword phrases).

Keyword phrases (which you want to get to the top of the search engine for) should be well researched.  For more information on researching keywords, have a look at   http://www.profitpuppy.com/keyword-research.htm where you can find links to useful keyword tools.

Key factors for getting to the top of Google:

1. The keyword phrase in the title of the page - you should have the phrase in the title of the page.
2. The keyword phrase in the text of the page – you want the keyword phrase to be up the top of the page, preferably as high up the top of the code on the page as possible. You also want the phrase repeated a few times on the page. Don’t worry about how many times, just at least 3-4 times and more if you think it fits in naturally with the content of the page.
3. Include the keyword phrase in a large font heading with H1 tags  (this may make a small difference).
4. Links into your site from other sites (covered in more detail below).
5. Links within your site (covered below).
6. Links to other sites (covered below).

Links into your site from other sites

This is probably the most important factor for getting good search engine listings. You need to have good links coming into your site from other sites. You want those links to be from popular sites that also have lots of links coming into them. Google uses a Page Rank system which is a rough measure of how many links are coming into your site. You want links from sites that have good Page Rank.  Creating 50 of your own sites and interlinking them won’t increase your page ranking.

How do you get links from other sites?
The main ways are to: Create a great site that people naturally want to link to, Get an affiliate program so people can link to your site and get paid, swap links with other sites, get listed in directories such as dmoz.org and buy links from people who have sites with a high PR (Page Rank). Again, we’ll be talking about this in more depth in another issue of the newsletter.

The most important consideration with incoming links is that you need to have the keyword phrase in the link that directs traffic to you your site. Getting listed in directories such as DMOZ (Open Directory Project) can also help you significantly in getting a good search engine ranking in Google.

Links within your site

It helps once again if you have the keyword phrase in the links to each page of your site. For example, let’s say you have a site on baby products and you have one page where you are trying to optimize for the keyword phrase “cheap baby supplies”.  You should make sure that links that come into that page have the phrase “cheap baby supplies” so that your links look like this:  Click here for cheap baby supplies

Links to other sites

You can improve your page rank if you link to other sites that have high search engine listings for the phrase that you are trying to optimize for. Note: it can also hinder if you link to pages that are off-topic.  For example, you don’t want to link to a chemical arms factory from your baby supplies site.

Some other things you don’t want to do (and some things that make no difference at all) are:

1. Repeating the keyword phrase multiple times on the page unless it makes contextual sense.
2. Placing hidden links on your site – for example, links that are the same color as the background of the page won’t be recognized by Google.
3. Optimizing your site too carefully – if it’s obvious that you have optimized your site for Google (for example, if all your incoming links use the same keyword phrase) you may be penalized. Google looks for sites that are more ‘natural’ in their structure, so if all links look the same this won’t look like an organic site to Google robots and you may be penalized for it.
4. Despite popular opinion, Meta tags don’t really help at all. However, the description tag is important because that is the description that will appear in your listing on Google.

Finally, you may have heard of people using automated pages and or ‘cloaked pages’ to get high search engine rankings in Google. Personally, I don’t believe in taking this approach as it’s a non-sustainable way of getting high search engine rankings (that’s not say that some people who aren’t very successful at it). I know of atleast 3 highly successful companies who generate automated pages using  this software http://www.profitpuppy.com/traffic. This is a sneaky way to make it to the top of of the search engine rankings, but it can work; one guy I know is earning several million dollars per year using this technique.  So it can work, but as I mentioned before, I don’t think it’s sustainable and the Google engine doesn’t take kindly to it.

How do I submit my site to the search engines?

My personal philosophy is that if your site is not found naturally by following links then it is unlikely to rank in the search engines - I don’t usually bother submitting to search engines.

So that’s the basics of how to get to the top of the search engines. We’ll have a look at the more advanced stuff later on. It takes a lot of time knowledge and dedication to get there but once you master it, SEO is a fantastic way to get traffic and make money on the web.

Robert Rawson

AKA: http://www.profitpuppy.com/

Two big things have just happened in Google-land: Jagger and Google Analytics. Together, these two events may have changed the face of search forever.

Jagger

First, let’s discuss Jagger… Just like hurricanes, Google updates have names. (A Google update is a change to the way Google determines its rankings. Google makes these changes periodically, and they’re universally feared because they can impact dramatically on a website’s ranking.) The latest update is called Jagger, and it has search engine optimizers (SEOs) all around the world in a state of panic.

Why was Jagger such a fearful update? Simple… With Jagger, Google once again outsmarted huge numbers of SEOs. You see, many/most SEOs spend their time (and their clients’ money) trying to trick Google into thinking that their websites are more relevant and important than they really are. They do this mostly by swapping links, buying cheap links, and placing links on free directories. While there’s nothing wrong with these sorts of links (i.e. they’re not considered ‘black-hat’), they don’t really show that the site is relevant or important. All they really show is that the site owner has made a deal with another site owner. In these deals, the incentive for the linking site owner is a reciprocal link, money, or increased link volume. Google much prefers it when the linking site adds the link simply to enhance the value of their content or to increase their own credibility and authority.

In other words, Google wants its search results to contain relevant, important sites, not sites that merely appear to be relevant and important. To this end, Google invests millions of dollars and employs the world’s smartest mathematicians to create algorithms which identify sites that are trying to trick them. And that’s exactly what Jagger did; and when it found those sites, it simply adjusted their ranking to more accurately reflect their true importance. (Unfortunately, it also demoted some sites which actually deserve a high ranking. It is hoped that these mistakes will be ironed out with future minor updates, but that’s a topic for another article…)

From a technical standpoint, Jagger was well described by Ken Webster in his article, http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/topnews/Jagger. To summarize, Jagger:

1. Increased importance placed on IBL (Inbound Links) Relevancy?
2. Increased importance placed on OBL (Outbound Links) Relevancy?
3. Promotion of relevant Niche Directories (related to #1 & #2)?
4. More weight thrown back to PR @ top domain?
5. Increased importance on AdSense placement relevancy?
6. Possible introduction of CSS Spam filtering?
7. Overall Blog demotions?
8. New and unresolved "canonical" issues?

Some more interesting effects were reported by WG Moore in his Jagger article - http://www.sitepronews.com/archives/2005/nov/9.html. Mr Moore runs a number of test sites for SEO purposes. By monitoring the links to his test sites as reported by Google, he established that:

"all reciprocal links had vanished. We think that this is because Google is down-grading or eliminating reciprocal links as a measure of popularity. This does make sense, actually. Reciprocal links are a method of falsifying popularity. Sort of a cheap method of buying a link, if you want to think of it that way… During the second week of the Jagger Update, a few of our reciprocal links did come back up. However, we also noticed that these were from places where we had highly relevant content. They came from articles where we discussed our area of expertise: Web Analytics, or from forums where we had relevant threads. So we feel that these links came back because of content, not linking.

The other group that came back up was one-way inbound text links, regardless of the originating web site. These links also had strong relevance to our web analytics business. In other words, they contained keywords and/or phrases related to our site and its business."

In short, Jagger undid the hard work of thousands - if not millions - of people! As a result, hard-won high rankings and revenues plummeted.

Interestingly, article PR (article submission) came through Jagger seemingly unscathed. My SEO copywriting website, for example, went from no.4 to no.1 worldwide for "copywriter", and I’ve employed article PR almost exclusively. Whether it was promoted or the sites around it were demoted, one thing is clear: article PR is one of the best ways to obtain a high ranking.

Google Analytics

The second monumental event to occur recently was Google Analytics - http://www.google.com/analytics/index.html. Google Analytics is a free web-stats solution which not only reports all the regular site stats, but also integrates directly with Google AdWords giving webmasters and insight into the ROI of their pay-per-click ads. According to Google, " Google Analytics tells you everything you want to know about how your visitors found you and how they interact with your site."

Why is this such a landmark move? Because for the first time ever, Google will have access to your real web stats. And these stats will be far more accurate than those provided by Alexa - http://www.alexa.com . Furthermore, Google’s privacy statement (http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacy.html) says: " We may also use personal information for auditing, research and analysis to operate and improve Google technologies and services." Now let’s put two and two together:

1. Google is ‘giving’ every webmaster in the world free access to quality web-stats.
2. Millions of webmasters will accept this ‘gift’, if only because it integrates directly with their Google AdWords campaigns.
3. Google will then have full access to the actual web stats of millions of commercial websites.
4. Google will have the right to use these stats to develop new technologies.
5. What’s the next logical step? Google will use these statistics to help determine its rankings, of course!

It should come as no surprise. It’s been on the cards - and frequently discussed - for a long time. For example, Jayde Online CEO, Mel Strocen, recently published an article on this very topic http://www.site-reference.com/articles/Search-Engines/The-Future-of-WebSite-Ranking.html. She quite rightly asserts that:

"Google’s "democratic" vision of the Web will never be achieved by manipulating algorithm criteria based on content. It will only be achieved by factoring in what is important to people, and people will always remain the best judge of what that is. The true challenge for search engines in the future is how to incorporate web searcher input and preferences into their ranking algorithms."

In fact, the Jayde Online network already owns and operates a search engine, http://www.ExactSeek.com, which incorporates user popularity statistics in its rankings.

The Future of Search & SEO

To date, ExactSeek is the only search engine which uses visitor stats as criteria for its rankings. But Google isn’t far behind. We all know that Google specializes in taking a good idea and implementing and adapting it brilliantly. This is exactly what we’ll see in this case. By combining link popularity and user popularity statistics, Google will be the only major search engine to consider both what other sites think of your website and what your visitors think of your website. And because they have the most advanced algorithms for assessing link popularity, and will soon have access to the farthest reaching, most accurate web stats to assess user popularity, its competitors will be a long time catching up.

So if that’s the future of search, what’s the future of SEO? The future of SEO is undoubtedly one where:

• one-way text links from relevant pages continue to be the most valuable links
• reciprocal linking continue to decline
• the ’shotgun’ approach to link buying declines
• mass email link requests decline
• free directory submission declines
• niche directory submission increases
• article PR (article submission) increases
• article submission sites (e.g. http://www.ezinearticles.com , http://www.goarticles.com , and http://www.articleblast.com ) play a much bigger and more important role in helping online publishers locate quality articles (due to the increasing article volume)
• user popularity is just as important as link popularity, which means:
• the quality of article PR improves in order to increase site traffic, credibility, and loyalty
• the quality of website content improves in order to convert traffic and encourage repeat visits

Clearly, the choices for SEOs will be pretty much limited to paying for links at niche sites and/or engaging in article PR. Being an SEO copywriter, I may be a little biased, but for mine, article PR is the hands-down winner in this comparison:

• It satisfies Google’s criteria for relevance and importance. Linking site owners include your article and link because, in doing so, their site becomes more useful to visitors, and their business gains credibility and authority.
• It generates hundreds of free links quickly enough to make it worth your while, but not so quickly as to raise red flags at Google (in the form of link dampening).
• Links are permanent and you don’t have to pay to keep them there.
• You get a lot of qualified referred traffic who already trust you and your expertise. This satisfies Google’s visitor popularity criteria, while at the same time bringing you a lot of extra customers.

For more information on article PR, read ‘How to Top Google with Article PR’ (articlepr.com/SEO_Article_Submission.shtml).

Conclusion

The lesson from Jagger is, don’t try and trick Google! They’ve got more money and more brains than virtually any company in the world. It’ll only end in tears! Don’t spend time and money trying to make your site look important and relevant. Instead, spend that time and money actually making it important and relevant! Content - the real content behind the optimization - is the answer. After all, whether it’s an article or a web page, it’s the content that keeps ‘eyes on paper’, and that’s what it’s all about.

Happy optimizing!

Glenn Murray is an SEO copywriter and article submission and article PR specialist. He is a director of article PR company, Article PR, and also of copywriting studio Divine Write. He can be contacted on Sydney +612 4334 6222 or at glenn@divinewrite.com. Visit DivineWrite.com or ArticlePR.com for further details, more FREE articles, or to download his FREE SEO e-book.

If you’re looking for an SEO firm, we recommend that you weigh 10 factors that can save you trouble down the road.

1. Check out their experience.

You shouldn’t have to try hard to find samples of their clients or their SEO performance on individual websites. How competitive are their search terms that are ranking well on Google? Are the search terms that are ranking well difficult terms to position–one, two and three word phrases, or are they easy terms to position because no one else is using them at all–six, seven and eight word terms?

2. Ask for testimonial letters.

Insist on letterheads from the clients that feature real names, not Fred from Cleveland or J.T. from New York. Call these references and ask them questions about the SEO performance of the company you are considering.

3. Ask them to document their process.

What policies and procedures do they follow? Are they consistent? Do they stay away from unethical procedures that could put your site in jeopardy with the search engines?

4. Get staff credentials.

Find out who is doing the work. You really need a team of people - no one person can be proficient in every area of server administration, programming, marketing, writing, link building and more. Get to know the team a bit.

5. Be suspicious of money back guarantees.

Unless it’s super-clear, you have to wonder about the details of the guarantee. If a firm offers one, including Top 10 placement, ask them to elaborate. Which key words are included? Just one Top 10? Do they plan to achieve Top 10 rankings among natural results or pay-per-click? Are the Top 10 listings associated with your web site or a supplemental web site the SEO firm controls?

6. Get pricing information.

Is the SEO contract for hourly, monthly or annual services? Get prices from a few other firms as well, but be aware that the scope of services may vary greatly from firm to firm. Insist that the firm you’re interested in explain why it charges more for services, if that’s the case.

7. Ask about reporting. How many keywords will the firm handle? How many pages?

Find out whether you’ll be able to access the latest data about your project. How often is it provided? What’s included? Some firms just send a ranking report. What other details can you expect in terms of the overall strategy, next steps, web site traffic and conversions?

8. Determine the firm’s ethical standards.

What are the firm’s practices when it comes to ethical standards and practices? How far will they go? How do they view doorway pages, cloaking and keyword stuffing?

9. Know your objectives.

You need to have some idea of what you want to accomplish when selecting an SEO firm. Do you simply want to promote your brand? Do you want to increase visitors and push traffic to retailers? Do you want to improve online sales? Which categories of products will matter the most in your campaign?

10. Come up with a budget.

You can submit your web site pages (not optimized) for free or through services that cost well below $100. Optimizing is another matter–It’s going to cost money. Have some flexibility–the level of service and the firm’s expertise will determine whether you pay hundreds of dollars or well over a $1,000 a month.

Michael Murray is vice president of Fathom SEO, a Cleveland, Ohio-based search engine marketing (SEM) firm. A member of Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), he also authored the white paper, "Search Engine Marketing: Get in the Game."

mmurray@fathomseo.com

Record keeping measurements for Internet marketing

Record keeping tracks money — where it goes, when it comes in. Internet record keeping is also required for success. Yet the statistics show that only one out of a hundred people who own web sites do any type of record keeping on how much it cost them to be there A system that works hard for you when you don’t still requires monitoring and periodic reviews. If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it, then it manages you.

The top keys to making money on the Internet are working smart, planning, testing, immediately stopping when something isn’t working, reinvest in new techniques and approaches that improve and then keep testing. For every success there are usually 10 to 15 try, sometimes more, that weren’t successful. Even prolific writers create a number of drafts to get to the end result that works.

Here are nine terms you want to become very familiar with and that you want to use to measure your success. As a past CPA, these terms aren’t just for an Internet site, they too are usable in other services or brick and mortar operations.

1. Cost per action, sometimes also called, cost per acquisition. How much does it cost you to get a visitor to take a specific action beyond just clicking around in your web site? How many click-throughs does it take for visitors to make a purchase? Another way to apply this to ezines subscribers — how many clicks were made before the subscriber registered for your eNewsletter? You take the total expenses for running your web site and divide by the number of clicks measured.

Example: If the cost per click is $0.50 and it takes 30 click-throughs to get one person to register for your eNewsletter, the cost per action is $15. If you write articles, how many registrations do you get for each article? If your measurement is 10 for each article and it takes you about two hours to produce and deliver the article over the Internet. If your estimated hour rate is $100 per hour, then each registration is costing you $10 plus your web expenses.

2. Cost per sale. To measure, divide the marketing expenses by the total number of transactions to come up with the cost per sale in a dollar amount.

3. Return on Investment, also known as your ROI. Divide your gross sales, this is all your sales coming from your web site, whether it is from affiliate, commission, advertising, or items sold, by all your marketing costs. All that you have invested in its production. You come up with a percentage amount which is the bottom line on how successful your marketing was in terms of sales. Refunds or credits are also taken into account. If you gave away a number of products you need to count these as part of the items sold even though they didn’t land any money in the bank account. Giveaways are a frequent overview in this calculation and can be a huge eye opener.

Example for service professionals. If you provide a service where you give away the first session as complimentary, give a presentation for a sale, or prepare a proposal, these costs also need to be included in your ROI calculations. If you provide this service in person you need to also add in your travel time and an average cost for car expenses (not just gas). This is why it is so important to prequalify. For coaches, this is why I recommend only performing complimentary session over the phone or in your office unless you’re fee is built in and high enough.

4. Pay per sale, also called a referral fee for closed transaction . This is typically a percentage of the sales generated by the advertisement. A commission is paid when a sales is made by the advertiser and not by the number of click-throughs. Advantageous to the advertiser not to the publisher.

Example: Someone places an ad in your eNewsletter with an agreement to pay a higher percentage fee for each sale but zero for any nonsales. The responsibility of success for the sale falls mainly on the advertiser. If you enter into this type of agreement, make sure the advertiser delivers on their promises, and has a structurally sound sales processing system in place. Not to mention a means for reporting to you what was sold, when and where too.

5. Customer lifetime value. Stated in dollars, this is the average length your customer remains with you divided by net profit of that value. If you are new in business or don’t have the actual figures you will need to estimate.

Example: If you are a coach and average of 22 steady clients per month for an average agreement of six months. Your net profit for six months would be $46,200. You then divide the $46,200/22 = $2,100. What this means is that every client that you acquire for six months is worth $2,100 to your business.

6. Cost per click, also known as cost per click-through (CPC). How much you have to pay for every time someone clicks on your ad — clicks from that point to the next point, usually your web site.

Example: You purchase a banner space on someone else’s web site for your product or service. That space costs you $400 for the month. There were 225 click-throughs from that banner to your site during that month. $400 divided by 225 = $1.77. You paid $1.77 for each click-through.

7. Cost per lead, also known as pay per lead. This usually occurs when you purchase prospect lists. These are specific lists from people who have already given permission to someone else that they are interested in this type of product or service. In other words, they have opt-in to a similar request, and they are the target market you are looking for. The leads can be limited to just providing the e-mail address or in great details.

Catherine Franz is a Marketing & Writing Coach, niches, product development, Internet marketing, nonfiction writing and training. Additional Articles: http://www.abundancecenter.com blog: http://abundance.blogs.com

I’ve been frustrated lately. It seems people just don’t get it. There’s lots of talk about SEO copywriting these days, but hardly any of it is on target. The majority of the conversations, posts and articles I’ve seen deal with topics like keyword density, allowable limits, over optimization and such. These people are making search engine copywriting all about the search engines. They are forgetting the fact that SEO copywriting is still copywriting.

What that means - generally speaking - is you are still writing promotional copy designed to cause a *person* to take a specific action. Your target audience (your site visitors) should come first. The elements designed to help the copy rank well absolutely come last.

What good is all the traffic in the world if your site copy doesn’t convert visitors into buyers? Not much. That’s why - when writing SEO copy - the human visitor comes first.

Unfortunately, SEO copywriting is getting a bad name because so much of what is being cranked out is repetitious babble. Most of these pages would never have made it on to a site, except for the fact that the site owner wanted to rank highly for certain key terms.

So, in the interest of salvaging the good name of search engine copywriting, before it’s too late, let me offer some guidelines.

SEO Copy Is:

· first and foremost - written for the visitor.

· unique and purposeful.

· natural-sounding - it flows.

SEO Copy Is Not:

· written exclusively with the engines in mind.

· mirrored, adjusted or altered to create new pages by simply changing keyphrases.

· stiff, forced or overly repetitive.

The Dos of SEO Copywriting

When writing SEO copy, you’ll want to:

· understand who you are writing to.

· choose what the focus of the page will be.

· create a plan outlining the message you want to convey.

· decide how best to communicate that message to your particular target customers.

· choose which keyphrases will be incorporated into the copy.

· make sure those keyphrases work well with the page and the planned copy.

· incorporate keyphrases as you write (not after you write), so they flow naturally with the planned message.

The Don’ts of SEO Copywriting

When writing SEO copy, you should never:

· create a plan based solely on how to rank high.

· replace *every* instance of a generic term (car) with a keyphrase (red, convertible car).

· add pages of copy simply to appease the search engines.

· rely on useless keyword density ratios and formulas.

· shove keyphrases in everywhere possible. (No, it won’t get you banned, but it will sound completely ridiculous!)

SEO copywriting is not the process of writing exclusively for the search engines. It is the process of writing copy to appeal to your visitors, while including elements to help the search engines and your visitors understand what the page is all about.

If you remember who truly makes or breaks your site’s success (your customers!) and focus on them, you’re sure to create SEO copy that rings true.

© 2005 http://www.marketingwords.com/

Karon Thackston is author of “How To Increase Keyword Saturation (Without Destroying the Flow of Your Copy).” Discover the secrets to creating SEO copy with a perfect balance between keywords and natural language. http://www.copywritingcourse.com/keyword

Search engine copywriting has become an extremely important part of the overall search engine optimization process. However, in addition, search engine copywriting has developed into a misunderstood craft.

Shoving keywords in anywhere they can possibly go is not considered search engine copywriting. The process is more defined than that. Successful SEO copywriting takes planning. Any half-hearted efforts at writing copy geared strictly toward the engines will usually result in a decline in your customer’s experience at your site.

What’s the best way to write SEO copy? Starting with a plan is always a good idea. Keep in mind, these are guidelines of techniques that can be used *IF* they make sense for your site visitors. I never recommend writing solely for the search engines. In the case of search engine copywriting, the customer is truly #1.

1) Use Three Keyphrases Per Page - Not a carved-in-stone rule, the guideline of three keyphrases per page gives good variety and helps keep the copy from sounding too repetitive. I always choose keyphrases first - before I write - because they can have a direct impact on the focus of the page.

2) Have 250 or More Words of Copy - The length of your copy depends on several things: Your target customer’s preferred communication style, whether the product is new to the marketplace, if a detailed explanation needs to be given, site design and many other factors. However, the 250-word minimum gives enough room to get your message across and offer an effective level of keyword support. Remember though, it’s all about the customer. If your target customers prefer longer copy, write longer copy. If they like shorter copy, write shorter copy.

3) Write In Natural Language - "Natural language" is a term popular in SEO copywriting. It means that the reader should not be able to (or should barely be able to) detect what keyphrases the page is being optimized for. The copy should flow as if it were not written with the search engines in mind. You don’t want the copy to sound forced or stiff. When you generate ideas for the page copy, keep your keywords in mind. Ask yourself whether you can use them in the copy in such a way that they won’t be obtrusive.

4) Use Keyword Phrases In Headlines and Sub-headlines - IF it makes sense to do so. You will not blow your rankings if you have no keyword-filled or other tags. If your headline sounds stupid with keywords in it, don’t use them. There are countless sites online that rank highly which have no keywords in the headline.

5) Use Keyword Phrases Once or Twice Per Paragraph - Again IF it makes sense. Remember what I keep repeating? None of these guidelines are carved in stone. Read your copy out loud. If it sounds stupid or forced, take out some keywords or find ways to rework them so they flow more naturally.

6) Use Keyword Phrases In Bold, Italic or Bulleted Lists - IF it makes sense to do so. Don’t automatically bold or italicize every instance of your keywords. It will make your page look stupid, and your visitors will wonder what kind of drugs you’ve been doing!

7) Do NOT Use Keyword Phrases As Substitutes For Generic Terms - For example, do not replace every instance of the generic word "cruise" with the keyphrase "Mexico cruise vacation." Your copy will sound ridiculous.

We offer Mexico cruise vacation packages on the most popular Mexico cruise vacation ships to the most breathtaking Mexico cruise vacation destinations. Oh please!!

8) Use Keyword Phrases As Anchor Text In Links - This is certainly not always possible. If your primary keyphrase is "Mexico Cruise Vacation," you absolutely should not write every link to include that phrase. However, if you can include keywords in anchor text within body copy or in text navigation links, you might score a little extra credit.

9) Test and Track - Lastly, and above all, please remember, it may take some tweaking to get your page to convert the way you want it to. All customers are not the same, and all sites are not the same. All keyphrases are not the same. There is no magic bullet. You’ll have to test and track and see what works best for you.

© 2005 http://www.copywritingcourse.com/keyword

Copy not getting results? Learn to write SEO copy that impresses the engines and your visitors at http://www.copywritingcourse.com. Be sure to check out Karon’s latest e-report “How To Increase Keyword Saturation (Without Destroying the Flow of Your Copy)” at http://www.copywritingcourse.com/keyword.

Just because you put up a web store doesn’t mean people will come, take a look and then give you their hard earned dollars. The most successful e-commerce sites have systems in place that entice people to come and buy-again and again. How do they do it. Here are some helpful hints:

First they do everything they can to get people to leave their names and e-mail addresses so they can tell them about upcoming sales, new products and so on. Consider offering a free newsletter or service that sends out updates about your products or services.

Second, they pay close attention to their catalog copy. They try to make it interesting yet concise so that it can be easily understood. Also, their pricing information is very clear.

Third, they also know that their sales strategies on the Web shouldn’t be different from storefront sales strategies, they discount items, have sales and offer coupons for consumers to download.

Fourth, they also let their customers know that real people are behind their Web store. They list their phone and fax numbers-and an e-mail address-prominently on their Web site. They put their customers more at ease about buying from there knowing that they can be reached easily and by a number of different methods.

Last but not least is you want to get customers to your web store. One very simple way is to register your web store with the top search engines. There are also services that automatically do this for you. However, we have found it is always best to do it yourself.

Copyright 2004 DeFiore Enterprises 

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Search engines have robots that come to your site and grab everything there is to grab. But because competition is so fierce, there is no way to get in the search engines, unless you pay for ads or hire a SEO (Search Engine Optimization) consultant, right? Wrong!

Even if you pay big money, if your site is not properly seen by the robots used by search engines for indexing, chances are many of your pages will never make it.

In this article I will discuss the importance of having your website structured properly, the importance of using the old fashioned hyperlinks versus the modern Flash menus, scripts and extensions and provide you with a very simple and free tool that will allow you to see your site in a similar fashion most indexing robots do. But first, let’s define some of the concepts.

What is a www robot?

A robot is a computer program that automatically reads web pages and goes through every link that it finds.

The first robot was developed by MIT and launched in 1993. It was named the World Wide Web Wander and its initial purpose was of a purely scientific nature, its mission was to measure the growth of the web. The index generated from the experiment’s results proved to be an awesome tool and effectively became the first search engine. Most of the online stuff we can’t live without today was born as a side effect of some scientific experiment.

What is a search engine?

Generically, a search engine is a program that searches through a database. In the popular sense, as referred to the web, a search engine is considered to be a system that has a user search form, which can search through a repository of web pages gathered by a robot.

What is a bot? What is a spider? What is a crawler?

Bot is just a shorter, cooler (for some) version of the word robot. Spiders and crawlers are robots, only the names sound more interesting in the press and within metro-geek circles. For reasons of consistency, I will use the term robot throughout this article, when referring to spiders, crawlers and bots.

Are there other… things that crawl out there?

Oh yeah, but these things are way beyond the scope of this article. Well, for the conspiracy theory aficionados, let’s see… we have worms - self-replicating programs, webants (or ants) - distributed cooperating robots, autonomous agents, intelligent agents and many other bots and beasties.

How do robots work?

As with all other things technical, I believe that the only way you will utilize a technology to its full potential and to your best advantage is if and when you understand how that technology works. When I say how it works, I don’t mean intricate technical details, but fundamental processes, big picture stuff.

Generally, robots are nothing but stripped down versions of web browsers, programmed to automatically browse and record information about web pages. There are some very specialized robots out there, some that look only for blogs, some that index nothing but images. Many (such as Google’s GoogleBot) are based on one of the first popular browsers, called Lynx. Lynx was initially a pure text browser, therefore, in today’s internet Lynx would be extremely robust and fast. Basically, if you can program, you can take Lynx, modify it and make a robot.

So how do these things actually work? They get a list of websites, and literally start "browsing" them. They come to your site and then start reading the pages and following every link, while storing different information, such as page titles, the actual text of the page, etc.

Based on the above, what would happen if instead of your beloved Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera or whatever browser you are attached to, you go dig on the internet and download a version of the venerable Lynx browser?

I’ll tell you what would happen, and some will probably accuse me of giving away one of the secrets the SEO corporate community does not want you to know:

You will be able to see your site very close to the way a robot sees it. You will be able to look for errors in your pages and track down navigation errors that might block a robot from seeing portions of your site.

In plain English, let’s say you built a great looking site. There is an index page, the first page one sees when entering your site. On that page you have the most incredible Flash navigation system, with a huge button pointing to your products and services and the rest of the site. If Lynx goes to your index page and will not see a standard link, it will not be able to see the rest of your site. There are extremely high chances that a lot of indexing robots will not see your site either.

You will then understand why your very large site, that has one of the most intricate and functional Flash based navigation systems on the planet never makes it high into the search engines, even after all your efforts of manually submitting it everywhere. It’s simply because you forgot to add basic hyperlinks. It’s because when you submit a site - even manually - all that really happens is you telling the search engine "hey, Mr. Search Engine, whenever you think you can find some time, please send your trusty robot to my site".

Folks, robots can’t usually use a navigation menu made in Flash, Java script, PHP, etc. and will not be able to get to your pages, it’s as simple as that.

How do I get Lynx?

Lynx first started life as a UNIX application, written by the University of Kansas as part of their campus-wide information system. It then became a gopher application (a pre-web search tool), then a web browser. The official page for Lynx is http://lynx.isc.org, however, if you are not a Linux geek, used to play with binary distribution files and used to compiling your own apps (don’t worry about what I just said), you might want to find a version that someone else already made usable for your computer. For example, if you are a PC user running Windows, you might want to check links to “Win32 compiled versions”. At the time of writing, one such site is http://csant.info/lynx.htm (called a distribution site) where you can download a version that will install onto Windows machines in a fashion that will be familiar to non-geeks. After you install the browser, you might want to read the documentation. To get you going and to alleviate your beginner frustrations, I’ll tell you that you must press the G key (as in “go”), then type the complete URL of the site you want to browse (starting with “http://”), then hit Enter. Use the arrows to navigate.

Bottom line, use Lynx to verify that every page of site is accessible and let the robots do all the work for you. You’ll save yourself a lot of aggravation and maybe some money that you would waste on advertising your otherwise non-indexable site.

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Andrei co-owns Bsleek - a company that specializes in web design, hosting, promotional items, printing, tradeshow displays, logos, CD presentations, SEO and more. Andrei has amassed an extensive technical knowledge and experience through his career as the CIO for a major travel management company and through his past careers in military research, data acquisition and airspace engineering. He also consults for Trinity Investigations, a New York based PI firm.

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