Search engines determine their rankings based on two things:

1. Is your site relevant? (Optimized for certain keywords)
2. Is your site important? (Many links back to your site from other sites)

Only when you address both of these considerations are you guaranteed of making an impact. Your degree of success depends on how hard you try and how many other people you’re competing against (and how hard they’re trying).

Optimizing your site for keywords is the easy part. (See www.divinewrite.com/seocopy.htm for more information on SEO copy.) Generating links back to your site is much more challenging – and time consuming (especially considering Google’s dampening link filter - see www.divinewrite.com/googlelinkfilter.htm. But it can be done; and you don’t need a huge budget.

The key to topping Google on a budget is article PR.

Here’s how article PR works…

STEP 1) You’re an expert in your field so you possess knowledge that other people want.

STEP 2) You write a helpful article – sharing your hard-earned knowledge and expertise.

STEP 3) You submit your article to recognized “Article Submit” sites on the Internet.

STEP 4) Publishers of online newsletters, ezines, etc. gather content from these sites for free.

STEP 5) Helpful, well written articles are snapped up by thousands of publishers from all around the world.

STEP 6) The only condition is that they must publish the article with a functioning link to your site.

STEP 7) 300 people publish your article – you get 300 links back to your site.

Below are some FAQs about article PR that will help you write your articles and manage your article PR campaign.

Q) What should I write about?

A) Write about what you know. Make sure it’s related to your business (so you can use the keywords you want to rank with) and helpful (so it gets published). For example, if you’re a manufacturer of industrial plastics, you might write an article - or series of articles - on how best to handle teflon tubing prior to installation. Once you get thinking about it, you’ll probably find there are hundreds of articles you could write that are helpful. You may even have some of them partly written already in your instruction manuals or installation guides, etc. Another good idea is to think of all the questions you get asked by customers and potential customers. These questions show you what people are interested in. If you write an article answering every one of these questions, you’ll get published, and you’ll also show yourself to be a credible expert. (You may even cut down phone support time!)

Q) How long should my article be?

A) The best articles are only as long as they need to be. Keep it short and sweet – there’s nothing wrong with a 400 word article. By the same token, if you need 1500 words to say all you need to say, that’s fine as well.

Q) What kind of writing should I use?

A) Simply write in a style that your audience will be comfortable with. If they’re from the old school, don’t write like I am. Don’t use contractions, don’t end sentences with prepositions, and don’t start sentences with “and” or “but”. But if they’re not old school, just use conversational English. In fact, the more of yourself you include in the article, the more engaging it will be. The key is to make it readable.

Q) Should I focus on keywords?

A) Yes! Yes! Yes! Any SEO website copywriter will tell you that just as you need to optimize your website for specific keywords, so too should you optimize your articles. If possible, turn keywords into links back to your site. And always try to include keywords in the headline and byline of your article. And don’t worry about being seen as Spam; if your article provides good quality information and guidance, it won’t be seen as spam by the search engines even when it’s very keyword rich.

Q) Where should I submit my article?

A) There are hundreds, if not thousands, of submit sites on the Internet. Too many to include here. Do a search for “article submit” and just find the ones that are most applicable to your industry and offer the most subscribers. Alternatively, you can purchase a list.

Q) Who will publish my article?

A) Generally people publish pre-written articles because they want “eyes on paper”. In other words, they want to generate traffic to their site. Helpful articles are one way of doing that. It also sets them up as credible authorities on a particular subject. And it develops customer loyalty. There are hundreds of thousands of companies (maybe even millions) publishing online newsletters, ezines, and article pages. No matter what your industry, you’re bound to find quite a few who are interested in what you have to say. In fact, once a few publishers recognise you as a good source of content, they keep coming back looking for more (and even email you asking if you can send them directly).

Q) How will I know when my article has been published?

A) As one of the conditions of publications, you can request that the publisher notifies you when they use your article. Of course, most don’t bother to do this, so it’s a good idea to set up a Google Alert which notifies you when your URL has been published on a web page. Google doesn’t pick them all up, but it picks up a lot. Whenever you receive an alert, you make sure the article in unchanged and the link back to your site is functioning.

Q) Will the publisher change my article?

A) No, generally not. Changing articles is just extra work. In fact, that’s why publishers like good articles and consistent content providers – because that means they don’t have to do any extra work. I’ve had many articles published, and don’t recall a single instance of an article being changed without my permission. If you’re worried about it, you can include an instruction not to change the article in your conditions of publication.

Q) Can I get an SEO copywriter to do my article PR?

A) Yes. Any SEO copywriter should be able to write keyword rich articles and submit them to a number of high traffic article submit sites.

Q) What kind of information would I need to supply an SEO copywriter to write my article?

A) You’d need to tell your SEO copywriter something like, "We want to write an article which helps people install teflon tubing. The kinds of people who’d be doing it are… They’d be doing it because… The benefits of our tubing are… The difficulties they’d face are… Here are the key steps to successful installation…" Using this information, your SEO copywriter should be able to put together a very readable article which would be bound to get published.

Q) Will my reputation suffer if my article appears on a dodgy site?

A) It shouldn’t. Most dodgy sites will be either unrelated or have very low traffic. If the site is unrelated, the publisher won’t go to the effort of publishing your article. If it’s related but has very low traffic, very few people will see your article there anyway. And besides, even if your article appears on a dodgy site, it probably won’t be changed because – dodgy or not – publishers don’t create extra work for themselves. So your original presentation, content, and intent will be unaffected. Write a good article, and it always reflects well on you, no matter where it’s published.

Q) How long will it take for my ranking to increase?

A) There are no guarantees in SEO. It all takes time. For a start, the search engines can take up to 2 months to update their index of pages. And a single inbound link generally won’t have much impact. Depending on how much competition you’re facing for keywords, and where the links are coming from, 100 inbound links may not make much of a difference. (Links from high PageRank sites are more beneficial to your ranking – see http://www.divinewrite.com/seotradesecrets.htm for more information on PR.) So don’t expect anything to happen too quickly. But if you’re dedicated, and you’re prepared to write quite a few articles, you’ll definitely see results within a few months.

Happy writing!

* 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 www.DivineWrite.com or www.ArticlePR.com for further details, more FREE articles, or to download his FREE SEO e-book.

Strategic search engine optimization involves far more than keyword research, META tags and content.

If you want to mange an SEO program, you need to be aware of any issue that can affect your success.

Domain name management is one of the big factors. Effective domain name management is critical because you could end up getting banned from Google and other search engines if you take the wrong approach.

Why would Google ban you?
In the spirit of fair play and providing depth in its results, Google frowns on duplicate content. Some web site owners purchase multiple domains and copy their content for both domains. They figure they may land the #1 and #2 positions that way. That may be the company’s goal, but it’s not very valuable for the Internet searcher.

Even if you don’t maintain your identical content with two or more domains, you can still run into problems. It’s possible to update just one set of web pages, but have them look like duplicates because of how the domain names are administered. You may be risking everything if someone enters
www.yoursite2005.com/about.html and
www.oursite2005.com/about.html
and they see the same content – even if the pages reside in only one location.

Many web site owners redirect one domain to the next rather than configure the server to associate the core content with a second domain name. In many cases, a 301 redirect is your best bet. It’s a server-side redirect most administrators can handle in a few minutes. In effect, it’s a proper way of telling search engines to ignore one domain and favor another.

You may have many good reasons for owning multiple domains, including brand protection. Some companies get extra domains on the off-chance that someone may simply try a domain name and see what comes up. A classic example is 1-800-FLOWERS.COM. One of their domains is www.1800flowers.com, but you can get there with www.flowers.com as well.

The Bottom Line
If you secure more than one domain, redirect the extras to your main web site (on the server) or use the extra domains for unique content (showcasing a line of products of services).

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."

Since I became involved with e-commerce 8 years ago, the "marketing experts" have been teaching that one of the best ways to increase traffic to your site and present yourself as an expert in your field is to write articles and submit them for republishing.

And with the recent mantra that "Content is King" being repeated everywhere, many website owners are scrambling to find helpful and informative articles to include on their site or blog.

While there’s no doubt that having your articles published on dozens or even hundreds of sites will create name recognition for yourself and strengthen the public’s view of you as an expert in your industry, there is a black cloud that has arisen in the area of your published articles increasing your standings in search engine results.

That cloud is called "Googlewashing"…

To clean up their search results Google has really started cracking down on duplicate content. This means that if you have your original article published on your website, but it is also included in the content of dozens of other sites, you could conceivably be decreasing the chances of your website showing up in the top rankings of search results for your article’s keywords.

For example, let’s say that you’ve written an article titled, "How to Groom Your Purple Poodle". You submit the article to article directories and ezine publishers giving permission for your article to be republished. 50 other webmasters and blog publishers with content that targets Purple Poodle owners like the article and decide to put it on their site.

This is great right? You’re creating name recognition for yourself and your company and establishing yourself as an expert among people that own Purple Poodles.

But hold on Hoss, that upside could have a downside when it comes to pleasing the "search engine gods".

What if among those 50 webmasters that published your article is Mr. "my site has been number one in the search engines for Purple Poodles for the last year".

Your site shows up as number 22.

Now, when someone goes to Google and types in, "How to Groom a Purple Poodle" - whose website do you think is going to show up first in the search results with your article?

Most likely, it won’t be yours… even though YOU are the expert who wrote the article.

But is that as bad as it sounds?

Of course we all want our site to rank high in the engines for our chosen keywords, and most webmasters do everything possible to have that happen, but in reality the majority of those reading this may never experience a top ten ranking.

But don’t despair for all is not lost, at least when it comes to website traffic.

In my humble opinion, traffic is gold - as long as it is targeted traffic - regardless if it comes from folks finding my site through a search engine, or by clicking a link to my website that I have included in the byline or resource box within my articles that are being published on other sites.

It is those thieves that use your articles WITHOUT acknowledging who the true author is that you have to look out for… but that’s another article.

© All Rights Reserved. (iamsbm)

Sharon Bray-McPherson is the owner of E-Commerce Made EZ, where you’ll find everything you need to start your own Wholesale Business. With new and expanded services, including the Wholesale RSS Directory. Add Yours Free! http://www.go2sbm.com/ecommerce

Keeping in touch with other sites like Amazon.com, Buy.com and Yahoo.com, Google created a new shopping search tool called “Froogle”. It has been called one of the most innovative price conscious tools on the Internet. Using the same technologies of Google.com, Froogle employs direct data received from merchants and through web crawls alone. Depending on the successes of the beta testing phase will provide adequate information as to whether Google continues with Froogle.

Housing over 15 different products and categories ranging anywhere from electronics, computers, food and gourmet, health care products, books, music and video, sports & outdoor equipment as well as toys and games, the list will only continue to grow in the coming months. Its searching capabilities mirror its mother page; it can be found at froogle.google.com and items can be found either in their product categories or by a dynamic keyword search. The results published are limited to one item per store. Every item appears with a thumbnail attached as well as a detailed product description, which includes price. Google doesn’t bias any website and often you will find products that exist on Amazon and Yahoo. This approach mirrors the Google philosophy of less details, more products.

The remaining products are crawled throughout the Internet as most other keywords are sought. Currently merchants can setup their accounts and sell on Froogle right away! There is no cost or cost per click through associated with adding your products to Froogle. Merchants can sign up for free and monitor how Froogle displays their product. This technology is open to the public at no initial cost or commissions. 

Depending on how many items your company may want to sell on Froogle; you have to create a data feed file, which can be done with any spreadsheet software or by a text file. The opportunity to get involved with Froogle is incredible; chances are if you are selling a product and are optimized on the Internet for Google, your product may already exist.

Jakob Jelling is the founder of http://www.sitetube.com. Visit his website for the latest on planning, building, promoting and maintaining websites.

With Google delivering so much traffic, it is only normal to be eager to submit your page and have it indexed as soon as possible. However, submitting your page is not your only option, and it’s not the best one. If this sounds strange keep reading.

Talking about its indexing process, Google says:

"We add thousands of new sites to our index each time we crawl the Web, but if you like, you may submit your URL as well. Submission is not necessary and does not guarantee inclusion in our index. Given the large number of sites submitting URLs, it’s likely your pages will be found in an automatic crawl before they make it into our index through the URL submission form."

We can therefore draw two conclusions:

The Google folks have also made it clear that Google gives a page more importance when it is found through an automatic crawl. This can be easily verified when we consider how Google’s PageRank system works: when page A links to page B, part of page A’s PageRank trickles down to page B, increasing page B’s PageRank (and, therefore, its importance). A manually submitted page will not enjoy this benefit.

Now that you know that manual submission is neither necessary nor the best way to go, what can you do to make Google find your pages?

The best way, at least in my personal experience, is to write an article on your area of expertise and submit it to popular article syndication sites like http://www.marketing-seek.com or http://www.ideamarketers.com . These sites will post your article, so that online publishers can use them for free in exchange for including your resource box at the end of the article. A resource box (a.k.a. bylines) is a small paragraph about yourself, written by you, which contains a link to your homepage.

In very little time, your article will show up in websites and ezines across the web. It will then be just a matter of time (usually days) before Google crawls those pages and finds your links. If you followed good web design practices and have included a link to a site map in your homepage, Google will follow it as soon as it finds your homepage, and all your pages will be indexed. It’s as simple as that.

The most popular articles you can write are those that list a collection of tips related to your area of expertise. One of my most succesful articles is called "50 Surefire Web Design Tips", and it is nothing but a checklist of guidelines to follow when designing a website.

Another good way to help Google find your pages is to exchange links with other sites. Google will crawl those sites, find the links to your page, and add it to the index.

Finally, remember to optimize your pages before you try to get them listed, so that you have a better chance of ranking high in the search engine results pages (SERPs). After all, what good would it do to get your pages listed if nobody can find them?

About The Author

Mario Sanchez is a Miami based freelance writer who focuses on web design and Internet marketing topics. He publishes The Internet Digest ( http://www.theinternetdigest.net ), a growing collection of web design and Internet marketing articles, tips and resources. You can freely reprint his weekly articles in your website, ezine, or ebook.

Imagine what your business would be like if you were listed number one in Google when someone searched for your product or service. At no cost to you, you’d have hundreds or even thousands of highly targeted potential customers coming to your website every day. It would be like shooting fish in a barrel. If you sell a quality product or service, your profit potential is unlimited.

I see people all the time bragging that their website is listed number one in Google for a specific search phrase. When I Google their specific keyword phrase, they do come up number one. Then I look at their traffic statistics and they are ranked over 2 million on alexa.com. That means hardly anyone visits their website. Then I check to see how many people actually search those keywords at inventory.overture.com. Maybe 10 or 20 people a month search for that combination of keywords. Does being number one in Google for an obscure search phrase help your business? I don’t think so.

I’m not going to kid you, getting to number one in Google is no easy feat. And staying there can be a full time job if you’re in a completive market. There are many tips and tricks I can teach you to raise your search engine ranking but I’ll save that for another day. Today I want you to try a different perspective…

Can my website be successful without a high search engine ranking?

Absolutely! Finding your website through the search engines is just one way for potential customers to find you. There are many other ways to drive traffic to your website that are much easier than trying to be listed on the first page of the search engines. You can use a variety of online and offline tactics to attract visitors to your website.

But, before you start driving traffic to your website, make sure your website is ready for new visitors. You must give visitors a reason to stay at your website and come back again in the near future. Give them valuable information that is going to quickly solve their problem. Give them a reason to tell your friends about your website. Give them some incentive to sign up for your newsletter by giving them a free report that will help them solve a common problem they may be facing. For example, "How to…" or "The Top 10 Ways to…" are great beginnings to your free report.

Once your website is full of problem-solving information it’s time start driving traffic. You should use a combination of both online and offline methods to get people to visit your website.

Offline traffic methods

1. Put your website URL on all of your collateral including your business card, stationary, brochures, your print advertising, your Yellow Pages ads, and anywhere else your business name appears. If you have a sign on your office building include your website URL.

2. On the back of your business card, offer a free report and include a website URL that leads the reader directly to a specific page on your website (a landing page) that describes how your free report will solve their problem. You can even have a series of free reports, each with a separate landing page that leads visitors to different promotional campaigns based on their search phrases. Always get the reader to give you at leas their name and email address when they are signing up for the free report. Also mention that as an added bonus, they will receive your newsletter free of charge just by signing up for your free report. This gives you permission to add them to your newsletter email list.

3. Publicize your website URL anywhere you can while maintaining a professional appearance. Don’t compromise your integrity just to get your website URL advertised.

Online traffic methods

1. Add your website URL to your email signature. Also promote your free report or one of your products or services in your email signature but don’t overdo it. Too much information in your email signature can do more harm than good.

2. Participate in newsgroups and forums where your potential clients look for solutions to their problems. Don’t advertise your services, just post answers to their questions or problems. Include your website URL in your signature in the forum posting.

3. Buy ezine advertising. Find ezines that your potential clients subscribe to and purchase advertising. Create ads that talk about their problems and direct them to your website for answers. Direct them to your free report landing page and get their name and email address. The free report will build your credibility and open the door to potential future sales. Don’t try to sell them your service right away without building some trust and credibility.

4. Purchase banner ads. Yes, banner ads really do work. Many experts have been saying banner ads are dead but they’ve taken on a new life. You can purchase very affordable, highly targeted banner ads that are only displayed to your target market. Use the same approach as with ezine advertising, direct them to your free report landing page to solve their problem.

5. Advertise on craigslist.org. There are many ways to advertise your product or service for free on craigslist. You have to be subtle with your advertising or they may block you posting if you violate their policies. Read their guidelines before posting your ads. If you’re promoting a workshop, use the same approach of directing people to a landing page on your website for information.

6. Write articles that talk about a problem your clients are facing. Show them how to solve the problem and direct them to your website for more information. Post the article on your website as well as submitting it to article directories on the internet. Always include your bio and website URL at the end of the article with our copyrights. Encourage people to share and reproduce the articles with others as long as they don’t change the content and leave your bio and contact information intact.

7. Set up your own blog and update it regularly. You can even post your articles in your blog if you don’t feel comfortable writing about yourself. Register your blog with blog directories on the internet and always include your bio and website URL in each blog. Blogs are now getting picked up and reproduced like articles. The search engines love blogs with quality content.

8. Send press releases promoting your new product or service. You can send a press release easily at www.prweb.com and it will read by thousands of press people within minutes. You can send the press release for free or pay a fee to reach even more news services.

These are just a few ways to drive traffic to your website. As I try more methods I’ll share my results with you so you don’t waste time duplicating my efforts. It’s important to use multiple methods of driving traffic to your website because you want to reach as many potential customers as possible. You won’t know which methods work for your target market until you experiment and measure your results. Remember to thoroughly track your campaigns and measure your results.

Ted Prodromou spent over 25 years in the computer industry working for IBM, Digital, and Cellular One. Today he’s the owner of Valiss Internet Solutions, a consulting firm that teaches you how to use your website as a marketing tool. Download your free report How To Attract Clients While You Sleep at http://www.valiss.com/freereport.htm

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.

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.

Search Engines around the world are getting smarter day by day. Everyday they spend hours to refine their search results. These search engines are following techniques familiar to various known species of our planet.

Google works like a “Clever Fox”, and many of you would agree with me. It has adopted several unperceivable techniques, and algorithms which are difficult for anyone to interpret completely.

Google keeps on updating its algorithm while making them more complex, and hard to interpret. Several new terms like “Sandbox”, and ”PR” have become popular within SEO communities worldwide.

Several seo companies are working day, and night just to understand Google better.

Some of the techniques which new website owners can use to obtain top rankings are:-

1) Purchase a Domain Name which is old, or was registered 6-12 months back.

2) Use keywords in your domain name, but do not exceed them. An ideal seo domain name can be one which is short, and precise.

3) Never ever try to over smart Google, because the trick which is working today will surely get outdated tomorrow. Once the trick is detected by Google your domain can get life imprisonment.

4) If your site is caught in Sandbox, then remove every single instance of on-page optimization spamming. This will not only ensure a higher ranking, but also a safe haven for your domain.

5) Keep updating your site regularly with fresh content, and materials. It will give your PR a boost.

6) Keep making slight changes on your pages after every week.

7) Try to abstain from link exchange, as it is a risky technique, and can get your site in trouble.

8) Keep adding high PR one way links towards your website.

9) Don’t make websites just to fool search engines.

10) Make websites which have proper Business logic, and motive defined behind it.

11) Do read the latest webmaster guidelines on Google.com.

12) Keep close tabs on your rankings.

These are some of the techniques which can ensure top rankings, and high PR on Google.com

Best of Luck

Seohawk, India

Name: Bhupinder Singh

Occupation: Working as webmaster for BSOLUTIONS, http://www.bsolutions.s5.com, and seoexpert in http://www.seohawk.com. I have worked for several international clients from UK, US, CANADA, and India. Having experience of more than 3 years in web development and Search Engine Optimization, I have evolved a wide expertise in Search Engine Optimization Techniques.

Contact me: bhupinder@bsolutions.s5.com OR bhupinder@seohawk.com

It allows users to contribute online and offline content to the search engine, and add attributes to the content’s description to help others find it.

Depending on relevance, submitted items could appear across Google properties like Froogle or Google Local. That would seem to support the anticipated release of Google’s classifieds service, by giving users an easy way to upload and tag products or services.

One item in the Base FAQ also shows that the service is ready to work with classifieds:

If you’d rather format your item by hand, click Next without entering any information in the description box. On the next page, you can specify your item’s title, description, pricing, and other content in separate fields.

Publishing items to Base will require a Google Account. Google will review submitted items, so users will have to obey the terms and conditions of the service. Users with a large number of items to submit can do so via bulk upload with RSS or Atom feeds, or with a tab-separated file.

AdWords users can advertise their hosted page on Base with the program. Google recommends in the FAQ that AdWords users include their namespace in the visible URL of the ad, ie base.google.com/username.

Gary Price at Search Engine Watch does see a couple of areas Google will have to police heavily in order to keep Base a relevant and useful service:

Spam will likely be rampant, especially in the optional "labels" (aka tags) section. Precisely how these labels are used is unknown, but I’m guessing their use is for helping determining relevancy to a specific query. Also, will someone or something be watching for copyright issues if/when someone reposts an in-copyright article from a magazine? It’s worth mentioning that every item has a link to report it as a "bad item" (violates copyright, mislabeled or misleading, spam, contains or links to adult content and is not labeled correctly, etc.) Great, now does Google have the human resources to check out each report in a timely manner and then respond properly?

And Danny Sullivan recommended a couple of improvements for Base:

This is a real advancement, and it’s one I hope we’ll see improve in two ways — the ability to have private databases and named databases.

For private databases, I mean that Google Base is a simple way for anyone to create a collection of names and phone numbers for the local soccer club. But you don’t want the world to have access to that information, only people you choose. Private databases would be helpful.

By named database, I sort of mean mini-Google Bases. If someone’s created an exceptionally good set of information, I want to be able to search directly against just that information, rather than all of Google Base. It’s a pain to have to hope or figure out that refinement will let me do that. Give me the ability to name and bookmark a particular database.

A number of items have been submitted to Base already. Google is using geocoding to enhance the results. By clicking on the sample "cars for sale" link, I was taken to specific listings within 45 miles of the WebProNews home base, complete with a Google Map and pushpins showing where each car could be found.

Doing a search for "blogger" in Base returned a couple of pages of results, which should rapidly expand as more people add references to their blogs to Base. Options to refine the search appeared as clickable links at the top of the results page.

Base has been listed as a beta version, like a lot of Google services. Now we’ll have to wait for Classifieds to come along and see how they work together.