How many times do we continue old, familiar ways of doing business that don’t respond to changing circumstances? The inability to respond to evolutionary changes in marketing channels can spell disaster for some business owners. Search engine marketing is one of those evolutionary changes.

Take Microsoft for instance. Here is the dominant technology company in the world with incredible Corporate Branding and they wouldn’t respond to changes in consumer behavior and preferences. Strangely, they were gearing up to deliver their products online, not via expensive physical distribution. Even their marketing was being increasingly online. Isn’t it common sense that they would want to be front and center in front of online shoppers, including their current customers? Yes, but MS had preconceptions about which comes first, the cart or the horse. The whole idea of giving something away for free (search service) while not bombarding visitors with ads was beyond their corporate scope. They didn’t bother improving their search engine or promoting it.

At the same time, the world’s B2B buyers and consumers were going online, using search engines to find the precise software products they needed, from office productivity to e-commerce shopping carts. With the MSN Search engine, Microsoft Corporation had direct access to those sales leads and online sales. Even though the writing was on the wall, and Google was showing that they’re new approach to online search was the way to go, Microsoft stuck their head in the sand, and lost out on what is now worth 30 to 40 Billion dollars to the innovative owners of Google. Their search engine was very poor quality, at one point almost losing its complete marketshare.

Search engines are used by extremely well-targeted sales prospects who are either doing serious research before buying or intend to buy online. They could be consumers or business buyers such as retail store owners and distributors. Although only 1 to 3% may buy online, two to three times that many may buy at a brick and mortar store afterward. The sales potential of search engines is grossly undervalued. Not only do they allow you to push sales through the distribution channel via B2B buyers, it pulls it through via consumer demand.

If Microsoft had disrupted their business as usual processes, and responded to the looming Web search phenomenon properly, they wouldn’t be facing the huge new threat that Google poses. Google isn’t just a search engine anymore. They’re the world’s biggest online advertiser, growing in leaps and bounds as more people discover that online research and shopping fits their lifestyles and business needs, and they investigating implementing everything from browsers and even future operating systems.

Google innovated and discovered it had something extremely valuable to businesses – direct access to consumers. It has a dominant leadership in the most important marketing medium in the new millennium, and it can sell anything. It can even sway the top Microsoft employees to work for them.

Last year, many executives reported a strong new interest in search engine marketing. This field has matured however, and it is expensive to buy paid search-based advertising on the appropriate Web sites. Given that cost, search engine optimization promises to capitalize on the search engine’s free opportunities so it has become very attractive.

For the past few years, only Google offered a truly free opportunity. Yahoo and MSN continued to try to charge web site marketers to appear in their results thus ruining their own search product. Consumers wanted uncontaminated quality results which Google delivered. Now companies like Yahoo and MSN are walking up to the need for quality search results. Why? Because Google wasn’t giving them any preference in their own search results. In the past, MSN and Yahoo were showing up strongly in Google results so Google was giving them free business. So, Google then made a shift in their search algorithm to eliminate the boost MSN and Yahoo received. Their traffic must have plummeted along with the revenue.

So there comes a time when executives must recognize changes in marketing conditions. Like it or not, search is integral to the way people are leading modern personal lives and the way they do business. This new medium won’t be forced to fit conventional marketing processes. Organic search in particular requires unique approaches that require more courage and responsiveness from business owners.

With respect to Microsoft, they have unbelievable resources and can make their search engine become their biggest asset if they choose. Since Google is producing stale search results, searchers are checking out MSN to find new and different sites. Consumers adjust and so should business.

That’s where the innovation called Search Engine Optimization arises. It responds perfectly to opportunities the search engines offer and to consumers who are only interested in the context of their search. You have to be found as part of their search which in turn is part of their shopping experience. It takes confidence and optimism to let go of the old approaches and take on a new one that responds to the reality that consumers are in control.

Scott White is President of Brand Identity Guru. He can be reached at 508-238-4347 or at swhite@brandidentityguru.com.

Everyday, the Search Engines average 300 MILLION searches. In a recent Forrester Research report 81% of consumers on the Internet find products and services by using the Search Engines. Search Engine Optimization allows you to achieve top search engine placement and a tap into a new source of qualified visitors who are actively searching for products and services on the Internet.

Unfortunately, only 7% of all websites are visible by the search engines according to a recent StatMarket.com study. The reason for this phenomenon is because most web sites are not properly optimized and promoted to achieve high search engine rankings.

The Top 3 Components Of Optimizing Your Web Site for Top Search Engine Rankings:

To achieve the best overall, long-term search engine positioning, three components must be present on your web site:

1. Content component (Your web page text.)

2. Link component (How you link your pages together.)

3. Link Popularity component (The in-bound links to your site.)

1) The Content Component

The most important part of the content component (of a search engine algorithm) is keyword selection and where you place keywords on your web pages. In order for your target audience to find your site on the search engines, your web pages must contain keyword phrases that match the phrases your target audience is typing into search queries. Finding these keywords that your target audience uses to find your product is accomplished by conducting keyword research.

2) The Link Component - Internal Linking

The strategy of placing keyword-rich text on your web pages is useless if the search engine spiders have no way of finding that text. The way your web pages are linked to each other has huge impact on your site’s search engine positioning. Be sure to link your pages together with your keywords within your links.

3) The Link Popularity Component - Acquiring In-Bound Links

The "Link Popularity" or Google "Page Rank" (PR) component of a search engine algorithm analyzes how many web sites link to your website.

95% of the battle of getting high rankings at the search engine is acquiring quality and relevant links pointing to your web site. Ever since Google entered the search engine market, all the major Search Engines have started using links as the primary way they rank web sites. This is known as your web site’s "Link Popularity" or in Google’s case it’s called "PageRank" or "PR."

For example, the heart of Google’s algorithm is PageRank, a system for ranking web pages developed by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University. Here is what Google says about their "PageRank" web site ranking algorithm at their web site http://www.google.com/technology/…

"PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."

As Google explains, Links and PageRank are critical to ranking high in the search engines. In fact, inbound links and the text within those inbound links account for 95% of effective search engine optimization.

Relevant Links: But, attaining optimal link popularity is not as easy as simply obtaining as many links as possible to your website. The quality and relevancy of the sites linking to your site holds more "weight" than the quantity of sites linking to your site. Since Yahoo is the most frequently visited site on the web, a link from Yahoo to your website carries far more "weight" than a link from a smaller, less visited site.

Here’s what Google Developer Matt Cutts has to say about links…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Thematic incoming links from authority sites
carry more weight than on-page optimization."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Top 4 Strategies for Acquiring Links to Your Web Site:

Below are the four critical steps for achieving high rankings by acquiring text links to your web site…

1) Get a higher Google PageRank score than your competition For any given keyword, there is a minimum PageRank required to rank at Google. In order to see what this minimum PageRank number is, search Google for your keyword and look at the PageRank of your competition’s web sites that are ranked in the top 10 of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). An easy way to view the PageRank scores of your competition is to use Google Toolbar http://toolbar.google.com or the SEOChat PageRank Search tool. http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/pagerank-search/

2) Get more relevant links than your competition All links are not created equal. The best links are "relevant" links from web pages related to your keyword.

3) Get more links on more different web sites than your competition Getting links on a variety of different web sites on different networks is crucial for high rankings.

4) Use the keywords you want to high rankings in the search engines as the anchor text of your in-bound links. "Anchor text" is the visible text within a hyperlink. Text links and anchor text are the two most important criteria for how Google and other top Search Engines rank web sites.

Here is an example of a link containing the keyword phrase "ERP Software" within the anchor text…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
F*R*E*E [ERP Software] white paper shows how
to increase profitability and reduce inventory.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Relevant Links and PageRank are critical to achieving high search engine rankings. Want proof? Do a search at Google for the highly competitive keyword "computers" and you’ll find Apple and Dell computers rank numbers 1 and 2 in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Now, click through to the Apple and Dell web pages and look for the word "computers" in their web page text. What did you find? Neither www.apple.com or www.dell.com have the word "computers" in their text, yet they’re ranking #1 and #2 at Google.

Relevant Links and PageRank Win!

The sites with the most relevant links and highest Google PageRank win every time and rank the highest at the top search engines. There are many methods you can use to acquire text links including buying links from a broker, Internet directories, reciprocal linking, Internet publicity, and others.

Matt Hockin is President of Interactive Marketing, Inc., an Internet marketing consulting company providing web site optimization and search engine marketing services that "tune up" web sites for increased conversion rates, traffic, qualified leads, and profitability. For more information, visit http://www.interactivemarketinginc.com

Before you go and spend big money on a professional website designer, or start designing yourself, read through this article and make sure that you or your designer knows how to design a website that the search engines will like.

Being a web designer myself, I know firsthand what they teach you in college about being a good designer. While I learned all of the important design concepts like color theory, the importance of graphics and white space, ect ect, I came away knowing nothing about how to actually design a site to get ranked in the search engines.

Because of the lack of training in design schools, there are many, many web design companies out there today that know nothing about designing a web page properly.

It wasn’t until I started doing some research that I realized there was a whole world of search engine optimization (SEO) techniques that I didn’t know about. Most designers love to make your site aesthetically pleasing. Maybe they use newer technologies like Flash design or really graphic intensive pages. While these techniques make your site look pretty they are not practical if you ever want a visitor to find your site in a search engine.

Here are some basic concepts to learn before beginning your website design.

**Flash**

I know it’s tempting to have an all flash site because lets face it they look really awesome. The problem with having an all flash site though, is that it is basically nonexistent to the search engines.

A flash source file is embedded in the html and therefore offers no content to which the search engine spiders can look at to rank you. Unless you are already well known in your particular industry or have a very identifiable brand (think Pepsi or BMW) then you should not use an all flash site.

But what if you really, really want to have flash? Here are some ways around this problem.

First, you can create two websites for your visitors. An HTML version and a Flash version. You can let your visitor decide where to go. That way you won’t leave them frustrated if they have a dial up connection and are not surfing with broadband. There is nothing that will tick your potential customer off faster than having to wait ten minutes just to view your fancy flash intro. By having both versions available you also give the search engine spiders a content rich HTML site so they can rank you accordingly.

Secondly, you can add flash components in your main site to give off some cool effects without taking forever to download. For instance, I have seen a lot of websites lately where the top header portion of their site is made in flash or their buttons are done in flash to make them stand out more. These are two good ways to use flash without overdoing it. Just make sure that your body copy is keyword rich to offset the flash.

**Keyword Placement**

This next part assumes that you already have researched and gathered targeted keywords to work with. If you have not done keyword research for your services or products you are selling, then you have some work to do before this next step. You can check out http://www.westmarketing-design.com/articles.htm for more information on doing keyword research.

There is a phrase that you will hear in the SEO world and that is “keyword rich text”. This simply means that when you write your body copy for your website that you need to word it a certain way so that you include your keywords. Now that doesn’t mean that you insert a keyword every other word. The search engine spiders consider that to be spam. What it means is that you give your body copy a lot of thought, making sure you have keywords placed within your copy that make sense to the overall service or product that you are selling.

Here is an example of a keyword rich paragraph selling an information product on public speaking. The keywords are in quotes.

Are you interested in becoming a better "public speaker" or improving your "public speaking skills"? You can become a "paid public speaker" and make lots of money for "speaking in public" to a wide variety of audiences. Learn all the latest "public speaking tips" and tricks, including learning how to "overcome stage fright" and "add humor" to your presentation.

All of those keywords were researched and found to be very targeted to the phrase “public speaking”. Now I went a little overboard in my keywords for the example, but you get the idea.

There is another phrase called “keyword density”. This refers to how many times a particular keyword or phrase is found in one website page for every 100 words.

You walk a fine line between having enough keyword density to having too much and having the search engines consider your site to be spam. Be aware though that not all search engines are created equal. Some might like a keyword density of 5 percent, while another one might favor 7 percent. I suggest testing your copy for a month or so and keeping tabs on your search engine ranking. If you get high ranks, keep your copy the way it is, but if it is lower than you want, try tweaking your copy and keyword density to see if you can get the desired ranking.

**More Places for Keywords**

There are other places that search engine spiders look for keywords besides your website copy. If at all possible try to get a domain name with one of your keywords in it. For instance if you sell dog collars, a name you might want for your website would be www.dogcollarsales.com or something like that. It might take some thinking and some time to come up with a related name that someone hasn’t already taken, but it can be done.

Another good place for keywords is in your page title. Instead of putting the name of your business which most people won’t know, instead place a keyword rich sentence or phrase. Using the dog collar business example again here is a title page you could use.

Dog Collars – We sell dog collars and other products for your beloved pet.

It clearly tells the search engines what the page is about. Remember that the title of your website is indexed by the search engines and is part of what is shown to someone who is searching on that keyword.

So if I typed in dog collars into my search engine, the title from above and my meta tag description would show in my search results. Make sure you put some thought into your title.

This rule also applies to your meta tag description which is also viewed when a search engine pulls up your site. Make it only one or two keyword rich sentences. The meta tag keyword has less impact today then it did a few years ago, but I still recommend adding a few keywords. Don’t go overboard and write out 50 keywords or your site will be considered spam to the search engines.

Most websites that are designed today rely heavily on graphical content and not much else. Another tip on keyword placement is to try to place a keyword rich sentence near the very top of your page. Some people have spots for banners and such at the top of their pages, this is the same kind of idea and can be made to look pretty and not out of place. This is important because the search engine robots start at the top of your page and work down. The closer to the top of the page you have keywords the more the search engines will think your page is relevant.

**A Frontpage Trick**

Search engine spiders will look at a block of text and if any words or phrases are typed in an H1 size then they consider that phrase to be of the utmost importance to the page. This is a great place to have a keyword look very important to the search engines.

Now for those of you who don’t know, an H1 size is pretty big and would definitely stand out on your page and can oftentimes look a little ugly. There are ways around this if you know CSS well, but if you are designing your site yourself and have no clue what CSS even is then I can help you.

*This tip is only for those of you who are using Frontpage as your web editor.*

You can show the search engines that the text is in an H1 size, but then change the size of the text back down to whatever size you want instead. Here’s how you do it.

In Frontpage select the text you want to use and set it to an H1 size. Then go over to the font size drop down and change it to whatever size you want to use. It’s that easy.

Now one drawback to using this technique is that there will be empty space around the phrase that is designated as an H1 size. Basically it is still taking up the same amount of room it normally would, it just doesn’t look so blatantly obvious. This technique is best used for titles of paragraphs or break points in paragraphs, so that it won’t look weird to your visitors.

**The ALT Tag**

This design tip is a pretty clever way to get an extra keyword or two into your site. The ALT tag is an HTML tag that is used when you want to give a written description for a graphic element on the page. It was designed initially so that if someone couldn’t download your pictures, they could see an alternative description in text describing the picture.

Instead of describing the picture you can place a keyword in the alt tag instead. Here’s an example of what the HTML code would look like.

img border="0" src="myimage.jpg" width="640" height="150" alt="keyword phrase"

These are just a few proven techniques when designing your site to improve your search engine ranking.

Leah West

http://www.westmarketing-design.com Providing complete search engine optimized website design and internet marketing services for your small business success. Sign up for my Fr*ee ezine at http://www.westmarketing-design.com/ezinesubscribe.htm

Search engines are hot topic. Google has great financial reports every quarter. Google is the most used search engine and if you want to use the power of search engines and to have success on the Internet you have to do your search engine optimization (SEO) wisely. We will give you several tips that will help you in making better SEO campaigns.

Rule #1 – Quality content

You probably know about that “Content Is King” rule. It is especially true for SEO. Try to have relevant and quality content, at least 400 words per page. Search engines love lengthy articles. You web site should be up-to-date, articles and news have to be added on a regular basis, at least once a week. This will show to search engines that your web site is an ongoing project and not some “let’s make a web site for Adsense” schemes. Make your content relevant to your target audience, use appropriate keywords but don’t make a mistake and do keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing is when someone intentionally includes many keywords and repeats them many times in the article hoping to achieve better search engine placement. Search engines are machines but they are not naïve, and they are getting “smarter” every day. Your keywords need to have the most appropriate keyword density. You won’t be able to know the right keyword density because search engines often change their rules. Several great resources and software can help you to choose the right keyword density and to be up-to-date with search engine trends.

http://www.searchenginewatch.com

http://www.searchengineguide.com

http://www.webceo.com

http://www.webposition.com

Rule #2 – Link popularity

Links are the next most important rule in making a successful search engine optimization. Many search engines give very much weight to number of web sites that have links to your web site. It is especially case with Google, the most important search engine, that use their proprietary technology called PageRank that ranks web sites by counting number of links it has on other web sites. However, quantity is not the most important thing. You should have quality links. So, Google will give you better PageRank (PR) if you have links on web sites with higher PR. They assume that if quality sites link to your web site that your site is quality, as well. That’s why you should make ad swaps with quality web sites that focus on similar audience like your web site. Please be aware that linking between sites that are on the same server (IP address) won’t bring you benefit in increasing your PR. To check your link popularity type site:www.yourdomainname.com in Google search bar and you will get list of sites that have links to your web site. Also you can use a free service at:

http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/

Also, you should have a good internal navigation on your web site. It is recommended that you design your web site that every page can be accessed within 3 clicks.

Rule #3 – Meta Tags

Meta tags give different information about your web site. The most used Meta tags are for title, keywords and description. Meta tags are placed between tag in your HTML document. It is very important to give good page titles, description and keywords for every page on your web site. It doesn’t have to be too short, but also it doesn’t have to be too lengthy. Between tag you will write title of your HTML document. Title shouldn’t be longer than 70 characters. Choose it very wisely. After that you can include different Meta tags. We will give you several most used Meta tags:

There are several useful free services that will help you in finding the best keywords for your web site. We can recommend you these services:

Google AdWords Keyword Tool

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordSandbox

Keyword Suggestion Tool

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/

Also, there are other Meta tags that you can use in your web site.

This Meta tags give info to search engines when they should come back to your web site and re-index it.

The following Meta tag gives info to search engines what to index. In this case they will index all pages. However, you can also make some restrictions and to deny that some pages be indexed by search engines with making a so called robot.txt file.

Also, you can place a Meta tag that will give info about you or the author of your web site.

Those 3 rules are the most important rules in search engine optimization. Also there are other rules that we will only mention like to use a so called ALT tags to give description to your images, don’t use database-driven links (make them search engine friendly) and don’t use frames in designing your web site. Also, it is highly recommended to submit your web site to Open Directory Project web site (http://www.dmoz.org). It takes time to be indexed there but it is useful because it will help you in better search engine placement and many sites use Open Directory Project database on their web sites.

After you have completed your SEO campaign you will have to check your rankings on search engines for different keywords. Beside above mentioned SEO software, we can recommend you these free services for checking keyword/ranking placement:

Free Search Engine Ranking & Keyword Tracker

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/keywords/

Search Engine Placement Check

http://www.marketleap.com/verify/default.htm

We wish you to achieve the first results page!

Dejan Bizinger is a Contributing Editor for Infacta. Infacta is email messaging services company providing powerful, yet easy-to-use award-winning Group Mail, software for sending highly-personalized email messages and Group Metrics, software for email tracking. For more information visit: http://www.infacta.com

In the following article I will give you some basic guidelines to follow in order to help get your web site ranked at the top of popular organic search engines. More detailed information can be found in our DIY Internet Marketing Guide “Start at the Beginning” Click here for an excerpt: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_2.html

What Is Optimisation?

Search engine optimisation is the process of creating or modifying a web site so that it encompasses the design, background coding, text copy, and link-building elements search engines check through when indexing your web site. Through the process of optimisation, you can develop or alter a web site so that the search engines will move your web site towards the top of the results generated for your particular, relevant searches. This means people who are actually searching for what you have to sell will click to your web site, as it will be listed above those of your competitors.

How Does Optimisation Work?

There are three fundamental elements to the search engine optimisation: background coding, text copy and link popularity.

Background coding is the manipulation of your HTML code so that it is “clean”, uncluttered, positioned correctly, and easily accessible to the search engine spiders and crawlers. You need to be sure that the most important information to the spiders is located near the top of the page where it can be quickly and easily found and positioned thus, the spiders will consider that it is more relevant than information nearer the bottom of the page. You also need to ensure that java scripts and other such coding are moved out of the spiders’ way.

Text copy relates to the text on your site. Professional search engine copywriters are able to write in such a way as to include your primary key phrases in strategic places so that you get the most "points" from the engines and also appeal enough to your customers to persuade them to purchase your product or service.

Link popularity deals with how many sites have links that point back to your web site and the quality of those web sites with regard to relevance. The theory is, that if others in your field think highly enough of your web site to link to it, your web site, and the products or services it offers, must be of good quality.

When you have a good combination of all three primary elements, you stand a much better chance of ranking high within these engines.

A Couple of Myths Exploded…
Isn’t It All About the META Tags?

A long, long time ago, in a land far away…it used to be! When the Internet was first founded, virtually all you had to do to get high rankings was to stick a load of key phrases into your keyword tag and boom, lots of targeted traffic flooding to your web site. Now, however, the engines are smarter. They pay no attention to the keyword tags and very little attention to the description tag. The only tag that carries much weight anymore is the title tag and it is extremely important.

Isn’t it All About stuffing Your Pages Full of Key Phrases?

No! Not only does key phrase stuffing (as it is attractively known) put you at risk of spamming the search engines, it makes your text copy look and sound horrible to your human site visitors. What good are high search engine rankings if your web site text puts off and doesn’t convert those visitors into paying customers? You need to maintain the balance between natural language and key phrase use.

How can you get the balance right? Read the detailed information in our DIY Internet Marketing Guides “Start at the Beginning” excerpt available here: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_2.html and also “Writing Text That Sells” excerpt here: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_3.html

How to Optimise Your Web Site.

Set your goals.
The first thing to consider when embarking on a new search engine optimisation campaign is to establish the goals for the site and the optimisation in general. For instance, is the goal to drive more targeted traffic to the site, to get people to sign up for a newsletter, to get someone to make a purchase online, or is it to entice people to call or fill out a form requesting more information? Usually, the goals will be a combination of things. Very often different pages within the site will have different goals, and these need to be kept in mind throughout the SEO process.

Identify Your Key Phrases.
With the end goals in mind, the next step is to compile a key phrase list. Brainstorm the phrases you feel are important to your business and also make sure you go through the existing pages or your web site and add to the list any phrases that appear naturally within the copy. With list in hand, it’s time for some heavy-duty keyword research. You can use a free suggestion tool such as those provided by Overture or Google or pay for time limited access to WordTracker.

WordTracker - http://www.wordtracker.com
Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool - http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
Google AdWords - https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordSandbox

More often than not, you’ll find that phrases that you thought were important are not actually searched for by real people. The key phrase suggestion tools above will give you alternate suggestions to test.

You will now be armed with a list of actually searched for, highly targeted, relevant keyword phrases. Weed out any irrelevant phrases from the list and rank the relevant ones in order of importance for your business. Then decide which 2 or 3 phrases to focus on within the copy of each page of the web site. The home page of the site should usually focus on the main 2 or 3 phrases that encompass the general theme of the site. Inner pages should each focus on 2 or 3 more specific phrases. If your pages already have some text copy to work with, take a look at the existing words on each page and see which 2 or 3 keyword phrases in your short list will fit best with the current copy. If pages of the site don’t have much copy to begin with, or if there is no specific focus on any given page, a rewrite from scratch will be necessary.

Write the Text Copy.
Now it’s time to get down to the nitty-gritty of writing the text copy for your pages. If you’re starting from scratch, be sure you keep in mind which phrases need to be used, what the goals of the site are, and who the target market is as this information will affect how you write the copy. If you’re lucky enough to have some existing copy, the next step will be to work in the necessary keywords whilst maintaining the flow and rhythm of the text. Once your copy is finished you should have a number of pages focusing on 2 or 3 key phrases each. Edit the HTML Code.

Optimising the HTML code includes creating Title tags, Meta description tags, Meta keyword tags, hyperlinks, and possibly headings and image alt attributes. All of these are factors in helping the search engine spiders to properly classify your site, with some being more important than others. There is too much detail to go into in this newsletter but more information can be found in our DIY Internet Marketing Guide “Start at the Beginning” Click here for an excerpt: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_2.html

Upload and Submit.
Once you have completed all the steps above upload your new pages to your server and if this is a new web site, submit them to the search engines. If you are updating an old site that is listed (all-be-it badly) in the search engines, it is not necessary to resubmit it.

Also don’t forget to perform your directory submissions or directory change requests. Make sure you submit to directories only when your web site is complete as this aids the directory editor categorise your site more easily, and they’ll be less likely to edit your submitted description.

Link Building.
Now it is time to begin your link-building campaign in earnest. Link building can be started in a quick burst, but should also be an ongoing process. You should always be on the lookout for sites that are a good fit with yours and contact them about exchanging links. For more info on link popularity and its effect on search engine rankings, please read our guide “Start at the Beginning” Click here for an excerpt: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_2.html

Wait and See.
All that’s left to do now is wait for your organic listings to begin listing. If you’ve paid for inclusion with the search engines and directories that offer this service, you should start to see results within two weeks. If the initial rankings aren’t as high as you’d like them to be, don’t panic. Concentrate on your link building and your efforts will be rewarded over time. Try not to make any major changes to the web site its-self for at least 3 to 6 months.

Now all you have to do is sit back and wait for all those free, targeted, highly motivated customers!

For a complete guide to marketing on the Internet, including:

· The General Principles of Internet Marketing
· Start at the Beginning
· Writing Text that Sells
· Building Online Relationships
· Maximising Your Pay Per Click Campaign
· Measuring Success

Why not purchase the whole series of downloadable guides for the discounted price of £64.95. Click for more information: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/promo_ebooks.html

Justine Curtis
Enable UK
Internet Marketing Information and Resources
Make your web site work harder!
Web: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk
Email: info@enable-uk.co.uk
Article from Internet Marketing Tips Newsletter, a monthly publication of Enable-UK
Copyright © 2004 Enable-UK.

For more than 4 years now I have been modifying my work from home based web sites trying to optimize for the major search engines, Especially Goggle. Today with much disappointment I have come to the realization that search engine traffic alone will not make me rich. Yes my search engine rankings are now worse today than when I started 4 years ago.

Google is constantly changing their algorithms which may or may not benefit your web site. In my case it appears it does not. And then there is Yahoo and MSN search on the horizon. It appears these 2 are beginning to take away valuable customers from Google. Although this is not necassarily a bad thing we now need to optimize for 3 search engines instead of 1. Back in the good old days if you had a number 1 ranking on Google for work from home (the holly grail of search terms) you also had a number 1 on Yahoo and MSN for work from home. Today that is not the case.

I have always been reading other people saying not to place all your chips on Google and expect to make it big time. Today I realize how correct they were. I still optimize for search engines this will never change. But in addition to search engine optimization other advertising methods must be used if you want to make it on the internet big time.

If you have the money paying for placement is not a bad idea. Google has its very popular ad words program which for a price will place your website link in an ad box down the right hand side of the search results. And Yahoo has Overture search results which are placed above the natural search results. But you will need to be in the top 3 for your link to show up because Yahoo only shows 3 sponsored listings on top of the natural listings. You can also use several smaller pay per click engines such as Findwhat, 7Search and Kanoodle to name just a few.

Gaining in popularity and very effective is writing and submitting press releases. If you write a good press release with your target URL in it you could potentially get 1,000’s of visitors from just 1 press release. Press releases are also showing up in the news search results of Yahoo and Google. This can’t hurt your search engine optimization efforts either. The most popular place for information on press releases and getting your release published is http://www.prweb.com. For a small fee of $30 you can guarantee a next day listing and submission of your press release to Yahoo, Google and many other engines.

People have been raving about writing articles for a long time now. Do they work? Of coarse they do. Why do you think I take the time to write articles? It’s difficult at first if you are not into writing, but writing articles can help your search engine rankings if you can incorporate your website URL into the article you are writing and then submit it to as many article directories as you can find. Also make sure you add all your articles to your own web site. This adds content to your site that hopefully you visitors will want to read.

There are literally hundreds more options for you to advertise your website both online and offline that I am not going to get into in this article. The main point is don’t put all your eggs into one basket like I did (GOOGLE) Spread them out advertise everywhere and don’t count on a good search engine ranking. If you do everything else right the search engines will look after your sit for you.

Tom Worsley is a successful work from home Internet marketer and independent representative for SFI, Owner and Webmaster for http://www.kawarthapublishing.com.

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What follows is a condensed version of a conversation that happens all too frequently when I am approached by a prospect interested in search engine optimization (SEO):

Prospect: We need our website optimized, because we aren’t showing up for any searches.
Me: What searches have you tried?
Prospect: We don’t show up for ANYTHING.
Me: Why do you want to show up in searches?
Prospect: Well, it seems like we should. Our competitors do, and our website is WAY better than theirs.
Me: But, really, what would you stand to gain from showing up prominently in search engine results?
Prospect: Well, we could get more people who are looking for our products or services to find out about us.
Me: So, what you are saying is that increasing your search engine results could help you to increase sales and awareness?
Prospect: Yes.
Me: Now we’re on the right track. Since your goals are to increase sales and awareness, have you thought about not only improving your search engine rankings, but also getting more people to take an action on your site that leads to a sale, getting more people to read your press releases or whitepapers so that they can consistently associate your company with your offering, or sending your prospects a regular newsletter to reinforce your name and expertise?
Prospect: Didn’t you hear me? Our website is great. We just don’t show up for searches.

And so it goes.

A consistent problem with the “ranking-centric” mindset demonstrated above is that it doesn’t reflect a powerful rationale for getting involved in SEO. Where is the true business case? What tangible results are desired? In general, if a prospect can’t explain what he or she hopes to achieve beyond “higher rankings” or “more traffic,” we’ll first try to educate, and, if that person can’t move beyond these base subjects, we’ll kindly refer them elsewhere.

More and more frequently, people are getting into SEO for the wrong reasons (and sometimes for no real reason at all). Achieving high rankings for targeted keyphrases, while an admirable and worthwhile goal, is really only a small piece of the entire online marketing puzzle. In this article, we’ll discuss a few additional, but equally vital, pieces.

Website Conversion

Website conversion is the art and science of getting more of the people who come to your website to take the action that you want them to take – fill out your contact form, read your whitepapers, sign up for your newsletter, or (in the case of e-commerce) buy something. For a company that is trying to build offline business, this action is typically something that gets prospects into the sales pipeline through some form of online registration. For a company or organization that is trying to build awareness, this action can be a number of things – getting visitors to a certain page of the site, getting them to stay longer at the site, or getting them to tell a friend about the site.

The critical point that is commonly overlooked in a ranking-centric mindset is that no number of high search engine positions will address the real problem if your website is not serving as an effective marketing and sales tool. And, as I have said many times before, the overall net effect of raising your conversion rate from one to two percent is the same net effect as doubling your traffic, and it is almost always easier. Increasing the number of visitors to a site that does not convert them effectively is like pumping high performance gasoline into a car with engine trouble – it might help the car to run a little bit better, but if you’d done repairs before adding the premium fuel, it really would have hummed.

Online PR

Your website is only one potential online destination where people can find out about your company, and a typical user will regard your site as an advertisement since you have complete control over the content. With optimized press releases and expert articles, however, you can have your company name mentioned on popular news sites and industry portals, where credibility is more inherent. Optimized Press Releases

Press releases that are optimized to appear when certain terms are typed into news search engines are an excellent way to build name recognition and credibility. If someone is taking the time to look for news related to your industry, he or she is probably either in your business, learning about your market, or writing a piece about your industry. The last category is especially significant since a recent study* indicates that 98% of journalists go online daily, 92% use the Internet for article research, and 73% use it to find press releases. Whatever motivation a person has when he or she searches for news related to your industry, you want your company represented in the results. Expert Articles

Another great way to promote your expertise and business is to write expert articles and submit them to the leading online publications in your field. At least one person in your company is almost certainly an expert in your field – why not let everyone know that? A person that reads an expert article published on an industry portal, and who subsequently clicks through to the website (from the link in the expert’s bio) is extremely targeted and already has a favorable impression of your company. Moreover, the same study cited above found that 76% of journalists go online to seek news sources or experts. When your company has demonstrated that you have experts on staff by publishing articles in credible, non-biased forums, the phone invariably starts to ring. Your experts will be asked to provide their opinions, quotes, or experiences for feature articles, often in prestigious industry publications. The benefits of this, of course, do not need explanation.

A side benefit to both of the strategies above is that they increase the number of inbound links to your website and, therefore, can help greatly enhance your search engine rankings – which might be the primary reason you looked into SEO in the first place.

Newsletters

Direct mail was once considered a marketer’s dream – but email newsletters can be much more effective. Imagine a direct mail list with a low delivery cost, where every single person on the list has shown an interest in receiving such mailings. Such is the nature of opt-in email newsletters. People have shown enough interest in your company, or, at least, in what your company has to say, to invite you to communicate with them on a regular basis. They are essentially giving you permission to keep yourself “first in mind” whenever they are considering your products or services. Such opportunities are rare in the marketing world. By combining the conversion principles you have applied to your website to your email newsletters, you can also get people to take an action that puts them into your sales pipeline without worrying about getting them to your website itself.

Conclusion

These are only a few of the additional ways to expand an online initiative beyond a misdirected ranking-centric approach. Weblogs (or blogs) are often considered another new frontier in online marketing, and we haven’t even touched on paid media opportunities such as banner ads or pay-per-click marketing. However, the three components mentioned above are important elements of a complete and successful online marketing initiative. An SEO campaign launched without considering them is like driving a four-cylinder car with only one cylinder firing – it will move, but you’d definitely reach your destination more quickly – and more smoothly – with all four.

*Middleberg-Ross Survey and Pew Internet and American Life Project

Scott Buresh is managing partner of Medium Blue Search Engine Marketing. His articles have appeared in numerous publications, including ZDNet, WebProNews, MarketingProfs, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, SEO Today, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. He was also a contributor to the recently released Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004).

Medium Blue is an Atlanta search engine optimization company with local and national clients, including Georgia Pacific, DuPont, and Boston Scientific.

Optimizing Your Title Tag

Without question the title tag of your page is the single most important factor to consider when optimizing your web page for the search engines. This is because most engines & directories place a high level of importance on keywords that are found in your title tag. The title tag is also what the search engines usually use for the title of your listing in the search results.

What it looks like:

Here’s the title tag of this page:

Where it belongs: The correct placement for the title tag is between the and tags within the HTML the makes up your page.

Tag limits:

We recommend that your title tag be between 50-80 characters long - including spaces! The length that the different search engines accept varies, but as long as you keep within this limit you should be ok.

Tag tips:

We recommend that you include 1-2 of your most important keyword phrases in the title tag, BUT be careful not to just list keywords. If you just list keywords you risk being viewed as a spamming the engines which can ultimately lead to you being blacklisted by the search engines. Your title tag should include your keyword phrases while remaining as close to a readable sentence as possible to avoid any problems.

Make your title enticing! Don’t forget that even if you get that #1 listing in the search engines your listing still needs to say something that makes the surfer want to clickthrough and visit your site.

Since the length of your title tag could be a little long for some engines we suggest placing the keywords at the beginning of the tag when possible so that you do not risk having them cut off.

Each page of your site should have it’s own title tag with it’s own keywords that related to the page that it appears on.

Stein Dozien SEO http://www.instantnlimitedincome.com/

Lets face it. Search Engines rule the World Wide Web today. Anytime you want to look up some information or a product you want to buy, you put the relevant keyword in the search field of a major SE like Google. And Violá! The efficient little engine throws up pages and pages of website URLs which carry your keyword.

SEO has become the most popular and the most effective strategy for increasing website traffic today. It gives you more exposure, pulls in more qualified visitors and helps you substantially increase your income. So, if you are a home based business owner with a serious web presence you would know the importance of attracting quality traffic to your website. Among all the strategies and tactics you can employ to attract focused web traffic to your site, optimising your website to get in top SE rankings is the most important. However to keep your rankings that way you have to be on top of what is happening in the SE industry. To understand how search engines work, spend some time at: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/0,4621,316408,00.html

Here are some great ways to optimize your site to get to the top of the SE rankings and stay that way:

1. Reciprocal links: Fish out relevant (but non-competing) websites that complement your services and products and ask them to link to your site. It’s a big hit with search engines to see a large number of sites linked to yours. However more important than quantity is the quality of the linked sites. Search engines look at how relevant the links are, that is, how much the content of the linking site has in common with the content on your site. The more relevant, the better. SE s also gauge the importance of these sites; their online presence and the number of hits they get. In a nutshell SE s believe that company matters!
2. Keyword is the king:however much the SE industry changes its rules, algorithms, indexing methods…. the right keyword is still the most important reason they will pick up your site to put on their top result pages. So keyword inclusion and placement is very important. The best places to place your chosen keywords are:
• Domain name: Putting your keyword in your domain name is both most obvious and the most important. But take care to put it in the root of the URL, not in the stem…that could SE s angry and do you more harm than good.
• Title tags:

in the title tags of your source code

• Meta description: In the Meta description of your site.
• Meta keyword tags
3. CONTENT CONTENT CONTENT: Create content rich information pages to get traffic coming your way. A word of caution…unless these pages contain information of some value to the potential visitors SE s may not pick them up. Search engines hate "pointer pages" that have no content and exist only to add to the number of links pointing to a site.
4. Online Directories: Almost all major portals have industry specific directories. Submit your website’s URL to directories like Yahoo and About.com as well as smaller directories. This will increase your chances of getting a boost in your SE rankings.
5. Go Forth and Multiply: Create your own community of sites that point to each other. A good idea would be to have different sites if you sell different types of products and services. You can also concentrate on using specific keyword phrases on each site. The more content rich sites that point to your site the better. So that’s another great way to boost your search engine ranking.

Now lets look at some of the most common mistakes that can prove to be the undoing of your website.

- The number 1 mistake is not putting enough CONTENT. Your website must have keyword –rich content that adds value to the visitors’ info search. Without meaningful content your visitors can click out just as easily only to never come back again.

- Using frames is a technique that makes the Webmaster’s life easy but can easily prove to be a major put off for SE s. SE s may find it difficult to move around in frames and will fail to include all of the pages in their list. These missed out pages will never show up to the people who are looking for them and defeat the whole purpose of your exercise.

- Enclosing text in graphics is another technique used by web designers to give the website an even, uniform look for every visitor. Unfortunately, SE s cannot differentiate between a photo in a graphic and text in a graphic. Hence they will overlook it. There you go again! Beat this problem by putting the real information in plain text that search engines can recognize.

Being visible the Internet is the first step to being found on the Internet.

So take advantage of these proven success tips and avoid the traps that will make your rankings fall down in the SE abyss. What you’ll be left with is a great website ranking bringing in focused qualified visitors to help you boost your sales.

For more information check out these websites:

http://www.powerhomebiz.com/vol127/optimization.htm
http://www.dummies.com/WileyCDA/DummiesTitle/productCd-0764567586.html

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The search engine giants are locked in an all out power struggle to get your attention and patronage.

Over the past 6 months there have been many changes. The big guys are getting even bigger, but there are a number of new players vying for your patronage too.

The top three Search Engines are Yahoo, MSN and Google. It would seem that Yahoo serves the most searches followed by MSN and then Google.

Only a year ago Google supplied both Yahoo and MSN with search listings. Yahoo has progresses from a Directory to a fully fledged search engine as has MSN with the launch of their new Search Engine. However Google still supplies search results to many other search engines including AOL, Alexa and a host of small and medium sized search engines.

It is my belief that any small business owner should know the basics of search engine placement and it is surprisingly easy to list your Web site, but even easier to get it ignored or even black listed by search engines.

All the information you require to list your site is only a search away. But you have to use the right search query. Don’t type in ’search engines’ into any search engine, as you will end up with a heap of useless information. It will probably list the top search engines, but it will probably not tell you how to prepare your Web site or how to get the best coverage for a listing.

For information on how to prepare your site I would try a search for a phrase like "search engine optimism" with the quotes so that your search is for that exact phase. The trouble is with first time Web site owners they don’t always know the terminology, even a search for ’seo’ will bring up a list of useful resources.

Other search phases include, optimize website, website optimizing, website optimization, web site optimization and website promotion, these are all useful search phases.

My experience is that any search engine submission company that promotes its services through paid memberships or sites that offer to list your site on many of the 100,000 plus search engines has more chance of getting your site ignored or black listed. Some companies do provide a good service but they are few and far between.

I personally only add a site to one search engine at a time and only the one time although there are a small number of search engines that will only list your site for a set period of time.

There is no set right way to list your site in search engines. It is not even necessary to physically add your site to a single search engine. A good example is my Ezine Web site. To date I have not submitted my site to a single search engine. Internet-Income-Index.com

I have added links to a couple of my personal sites and added my ezine articles to an Article directory or two and for a number of searches my site now comes up in the top 10 listing. Go to Google.com and try a search for the three main companies I promote online and see for yourself, TrafficOasis, ItsYourNet and Madison Dynamics !

So as you can see it is not necessary to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on promotion of your Web site. If I can get top 10 listings for my site within 6 months for Affiliated programs that have in the case of TrafficOasis over 125,000 members who I would assume are also promoting their TrafficOasis page. A top listing is possible.

Listing your site will be a different process to how others promote their sites. Even I promote one site different to another site. Check http://www.allsearchengines.com for lists Search Engines by product, service, category and country.

If you have a communications company, I would suggest you list your site in communications specific search engines and directories.

Using pay-per-click is one way to promote your Website But even then my ezine site has listings on the first page of Overture.com who are one of the major pay-per-click search engines owned by Yahoo. Pay per click can become an expensive choice if your site is not optimized for both search engines and people.

There are a number of theories that the Gurus claim are best. Yanik Silver suggest that with mini sites of a few pages focused on one product or service are the story.

I totally agree, but a problem does arise when you are promoting a number of companies that have numerous products. This requires creating a site that houses the various products on individual pages like my ezine site. It will take you more time keeping it updated but either a mini site or a larger site will work if the proper research, optimizing and planning is completed.

Learning as much as you can about search engines is of the utmost importance if you hope to achieve high page ranking and for your prospective site visitor to stay at your site to make a purchase …

Like you choosing the right search phase to get useful information on site optimization, the same applies to your site too.

Your site content must have the relevant content to provide to search engines so that they can list your site within the appropriate search results, then to get the searcher to decide to visit and stay at your site.

Let me simplify that.

Your site content must be relevant both for your visitors and search engines. Failure in one area directly affects the other.

May all your promotions be Successful.

PETER GREEN.

Editor of ~ The INDEX ~ ezine.

Editor@Internet-income-index.com

http://www.Internet-Income-Index.com

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